Technical Support

Background

My churches are going green.

Problem

→ I downloaded a PDF from Haute-Garonne’s government site, filled in the form and saved it on a USB key. Then I printed it at a Konica Minolta bizhub photocopier yesterday.

Problem

I would like to submit Flying Grizzly’s form. I filled in every blanks and then I clicked the “submit” button below. I was greeted with a MISSING_REQUIRED_FIELDS error within a second.

{
    "success":false,
    "data":["replying_to"],
    "rawError":{
        "_smErrorCode":"MISSING_REQUIRED_FIELDS",
        "data":["replying_to"]
    },
    "errorCode":"MISSING_REQUIRED_FIELDS"
}

Discussion

The error code suggested that the form fields sent should be inspected.

Goal

To enable Chinese and Japanese input on (X)ubuntu 18.04 laptops .

My choices of input method

On my old Fujitsu laptop running Xubuntu, I’ve chosen Fcitx. This turns out to be a difficult choice when I install Rime.

Japanese input

Thanks to ひゃまだ, I’ve managed to switch between difference modes in Mozc.

Problem

After installing NPM throught Ubuntu’s default apt-get manager, I got permission errors. Though sudo can solve the problem, that’s not the right way in principle because NPM is supposed to hold different versions of Node.js packages for testing. It’s insecure to execute npm with sudo priviledges.

Solutions

1. Install Zsh to improve efficiency

2. Grab Oh My Zsh to instal NVM as its plugin.

    sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
   

3. Use NVM (NPM Version Manager) to manage NPM.

   [Read More]

Background: 🈶 ⛪ → 🌿

→ 📧 In the recent decade, organizations are replacing courrier with email. The reason is two-folded. 🌿 First, the later is more environmentally-friendly. 📨 Second, the later delivers the content to the recipient quick as a flash.

📧 📎 When one sends an email, one sometimes wants to attach a file to an email. If one has to sign a paper document and send it by email, then one will probably need a scanner. (Despite the emergence of scanning apps on mobile devices, the quality of a scanner is normally better since the page is flattened during the scan.)

Main ideas

• – Ideal energy range for storage: 40%–80%
• The biggest enemy of electronic parts is heat .
• Avoid overchanging and unplug AC adapter when charging is complete. In particular, don’t leave a fully charged laptop connected to power supply. This can reduce the lifespan of the battery.
• Avoid deep discharges: recharge the laptop battery when its enery level drops to 40%.
• Reduce unnecessary programs running in background.
• If your hardware vendor supports Linux drivers for batteries, set the charging thershold to 80%.
  • Some Lenovo Thinkpads can benefit from those drivers.
  • Other vendors like Fujitsu offers such drives for M$ Windows only.

External URLs

1. Life Hacker
2. Omg! Ubuntu!

Objective

To get a hands-on experience on Ubuntu installation on a UEFI hybrid system.

Devices

• 120 GB SSD disk: /dev/sda
• 1 TB HDD disk: /dev/sdb
• 8 GB USB key: /dev/sdc

Stage 0: precautions

• Ensure that your machine has enough power.
• Disable Secure Boot in M$ Windows
• Disable Quick Boot in boot menu

Stage 1: Make your live USB key

I tried Xubuntu’s built-in disk writing tool to create a live USB key from the official ISO file. Like my Xubuntu 18.04 installation on Fujitsu LH532 , the installer crashed during the installation. After submitting the generated report to Launchpad, I found out that the cause for this crash: the integrity test for my live USB key had failed.

It’s FOSS’s after-installation guide #11 recommends TLP. However, this package stopped my laptop from shutting down and logging in. I resorted to remove it through TTY.

😖 @ 📃! This post contains unpleasant images. If you don’t wish to see them, please view this page with a text browser or a text mode plugin of your browser.

Rationale

Why?

My Fujitsu LH532 has been serving me well as my production machine for almost six years.

The keyboard was quite dirty: it’s full of hair and dandruff. I had to clean it for personal hygiene.

pdfunite is fairly easy to use.

pdfunite PDF-sourcefile1..PDF-sourcefilen PDF-destfile

Another way is to use QPDF. I’ve learnt to add --empty from @qpdf/qpdf:#12.

qpdf --empty --pages *.pdf -- out.pdf