Linux Setup - Partitioning Editor Feature Requests

Based on my experiences today, I'd like to offer the following feature requests to Linux install tool partition editor UI devs:

1) If you have to use MiB, just give us an alternative units drop down for MB (defaulting to MB), and do the necessary calculations / conversions under the hood

2) It's high time to add the option to do a "Standard multi-partition install" equivalent of the "Erase Disk (and create single partition install)". This would essentially ensure you have separate root and home directories (*), with swap + anything else needed all getting auto included too. All of these would be set to default sizes relative to the available disk space, that can then be tweaked as desired (ie mainly OS vs Home dir split).

(*)  In this day and age, that would seem a sensible default choice, given how many OS's need reinstalling every few years anyway, whereas your personal files are often a lot more persistent (i.e. you really don't want to have to keep restoring those from backups all the time)

3) Lower priority, but could we also get the option to reorder partitions we're newly creating / don't exist yet. Makes it easier to figure out how much space we can play with?

Happy Linux Day - "CodeQuest" Windows Laptop Converted to Linux at Last!

Yay! As of a few minutes ago, my "CodeQuest" laptop is finally booting from its SSD from Linux (instead of the live usb only)! 

This has taken about 3 install attempts (following about 2 months of having it on Linux via the Live USB, and doing a full copy/clone of the drives last night - details later)

Why 3 attempts?
  1) First one I made the mistake of trying to set up a manual GPT setup on what was apparently a legacy BIOS that could only support MBR and MBR only (presumably... or I stuffed it up, and only after wasting *ages* grovelling over the partition sizes in MiB vs MB/GB)

  2) Second time, I tried doing a MBR one with multiple partitions again. This time sticking the root one first. Again that failed. (Or maybe I still did stick in a "bios-grub" one at the start, which is again where it fell down)... Should I have mounted that as "/boot" to get it to work? Or selected something else?

  3) This last time, I gave up and just let it use the "Erase Disk" option, which generated a single partition (ugh... I do want my homedir separate from the OS stuff!). That finally worked.

 

I'm slightly annoyed though that the installer doesn't transfer any settings from the Live USB session over immediately, and requires reinstalling stuff manually. 

   * Fortunately, it looks like for the majority of the Plasma stuff at least, I just had to copy the ".config" and a bunch of other data dirs from the liveusb config I'd set up. After then rebooting, it seems that I at least get that part of environment back the config I'd set up previously (though further testing is still needed)

    * EDIT: Annoyingly, it seems that "konsole"'s shortcut keys are NOT stored in that .config dir, so I will have to reset my "Ctrl-Shift-X" shortcut key manually (i.e. Clear and Reset). 

   * EDIT 2: Ahh... maybe I should've copied my .local folder too 

   * EDIT 3:  For the "snap" version of Firefox that's installed by default, the best way to migrate is to leave the overall snap folder on the new host alone, but to pull in just the profile folder (located in "~/snap/firefox/common/.mozilla") from the liveusb, then modify the profiles.ini to point to it. Then, the next time you start Firefox, it will not only load all your stuff again.  (Maybe the extensions will need manually reinstalling though, or maybe I missed some other folder that needs porting still)

     In any case, I shall be disabling the snaps ASAP I think...  But for initial usage + testing, I've just left them in place to avoid dealing with all the mess just yet.

 

  * Unfortunately, that means I will also now have to re-check all the stuff I had installed and will have to reinstall now. Which will be "a few" things...  (Note to self:  Next time, just maintain a declarative script for doing all this, OR look into what something like NixOS can do)

At this point, I may just leave it at this, until trying to reinstall the LTS over the top after checking it works stably for my machines... But still, 1/3 "current" Windows machines is now converted now!

 

Audio Hardware Rant - HDMI Monitor Sound Playback (with no speakers to speak of) + Headphone Woes

 It's quickly turning into one of *those* nights I think:

* 1) Spent ages trying to debug why Firefox was not playing any audio (but MuseScore) was:  Turns out, the stupid HDMI switcher has again caused computer to forget that I've previously hell-banned audio from being sent to play on my monitor via HDMI, but it had suddenly decided again that that is the default location it should go!  

ARGH!

Does anyone sell HDMI cables where the audio pins are purposefully knocked out, and this fact is communicated to the PC at the other end, so it never pulls this trick again?!


* 2) It seems I also need to hurry up the search for 2 pairs of headphones:  My main pair (that I've brought over with me) have in recent weeks developed a very disturbing habit of suddenly and randomly / explosively *LEAPING* from my head and collapsing into a crumpled/folded bundle that lands with a loud thud either on my keyboard, on on the floor!


