Phil Norton

After installing the RTL-SDR on my Clockwork uConsole (running a Raspberry Pi CM4) I was looking for something to try out the device to see what it could do. The GNU Radio Companion is still a bit baffling at the moment so I was searching for something with a lower barrier to entry.

One thing that caught my eye was a project on GitHub called dump1090. This is a "Mode S" decoder that uses the RTL-SDR to decode transponder information from Aircraft. Whilst the package is quite old now, it is still being minimally maintained. The dependencies are quite small and so it tends to compiles quite nicely without too many additional packages or issues, event on the limited hardware of the CM4.

I've seen lots of "our team" pages over the years, but one of the ones that stood out to me the most were those that had an interactive element to them. For me, it adds a bit of personality to the page and makes it feel more alive than a bunch of silhouettes of the directors.

I remember seeing a team page a while ago that had a number of little images of the team that looked at the mouse pointer as it moved around the page. Each face in the picture looked in all 8 directions as my mouse pointer went around the screen. This caught my interest so I had a look to see how it worked.

The page used a combination of a fixed image dimension and background positioning to show show parts of a single image. By combining this with a little bit of JavaScript the page created an interactive image without having to load lots of images. The image can also be simple as it just needs to be a square collage of 9 images, one for each direction the mouse lies in, and a central one to look straight ahead.

I was scrolling through The Pi Hut website recently and my eye was drawn by a case for the Raspberry Pi Computer Module 4 (CM4) that looked like a modified Nintendo Gameboy. I had bought a CM4 for another project, but as that project wouldn't be delivered for a few months I was looking for something useful to do with the CM4 in the meantime.

The GPi Case 2 from Retroflag is a case that accepts the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (CM4) and is used as an emulation station. Using the right software, it is possible to add files to the system that allow you to play games from a variety of different platforms. If you go for the WiFi CM4 you can also connect Bluetooth controllers to the unit and even use WiFi to transfer files.

DrupalCamp Scotland returned after a small hiatus of 5 years on the 25th October 2024 and saw nearly 50 people attend the university of Edinburgh Paterson's Land building for a day of talks and sessions. I had the honor of being invited to speak at the conference, which was the first physical speaking session I've had since 2019.

I arrived early to the conference on a sunny Friday morning after driving up the night before. After a cup of coffee and a lovely chat with a few people we started the conference.

This is the sixth article in a series of articles about the Batch API in Drupal. The Batch API is a system in Drupal that allows data to be processed in small chunks in order to prevent timeout errors or memory problems.

So far in this series we have looked at creating a batch process using a form, followed by creating a batch class so that batches can be run through Drush, using the finished state to control batch processing, processing CSV files through a batch process and finally adding to running batch processes. These articles give a good grounding of how to use the Drupal Batch API.

In this article we will look at how the Batch API is used within Drupal. The Batch API in Drupal is either used to perform a task, which I will call "direct", or to pass on the batch operations to a hook, which I will call "indirect". These aren't official terms you understand, I'm just using them here to separate how Drupal uses the Batch API.