watmough

Good stuff.

One rule I like, is to ensure that, as well as validation, all validated information is dumped in a convenient format prior to running the rest of the script.

This is super helpful, assuming that some downstream process will need pathnames, or some other detail of the process just executed.

Here's a comparison of the J4125 (Radxa X2L/Palmshell) vs EliteBook 8560w i7-2820QM vs Radxa X4 N100.

    https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/3667vs5157vs885/Intel-Celeron-J4125-vs-Intel-N100-vs-Intel-i7-2820QM

In comparison with a Pi 5, the slowest of the above, which is the X2L/Palmshell kicks the butt of the Pi 5 six ways to Wednesday. Just so much better, it's unreal. Web-page resizing works immediately, video plays well, it just feels like a real PC, even though it's a bit slower than my EliteBook, which is still pretty handy.

Not got an X4 yet, but from the link above, it should be about 50% faster than the EliteBook, which in turn is 50% faster than the X2L / Palmshell.

I kinda wondered my my Windows 11 based work laptop had rebooted... I guess I should go check if it's still working right.

Excellent rant! I don't use DarkTable but ... I've been there.

I know this. I’ll dig up the reference in the am. It’s diode rom graphics. Atari GranTrak 10 used it for graphics, but the then new rom chips for code/data.

  https://edfries.wordpress.com/2017/06/14/fixing-gran-trak-10/

Yeah, and they can be very scratchy. :D

  me: "(apologetic) A small amount of urine escaped. The rat was not to blame."
  wife:  "(sternly) The rat was *totally* to blame!"

Just woken up and seen this after picking up my laptop, but only after feeding the cat, taking dog out to poop, and feeding the rats a few puffs.

They are such little characters, full of so much love and joy.

Just the short lifespan is the biggest downside. :(

Funny that this should come up, 30 minutes afer I put our mischief of 3 young girl rats back in their habitat, but yeah, a few concrete examples:

  * Pudding rat plans escapes to the top of the habitat, whenever the door is open,

  * Rats are super trainable, and will speculative do tricks for treats (ours get gerber baby puffs, or rice krispies for spinning, going through a hoop, shaking hands etc.)

  * Pie rat likes loose clothing and will run into sleeves, pants, and general enjoy herself,

  * Rats also love certain styles of place, depending on the rat, and will happily just chill on your shoulder, or against your tummy, or under an arm and nibble a treat,

  * Crumble rat is the baby, and more timid, less curious, and prefers to hide, but will run around and climb on the humans if her sisters are doing it.

Personality-wise, rats are all across the spectrum, and that personality is visible at weaning when most rats are sold by breeders, and so far it's inherent to the rat, and not something that really changes much.

I've not ever noticed them dreaming as ours prefer to snuggle in a hammock, with some rags pulled down, but they clearly have goals, and imagination, not just 'behavior'.

Rat's aren't dogs, but a few rats can make a wonderful replacement if you're somewhere where larger pets aren't permitted.

Beware, this is kind of a deep rabbithole.

I suggest to look up his trip up from Mexico, following the migrant route. For a different view of the same trip, his travelling companion (automous something) has his own channel.

RanOutOnARail isn't really a hobo though ... I think he's a software engineer in Texas somewhere.

Hobo Shoestring has an interesting channel also, albeit with a home base. You'll learn a lot about trains, and hobos' most hated adversaries, the 'homebums'. :D

And of course, there's a 10x hobo, in stobe-the-hobo (RIP), well worth watching all his videos.

As a pet owner, rather than using insecticides, I use a couple gallons of hot water mixed with washing-up liquid to eliminate fire ant nests in my yard.

The hot soapy water washes away the structue of the nest, and quickly kills the inhabitants, whilst not damaging my lawn, or having slow acting insecticides hurting my animals and getting into the wider food chain.

I have no doubt that Jeff Minter will be right on that ...

https://www.polygon.com/23613576/jeff-minter-profile-akka-ar...

Arguably, fusion energy has given us power "too cheap to meter". [1]

  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_cheap_to_meter

Interesting that on that basis, $3500 is probably about on a par with a really nice OLED big-screen TV and surround sound system.

One person only though, not a shareable experience.

Like others, I'm waiting for this to come to a spectacles / sunglasses formfactor. An external box would be fine, I just wouldn't be able to bear wearing what looks like metal ski-goggles for any significant period of time.