My main requirements for headphones are:
 a) Ear cups do NOT use PU leather, or equivalents that will flake in 6 months tops
 b) They are better than the crappy el-cheapo Panasonic ones I once got that leaked sound AND had to be turned up to 90% to hear anything
 c) No sound leakage
 d) They don't clamp hard with horrid nutcracker squeezing force (like all those I encountered as a kid)
 e) It has a cable, mounted on the right side only, which is ideally more than 2m long (and/or can be detached, to allow switching out if too short)
 f) Ideally has some degree of noise cancellation / muffling, to block out any annoying environmental noise that may be an issue

Rant About Interminable Roadworks Outside Our House

What follows is a summarised rant about the IMO totally unacceptable, and really poorly managed + executed + communicated roadworks outside our place, that have been going on for the past 3 months and counting now!  🤬

While I accept that roadworks sometimes have to take place, the manner in which this has whole process has taken place has been nothing short of appalling, and completely unacceptable IMO.  (It's all the more surprising, when the council had only just spent a bunch of money getting another bunch to resurface the whole road like 2 years earlier, to the point I thought that we wouldn't need any further works for another decade!)

It's also somewhat galling to finally find that the company ("Hunter Civil") who won that contract / tender, did so on a "Restricted Tender" project (i.e. the council, for all intents and purposes, could've effectively shoulder-tapped those bastards to offer them this "juicy nugget" project - covering a whole bunch of streets, over 6 months... to what extent that is / isn't true is not really something that can be easily found out just yet though - yeah, there's the LGOIA (Local Government Official Information Act) provisions for finding out such shit, but yeah... it turns out you have to pay them to hire / divert a staffer to gather that info for you... and then they charge *per page* copied in addition to their hourly rate around minimum wage-ish spent doing all that... 🙄)

 

First Impressions of New Ice Cream (Soft Serve) Machine

Tonight, I finally got around to trying out my "new" Ice Cream Machine (soft serve), having originally bought it over 1-2 years ago (i.e. it was on sale during a long weekend, and I'd always wanted a soft-serve machine).

 

Why then has it taken so long to get around to trying it?  Well, mostly being too busy to read the instructions to:

  1) set it up, 

  2) get the ingredients, 

  3) have enough time to set it all up and finally try it

This Easter weekend, I *almost* managed to do that, until I found that we didn't have Vanilla Essence (as called for by the recipe), having thought we did... Oh well! That was one of the "things not going well" that happened that weekend... 

Anyway, tonight was the night, when I finally got to see how well this worked (and/or whether I could say that it's potentially a better system than what two of my colleagues have using a different / newer machine they got at the end of last year).  (Well, on that front, I can say - yes, their one apparently is *really* noisy as it has to grind into solid-frozen ice, whereas mine churns liquids into semi-solids using a frozen bowl)...

 

A Very Good Day (for a Change)

 Today ended up turning out really nicely!  (Well, especially everything from this afternoon onwards!)  😊

* Got vaccinated for this year's COVID + Flu combo's  (**1)

* Got a bunch more cute Eugy models to put together, and the lady at the store let me grab a few of their prebuilt models for free (which was a nice surprise!) 

* The sun was out and it's warm  (25C, which was warmer + nicer than most days over the "Summer" that we've just had, where it just rained and stay in the low-mid teens)

* Managed to hear some silvereyes (going to feast in the "Autumn Birdy Berry Tree")!  (**2)

* Finally managed to try my "new" Ice Cream / Soft Serve machine - Technically I'd gotten it over a year ago, nearly 2 now, on sale one long weekend. But till now, I haven't had time to get around to investigating how to set it up, and gathering the ingredients to try making some!  (I'll have a separate post on this shortly)

All this was a very nice change + surprise, having been feeling rather err... "off" this past weekend from hardly anything going right (**3)!

 

Wordplay: Motorcycle Rallies vs Boy Racers

This morning, I watched as a large convoy of colourful motorcycles cruised past noisily. Which got me thinking:

We should be calling these motorbike rally enthusiasts "midlife / grandpa racers", as the "boy" racers apparently gather on Friday/Saturday nights at the Moorhouse Ave Countdown carpark (there was a YT short docu about this), in their four wheeled contraptions (aka: They need training wheels still! 😜)

The video in question, from "New Zealand Today" (from 3 years ago):

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BaDDQ54UftA

Excursions in Google Translated Maori: Hukarere = To Snow

TIL, from a typo'd search for what I presume was a Japanese term written out in English letters, that "hukarere" means "to snow" in Maori

https://maoridictionary.co.nz/search?&keywords=hukarere

Fascinating... according to Google translate, if I change from saying "I wish it would snow" to "I wish it would snow *again*", one of the extra words ("ano") looks awfully like something you'd hear in Japanese

