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TFW I'm finally using the 2-ply linen thread on an historically accurate piece of reed rather than modern cardboard¹ spool, and it's when sewing a pair of modern slippers.

#sewingPersonProblems #HistoricalSewing

¹ I don't think I've ever bought linen thread on plastic spools

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

not that I ever do any kind of sewing where a cardboard spool wouldn't be realistically possible (even if possibly the markings could be too modern, e.g. if there is a barcode)

or at least, not that I'm currently planning to do :D



It's the end of February, and my “score” is: 27 pieces of mail (mostly postcards, some letters) have been written and sent / delivered, one is on my desktop because I've decided at the last minute to paint a postcard and I'm a bit late with it, and will be sent maybe thursday or so.

I'd call it a success, anyway!

#InCoWriMo #MonthOfMail or whatever you want to call this thing :D


rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua ha ricondiviso questo.


Making a pair of slippers in optical white linen is a good idea, right?

What can possibly go wrong?

I mean, it's not like slippers are getting dirty or anything, RIGHT?

(it's what I had in the stash, and I wanted to do it NOW)

#sewing #sewingPersonProblems

Unknown parent

Elena ``of Valhalla''
@Green and Rainbows they are going to have some kind of sole, it's not just white linen :D


my plan to let my mother use #fountainPens so that I can buy more ink is both working and not working: I've just refilled the one pen she's been using and I've seen on my ink diary that the last time it had been refilled was on 2021-04-13 with a platinum cartridge (which takes more ink than a converter, but still…).

Elena ``of Valhalla'' ha ricondiviso questo.


Meta: Thoughts on Usage

I don't really want to be prescriptive about how people communicate with each other over the Fediverse.

That said, I do think that using euphemisms is inferior to directly naming things. Naming things outright means people can avoid them more easily, by making filters that remove those topics.

Also, while I think the lack of search is a flaw, it also means that people won't find and harass you because you mention something, obviating another reason for euphemisms.

Elena ``of Valhalla'' reshared this.


Elena ``of Valhalla'' ha ricondiviso questo.


the most important part of #Unicode history is when a mouse fell out of a light fixture and got added to the count of members present at a Technical Committee meeting (9 Nov 2016)

unicode.org/L2/L2016/16325.htm…

Questa voce è stata modificata (1 anno fa)

Elena ``of Valhalla'' ha ricondiviso questo.


Which of these worlds sounds best for FOSS:

a) a world where all the projects have clear steps to compiling, participating

b) a world where you trust the developers to compile and put things together from black boxes, don't touch them, the devs know what's best for you

fuck flathub/flatpak/docker as "the way to run FOSS software", go guix and nix and debian

down with "father knows best" architecture

reshared this

in reply to Now at cwebber@social.coop !

I’ve always seen open source as a model for how projects should be and pushed back hard any time proprietary software requires specific configurations on the developers’ machines. Being spoiled by how easy autoconf, et al made things, so many closed source projects seem downright clunky in comparison.
in reply to Now at cwebber@social.coop !

Speaking as someone who used to toggle binary machine code into core memory using front panel switches, and used a logic probe as a primary debugging tool I’m confident that there’s a continuum in this, as in all things.
There will always be wizards, as well as script kiddies and moms and dads with differing needs and abilities.
That said, the “O” in FOSS pretty much by definition rules out black boxes. The challenge, nevertheless, is to agree on the level of abstraction where black boxes are acceptable. The CPU as black box? Compiler?
We’re all probably running C compilers with Ken Thompson’s privilege virus in them, for example :-) (i.e. not many people bootstrap their “black box” compilers). However not having buildable source seems like it’s no longer “OSS”.

Elena ``of Valhalla'' ha ricondiviso questo.


Do not seize the day. This will startle the day and may cause it to become aggressive and give you a nasty bite.

Instead approach the day calmly without making eye contact, pet it gently, and slowly enfold it in a careful embrace

If the day shows any signs of resistance to being engaged with, it is likely to turn on you. Back off and return to bed.

Questa voce è stata modificata (1 anno fa)
in reply to BeeCycling

Or, as the Boomer says...

