Manjaro and ArchLinux

20 Mar 2023 By in Linux Tags: , , ,

After spending many years using Ubuntu, Debian and Fedora, I’ve decided to look at going a bit deeper and start tinkering with ArchLinux

Initially I tried to use Manjaro, but I couldn’t get its sound working with my Pixelbook, even using u/LyncolnMD’s setup (reddit link here). That being said, a commenter on that thread did say they had sound working, so I’m not sure how he made that happen.

Bizarrely, under vanilla ArchLinux, on which Manjaro is based, it works. So I’ve decided to go into ArchLinux instead.

I spend several hours making backups of my current Fedora setup and making CloneZilla images.

It took several hours to copy back the files too (212GB of content in my home folder).

I have also decided to reutilise my pixelbook-fedora-setup repo to configure for archlinux too. That will take a while to reconfigure everything since ArchLinux uses pacman as its package manager (with some AUR helpers like yay or pamac). Ansible has a pacman module, but no yay module, so each time I have to use yay to install packages under ArchLinux, I have to use the shell module instead. A minor issue, and I can see a few people have already worked on some yay modules, but none are officially distributed yet.

So until I finish reconfiguring my pixelbook setup repo, I’m staying on Fedora. I’m using a VirtualBox machine to do the testing of the setup.

Twitter, TFL and Dilbert

28 Feb 2023 By in Dilbert, News, Social Networks, Technology, Thoughts, Twitter, Web Comics Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s been a while so here’s a few updates in the meantime

It’s coming up to a year since I moved house and only now have the pile of construction rubbish been moved from outside my old flat. Dumping of rubbish by the neighbours in the adjoining block of flats into the garage is still happening.

Conservatives lost control of the area to Labour but I’m seeing absolutely no change

We went through a period of very cold weather (-6degC) and this was costing us £10-£15 per day in gas usage.

Moving onto other updates. As posted previously, I went into hospital to remove a lump from my mouth. I’ll soon get a follow up call from the doctor to check how I’m doing. Stitches took about 10 days to dissolve. I just have a small white patch there now where the lump was removed and the doctor cauterised the wound.

Twitter has descended into a real s**thole since Elon took over. First killing all third-party clients and then indicating it may start charging for API usage.

The third-party client purge I can tolerate — it was originally started during the Jack era, but charging for API usage, or even limiting tweets per day is not something many people will accept.

I started working on stripping out twitter functionality from my TFL updates bot and that’s near enough done now. It now tweets (or should that be toots) into a Mastodon account at https://mastodon.xyz/users/updatesbf

RSS feed functionality should still work, but it is not enabled yet, until I can get Keda to work.

Operation Update

27 Jan 2023 By in Thoughts Tags: ,

So it’s been a couple of days since the operation. The pain has now died down enough to be tolerable without painkillers – or at least as frequently.

I’m able to eat semi-solid food now stuff like soups, porridge and congee (look that up if you don’t know what that is). I have been able to drink hot drinks without too much pain now, like tea, although I still need to mix in a bit of cold water to cool it down first.

Brushing my teeth has been easier now and I’ve started using salt water rinses as instructed — although the side effect of that seems to be that it dries the hell out of my lips (well, that’s what salt does, after all).

I’ll be heading back into the office next week, but only for one day since I’m training for three days and the fifth day is taken up by another freaking train strike.

Operation

24 Jan 2023 By in Thoughts Tags: , , , ,

Today, I went to hospital to be operated on — something I haven’t had done for over 35 years.

The operation was, quote, “An excisional biopsy” of a lump in my mouth – a lump I have been carry for several years.

The lump has been growing very slowly and I am now biting it more frequently than before, causing a lot of pain.

My dentist referred me into the Maxillofacial department of my local hospital.

I visited there last week to get a preliminary examination. The doctors there agreed it could be removed and scheduled me into a biopsy today.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was a bit nervous. Nonetheless, the doctors helped reassure me and the operation started. They offered me a pair of sunglasses to go over my own glasses as the light from the operating theatre’s light is very bright. I chose to use them.

Settling in, the process started with three anaesthetic injections. I felt the first two and they didn’t feel bad. The third one hurt, and the fourth one was tolerable.

Couple of minutes later, the doctor poked around inside the mouth to check if the anaesthetic had taken effect (I didn’t feel anything). They started stuffing gauze in my mouth, and it felt a bit like one of those prisoner scenes in the movies when they did that.

The nurse kept my lip open while the doctor operated on it. I felt nothing at all. This was so weird, I could see them doing stuff, but they were out of my field of vision and I had no idea what was going on down there.

I started to see blood on the gauze. LOTS of it. They swapped out gauze a few times and then I started seeing small thin wafts of smoke coming from there. However, still no pain.

The doctor then started stitching me up. They used 3 stitches and still felt nothing.

I asked for a mirror at the end of the operation to see how bad it was. I had a puffy upper lip on one side and normal on the other. Expected though.

The doctor ran through some after care instructions. I’m supposed to be on a soft diet for 3 days, no hot food or drink for 24 hours, no smoking, vaping or alcohol for at least 3 days, no strenuous exercise for 3 days, no spitting or rinsing the mouth for 24 hours, salt water rinse after meals from 24 hours onwards, and painkiller use when needed to help reduce pain and swelling.

It’s been around 5 hours since the operation and I’m feeling rumblings of pain. Not intense, but I suspect the anaesthetic might be beginning to wear off.

Boiler

21 Jan 2023 By in Thoughts Tags: , , ,

Just got my boiler fixed after three days without reliable hot water.

We had two engineers in over two days, and a total of 4 hours where neither could figure out the problem. Then we called in the manufacturer’s engineer (Vaillant)

The outlet sensor was faulty and was registering a temperature of 999 deg C. The boiler kept flaring up then tripping the safety cutoff as a result.

5 minutes, and one replacement part later and everything was fixed.

Apple Locking Out Older Devices

9 Jan 2023 By in Technology Tags: , , , , ,

My dislike of the Apple brand is well-known and documented, and recently, I came across a story that made me hate them even more.

It seems like Apple are now locking out older devices and devices running older versions of their OS. This obviously then forces them to buy the newer, greater model and spend more money in their stores, forcing customers to remain locked into their ecosystem.

Heck, I still have an ASUS TF101 running Android Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0.4) and it still runs. Sure, a lot of apps refuse to install, but the basic stuff I need the device for works, and that’s all I need.

You Have Cancer… Oh Wait, You Don’t. Merry Christmas

4 Jan 2023 By in Technology Tags: , , , , ,

When your festive f**k-up makes it onto The Register, you know you’ve fked up good.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/03/askern_medical_cancer_message/

The message went out to patients of the medical facility – there are reportedly about 8,000 of them – on December 23, 2022. It asked patients to fill out a DS1500 form, which is used to help terminal patients expedite access to benefits because they may not have time for the usual bureaucratic delay.

About an hour after thoroughly alarming recipients of the not-so-glad tidings, the medical facility reportedly apologized in a follow-up text message.

Error or not, there should have been failsafes to prevent this happening. Even Tom Scott has a story from personal experience when he had to get himself tested for STDs (his face tells you everything you need to know

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