After months (or years?) of waffling and false starts I finally bought an ASUS X542U. The advertised specs say "up to", but I don’t have the "up to", I have the baseline 7th gen i3, 128GB SSD, 4 GB RAM.

Here’s the rambling story of a laptop purchase and its various side quests.

Some details that may or may not have made it in to the show (and the show has some that aren’t there) available on the Fediverse at https://pleroma.heldscal.la/notice/7204988 .

Side quest to the side quest of making an episode about side quests:

Why spend five minutes writing a simple Makefile when you can spend half an afternoon writing a simple default.nix instead?

An explanation of hand stripping http://www.petguide.com/petcare/dog/grooming-basics-all-about-hand-stripping/

I chopped the recording down a bit as it was originally over an hour long I thought it would just be too monotonous.

Listening back to the recording I can't believe it took me so long to get organised and get out the door.

With all the rhythmic clinking sounds it sounds more like I'm riding a horse than walking the dog, I think the supplied clip-on Dictaphone microphone is a bit on the sensitive side.

As a responsible dog walker, one of the most important pieces of equipment I take with me on every dog walk is the “Toley Bone” mentioned around one minute point.

Toley is a fine Scottish word, you can look it up if you are unfamiliar with it http://www.firstfoot.com/dictionary/t.html or alternatively just do a simple google search to be enlightened.

An example can be found here. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Plastic-Holder-Dispenser-Carrying-Walking/dp/B01IW0YSM0/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1509280608&sr=8-8&keywords=dog+bag+bone

Listen out for the crinkling sound around the halfway point where it is put to good use.

The second most important piece of kit is a sweet, consumed around the 3 minute point.

The main part of the walk was fairly uneventful and consisted of traffic noise, passing by the local bus terminus where the bus turns at the end of its route, a rather noisy motorbike and a brief encounter with a fellow dog walker on route.

Finally ending with a treat and some light refreshment.

Oh, and in case you're wondering yes the the scones mentioned near the end of the podcast made by Mrs X were wonderful.

Oh and one final thing on listening back to the recording one more time I just realised that for some unknown reason just after the bus noise I started whistling very softly to myself, I don't remember doing that at all, I must have been doing it subconsciously. I could be wrong but it sounds to me like I'm whistling the tune “The animals march in two by two” I guess it was just the right tempo to help me round my one hour walk.

Been getting a lot of updated policy changes lately ? Here's why !

From Wikipedia

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679 is a regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union. It also addresses the export of personal data outside the EU. The GDPR aims primarily to give control to citizens and residents over their personal data and to simplify the regulatory environment for international business by unifying the regulation within the EU. It was adopted on 14 April 2016, and after a two-year transition period, becomes enforceable on 25 May 2018.

The following information is taken from the Guide to the General Data Protection

Regulation (GDPR) from the Information Commissioners Office in the UK, which is released under a Open Government Licence v3.0.

Principles of the GDPR

Under the GDPR, the data protection principles set out the main responsibilities for organisations.

Article 5 of the GDPR requires that personal data shall be:

a) processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to individuals;

b) collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes; further processing for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes shall not be considered to be incompatible with the initial purposes;

c) adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they are processed;

d) accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date; every reasonable step must be taken to ensure that personal data that are inaccurate, having regard to the purposes for which they are processed, are erased or rectified without delay;

e) kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed; personal data may be stored for longer periods insofar as the personal data will be processed solely for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes subject to implementation of the appropriate technical and organisational measures required by the GDPR in order to safeguard the rights and freedoms of individuals; and

f) processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data, including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage, using appropriate technical or organisational measures.

Article 5(2) requires that:

the controller shall be responsible for, and be able to demonstrate, compliance with the principles.

What information does the GDPR apply to?

Personal data

The GDPR applies to ‘personal data’ meaning any information relating to an identifiable person who can be directly or indirectly identified in particular by reference to an identifier.