(You may need to click the image...sorry; it's how Mastodon formats things)


Naomi P ha ricondiviso questo.


I guess it's unplanned #fiberuary #mending?

This morning I've realized that the socks I had washed yesterday were dangerously thin on the heel, but I've managed to get them when it was still possible to do a duplicate stitch.

No picture because when I did it there was still no sunlight (not that we've had a lot of it today)


rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua ha ricondiviso questo.


I feel lucky: the laundry is currently outside to hopefully dry and not be drenched by rain. I repeat, the clean laundry is currently at risk of being drenched by rain. :D

Mi sento fortunata: ho steso fuori sperando che asciughi e non ci piova sopra. Ripeto, la biancheria pulita è stesa fuori nonostante un leggero rischio di pioggia. :D



TFW you have all of the powder / desaturated blue thread colours your haberdashery carries, and realize that the fabric (that you've had since 2019) you are cutting right now is a *saturated* light blue.

A voice tells me that a trip to the haberdashery is going to be in my future.

#sewing


Elena ``of Valhalla'' ha ricondiviso questo.


DOMANDA COMPLETAMENTE RANDOM MA PER LA QUALE CHIEDEREVVI (per favore grazie)MASSIMA DISTRIBUZIONE:
Qualcuno di voi utilizza ancora i Centri per l'Impiego? Anche non solo per la ricerca del lavoro, credo offrano altri servizi (forse, ho smesso di andarci quando, nella minuscola tessitura in cui ho fatto la prova le finestre erano tenute su con lo scotch da pacchi, il riscaldamento era con stufette a kerosene del 1800 e la prova alla fine non me l'hanno pagata, e rivolgendomi al CPI di Varese mi hanno detto che, fondamentalmente, erano cazzi miei nonostante il lavoro me l'avessero procurato loro con conseguente denuncia mia *privata* all'ispettorato perchè lo stesso CPI non voleva essere coinvolto mortacciloro)...

Grazie!!

reshared this

in reply to las_lallero

quindi in buona sostanza i centri per il supporto alla schiavitù?
in reply to 5Ub-Z3r0

@sbz
Precisamente, ormai quelle che "contano" sono le agenzie interinali.
in reply to las_lallero

@Dunpiteog a esistere esistono. Che poi abbiano pure una qualche utilità per qualcuno…

Elena ``of Valhalla'' ha ricondiviso questo.


We are hiring a Senior Python dev to build our next scrapers.
👇
kiwix.org/en/were-hiring-senio…

reshared this

in reply to Kiwix

While I'm not interested in this job myself, I'm sure I'm not the only one who would appreciate some indication of compensation to be mentioned.

However, Kiwix is awesome, and a worthy project, and I encourage anyone who knows Python to consider applying for this job.

Questa voce è stata modificata (1 anno fa)
in reply to Lars Wirzenius

We pay market prices based on where people are located so it really can vary a lot tbh.

We are looking for a developer, selection will be based on their code, not on how much of a cut they want to take compared to others.

We trust applicants to make an offer that's fair to themselves and we'll go along with it. Might be worth mentioning somewhere though, you are right.

Questa voce è stata modificata (1 anno fa)

Lars Wirzenius reshared this.


rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua ha ricondiviso questo.


OMG, the #pockets, the #pocketses!

youtube.com/watch?v=4_2s4s90d8…

at second 44. with cats.

(it also seems to be a good tutorial for a nice but simple skirt suitable for beginner sewists, either with or without a sewing machine. but I can't be sure, I was distracted by the kittens :D)

reshared this


rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua ha ricondiviso questo.


aaaaaaaah, the home server with the list of video channels I'm not-following-because-i-don't-have-a-youtube-account is down and I'm not sure whether it's a problem or it's because my SO is working on it, so I can't relax for the next half-hour or so sewing and watching videos while I wait for him.

wait, that list of video channels is saved in a git repo, I can get the next video I want to see from the local copy, even if I can't use the fancy web interface :D


Elena ``of Valhalla'' ha ricondiviso questo.


Happy Saturday everyone!

