I run a variety of systems including a couple which are running Debian stable. This means that packages (although stable) are often not as current as I’d like. To help get around this I started using prebuilt binaries directly from the upstream projects when they are hosted on GitHub. But this created a new problem - how to keep them up to date.
This article introduces a shell script designed to automate the process of downloading and updating binary files from GitHub repositories.

Recently I was thinking about how my websites are handled and realised that they are extremely static and so using WordPress as the CMS was overkill. This led me down the path of trying to find a replacement.

After looking at some of the various static-site generator options I settled on Hugo for a couple of reasons.

• The first reason was that I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years working with YAML (thanks k8s) so I appreciate that I can do all the configuration in YAML
• The second was that the site contents are all written using Markdown (used for internal documentation where I work)
• The third was that it all runs from a single binary which I can grab pre-compiled from github (so no need to install any packages/recompile manually)
• The fourth I also like the what content can be laid out in a structured and navigable manner
• The fifth is that it is themeable in a reproducible way
• Finally I really appreciate that the way it works fits nicely into version control (so I can put it all in git)

The end result is a nicely organised and tracked website which can be found in GitHub. The entire site is tracked in there with change logging etc meaning I can quickly rebuild if needed. I am using the theme Mainroad and to enable searching it is using Pagefind. The only modification needed to the theme was to add ‘data-pagefind-body’ to single.html so that only the standalone pages would be indexed (not the list pages).

Now that I have xLights being built fine within docker (see Automatic testing of xLights builds via Travis-CI/Docker/Github) the next step is to package up the application as an appimage binary so that it can easily be run on varied linux systems.

It is being built based on Ubuntu Trusty and has been tested to work on Ubuntu 16.04, 16.10, Fedora 25 and OpenSuse 42.2 (and should hopefully work pretty much anywhere else as well)

xLights is a free and open source program that enables you to design, create and play amazing lighting displays through the use of DMX controllers, E1.31 Ethernet controllers and more.

With it you can layout your display visually then assign effects to the various items throughout your sequence. This can be in time to music (with beat-tracking built into xLights) or just however you like. Currently xLights runs on Windows, OSX and Linux

This is the seventh post in my series on how I setup my christmas lights

Links to rest of series:

• Post 1 - The controllers
• Post 2 - The megatree
• Post 3 - Arches, candy canes, small spiral trees and large spiral tree
• Post 4 - Nativity Scene
• Post 5 - Windows, Singing Tree and tune-to sign
• Post 6 - Palm trees, carport and roofline
• Post 7 - LED Shirt

This post focuses on my LED shirt. To see it in action check it out on youtube

This is the sixth post in my series on how I setup my christmas lights

Links to rest of series:

• Post 1 - The controllers
• Post 2 - The megatree
• Post 3 - Arches, candy canes, small spiral trees and large spiral tree
• Post 4 - Nativity Scene
• Post 5 - Windows, Singing Tree and tune-to sign
• Post 6 - Palm trees, carport and roofline
• Post 7 - LED Shirt

This post focuses on the palm trees, carport and roofline

This is the fifth post in my series on how I setup my christmas lights

Links to rest of series:

• Post 1 - The controllers
• Post 2 - The megatree
• Post 3 - Arches, candy canes, small spiral trees and large spiral tree
• Post 4 - Nativity Scene
• Post 5 - Windows, Singing Tree and tune-to sign
• Post 6 - Palm trees, carport and roofline
• Post 7 - LED Shirt

This post focuses on the windows, the singing tree and my tune-to sign

This is the fourth post in my series on how I setup my christmas lights

Links to rest of series:

• Post 1 - The controllers
• Post 2 - The megatree
• Post 3 - Arches, candy canes, small spiral trees and large spiral tree
• Post 4 - Nativity Scene
• Post 5 - Windows, Singing Tree and tune-to sign
• Post 6 - Palm trees, carport and roofline
• Post 7 - LED Shirt

This post focuses on the Nativity scene at the side of the yard.