Wed Sep 17 06:07:57 PM EDT 2025 Transcript of Chat box from BLU meeting, Wed, Sep 17. 2025 Meeting held online via Jitsi Meet In attendance (12 total): Speaker(s): * Bill Ricker BLU officers: * John Abreau * Jerry Feldman Attendees (named): * Brendan Kidwell * Edward Piecewicz * Gregory Galperin * Rajiv Aaron Manglani * Randy Cole * Robert Luoma Attendees (anonymous): * Chuba * Mario C * Mike S ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rajiv Aaron Manglani says:I guess my microphone is not working. Hmm. 18:38 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jerry Feldman says:You are muted 18:38 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ John Abreau says:looks like you're still muted ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rajiv Aaron Manglani says:I have no microphone device to unmute :X Rajiv Aaron Manglani says:brb 18:39 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jerry Feldman says:Glad to have you 18:39 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Ricker says:I was somewhat startled to discover my NUC has an onboard mic as default input ... 18:43 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Edward Piecewicz says:Frame rate: 25. That;s more like it. πŸ˜ƒ 18:44 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jerry Feldman says:Glad to have you πŸ˜ƒ 18:44 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Edward Piecewicz says:Interesting resolution: 480x270 (send max 360p). 18:44 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Ricker says:that will not render dense slides well Bill Ricker says:Hi Chuba! 18:46 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chuba says:Hello Bill 18:47 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Edward Piecewicz says:The camera is 1080p from Creative (of SoundBlaster fame). Now it's 320x180 with a frame rate of 30. 18:54 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ John Abreau says:I picked up a Raspberry Pi 500 Desktop a couple weeks ago. Worked well using Raspian, which came pre-installed on a 32GB microSD card. 18:55 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jerry Feldman says: πŸ˜ƒ 18:55 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Edward Piecewicz says: πŸ‘ 18:56 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Ricker says:Using it for some experiments. 18:56 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ John Abreau says:Tried installing Ubuntu on a usb3 SSD drive, which seemed to work well, until I tried to play a video with my custom media manager. 18:56 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Ricker says:custom MM ? 18:57 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ John Abreau says:My media manager uses a custom protocol type in firefox, which uses xdg-open to launch mplayer with the NFS path to the video file. 18:57 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Edward Piecewicz says:I've had good luck so far with openSUSE Slowroll installed to two 'onn' (Walmart electronics brand) USB SSDs. 18:58 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ John Abreau says:It works file on Fedora and on Raspian, but Ubuntu ignores mplayer and instead pops up a dialog to choose a GUI application, whic defeats the workflow of the media manaer. 18:59 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Edward Piecewicz says:No. May 3 is last one listed. 19:00 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ John Abreau says:"custom MM?" Yes, I tried various media managers in the past, such as plex, kodi, and a few others I don't recall the names of. John Abreau says:None of them worked the way I wanted, so i wrote my own. Still a work in progress, but the core functionality is complete. John Abreau says:The MM is a CGI script using a read-onlu postgres database, and the maintenance is done on the command line. πŸ‘ 19:05 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Ricker says:Well should present it sometime. 19:05 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ John Abreau says:Videos are on several different NFS servers, with cron jobs running find(1) daily to index the data and load it into postgres. 19:06 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Ricker says:JABR, you heard us say we need to have the Wednesday installfest onto the Web Calendar ? 19:07 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ John Abreau says:Every directory with video files has a metadata file , .imdb_ids, with the IIMDB tt id for whatever movie or tv episode a given file contains. John Abreau says:But we should probably get the meeting started now. John Abreau says:The calendar. yes, i was planning to get to that tonight. πŸ‘ 19:09 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Ricker says:soon 19:10 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Brendan Kidwell (NYC) says:in the mirrors one of these reflections is not like the others 19:14 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jerry Feldman says:true πŸ˜› 19:17 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ John Abreau says:I ran into the same problem on my main desktop. Had to shift to the oldermachine. 19:22 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Gregory Galperin says:literally AF? the japanese navy was using the latin alphabet to communicate internally? 