I’m not a great Winter person. I lose patience about November. So the first signs of Spring that I see are very welcome. Snowdrops and aconites are the first in our garden, Followed by daffodils..!
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Category: trivial shennanigans
articles I am too lazy to categorise, or one off articles. Take your pick!!
I really like my M1 MBP 13″. It’s fast, light and the battery life is amazing. It’s a pretty large leap from my 2012 Retina MBP.
Except the nicest thing is not the M1, but the fact it supports unlocking with my Apple Watch. My previous MBP was a a single generation too old. But this one supports it. When opening the MBP it unlocks quicker than I can open the screen. I still look at my watch when it vibrates to signify it’s unlocking my laptop, thinking I’ve got a notification. But hey after a year with a Ring doorbell I still look at my watch when it notifies me that there’s movement outside my front door WHEN I AM WALKING OUTSIDE MY FRONT DOOR, so I guess I’m pretty slow to form new habits!
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Masks
At the start of Lockdown I was sold on the future need to wear masks and so I made some masks on my 1895 Singer model 15 (treadle) sewing machine. However, shamefully on the few times I’ve been out my mask has stayed in my pocket. I’ve justified this to myself that I never went inside a shop/building and observed the two metres distance at all times. I do not need to be further persuaded that wearing a mask helps reduce the transmission of the virus wearing a mask. Nonetheless I’ve felt extremely self conscious (which is not really like me) about wearing one and so my mask stayed in my pocket.
Wearing a mask is a display of civic duty to help your community. In the same way that vaccinations and not coughing in people’s faces are your contributions to a healthier society. Even if you have been extremely diligent in staying at home (which we have been), then wearing a mask sets an example to others that you are a responsible member of society. If we all wear a mask, it helps those who are uncomfortable with it (me!). To those people who refuse to wear a mask on “personal freedom issues”, then I would say the same as to those who refuse vaccinations – “your choice, but stay at home and stay the fuck away from people”.
Basically if we all wear masks then we can return to ‘normality’ sooner. But still my mask has stayed in my pocket. Shameful!
Last weekend we all visited a garden centre (partner, five year old and I). We were pleased to see that so many customers (not staff though) were wearing a mask. I would guess at least 50% of visitors, including entire families. This really did make me feel ashamed of our maskless faces. I think this was what I needed to push me into wearing one.
..and so the following weekend, following a purchase of “funky” masks (rather than my home sewed ones) we went shopping as a family again, but this time all masked up! It felt good!
wearamask
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Upgrading Linux boxes
After returning to upgrading my main Linux box (due to playing with Docker and using some stuff (genome annotation pipelines) that needs more than the system max of 16GB RAM) I came across this blog post about a similar situation (albeit more time). The beautiful machine
I’ve generally always upgraded my own computers. My main Linux box has been upgraded in bits and pieces for some time. I think the oldest current part is the case that is at least 15 years old. It’s been heavily updated with sound insulation from the car audio scene, although TBH it is much quieter now than when the motherboard was an Asus PC-DL running a pair of power hungry overclocked Xeons.
However, for one reason or another (lack of time, stable hardware, iPadOS etc) I’ve not done this for some time. My box was last opened two years ago when the TV tuner card (PCIe TBS6980) died and I replaced it, with an almost exact model. The previous real upgrade was seven or more years ago.
So I got myself a 10 yr old server board with dual Xeons and Max 32gb ram. Intel S5500BC board with a pair of Xeon E6240s. The setup only cost £70 but each CPU is far faster than the previous single Xeon X3470. Plus max RAM is double.
However, when I could previously swap over a motherboard in less than an hour, now we got multiple beginner errors.
– First error was refusing to boot due to a grounding error. I’d assumed there would be the usual 9 standoffs in the ATX format. Nope. There is no motherboard hole for a middle bottom standoff. What compounded the gorging error was that the lower left standoff was too short. Whoops!
– Then I’d not inserted RAM correctly. Turns out a proper server board does not fail to POST, but just omits the DIMM slots and allows the rest to work. Luckily a red LED indicates the incorrect DIMM slots.
– Then all 32GB of RAM (8 x 4GB) was recognised, but once booted into Linux only 24 GB was seen. Turns out another beginner error and the DIMM was inserted enough to be recognised, but not enough to work properly.
As well as the beginner errors the board is a server one and CPU fans ran so fast that it was difficult to think with the noise. Turns out most Intel server boards are intended to be paired with an Intel chassis. If the board does not detect the chassis it just switches on the fans full speed instead of managing then due to CPU heat! Noisy!
I found a few blog posts on reflashing the BIOS to a more recent one AND also something called a Baseboard Management Controller. When did they come along? This adds a non-Intel chassis profile for fan speed and allows it to be managed in line with CPU heat.
Even though Intel have EOLed these boards, I still found the latest BIOS on their site. The current BIOS was so old though I needed to update to an intermediate build, BIOS 66. Then flash to BIOS 69 which is the latest. Flashing the BIOS on servers boards is easy! The board used EFI can can be booted to a console, which allows you to flash the BIOS from a USB stick. Even easier there’s a BAT script to do this from the USB. Funky!
BUT the BMC firmware was very difficult to find. I eventually found it on a niche You Tube video.
Anyway the lesson I should learn is hardware upgrades can only be easy if you spend a lot of money. If you want to save money then you need to do them regularly to keep your skills up!
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Docker and childcare
So in between "Daddy, come here. What shall we play at now?" and "Daddy, I'm bored" I've been trying to learn Docker. From a fairly daunting concept to grasp, it's actually quite easy to get useful stuff running, even to running containers on Amazon's Elastic Sausage (or whatever stupid name they seem to have called it).
Docker curriculum is an excellent tutorial. Lengthy but clear and enjoyable. I need more advanced tutorials now, but I really need more RAM.
I must, however, resist moving everything to Docker. As well as being my main Linux toy, this box runs Mythtv and Motion (CCTV). The only other linux (match)boxes are a RPi on the boat (Raspbian), and one running the TV in my office (OSMC). I can see myself wasting time creating my own images/containers for this pair of services, when I really want to return to expanding my own knowledge on bioinformatics. Learning Docker is just an easy way to start doing this. I have a habit of filling my limited spare time with minor tasks and avoiding the main task (don't mention the hour wasted choosing a new.oh-my-zsh theme).
So in a return to blogging (hey there’s a pandemic on didn’t you know). Here’s a pretty good guide on Working from home with your Raspberry Pi – Raspberry Pi. I wish I had such tools when I started working from home a while back. My only RPis run my boat and my TV.
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My roses are suffering…..!
The plant that recovered:
The plant that was not affected:
The plant that is still afflicted.
Zoomed into the afflicted plant
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Sunset
It was one of the most gorgeous sunsets I’ve seen for a while last night.
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I had to go pick up some furniture that I’d bought online yesterday morning. It was so nice I ended up talking the dog for a walk along Aldeburgh beach.
The sculpture on the beach is pretty cool.
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Weekly tweets!
- roofing http://t.co/nYXae99L #
- I feel like I have spent the weekend painting doors. #
- Sunrise http://t.co/krwiHanX #
- Well Osborne's had me convinced. I've been wrong these years and the Tories are really for us all. They are on my side. He just told me so. #
- Got a Brother MFC-7820n that misfeeds. Cannot fix it. Any #cambridge printer repair shops? #