(For context, I don't really know/understand Japanese, but from time to time, I have heard enough in sequence to get a feel for the patterns these days)

1) "I wish it would snow in Ōtautahi"
== "Ko taku hiahia kia hukarere i Ōtautahi"

2) "I wish it would snow again in Ōtautahi"
== "Ko taku hiahia ka heke ano i Ōtautahi"

🤓

Disclaimer: I don't know Te Reo either, so Google may have totally butchered that badly and done the equivalent of "Catmeat I eat love" here, when I meant "I like cats"

Additional Can of Worms: 

* "rere" means "to run" /  "to flow"

* "wairere" means "waterfall"

* BUT "rain" is "ua"?!  🤯

   (the pronunciation examples for that and the related terms though are pretty impossible to catch!)

Computer Hardware Adventures - Resurrecting Desktop Workstation #1

For the past year, I've been forced to use my "secondary" (+ newer) workstation, as I woke up one morning to my former primary workstation (from 2018) having a severe bout of hardware-related instability. 

Granted, this secondary workstation has actually been a vastly better machine in most regards, as it has actually been more of the setup that I'd originally been going for in 2018 (see details below).  And also, this switch has helped postpone having to address a several "storage crunch" I'd been experiencing on the primary machine  (i.e. I'd gotten to the point where my Photos/Media drive had actually *run out of space*, and I had to quickly offload as much "non-critical" stuff as I could to a mix of "other drives on the machine, for "more important" stuff, and only a secondary drive for all the "not very important" stuff)

Anyway, for "reasons", I've come to finally get around to trying to resurrect this machine now at last!  (I'd actually mean to do it by this time last year... but then procrastination over finding "the right" replacement PSU and/or trying to fit that in against work/holiday schedules has meant that this has only happened now...)

This rambling post will be about the journey of trying to get this working again, and also the upcoming challenges of figuring out how this step now fits into my grand scheme for rejigging how I run all my computing setup (i.e. both the "Linux migration" project, but also the "two workstations / two locations, one big stash of data that needs backing up and syncing") 

Lessons from Aviation - Saturday Morning Thought on AI / Automation Use

Maybe I've been looking in the wrong places, but it seems that there is not much discussion out there on how we should be looking towards the aviation industry for insights into how our relationship with automation should proceed.

After all, pilots have been dealing with "autopilot" systems for decades now!

Salient lessons I think:

* There is a general skepticism of "what the machine says" that is drilled into them from early on - Yes, many do depend on navigation systems much of the time, as they are generally reliable. But, where possible, they are reminded to look out the window / use multiple sources and confirm whether that matches what the machines say. 

On that note, a very important part of their job is to constantly monitor and track the system information, cross-checking that against their expectations. Trust but verify.

* Between that and the need for redundancy in case of failure (e.g. backup radios, backup map + light sources, backup instruments), you'll also soon find that many pilots are actually wary about night flying, where the risks are greatly heightened, as darkness makes it harder to spot deadly situations. In other words, you should be careful about putting yourself in risky situations to begin with! Manage the risky situations by avoiding in the first place

* The need for regular "stick and rudder time" - i.e. there is widespread understanding that they do need to manually exercise / practice their skills *without using the automation*, so that they remain capable of stepping in when the automation goes berserk / breaks, which *will* happen, often at the worst possible times.

* It is also heartening that while this automation has existed for decades, there has been sufficient strong advocacy for maintaining two-pilot operations to maintain human-in-the-loop operations.

20 Years and Counting as a Professional Software Engineer

Ooh... earlier today, I was suddenly reminded that this year marks 20 years since I've been developing software in a professional / semi-professional capacity (i.e. working with a medium-sized team, on an established codebase with millions of lines of code, wrangling bug trackers + wikis, and supporting software for which there are real users of the stuff we're building who depend on that to get their work done)

I started in around May 2006 (*), after managing to get Blender's code compiling on my machine at last, which enabled me to start tackling a few of my pet peeves...

It also happened that one of the first feature film productions using Blender was kicking off around that time too in Argentina (i.e. "Plumiferos" at "Manos Digitales" (sp?) IIRC), and had posted a long list of feature requests that happened to overlap with quite a few of the things on my list! In short, that's how I ended up entering the industry - burning through that feature request list, and becoming one of the major contributors to Blender for over a decade!

(*) I had actually been programming since early 2000, but had only worked on my own private "from scratch" projects up till then

Linux Migration - Current Queries Edition (March #1)

This is the latest in my ongoing series on investigating my setup for migrating to Linux. I've got 2 other posts that were supposed to go up at the start of February, but I've been procrastinating on polishing them up for posting...

In any case, today's update covers where things are at in general, and the outstanding barriers to resolve before pulling the trigger.