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| Greg's diary |
| July 2024 |
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| Monday, 1 July 2024 | Dereel | Images for 1 July 2024 |
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Cold weather
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Topic: general | Link here |
We're going through an unusually cool period of weather at the moment:
mysql> select year(date), min(outside_temp), avg(outside_temp), max(outside_temp)
from observations
where month(date) = 6
group by year(date);
+------------+-------------------+--------------------+-------------------+
| year(date) | min(outside_temp) | avg(outside_temp) | max(outside_temp) |
+------------+-------------------+--------------------+-------------------+
| 2017 | 0.1 | 8.583251664357402 | 17.2 |
| 2018 | -0.2 | 8.587153978918375 | 18.9 |
| 2019 | -0.9 | 9.446074306448931 | 17.6 |
| 2020 | -0.7 | 8.782459793250906 | 16.6 |
| 2021 | 0.8 | 9.77173985397815 | 18.2 |
| 2022 | 0.6 | 8.86966862322499 | 19.6 |
| 2023 | -0.4 | 10.222608372489137 | 20.5 |
| 2024 | -2.4 | 8.394851808112373 | 16.5 |
+------------+-------------------+--------------------+-------------------+
And of course we had to discover that our new Mitsubishi Electric MSZ-AP60VG(D) air conditioner isn't really up to the task. It takes hours in the morning to bring the lounge room up to temperature:
I turned it on shortly after 5:00, and it took until 10:00 to come up to temperature (top line). I'm going to have to leave it running overnight.
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Lies, damn lies and statistics
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Last month was cold? How about this month?
mysql> select year(date), min(outside_temp), avg(outside_temp), max(outside_temp)
from observations
where month(date) = 7
group by year(date);
+------------+-------------------+--------------------+-------------------+
| year(date) | min(outside_temp) | avg(outside_temp) | max(outside_temp) |
+------------+-------------------+--------------------+-------------------+
| 2017 | -1.8 | 8.386610996751084 | 17.2 |
| 2018 | -0.5 | 8.84761882739429 | 19.7 |
| 2019 | 1 | 9.319298495442224 | 18.5 |
| 2020 | -0.8 | 8.394708139534231 | 16.7 |
| 2021 | -0.6 | 8.415084340357575 | 17.2 |
| 2022 | -2.6 | 8.445030549610115 | 20.4 |
| 2023 | -0.5 | 9.574544398292241 | 17.9 |
| 2024 | 0.9 | 2.9052224463604865 | 6.8 |
+------------+-------------------+--------------------+-------------------+
The maximum temperature is much lower than the average of any previous year! Of course, that's what you get with 10 hours of overnight data.
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Constructive translations
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Topic: language, technology, food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Google Translate is quite useful for reading labels on East Asian food, but it has its limits. Here's a particularly amusing one:
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Somehow Google Translate is just too eager to please.
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More garden work
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Topic: gardening, animals | Link here |
Jesse Walsh along to do some more garden work today, notably the “island” in the driveway:
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The Leucospermum had been so covered in Carpobrotus that there's a big bald patch:
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At the other end also planted some small Carpobrotus and some nameless plants that Yvonne got from Kelly-ann Nyari:
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And while tidying up, he found a particularly bloated frog:
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Also planted a long-suffering Buddleja_×_weyeriana in front of the “shade area”:
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X configuration: RTFM!
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
More searching for answers to the .Xdefaults issue today. What does the xterm(1) man page say? Much more than it did 30 years ago. Now there are 7,758 lines, about 130 pages. When I learnt X it was 253 lines, less than 5 pages. And much of this new version describes exactly what I'm looking for: a line like xterm-r*faceName: DejaVu Sans Mono refers to a name xterm-r, which is described in X(1):
-nameThis option specifies the name under which resources for the application should be found. This option is useful in shell aliases to distinguish between invocations of an application, without resorting to creating links to alter the executable file name.
And it's used like this:
/usr/local/bin/uxterm -name "xterm-r" -s -sl 2048 -sb -ls -j -rw -display :0.3 -geometry 90x50-53+0 -e /usr/local/bin/bash
And faceName is a resource described in the man page.
So now I have the background to actually do something. Looking through the configuration file, I find that most of these names simply refer to colours. They're relatively arbitrary, but they also describe the location of the icons. Here a “before” and “after” converting to Color
Style "xterm-r" Icon xterm.xpm,Color yellow/black,IconBox -40 300 -1 -140
Style "xterm-r" Icon xterm.xpm,Colorset 21,IconBox -40 300 -1 -140
So now I need to create entries for each of these names. Currently I have xterm-lx xterm-rx, xterm-r, xterm-rsxa and xterm-rsxd. Do I need all of them? Probably not.