Sensitive personal data

Special category data is personal data which the GDPR says is more sensitive, and so needs more protection.

race

ethnic origin

politics

religion

trade union membership

genetics

biometrics (where used for ID purposes)

health

sex life

sexual orientation

Criminal offence data

The Data Protection Bill deals with this type of data in a similar way to special category data,

My contribution to List of requested shows “Your favourite browser extensions”

OneTab Homepage

https://www.one-tab.com/

Firefox add-on link

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/onetab/

On Android, I'm lazy and just seem to have fallen into using the chrome browser. The Add-on I'm going to talk about unfortunately isn't available for the Android operating system.

On the Linux desktop, I use Firefox

In the past, I've dabbled with various browser add-ons but until very recently I've been using no browser add-ons on the desktop.

A browser add-on I did use and did miss was Tab groups

Tab Groups was originally a feature built into Mozilla Firefox

The feature was removed but maintained as an add-on until it was broken by changes in Firefox 57

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/tab-groups-panorama/

A colleague at work brought the One-Tab add-on to my attention https://www.one-tab.com/

It's available for both the Chrome browser and Firefox

No sign-up or registration required

With Tab-group I found myself spending a lot of time arranging groups getting the size right naming them etc.

One tab philosophy is a bit different and perhaps maybe not so intuitive, though I think now after some use I prefer it as it gets out of the way and can be used with the minimal of fuss.

I highly recommend one-tab if you regularly find yourself dealing with a lot of open tabs in your browser.

Battling with English - part 1

Introduction

This is the first episode of a series about the English language. In it I want to look at some of the problems people (including myself) have with it. I plan to do several episodes and I want to keep them short.

The English language is old and has changed – evolved – in many ways over the years. It has come from a multitude of sources, and it's difficult to say what is correct in an absolute way.

For example, when I was at school we were taught that "nice" should not be used in written material. At that time it was becoming common to see phrases like "I had a nice time" meaning pleasant (in a bland sort of way). In my "Concise Oxford Dictionary" from 1976 the 6th definition, "agreeable" is marked "colloquialism", whereas today this is a common usage.

However, it's easy to use the wrong word in the wrong context. You might choose one that sounds similar for example. You might also have problems with the spelling of a chosen word. Spelling in English is not always logical. You might also find yourself confused about the use of punctuation – the correct use of apostrophes can be challenging for example.

In this series I want to examine some of the problem areas and try to give you the means of remembering the right way.

Note: I'm not an authority on this stuff, but I have tried to teach myself not to make these mistakes over the years. I just wanted to share what I have learnt1 with some links to higher authorities.

Long notes

I have provided detailed notes as usual, and these can be viewed here.

Links

Then:

Oxford Dictionaries: Definition of "then"

Online Etymology Dictionary

Than:

Oxford Dictionaries: Definition of "than"

Online Etymology Dictionary

Then versus Than

Writing Explained: Then vs. Than: What’s the Difference?

Grammarist: Than vs. then

Merriam-Webster: When To Use Then and Than

There:

Oxford Dictionaries: Definition of "there"

Online Etymology Dictionary

Their:

Oxford Dictionaries: Definition of "their"

Online Etymology Dictionary

They're:

Oxford Dictionaries: Definition of "they're"

Tenet:

Oxford Dictionaries: Definition of "tenet"

Online Etymology Dictionary

Tenant:

Oxford Dictionaries: Definition of "tenant"

I switched phones, and complained about the microphone. It probably made a greater difference that I was recording in 16 kHz Vorbis, because I was on a fresh install of Audio Recorder. Always double-check your settings, and apologies for the quality.

I am currently in the process of converting our website from Hugo to Styx.

Styx is s static site generator written entirely in the Nix language. It is able to figure out exactly what pages need to be rebuilt depending on what you changed in your page source and data sources, and all intermediate results are stored in the Nix store.

The parsing of AsciiDoc and (multi)Markdown is done by external tools, but the templating and layouts is all Nix.

I thought I may have dreamed the bit about carnix or buildRustPackage parsing TOML within Nix, because I couldn’t find any evidence of them ever having done that. But then I discovered it was in nixpkgs-mozilla I had seen it! That’s Mozilla’s overlay for nixpkgs, which makes Rust Nightly always available in Nix, so it’s kind of Nix’s rustup equivalent. So yeah, I guess I had dreamed who did it, but not that somebody did it. :-)

What is trust? How do you get it? How can you exploit it? How can you keep from being exploited?