Yep my 13 year old will often pop her head round the door wondering about how dad is listening to a song she's heard sampled on TikTok or some crazy video. Apparently, there's a bunch of The Smiths songs living multiple lives in the new world of the TikTok / short-attention span / ADHDNet.

On a script-related note, I spent a bunch of time back in the day reading through these:

http://www.lysator.liu.se/~kjell-e/tekla/red-dwarf/scripts.h...

Seems like someone could use some corrective lenses.

So Elementary OS is one example of Linux that already runs very happily on my 2012 MacBook Air.

Surely most of the required support is there already?

> edit: or the time I got around their EXE blocking by changing a bunch of strings in UnrealTournament.exe to look like Norton Anti-virus. Got a couple weeks' suspension for that!

OMG That's awesome!

Yeah, hanging onto mine! Awesome desk.

They used to crop up on craigslist occasionally for $100-$200. not checked in a while.

Yep, just posted about this. Late 90's right?

I think it was Ygdrassil, or maybe a free distro off of a CD. Great investment of time as it got me into the oilfield doing tech support. Running Rocky 8 on a P1 Gen4 now, so come a long way from my 486/Dx2.

Back in the day, and I mean like mid-late 90's, you could actually install the Linux kernel, files etc., straight onto a Windows FAT partition and boot into it.

Not exactly what was being asked for, but a weird old fact I'd forgotten about.

My reading of the diagram says that 5 different exposures were needed to establish a 5+1 level gray scale.

Note that each picture is scanned simultaneously, and contributes to whether 0 - 5 holes are made in the tape.

At the receiving end, the number of holes controls the brightness of the beam reconstructing the image.

Sweet game!

  Near-perfect landing, super smooth

  Score: 95.5 point landing
  Speed: 1.9mph
  Angle: 0.1°
  Time: 57 seconds
  Flips: 0
  Max speed: 31.6mph
  Max height: 147ft
  Engine used: 82 times
  Boosters used: 33 times
  https://ehmorris.com/lander/

Probably worth changing the submission to point here, as the source should be readily findable if needed.

You mean like this?

https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-11

Totally describes what I do.

Last couple jobs have been heavily legacy C++ in the energy sector.

Lots of maintenance, but also opportunities to overhaul and build new objects.

Funnest project right now is porting some supercool Science code to cuda and getting about a 30x speed up.

Sadly the killer app of Facebook is to meet and enable precisely the kinds of local community the author is suggesting.

In a sense, Marketplace is the new Facebook. A buddy is just swinging by with some Rx-7 TII brakes for my NA. We have been trading parts for the last couple years.

I was at a car show yesterday, who did I know, Facebook buds.

Really interesting question.

As primarily a maintenance programmer by inclination, I'd not ever given the possibility of self-employment a thought.

However, if you need to be paid, you need to create value. So the answer to your question is to find someone to pay you to fix bugs in software that 1) they use and depend on, that may not be well-maintained, 2) that you have the source and all dependencies for, and 3) that they would trust your expertise in understanding their requirements whilst being at 'arms-length'.

To be honest, it sounds a bit difficult, but you might try looking for support / developer roles. These are often unpopular with developers that want to do the new shiny, but there's lots of $$$ in keeping existing software working with updated APIs, fixing bugs etc.

Or you could be a framework evangelist / fixer on site. That largely matches my current role, where my job is to ensure that a large customer is happy, and utilizing our framework-type software to it's best advantage.

As usual the poorest will suffer worst. In people terms, and at the level of countries and continents.

For those lucky enough to be within clinging reach of the lower middle class, efforts towards energy and food independence will reap huge rewards. Spain and Portugal could be taken as exemplars of embracing renewables. Even the UK, Australia and the Southern US have embraced solar and wind.

The poorest, thinking of Africa, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka will continue to, and escalate in suffering as energy pricing and climate chaos continue to steadily worsen.

Pretty sure Kenneth Baker was involved.

I'll look into this some more and check back.

... Yes, Kenneth Baker was appointed Minister for Information Technology in 1981, by PM Margaret Thatcher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Baker,_Baron_Baker_of_... [wikipedia]

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=kenneth... [lots of good links here]

source: I'm old, and Google is still awesome.

Not sure I like that knock-off copy of WordWise.

The original company Computer Concepts, now renamed Xara GMBH are amazingly still around! Wonder if they did a 40 years in business celebration?

    Bikes are not a kind of car!
    Yes, yes they are! Sorry if my error bothers you, but bikes are a type of car. Just look it up online.

LOL.