sudo, Author at apt get life

T420 Smooth Surface Touchpad

2016/01/02 by sudo

So, I’ve been repairing some Lenovo T420 laptops recently and a few of them have had really worn touchpads. Unlike the older generation of Thinkpads, the T420 has little dots all over the touchpad, giving it a textured finish.

Textured Touchpad

I’m not quite sure what the design motivation was behind this, but they seem to wear off quickly, leaving the touchpad looking quite unsightly. One of the T420’s actually had a smooth area in the centre of the touchpad that all the dimples had worn off from, which gave me an idea. I wonder if you can simply scrape off the textured dimples?

T420 Smooth Finish Touchpad

In order to remove the textured surface from the touchpad, you’ll need something ridged but not abrasive. A knife is not a good idea. Use something like a finger nail or old bank card and carefully scratch a the surface layer of the touchpad. On my first attempt this was easy, the dimples had erroded in the centre allowing me to start from there and work outwards towards the edges of the touchpad. I’d assume if the touchpad isn’t in such bad condition simply using friction would yield the same results. By the time I’d finished I had a smooth touchpad, similar to that of the T500 range. There was some leftover glue residue which can be removed using furniture polish sprayed onto a cloth or kitchen towel and gently rubbed over the affected area.

An alternative to this is you can buy replacement touchpad stickers with the texture on eBay or similar – searching for “T420 touchpad” seemed to return plenty of results.

Install Docker on Linux Mint 17.2

2015/10/21 by sudo

This post provides practical steps to setting up docker to run on Linux Mint 17.2, which is what I’m using on my development machine at the moment.

Before beginning, make sure you have remove any existing version(s) of Docker from your system.

First, add the Docker repository key

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://pgp.mit.edu:80 --recv-keys 58118E89F3A912897C070ADBF76221572C52609

Then create a new file for apt to find the Docker repository

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list

Inside the docker.list file enter the following

# Ubuntu Trusty/Mint 17.2
deb https://apt.dockerproject.org/repo ubuntu-trusty main

Save and close the file. Now we want to get the latest updates from the new repository

sudo apt-get update

Once this finishes, you should now be able to install the latest Docker version

sudo apt-get install docker-engine

Once this has run, you can test the hello world docker image, which is tiny and quick to download

sudo docker run hello-world

Repairing a ThinkPad style rubberised finish

2015/09/17 by sudo

Lenovo ThinkPads traditionally have a rubberised finish on the outer casing of the screen. My T500 is pushing 5 years old now, and the corners are warn away to the plastic beneath, so I have started looking into rapairing or replacing the rubberised finish on the laptop. After doing some googling I found people reccomending plasti-dip, which is a spray on finish that appears rubberised but can be peeled off as a thin film of plastic. Plasti-dip is available in the UK, but quite expensive and I’m not sure how well a “peelable” finish would work on a laptop.

Plasti-dip is intended for use on cars, which got me thinking about things like truck bed liner so I took a trip to Halfords (for those not in the UK, Halfords is a big chain of car and bike stores generally thought of as expensive but quick-and-easy). I ended up picking up black underseal and on a recommendation from a friend underseal for cars.

Lenovo ThinkPads rubberised finish is a matt black and quite resistant – the texture generates friction – while appearing quite smooth. I pulled out a scrap laptop from the collection that hasn’t made it to the computer graveyard yet and sprayed it in half; one side underseal the other bedliner.

Truck bedliner paint

The bedliner was much harder to get an even coat on, and even after several hours it wasn’t completely dry. It has a much coarser texture to it, making it a little unpleasant to handle the laptop but it does feel far more substantial in terms of the amount of protection it provides and the strenght of it.

The underseal came out a dark grey, not black, but was far easier to coat consistently. It’s actually a pretty close match to the Lenovo ThinkPad rubberised texture – so much so I had to get my ThinkPad out and put them side to side in order to spot the difference.

Car Underseal

I’m now wondering about doing something with both paints using a stencil – but probably not something for my precious T500. For it, I’m looking at either using a light abrasive like oven cleaner to take off all of the rubberised finish, taping off the display lights, hinges and logo before respraying the whole thing in underseal or trying to touch up the areas that are affected.

side by side comparison of underseal and truck bed liner on an old laptop

Bristol Wool Fair

2015/09/13 by sudo

This weekend was Bristol’s Wool Fair ( http://www.bristolwoolfair.co.uk/ ), and I was lucky enough to be able to attend on Saturday.

