Thoughts

Nerd-Code Snippets 3: Bash Minecraft Install Scripts TL;DR - I haven’t posted in a while. I like scripting and I try to script my Ubuntu 20.04 setup whenever I can. While a bit silly, Minecraft, and a few other 3rd party programs that work with Minecraft, find their download/installation/upgrade scripts among my bash-scripted setup files. Yes, this old blog still exists, despite how sparse my contributions. However, now it is mid-2020, I’ve been at Synap for over 4 years, I’m married, have had back surgery, have a 1-year-old daughter, and – most importantly – I have recently upgraded to Ubuntu 20.04. As a part of upgrading to Ubuntu 20.04, I’ve decided to script as much of my setup and preferences as possible. While not a staple of my day-job at all, I do always have Minecraft installed on the Linux-side of my computer. The latest release, Minecraft 1.16, sees a huge update to the nether dimension. As a result, certain 3rd party programs are updating as well. ...

Automating one's life using bash scripts can be fun. But sometimes really long scripts in bash may benefit from some prettier logging messages lest our eyes bleed. I wrote a snippet for that, check it out .

Disclaimer Most of you aren’t going to have a clue what I’m talking about. I sincerely apologize ahead of time. I’ll attempt a layman’s explanation, but I make no promises. I’ll try to link to unfamiliar terms. Backstory Even before my new job - oh yea, by the way, I’m a web developer now, fancy that - I was practicing with DVCS as a hobby. A Distributed Version Control System is just a way of tracking the history of source code files throughout the life of a project. There are two major DVCS’s out there, Git and Mercurial . It seems Git is more widely used and more widely accepted for projects with multiple developers (and I’m learning it for work), but I like to use Mercurial for my personal projects because that’s what I taught myself.

Of late, I've uploaded a storm of repositories. In the past, I was trying to consolidate by language and even set up my own library through the use of sub-repositories. It has come to my attention that is not the typical way of using repositories, and that it is perfectly common to make a repository for each project, even if there is only one or two files in it. So that is what I'm attempting.

Problem The Cal Poly Robotics Club has a slideshow that runs 24/7 on a computer (we call it halftop) in the club window. The half-of-a-laptop is hooked up to a screen so we can bombard any (and all) lucky Bonderson visitors with information about CPRC. Eventually they will join us or at least think we are awesome. The slideshow is actually available on Google Drive , which is really convenient for editing purposes. However, the fullscreen slideshow has to be restarted manually if any edits are made. Sure, that's not that difficult if there is someone in the room all the time, but the more autonomous the better!