All Entries (Page 46)

SBWG 0.9.6

Entry created on 2021-08-29 author:steeph (374) cat:Bash (31) cat:Code (31) cat:Computer (78) cat:Linux (36) cat:Projects (41) cat:SBWG (18) cat:Scripts (28) cat:Software (53) lang:en (253) top:Projects:Code:Bash Scripts:SBWG (16)

As foreseen I've made slow progress in development of SBWG, the script that generates this web site, because I want to test and improve it with the current feature set before I start to implement new features. The former is necessary. The latter is more fun. But today I've reached a point where I can say that the only thing left to do before I call it v1.0.0 is testing edge cases and things that I didn't think of testing before, as well as fixing potential bugs discovered from this testing.

So, version 0.9.6 is out, everything is working, The README file, other documentation included in the package, the example website, the included style sets and partly even the code quality has been deemed satisfactory, and I hope I'll find the time to test all sorts of weird stuff and discover and fix some bugs next month, at which point version 1.0.0 will be published and I'll finally be able to allow myself to start working on new features, some of which are awaited by both regular users of the script.

Hope Dies Last

Entry created on 2021-08-09 author:steeph (374) cat:Hope (1) cat:Thoughts (71) lang:en (253)

I will never forgive her for doing that to meeveverybody!

Backmatch - A Simple Dual-N-Back-Inspired Performance Task Trainer For Bash

Entry created on 2021-07-31 author:steeph (374) cat:Bash (31) cat:Brain Training (1) cat:Code (31) cat:Computer (78) cat:Scripts (28) cat:Software (53) lang:en (253) top:Projects:Code:Bash Scripts (23)

Here is a script that I wrote as a short side project because I wanted my own n-back trainer. I'm aware that the practical memory improments of n-back training, even when using a proper audiovisual dual n-back trainer, is not as great as it's often said to be. I just wanted to try it and see whether I like the training.

Usage

Execute the script and pass it a number that resembles the difficulty level. For example bash backmatch 3 starts the script with a 3-back task. On your keyboard press the key of the letter that was displayed n letters ago (in this example 3 letters ago). When you press a key the next letter is presented immedietly. If you don't press a key for 3 seconds (the time value can be changed by changing the variable sec) the next letter is presented and you don't get a point for this letter. When you exit the script by pressing ctrl+c your keypresses get compared to what was presented and you get your score.


#!/bin/bash

if [[ ${#} -ge 1 ]] && [[ ${1} =~ ^[0-9]*$ ]]
then
  n=${1}
else
  echo "'${@}' is not a number, is it?"
  exit 1
fi

echo "Ctrl+C pressing is for quitters."
npo=$((n+1))
sec=3

end() {
  echo -en "           \n"
  if [[ ${#str} -ge ${npo} ]]							# If enough characters had been generated
  then
    for i in $(seq $n); do echo -n "-"; done					# offset by $n dashes
    echo ${str}
    echo ${you}
    got=0
    for i in $(seq ${#str})
    do
      [[ ${str:$i:1} == ${you:$((i+n)):1} ]] && got=$((got+1))
    done
    echo -e "\n${got} out of $((${#str}-npo)) correct"
  else
    echo "Not enough data to judge you."
  fi
}

trap end EXIT

while true
do
  str+=$(cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'A-Z' | head -c 1)				# Get a random new letter.
  echo -en "\r       \r${str: -1}"						# Print the last character in the string (the new letter).
    read -n 1 -t ${sec} key							# Get a single character input, timeout $sec seconds.
    [[ -n ${key} ]] && you+=${key^^} || you+="-"
    [[ ${key^^} == ${str: -$npo:1} ]] \
      && echo -en "\r       good" \
      || echo -en "\r        bad"						# Check if uppercase input char is the same as the nth char from the back.
done

end

exit 1

Entry created on 2021-07-16 author:steeph (374) cat:Silly (29) cat:Thoughts (71) cat:Work (3) lang:de (41)

µ-d! Arbeit. µ-d! 🔁

Setting Screen Brightness To Any Value With A Three-Step Keyboard Shortcut (Linux)

Entry created on 2021-07-08 author:steeph (374) cat:Code (31) cat:Computer (78) cat:Displays (5) cat:Linux (36) cat:Scripts (28) lang:en (253)

Initially out of necessity because the brightness keys of my new laptop didn't work out of the box (the driver was aded to my distro not a month later, which should have been acceptable, but I didn't know that at first), I was looking for a way to set the backlight brighness of my laptop's internal screen easily, without typing a command in a shell. What I ended up using I like even better than the usual + and - keys.

I'm using i3wm and dmenu. The way I set screen brightness is

1) I enter the shortcut (mod+B in my case)

2) I enter a number and

3) I hit Enter.

It's simple to implement. Just put this line in the i3 config file:


bindsym $mod+b exec \
  thatbright=$(echo "1000\n2000\n3000\n4000\n5000\n6000\n7000\n100\n10" \
  | dmenu -p "How bright though?") && echo $thatbright \
  > /sys/class/backlight/*/brightness

You can put it into one line (without the \s inbetween) if you want.

You could easily change that to a two-step or single shortcut if you like. I like the three-step version because it allows me to choose from one of seven brightness modes easily but also lets me enter a value below or between those pre-sets without taking up more than one key.

Code Explanation

First, the variable thatbright is set to the number that dmenu outputs, which can be one of the numbers that are echoed to the pipe (selected with arrow keys or completed when typed in dmenu) or another number that is entered into dmenu. If that was suggessful, the value is written to /sys/class/backlight/*/brightness. If you have multiple backlights in /sys/class and you only want to set one or if your shell doesn't support wild cards in paths, you can change the * to whatever applies to your system, e.g. intel_backlight.

Scripts/Commands to set the screen brightness

The simplest script that sets the screen brightness in Linux is probably the one-liner from above: echo $1 > /sys/class/backlight/*/brightness. This sets the raw numerical value. You need to know what a sensible range of numbers is and what the maximal accepted value is (look at '/sys/class/backlight/[YOUR_BACKLIGHT]/max_brightness'). But there are more elaborate scripts, like bbacklight by Giuseppe Eletto with which you set the brightness with a percentage value.