Jenny Barnett’s fantastic felt fox

The weather held out really well and I got to see the Viking battle, some sheepdogs herding ducks and talk to lots of interesting crafty people. I also managed to buy a “Knitter” badge for one of my friends who I think needs it as she is never without her knitting. I also saw some excellent small crafts, and fantastic felting like this fox:

Vikings!

This isn’t the chest at the event, as I forgot to take a picture, but it’s a similar idea of what a reproduction Viking sea chest would look like (source: http://www.fjellborg.org/LodinsStorageChest.htm)

As part of the event, there was a Viking settlement setup in the field. I got talking to one of them about blacksmithing and Viking boats, which was actually really interesting. Apparently the boats were built in a way that meant they flexed in the water. Something that particularly caught my attention was the Viking sea chest. It’s a chest that was designed like an upside-down V shape, to help make it stable on rough waters. It also had feet to keep it’s base raised from the deck, which may have had water flowing over it. It would have held supplies including blacksmiths tools – blacksmiths being vital to Vikings for repairing weapons, tools and chain-mail.

Duck herding

There was a sheepdog display on Saturday at half past one. I didn’t manage to stay for the whole event, but was very impressed by the herding of ducks. There was also audience participation! Check out the website for information on the kind of displays they’re involved in. It actually looked kind of fun, maybe next time they’ll let adults get involved – I’d love to try and herd some ducks! http://www.sheepdogdisplays.co.uk/

Weaving Workshops

Saori Weaving by Wayward Weavers

I met Nicola from Wayward Weaves, who was lovely. She is a Saori weaver who has a studio which has recently opened in Stroud. Saori is a freestyle form of weaving that originated in Japan. It’s really interesting how it allows you to express yourself, or use scraps of wool or other materials in creative ways. I managed to get talking to her about Cheltenham Hackspace, which I’m a member of as well as some of the Cheltenham craft groups which I’m a member of. I’m hoping that between the groups in the area and my friends we can book some on site workshops. I’m very much looking forward to trying the weaving out soon! Check out the website http://www.waywardweaves.co.uk/.

Coldharbour Mill

Coldharbour Mill is a spinning mill in Uffculme, Devon. It’s a community owned mill built in 1799, which was bought and turned into a museum in 1982. It contains a number of period steam powered machines which are fired up on bank holidays. I want to go and visit – if I do I’ll post a more detailed blog about it. In the mean time you can find out more about the mills history and events on their website http://www.coldharbourmill.org.uk/.

Skyrack Angoras

I met Arthur, the Angora rabbit owned by a member of an Angora rabbit club. There’s a website http://www.skyrackangoras.co.uk/ which has information on welfare that they passed onto me. They’re part of a group of angora rabbit owners who share the left over fur from their rabbits and sell it in small quantities. They highly recommended Bigwig Andora as a UK supplier of Angora wool http://www.bigwigsangora.co.uk/ as they treat their rabbits well.

Interesting things from Bristol wool fair 2015

Linux Mint Docker “Error loading docker apparmor profile”

2015/07/30 by sudo

I’ve recently been experimenting with Docker containers, but found there’s an error with installing it on Linux Mint:

2015/07/30 14:00:53 WARNING: Your kernel does not support cgroup swap limit.
Error loading docker apparmor profile: exec: "/sbin/apparmor_parser": stat /sbin/apparmor_parser: no such file or directory ()

It’s quite easy to solve, you just have to install app-armour:

sudo apt-get install apparmor

Then start the docker demon from the terminal to make sure it’s loading okay:

sudo docker -d

You should see something similar to the following:

2015/07/30 14:07:14 docker daemon: 1.0.1 990021a; execdriver: native; graphdriver: 
[67068605] +job serveapi(unix:///var/run/docker.sock)
[67068605] +job initserver()
[67068605.initserver()] Creating server
2015/07/30 14:07:14 Listening for HTTP on unix (/var/run/docker.sock)
[67068605] +job init_networkdriver()
[67068605] -job init_networkdriver() = OK (0)
2015/07/30 14:07:14 WARNING: Your kernel does not support cgroup swap limit.
2015/07/30 14:07:14 Local (127.0.0.1) DNS resolver found in resolv.conf and containers can't use it. Using default external servers : [8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4]
Loading containers: : done.
[67068605.initserver()] Creating pidfile
[67068605.initserver()] Setting up signal traps
[67068605] -job initserver() = OK (0)
[67068605] +job acceptconnections()
[67068605] -job acceptconnections() = OK (0)

Once it loads this far, you can use ctrl + c to exit and start the service. If you have any further errors you’ll need to investigate further. Then start the service using:

sudo service docker.io start

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