A few years ago, I wrote about my perfect ls command. I always want to see the most recent file at the bottom of the screen, with a human readable filesize, and nothing else. I've started using the exa tool to make that happen. Sadly, there's no configuration file to change its default behaviour. So, I add this to my ~/.profile file: # Better LS with exa alias lh='exa -l -s modified…
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After finding the first Expanse book mildly interesting, I was badgered into reading the sequel. It isn't good. The first book made for some interesting "engineering" sci-if. What would it take to travel at excess g-force? What are the practical implications of living on a low-gravity moon? That kind of thing. But it was let down by being a mish-mash of recycled plots - big evil corporations,…
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There's an old, old joke: A man jumps into a taxi and starts chatting to the driver about philosophy. The taxi driver turns to him and says, “Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?” The man says, “Well, I'm an atheist.” The taxi driver thinks for a moment and says “OK, but is it the Catholic God or the Protestant God that you don't believe in?” I've written before about the UK's rapid loss of fa…
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I needed to copy 3TB of data from my old homeserver to my new one. I decided to spend as much time "sharpening my axe" as possible. I spent ages dicking around with ZFS configs, tweaking BIOS settings, flashing firmware, and all the other yak-shaving necessary for convincing yourself you're doing useful work. Then I started testing large file transfers. Both scp and rsync started well -…
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ZFS sometimes benefits from having a logging drive. Usually, you need to assign a whole device or partition to it. Unfortunately, I had already partitioned my SSD and didn't feel like repartitioning it. So, here's how to create a file, mount it as a loopback, and then assign it to your ZFS pool as a logging drive. Create a 1GB file somewhere on your SSD: fallocate -l 1G zil.img Mount the…
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Zombie films are always social commentary. The original Night of the Living Dead is a story of small-town racism and paranoia. One Cut Of The Dead is - if you'll pardon the pun - a cut above the rest of the zombie flicks. It asks some deep questions about cinema and the role of the audience. Are we morally culpable for the actions that occur on-screen? Without us, there is no bloodshed. Without…
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As part of my never-ending quest to banish this skeuomorph from the world… I was reading a fascinating eBook recently which was, sadly, designed to mimic a legacy / paper book. To the point where the authoring software had hard-coded in page numbers and forced them to be displayed. Here's what it looked like: There are two abominations here. There's no need to interrupt the reading e…
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I have a headless server - one without a GUI - which I use as a NextCloud client. My laptop, phone, tablet, and server all sync with a cloud-based NextCloud instance. But, sadly, NextCloud don't offer a way for servers to speak to servers. If you try to run apt install nextcloud it will try to install 300MB of GUI dependencies which you just can't use. Luckily, there's a way around all that!…
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Back in 2011, I bought an HP Proliant Microserver G6 for £250. Last week I upgraded to... A Proliant G8 for £270. Nice! Hurrah for Moore's Law! Of course, setting it up is a bit of a mare. So here's a tangled mess of notes to hopefully remind me what to do... Firmware Download the latest gen8 firmware / BIOS / iLO. Find a site offering demo licence keys for iLO 4. Boot Order I stuck in an S…
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Well gang, I did it! After two years I've finally finished my MSc! My final project was a 10,901 word epic about... The ✨Metaverse✨. Have I gone a little bit peculiar? No. I don't think so. I was advised to pick a project which would sustain my interest for 6 months. So I chose something which would have lots of modern papers to read. And, more importantly, justify me buying a new toy to play …
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After 3 full years of having solar panels on our London roof, they've generated 11,950kWh of electricity. Nice! Here's how those three years look, according to our smart meter. kWh Solar Generation 11,950 Solar Export 7,346 Grid Import 7,521 Quick maths! The difference between the generation and the export is our solar consumption: 4,604kWh over 3 years. So we…
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Yes, that Mae West wrote a novel. And it is a corker. Unabashedly sexy, druggy, provocative, and daringly modern. You can read the whole thing in West's voice: “It’s all right, Charlie,” she said. “I won’t hurt him. I only want to feel his muscles.” Every line just sizzles off the page. As with any 90 year old book, you might have to translate some of the slang: “the true story dope I’m commen…
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