Saturday 6 August 2016

Raspberry PI as Google Cloudprint Connector for Older Printers

Google Clouldprint is a great tool that allows you to print content to directly to your printer from anywhere, even if your printer is at home on the other side of the world!  Also, it will queue up the print jobs until your printer is turned on.   You can also share your printer with others, allowing them to print to it also, from anywhere.

However, only newer printers are Google Cloudprint ready.  This means that older printers need to have some other way to become Google Cloudprint devices... This is where Raspberry PI comes in.  For 40euro you can turn pretty much any printer into a Google Cloudprint device.  Regardless of whether your existing printer is connected via Wifi, LAN or even USB!

This is especially handy if you have just started using a Chromebook and just realised you cannot connect to your existing printer!  So, follow the various guides to get your new Raspberry Pi online, then follow these steps to set it up as a Google Couldprinter Connector for your old printer!  (RPi v3 is the best for this as it has wifi built in!)

FYI, Rasbian is the OS of choice for this howto!

Raspberry Pi setup guides:
https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/howto-install-raspbian-on-raspberry-pi/
https://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianStartHere

Here are the steps to turn your Raspberry Pi into a Goole Cloudprint Connector:
From the command line, via either ssh or directly connected, run the following commands to install some required base software:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install cups libcups2 libavahi-client3 avahi-daemon libsnmp30
wget https://github.com/google/cups-connector/releases/download/2016.01.02/gcp-cups-connector-rpi-jessie-2016.01.02.tar.gz
tar xvzf gcp-cups-connector-rpi-jessie-2016.01.02.tar.gz 
sudo mv cups-connector /opt/gcp-cups-connector
sudo chmod 755 /opt/gcp-cups-connector/gcp-cups-connector* 
sudo chown -R gcp:gcp /opt/gcp-cups-connector 
sudo useradd -s /usr/sbin/nologin -r -M gcpcd /opt/gcp-cups-connector
Next step is to run the gcp-cups-connector-util script to initiate the connector on your raspberry pi:

Thursday 23 May 2013

"Contactless Payment" wont be a replacement for carrying cash

30euro max now in Ireland
Just saying.... "Contactless Payment" wont be a replacement for carrying cash unless it remains free per transaction.

What the banks aren't actively saying about it now, is that after August 2016 it will cost 20c per transaction at home (AIB), but already costs 45c per transaction minimum in non-eurozone (upto 11euro max, based on 1.75% of transaction)!

Here is a round up of some of the Irish Bank's details on Contactless Payments charges:
Note: the charges aren't that easy to find!


UPDATE 20160806

Thursday 20 December 2012

Installing Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) on CentOS / RHEL

This page describes the process of how to install Oracle's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK or kernel-uek) on Centos or RHEL.


Why use UEK?

Why would you want to install the Oracle UEK on CentOS or RHEL?  If you're planning to run Oracle RAC on CentOS/RHEL 6.3 virtual machine (under RHEV/oVirt), you're gonna need it!*  Since RHEL v6.1 Oracle are no longer providing oracleasm drivers for the newer kernels.  They have instead decided to bundle the oracleasm drivers into their Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel.  This actually makes installing Oracle RAC a little easier as you don't have to go searching for the oracleasm driver specific to your kernel!  Just do a yum install! Yes, even on CentOS or RHEL!

Tuesday 18 December 2012

Instagram... Conflicting Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions

If you have an Instagram account, you may want to delete it BEFORE January 16th 2013....


I'm not a lawyer nor a litigator, but I do read the Terms & Conditions of services like Facebook and Instagram.   The current changes to Instragram's Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy bring it closely in line with that of it's now parent company, Facebook. However, there is one difference, from what I can see....
The Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions are in conflict. Have a read for yourself...