HPR NYE 2017 - 6

Using Ubuntu with snaps or just using Debian for a home server

Building a home firewall

What is the best firewall distro

Maybe just learn ip tables

Fun with virtualization

https://riscv.org/

A completely Free Hardware CPU that is gaining press

http://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon-devices/soc/zynq-7000.html

An ARM processor with built-in FPGA

Western Digital moving to RISC-V:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiriasresearch/2017/12/06/western-digital-gives-a-billion-unit-boost-to-open-source-risc-v-cpu/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATZls4lbwmM&t=20m27s

WD CEO announces their ambition to switch fully to RISC-V

https://www.heropunch.io/

Creating free hardware for decentralized communications, mobile applications and mesh networks

https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/

Secure Scuttlebutt, or SSB, is built for intermittent networks and drop points

A little bit about https://ipfs.io/

Content-Addressable Networks are important if you're in intermittent or high-latency mesh networks

And in passing: http://twister.net.co/

BitTorrent + blockchain + DHT social networking, not entirely dissimilar to SSB

https://www.bitmessage.org/

clacke was wrong, it doesn't store messages in a blockchain

3D printers: http://podnutz.com/category/themakerz/

podcast https://www.tinkercad.com/

cloud CAD https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/overview

cloud CAD https://www.onshape.com/

cloud CAD https://www.thingiverse.com/

"the Facebook of 3D model sharing" https://cults3d.com/

3D model sharing

https://www.cnx-software.com/2017/05/25/melon-s3-fpga-arduino-raspberry-pi-compatible-board-is-programmable-over-wifi-using-esp8266-wisoc/

https://www.cnx-software.com/2015/11/24/fleafpga-uno-board-combines-a-lattice-fpga-arduino-uno-form-factor-hdmi-output-and-an-esp8266-wifi-module/

Amiga and http://www.morphos-team.net/

MorphOS is a proprietary implementation of AmigaOS for PowerPC, but uses free software components from e.g. AROS

http://c64upgra.de/c-one/

A C64 reimplementation project that turned into an FPGA platform that can even act as an Amiga

Awk Part 11

Gnu Awk Documentation: https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html#String-Functions

Numerical functions

atan2: arctangent of y / x in randians

cos: cosine of x in radians

exp: ex

int: floor float to int

log: natrual log

randn: (pseudo) random number between 0 and 1

sin: sine of x in radians

sqrt: square root

srand: (pseudo) random between 0 and 1, manually setting the seed

String functions

asort: array sort. Returns array with the values sorted

asori: array sort. Returns array with the keys (index) sorted

gensub: Search the target string target for matches of the regular expression regexp. Returns string with substituted text.

gsub: Search target for all of the longest, leftmost, nonoverlapping matching substrings it can find and replace them with replacement. Returns string with substituted text.

sub: Search target, which is treated as a string, for the leftmost, longest substring matched by the regular expression regexp. Returns string with substituted text.

index: Search the string in for the first occurrence of the string find. Returns the position where that occurence begins

length: returns length of string

match: Search string for the longest, leftmost substring matched by the regular expression regexp and return the character position (index) at which that substring begins.

split: Divide string into pieces delimted by field separator. Returns an array of strings

sprintf: Allows you to store the a string in the that would have been the output of printf into a variable

strtonum: Turn octal representation to number

substr: Substring starting at position x for length of y. Returns string

tolower: Lower-case the string

toupper: Upper-case the string

References

Trigonometric functions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigonometric_functions

Psuedo random number seed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_seed

Natural log to log 10: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/107574/from-natural-log-to-log-base-10#107576

This episode is light on actual commands, and mostly a narrative analysis of what git HEAD is and why it matters to you.

Some commands you can try:

$ cat ~/path/to/git/repo/.git/HEAD

and

$ ls ~/path/to/git/repo/.git/refs

$ cat ~/path/to/git/repo/.git/refs/master