GeekTips
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Linux Mint, video encoding, ffmpeg, geek tips, regex, pdf manipulation, substitcher, mpv config
Download Telegram
to make fancy text graphics online use either this one
https://cooltext.com/
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VIEW IN TELEGRAM
Sparkel machine $120 - 10% off = $108 free shipping/ no tax from their website sparkel.com

Way better than soda stream as that one is more expensive having to buy and exchange CO2 canisters which are $30 per canister which supposedly can make 60L of carbonated water. However, as the pressure becomes less and less the carbonation level will vary as compared to Sparkel which will be consistent every time.

2 1/2 mins (level 3 carbonation) to make a 750ml bottle. 750ml = 25.4oz or about two 12oz cans. 1 gallon of distilled water is enough for five bottles. Super cheap since you can buy baking soda and citric acid for cheap. You add a tablespoon of each one each time you make a bottle. Only uses 20 watts @ 110 volts.

Don’t recommend using filtered mineral water whether it’s Brita or reverse osmosis water since the carbonation enhances those minerals. Although it’s not all that bad. It suggests a few ice cubes but it’s not necessary as long as your distilled water is pretty cold from the refrigerator.
Most will be happy with level 3 carbonation which takes 2.5 minutes. Level 4 perhaps for some which is 3 minutes. Regardless of what carbonation level you decide to use you always just add one tbsp of citric acid and one tbsp of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate).
Get Started instructions for Sparkel machine. Carbonated A is citric acid and Carbonator B is baking soda.
5 lb bag of food grade citric acid $24 and 5lbs of baking soda $5. Should be enough for a year or two of carbonated beverages.
I eventually plan to get a water distiller. Perhaps this one. Can save a little money if you get a plastic container rather than glass.

Most valuable tip I gathered from reading the comments is some people used citric acid to clean the burnt minerals on the bottom of the distiller. Even though most water distillers have an auto off switch once it hits a super high temperature like 320°F if there isn’t one or two inches of water the minerals will burn.

To avoid this buy a $6 to $10 outlet timer and once you figure out the correct time so one or two inches of water remains say like 4 hours, then just set it to that and you’ll avoid the burn altogether. Usually they have 15 to 30 minute increments you can set.
Amazon comments on the Sparkel machine basically saying no need to buy their A & B packets. The machine comes with 10 each so you can make ten 750ml carbonated water bottles.

I like making my own flavored water and control how much bubblies. Really easy to use. Don't need to buy CO2. I also bought citric acid for $6 and a box of Baking soda instead of buying the refills packets. Super easy just use 1Tbsp of each.

My advice would be to do the hack on you tube and purchase the food grade citric acid and baking soda in place of the packets. Works out to pennies a bottle to carbonate. A tablespoon of each is worth it.


Put the packets on a jeweler's scale. Packet A, citric acid, has a net weight of 11.0 grams (11.3 minus 0.3 empty packet weight). Packet B, sodium bicarbonate, has a net weight of 13.0 grams.
By Buyer on September 16, 2021

You can mix 1 tablespoon of citric acid and 1 tablespoon of baking soda in equal parts…. That is what is in their packets.
By KM on May 18, 2021

You can make the mix yourself using citric acid and baking soda. Google the exact recipe.
By AR on August 27, 2020

Yes, you use one Carbonator per bottle no matter what level you choose. That equals $0.40 - 0.44 per bottle (you can choose to subscribe and save). A CO2 tank will generally cost between $0.43-0.95 per bottle, depending on the level of carbonation you choose. There's no need to return clunky CO2 tanks, just order Spärkel Carbonators online to have them delivered.
By Spärkel on February 10, 2021

Good Question! Spärkel Carbonators are made of a special granulation of citric acid and sodium bicarbonate.