And then there are the options passed to the xterm:
/usr/local/bin/uxterm -name "xterm-r" -s -sl 2048 -sb -ls -j -rw -display :0.3 -geometry 90x50-53+0 -e /usr/local/bin/bash
So after all that, my invocation reduces to:
/usr/local/bin/uxterm -name "xterm-r" -display :0.3 -e /usr/local/bin/bash
Do I need to specify the display? Probably not. But there's no resource to specify the shell; the best choice there is the SHELL environment variable. If that works, I can reduce things to
/usr/local/bin/uxterm -name "xterm-r"
So do I need to generate individual files? Yes, unfortunately. I still have different invocations for local and remote machines, which could potentially reduce to something like this on hydra:
+ "eureka" Exec ssh -A eureka /usr/local/bin/uxterm -name "xterm-r" &
+ "hydra" Exec /usr/local/bin/uxterm -name "xterm-r" &
And on eureka it would be the other way round. Still, things look a lot simpler like that. The next step is to decide what names to use, and how to allocate them.
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20 years of wrong directions
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Topic: history, technology | Link here |
Twenty years ago today I started this idea of saving all my RCS files in a separate hierarchy. Bad idea, and it's still biting me.
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bhyve: out
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I've already had my concerns about using bhyve instead of VirtualBox, but another thing that concerned me was how to save a running instance. Once again Google Gemini to my aid. You don't:
Unfortunately, as of July 1, 2024, bhyve itself doesn't offer a built-in feature to save the state of a running virtual machine. This functionality is under development, but there's no official release yet.
| Tuesday, 2 July 2024 | Dereel | Images for 2 July 2024 |
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The end of US democracy?
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Topic: history, politics, opinion | Link here |
The Supreme Court of the USA has made an amazing decision: the President is above the law.
I needed to catch my breath. This special treatment of the ruler was one of the differences between the USA and Great Britain. It seems that the concept of equality under the law is not stated as clearly in US law as it is elsewhere, but the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution implies it, and it also states:
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
And, it seems, this decision reverses exactly the issue of the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. How can that happen? My understanding is that the only way to reverse this decision is for the Supreme Court to change its mind.
The consequences are staggering. The Shovel put it into perspective. Biden Responds to Supreme Court Ruling by Immediately Assassinating Donald Trump. Part of the article is worth reading:
The Biden team used an unconventional method to carry out the assassination – an actor posing as Vladimir Putin was hired to tell Trump that he doesn’t like him. Trump immediately died of sadness.
But somehow that's the death knell of US democracy. The 2020s have not been a good decade so far. I see even worse times ahead.
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Fixing the gate
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
Our front gate does not shut very accurately, and lately it has been overshooting the “closed” position. A minor adjustment, maybe?
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It doesn't look like much, but I think it should be enough. I didn't want to overdo it and risk breaking off the hook.
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ANZ: You typed the wrong password
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
Time for my monthly check on my bank accounts today. But no, my ANZ web page told me that my password was wrong.
What? It's stored in the web browser. I also have it written down, so I tried that. No, wrong. Please reset.
How did that happen? It's definitely not my doing. Called up and finally, after nearly a minute of announcements, I was asked the reason for my call. “I think my password has been breached”.
WRONG. Another two minutes explaining to me how to use the ANZ App to reset my password. And then I was disconnected. Nearly 3 minutes for nothing.
Tried again, this time telling the non-recognition that I had a security breach. OK, 5 to 10 minute wait, which proved to be closer to 15. Connected to Gracia, who told me that no special characters were allowed in the password, and then helped me reset it after a third time also failed and locked me out of my account.
When was my password last changed? 2 May, she said. OK, I've logged in since then, so if their site didn't let me log in, there must be something seriously wrong. Please inform your security team. ”I am the security team”. No escalation needed: I typed my password with an special character or some other error.
Please take a complaint. After three attempts and a threat to involve the regulatory bodies, she agreed to do so. Give me the complaint number, please. Can't do that yet, will send a “text message”, presumably an SMS. No, I'd like to have an email, please. Sorry, we can't send email. Wait on the line.
Finally she came back with the number. And where do we go from here? She seemed to think that that was the last I would hear of it, and maybe she's right. And after all, she said, I just typed my password in wrong.
I exploded, being rather rude and calling her an idiot. I regret that, but I've seldom had such a frustrating and stupid interaction.
And after it was all over and done, I got an email with the complaint number.
Somehow this is so like the interaction with Aussie Broadband a few months ago. We're being held to ransom by the “help desk” people.
Do you have a comment about something I have written? This is a diary, not a “blog”, and there is deliberately no provision for directly adding comments. It's also not a vehicle for third-party content. But I welcome feedback and try to reply to all messages I receive. See the diary overview for more details. If you do send me a message relating to something I have written, please indicate whether you'd prefer me not to mention your name. Otherwise I'll assume that it's OK to do so.
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