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.

Opinion / Rant - Christchurch Protest Zones Ban Denied

TBH, as crude as it sounds, I *DO* support the motion to place restrictions on groups of people protesting at the Bridge of Remembrance (and a few other sensitive spots like the official quake memorial), and think that it is a terrible shame that this proposal got voted down (by such a slim margin, and from the usual suspects too)

 

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/588649/controversial-proposal-to-ban-protests-in-parts-of-christchurch-fails-to-get-off-the-ground

 

Lion Dance Bricks Builds Completed

Yay!  I finally finished my "Lion Dance Minibricks" build this afternoon (after spending the last 3 weekend afternoons working on it)!  🥳

Got this one in Vancouver last year (having originally wanted another one that I ended up having to internet order instead).

Of all these Chinese designs I've built recently, this one is perhaps the most solid + structurally sound of all of them. The only problem was trying to figure out how the layers lined up, as a few layers had lots of bricks packed into tight arrangements that it became hard to figure out which was which! 

(The problem was such that today I had to redo part of the girl's face, as I'd added the middle between-eyes chunk one row too far back!  Fortunately, the whole lion-dance head came off relatively cleanly, and apart from one or two stragglers that needed to be manually placed first, I managed to get the whole head to snap straight back on after I'd made the tweaks... not once, but twice!  Phew! Things would've been bad had I had to undo all that to get back down!)