September 9 2025 rEFInd, DroidCam, RC2014n, Le Chat, Evie, RP2040
David mentioned that Microsoft secure boot keys will be expiring soon; Microsoft are distributing new keys with Windows updates; people need to set the BIOS to boot in UEFI mode. David recommended rEFInd for scanning for UEFI installations on devices; it comes with massive documentation. He also mentioned that the BIOS can have storage for operating systems in efi files which can become fragmented and stop you from accessing them; then you have to clear your BIOS out. Finally he mentioned problems with Bluetooth headphones which have fake IDs and will only work if the ID is made available to the Linux kernel.
Brian warned about ordering things which are available on AliExpress via Amazon; when you order something on Amazon, the seller will get it from AliExpress and pocket the difference. He also incidentally demonstrated that he has Alex rather than Alexa responding to him!
John shared a review of the previous year to mark the 17th birthday celebration. David said that the problem which he had put down to the heatsink had in fact been caused by an unshielded USB cable.
Steve mentioned that he had used DroidCam, which you install on your smartphone to turn it into a webcam, with Windows but had been unable to get it to work on Linux. Brian said that you can mirror an Android screen on a computer desktop by switching on USB debuging on the phone, installing android-tools-adb and scrcpy, connect via adb and then run scrcpy. However Steve said that DroidCam allows you to control the camera. He added that he had used KDE Connect to link a smartphone and a computer.
Steve then shared the RC2014 modular computer using the Z80 and running CP/M 2.2. John had written some papers about CP/M 3 in the 1990s which also reference CP/M 2.2; these are available in a PDF on his website.
Brian shared another experience of writing software with AI, this time using Le Chat which he had found better than Google Gemini.
He also mentioned that he had found that you cannot have tailscale on a PBX as it blocks the analogue telephone.
He demonstrated the Calibre Content server commenting that he had also tried audiobookshelf but found that you have to spend time to get the hierarchy right whereas Calibre imports metadata where possible. He doesn’t physically read the books that he downloads but uses the Evie text to speech reader to listen to them — which he then demonstrated. He added that you can set the speed at which it reads and also choose the voice.
With the closure of Pocket he now uses Readeck.
Steve showed an SoC with the RP2040, the same as on the Pi Pico, into which you can plug a monitor and keyboard; it has buttons to allow you can change colour of the terminal and you can get all sorts of addons for it.
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