Yes! Just add 1 Tbsp citric acid crystals and 1 Tbsp baking soda. It works great for me. So much cheaper than the carbonators! You don't have to use their special packets, so ignore the company's lies.
By KB on January 10, 2021
ocrmypdf -O 3 input.pdf output_ocr.pdf

-O 3 (letter O not 0 zero) is - - optimize and 3 does aggressive lossy optimizations (including lossy JBIG2)

OCR: 100%|███████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████| 125.0/125.0 [06:56<00:00, 3.33s/page]
WARNING - Some input metadata could not be copied because it is not permitted in PDF/A. You may wish to examine the output PDF's XMP metadata.
JPEGs: 100%|████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████| 125/125 [00:14<00:00, 8.29image/s]
PNGs: 0image [00:00, ?image/s]
JBIG2: 0item [00:00, ?item/s]
INFO - Optimize ratio: 1.74 savings: 42.5%
INFO - Output file is a PDF/A-2B (as expected)

PDF is 56MB reduced from 98MB. To use you need to install jbig2 encoder

If you only want to optimize a PDF to reduce size by reducing images then see here https://t.iss.one/geektips/185
inxi shows a short summary of CPU, kernel version, Uptime, Memory usage, Storage, # of processes, shell in use

inix -F shows Full information the computer, CPU temps and fan speeds, etc.

inxi - t cm
shows the top 5 CPU processes and the top 5 memory processes

to view system overview on Linux Mint go to Settings | System Reports and click on System Information (just not color coded that's all)

neofetch
command in the terminal gives you a quick system summer OS, Host, Kernel, Uptime, Packages, Shell, Resolution, DE, WM, GPU, Memory
My invalid perspective and opinion starting 2022. Here’s my hopes / wishes / living on prayers that people realize the following or do the following:

— Get off android and eyefoams eventually. I’m not gonna buy another Apple product again. I may have to replace the battery eventually but it’s the end of the road.

— Switch from MS Office —> LibreOffice

— Cancel all your tv / movie / music subscriptions as they are worthless. Replace that mindless brainwashing entertainment with reading books or listening to audiobooks, podcasts. Purge most of your crap music.

— Telegram has been a huge boon. It can send files in up to 2GB in size. Although I wish channel owners would still reduce the file size. Use -crf 28 and 32kpbs AAC or libopus audio for most videos. If the video is VHS quality old -crf 31 reduces file size even further while mainting quality. Also to upscale to 720p while mainting aspect ration do -vf scale=-2 720p

— Telegram has translation and OCR on images for iOS 15+ and all android phones. Amazing. Apple and google continue to censor certain channels which should show how Communist USA has become. To me this was the most exciting useful technology this year at least on phones.

— Most video sharing services censor or blow chunks. Seems like going forward Odysee might be the winner eventually.

— Get any old laptop with 8G RAM and install Linux Mint XFCE on it. Once you learn to adjust your workflow and transition it’s such a good feeling getting off Apple computers / Mac OS and Windows. Many stick with Windows for gaming hopefully some can also transition as many can use Steam on Linux.

— People will value social lives more than social media. Let’s start reversing and undoing the terrible society we’ve become. Reassess all your values and feel at liberty to start fresh from ground zero.
Learn how to use LibreOffice by just using it or reading some of the online documentation or downloading PDF manuals for Base, Calc, Impress, Getting Started, Writer, Draw

https://documentation.libreoffice.org/en/english-documentation/
LibreOffice change UI Variant to Tabbed. Go to View | User Inteface. Allows you to quickly see what button does without having to hover over it.
sudo apt install virt-manager

then logout (important for user permissions)

I always used virtualbox.org but Virtual Machine Manager virt-manager.org seems just as good. You can run all your Linux ISO images to test out various distributions. Only thing I got hung up on was how to exit full screen. Just move the mouse to the TOP CENTER of the screen and you'll see an icon to exit full screen.
bforartists - 3D suite to create 3D content

Bforartists is a fork of the popluar open source 3D software Blender. The primary goal of the Bforartists fork is to deliver a better graphical UI and a better usability. This means a complete switch in the usage philosophy. Away from the hotkey and speed centered usage. Towards a user friendly and intuitive graphical UI.

This makes Blender much easier to use.
draw.io app free online to create diagrams which can be saved as HTML, png, svg (vector). If you like it download the appimage or install deb file.
Listen and find radio stations. Can bookmark favorites and export playlist https://radiolise.gitlab.io/