19:54 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jerry Feldman says:In viet nam we used the Jack Benny method of transmitting frequencies 20:08 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ John Abreau says:Looks like my jitsi problem goes both ways. I unmuted myself and activated camera on the other machine, and it's showing me at stil l muted with no video 20:18 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Edward Piecewicz says:Thank you. 20:18 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Randy Cole says:My dad’s task force would use alternating identies on different days to double their apparent size Randy Cole says:This was ww2 pacific πŸ‘ Randy Cole says:I believe they felt they got away with it. 20:28 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ John Abreau John Abreau says:I'll process the video by this weekend. 20:35 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jerry Feldman says:Should be available when I stop the recording 20:36 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ John Abreau says:ok. John Abreau says:until I figure out what's broken with jitsi on my machines, i'm stuck with chat as my only means of communicating 20:37 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jerry Feldman says:ok 20:37 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ John Abreau says:i'll give that a try next month. John Abreau says:i need a third person to help me diagnose the problem 20:38 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Randy Cole says:I like to use audio on the phone and second connection to tablet or laptop to view the presentation Randy Cole says:John Alden Randy Cole says:Im decendent from william doty (also spelled doten). 20:41 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Ricker says:Hey Cousin ! 20:41 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Randy Cole says:Worcester got burned down and abandoned. They almost picked Lancaster as the county seat Randy Cole says:Highland ave vs needham st 20:44 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Edward Piecewicz says:No Concord (anything) in Salem. 20:44 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Randy Cole says:No Reading is the most illiterate town πŸ˜‚ 20:45 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Edward Piecewicz says:We don't even have a Main Street. Smart residents avoid downtown for the entire month of October. πŸ‘ 20:45 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Ricker says:and it's not so good in September already 20:46 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Randy Cole says:Newton has about 5 duplicate street names. There was a house that burned down partly because of it 20:46 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jerry Feldman says:Ourmain st does not go thrrough framingham center of downtown framingham 20:46 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Edward Piecewicz says:Yes. Some of the streets already close during the day, because of too much foot traffic downtown. 20:46 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Ricker says:Boston as a merger of multiple towns has multiple exact duplicates. 911 calltakers know to ask Neighborhood or Zipcode ; and Fire Alarm will dispatch to all ambiguous if not. 20:48 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Edward Piecewicz says:Salem recently passed an ordinance, no more duplicate street names. 20:48 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jerry Feldman says:Atlanta has 18 peachtrees 20:48 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Ricker says:When Maine went to county dispatch, they renamed many similar streets in different towns , which made my childhood address nonexistent tho the house still stands Bill Ricker says:18 is almost an orchard 20:49 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Randy Cole says:Postal compliance software corrects for up to 3 letter misspellings. Also, as of years ago, they preferred city name over zipcode…. 20:51 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mike S says:Got a nasty concussion in St. Stephen one winter. Can't say I'm a fan of Charlotte County, NB, having lived in St. George for a bit. 20:54 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jerry Feldman says:A friennd got a letter addressed to "camp androscoggin somewhere in maine" πŸ‘ 20:54 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Randy Cole says:So ### Princeton St, Brookline MA 02467 got changed to Prince St Brookline MA 02445. I think its been fixed since πŸ‘ 20:54 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jerry Feldman says:02467 is both newton, Boston, and brookline. 20:56 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mike S says:Though you might like a story my dad used to tell about a pilot with a habit for landing on the highway next to his favorite diner over near Black's Harbour (forgetting the town). The local police officer comes out and says something to the effect of, "Randy, I'm going to have another coffee. When I'm done I'd like there to not be a plane in the parking lot." 20:57 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jerry Feldman says:02467 is Chestnut Hill, Ma oe South Brooline Ma 20:57 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Randy Cole says:Multi city zip and multi zip city. And vanity names 20:57 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Edward Piecewicz says:The Boston postmark is BOSTON MA 020. The building where the mail is postmarked is Zip Code 02205. 20:57 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jerry Feldman says:Princeton rd in Brookline is near where I lived in newton 20:58 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rajiv Aaron Manglani says:Thanks Bill. Interesting talk. I'm heading out. TTYL πŸ‘ 20:58 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Randy Cole says:Haha 21:06 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Meeting ended at 9:06 PM