Automatic Backlight Per Power Source

I love the feature when Windows sets different backlight level depending whether I am plugged in or on battery. I really fits how I use my laptop. But then one day that feature seemingly disappeared. Cause seemed to be a Windows Update and to fix it I would essentially need to restore my old driver.

Well, either that or this small utility. Once installed, it will run a service in the background tracking your power source and backlight level. Whatever level you last set on battery will be used whenever you unplug and whatever you set while plugged in will be used when your AC adapter is connected. Essentially, the same behavior as what once came by default.

While this will never be a full application as I doubt there will ever be enough interested people, download is available at GitHub.

PS: For Linux version check Backlight Tracer.

Editing Scanner Profile

Changing default scanner under Windows is possible but requires manually editing XML files.

Well, this utility at least removes that step. While knowledge of scanner profiles is necessary, one can now do it using application and without messing with XML files directly.

While this will never be a full application as I doubt there will ever be enough interested people, download is available at GitHub.

APIs Are a Fair Use

It took just 10 years but we finally know for sure: copying API is a fair use.

There’s a really detailed analysis of Supreme’s court decision at TechDirt for those wanting details.

Despite result matching what I believe is right and better for industry, it’s really heartbreaking it took 10 years and millions in lawyers to clean this up.

Wait For Mountpoint

I have quite a few scripts running on my home server and they love writing on disk. They love it so much that, after reboot, they don’t necessarily wait for mount points to appear - they just start writing. Unfortunately, such eagerness also means that my other scripts mounting ZFS might find directory already in use and give up.

What I needed was a way to check if mount point is already there before starting with write. The easiest approach for me was using mountpoint command.

TEST_PATH=/test/directory
while(true); do  # wait for mount point
    mountpoint "$TEST_PATH" >/dev/null
    if [[ $? != 0 ]]; then
        sleep 1
        continue
    fi
    break
done

Script fragment above will check if given directory has something mounted and, if not, wait for 1 more second. Once test succeeds, it will break out of the infinite loop and proceed with whatever follows.

Easy enough.

Toto Slice

As my son went about cutting a mega bread slice, I told him that was called a “Toto slice”. And then immediately went onto explaining what is the origin of that phrase and why the heck nobody uses it except me.

Well, story starts ages ago when I got my first dog. It was a black terrier and a spitting image of Toto from Wizard of Oz. And Toto slice wasn’t named after him because he didn’t like bread. He liked chickens. Our chickens.

So, within a month, Toto was pronounced incompatible with our yard and gone. Where? I am not sure as some secrets run deep in my family but official version is that he was sold to somebody else. Whether it was an upstate farm or a backyard, the end result was the same - I was dogless.

Some time after, a replacement arrived. It was a mix of a female Scottish shepherd and a male white terrier. Rumors are that conceiving happened due to the bet between owners of each in regards to the capabilities of terrier. If they are true, terrier was skilled enough and thus a few puppies became available soon after.

In any case, the new dog was completely white and would quickly grow close to the size of a (smaller) Scottish shepherd. And his name was Toto too. It was shame to throw away a good name despite this dog being as far as possible from the Wizard of Oz namesake being both white and large.

Life wasn’t always easy and, while my family never went hungry, there was no extra money for dog food. Toto ate what we ate - more precisely, he ate leftovers. When leftovers were sparse, he would get a huge thick slice of bread dipped in the melted lard. That became known in the family as a Toto slice (or “totovska šnita” in my native language).

And Toto slice wasn’t just for a dog. Whenever my sister or I wanted a large piece of (ideally warm) bread, we would use the same phrase. And that’s the phrase I kept using for years and well into my current 40’s.

This phrase might live on with my children along with a story. Or it might die off with me. Regardless, I find it really interesting how sometime words we personally take for granted might not be known even to those closest to us. And how private the language can be even in these global times.