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Hacking a Raspberry Pi into a wireless airplay speaker

jordnburgess:

The raspberry pi is fully functional credit card-sized computer that is cheap enough ($25) that it can be used just for a single purpose. With this hack the computer imitates an airplay speaker, making it possible to send songs over to an old stereo wirelessly from your phone.

The Raspberry Pi generated massive hype in nerdy circles this summer when it came out and weā€™re beginning now to see some amazing hacks from this tiny computer now.

Iā€™ve had mine for a few months now but I hadnā€™t got around to using it yet. So Iā€™ve now decided to try to make something that Iā€™ve wanted for a while: a product to bring my good but dated speaker system into the 21st century by enabling wireless streaming of music to it.

A possible way to do this would be to buy an Airport Express or an Apple TV and connect the audio out to the stereo. But then I would feel like overpaying for features like video streaming or wireless routing that wouldnā€™t be used. Besides, those products cost around Ā£80. Airplay enabled speakers cost Ā£200 at the low end. This raspberry pi creation should easily come in under Ā£30.

Hereā€™s a video of it in action.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4opWFboWro?rel=0]

Keep reading

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Raspberry Pi Whole Home Audio Updates

Itā€™s been a long time since Iā€™ve written about my Raspberry Pi Whole Home Audio Project.

Simply, thatā€™s because Iā€™ve hit a bit of a wall and Iā€™m especially busy with work right now so I havenā€™t been able to find the time to work my way around it.

The problem is that the USB WiFi adapters that I bought (for about $5 each) donā€™t perform well. They have signal strength issues, and while they do work and maintain a network connection, the poor signal strength means the connection isnā€™t fast enough to stream audio. There are plenty of other people out there having the same problem. You get what you pay for, I guess, and I need to buy replacement adapters.

Iā€™m also considering a change in direction. My original plan was to install mopidy on one of the Pis and use pulse audio to stream the output to the others.

Iā€™m considering instead installing TuneBlade on one of my Windows PCs. TuneBlade takes all the audio output from that computer and streams it using Appleā€™s AirPlay protocol. Iā€™d then install ShairPort on all the Pis to turn them into AirPort receivers.

What do you guys think?

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Prevent Forwarding, Replying or Reply-All in Outlook

About a month ago I wrote a post that detailed how to prevent attendees from forwarding your Outlook meetings to other people.

Since then Iā€™ve expanded upon it slightly on my own computer: in addition to the option to prevent meetings from being forwarded, Iā€™ve added similar buttons to the new email toolbar that can prevent forwarding, replying or replies to all.

Preventing people from hittingĀ ā€œreply allā€ is sometimes a great tactic if youā€™re sending an email to particularly large group and you donā€™t want everybody to get caught up in any follow-up. By contrast, preventing replies (thus forcing people to use ā€œreply allā€ instead) is great if you want the opposite, and for everyone to be kept in the loop.

My previous post details the process of setting all this up, but below is the code for the four macros. The first disables forwarding, the second disables replies, the third disables reply all and the final re-enables all response options. By default, nothing is disabled on new items unless you hit the relevant button to run the macro.

Enjoy!

Sub DisableForwarding()
    ActiveInspector.CurrentItem.Actions("Forward").Enabled = False
    X = MsgBox("Forwarding of this item has been disabled", vbInformation, "Forwarding Disabled")
End Sub

Sub DisableReply()
    ActiveInspector.CurrentItem.Actions("Reply").Enabled = False
    X = MsgBox("Replies to this item have been disabled", vbInformation, "Forwarding Disabled")
End Sub

Sub DisableReplyAll()
    ActiveInspector.CurrentItem.Actions("Reply to All").Enabled = False
    X = MsgBox("Reply All has been disabled for this item", vbInformation, "Forwarding Disabled")
End Sub

Sub EnableAllResponses()
    ActiveInspector.CurrentItem.Actions("Forward").Enabled = True
    ActiveInspector.CurrentItem.Actions("Reply").Enabled = True
    ActiveInspector.CurrentItem.Actions("Reply to All").Enabled = True
    X = MsgBox("Forwarding, Replies and Reply All have been enabled for this item", vbInformation, "Forwarding Disabled")
End Sub
Shrapnel

Late Night Links – Sunday June 14th, 2015

Itā€™s that time of the week again! Itā€™s been an especially busy weekend, so I hope youā€™re all suitably appreciative that Iā€™m taking the time to put this together.

And weā€™re done! Have a good week all, see you next week.

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Project Management Proverbs

Itā€™s been quite a while since Iā€™ve blogged. Work has been especially busy for the past month or so, and as my calendar gets squeezed from every direction the first thing to disappear from it is the time to post here.

Thatā€™s unfortunate, and I must get better at it.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I came across a post elsewhere about project management proverbs, and some of them are certainly worth sharing.

One in particular caught my eye because my boss MattĀ recently welcomed his new son Jude to the world. I know that toward the end of his wifeā€™s pregnancy he was getting anxious, as Iā€™m sure any expected father would, and they wanted the birth to be sooner rather than later.

It takes one woman nine months to have a baby. The project management proverb I read reminds us that, despite conventional project management wisdom, the same result cannot be achieved in one month simply by impregnating nine women.

Other notable points:

  • The sooner you get behind schedule, the more time you have to make it up.
  • A badly planned project will take three times longer than expected. A well planned project only twice as long as expected.
  • The person who says it will take the longest and cost the most is the only one with a clue how to do the job.
  • If youā€™re six months late on a milestone due next week but nevertheless really believe you can make it, youā€™re a project manager.

More here!