We've got another Hack & Craft community event happening today at 14:00-16:00 ET (19:00-21:00 UTC). We hope to see you there!

Find more info and the link to join this virtual meetup here: fossandcrafts.org/hack-and-cra…

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rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua ha ricondiviso questo.


The idea is fascinating: a pattern that is sold not on paper, but as drawings on a (substantial and fitted) lining, the idea being that the outer fabric will probably be draped on top of it.

I wonder how widespread they were.

“The same difficulty appears when marked waist linings are used. These linings may be purchased by the yard,on which is traced the entire waist and it can soon be cut out and basted together and alterations made in it.”

From Annie E Myers. Home dressmaking; a complete guide to household sewing. Chicago, C.H. Sergel & company, 1892. pag 48

archive.org/details/homedressm…

#sewing #HistoricalSewing

reshared this

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

It sounds almost like a pre-printed version of Trace N Toile (which I'm always tempted by, but I'm not a huge fan of - it's expensive compared to paper, and almost every version I've found is non recyclable). Or if anyone was printing patterns directly on Swedish tracing paper (which you can apparently sew like fabric and is recyclable, but I've struggled to find anyone selling it in a decent width or length for a price I can afford who'll ship it here.)

From skimming a fairly closely dated Sears catalogue (1897) it looks like sellers did differentiate between paper patterns and these, but I can't find if Sears was selling the printed linings to see what they were listed as or the price difference.

Questa voce è stata modificata (1 anno fa)


campanilismo, contenuti stupidi

in vetrina dal coltellaio oggi c'era un victorinox con la bandiera italiana e “I love Italy”.

ma.

ma.

ma è fatto da extracomunitari!!!!

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

campanilismo, contenuti stupidi

Anni fa un'amica di Quito che era qui senza documenti in attesa di sposarsi dovette fare qualcosa all'ASL.

E là le chiesero un documento.

Lei mostrò la patente della California e l'impiegata disse: «Ah, Stati Uniti? Allora non è extracomunitaria!»

Questa voce è stata modificata (1 anno fa)
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua ha ricondiviso questo.

campanilismo, contenuti stupidi, ma non del tutto

@Rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

ci sono extracomunitari di serie A ed extracomunitari di serie B. Il mio impegno morale è prendere per il culo quelli di serie A, che se lo meritano.

(la prima parte della frase mi era stata detta da uno svizzero che era andato a rinnovare il permesso di soggiorno italiano scaduto, e ovviamente ha avuto molti meno problemi a farlo di quanti ne avrebbero avuti extracomunitari di altre nazioni, anche se era prima che la svizzera entrasse in Schengen, la seconda parte è stata la mia risposta)



git status Side Effects


Posted on February 17, 2023
TIL, from a conversation with friends1, that git status can indeed have side effects, of some sort.

By default, running git status causes a background refresh of the index to happen, which holds the write lock on the repository.

In theory, if somebody is really unlucky, this could break some script / process that is also trying to work on the repo at the same time, especially on a huge repository where git status takes a significant time, rather than the usual fraction of a second2.

There is a way to prevent this, by running git status --no-optional-locks (git-scm.com/docs/git#Documenta…) or by setting GIT_OPTIONAL_LOCKS to 0, as writing the updated index is just an optimization and git knows it can be avoided.

I don’t think there are many chances to actually stumble on this in the real life, but I’m writing this down so that if I ever do I have an easy way to remember what happened and find the solution.


  • I won’t name name or provide details to protect the innocents (and the guilty), but thanks to all of the people involved in the conversations who helped find the answer.↩︎
  • Related, but unrelated TIL: there is a place called Secondo (second), near Venice, but it’s already a frazione (fraction / subdivision of municipality).↩︎

blog.trueelena.org/blog/2023/0…

Unknown parent


Mre. Dartigen [maker mode] ha ricondiviso questo.


This morning pet peeve is:

fabric weight isn't a weight nor a density, since it's measured in g/m²

(I don't think it will remain a pet peeve for long)

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

ditto paper weight!

I looked it up. It's a specific term, "grammage"

(One for next Scrabble game?)

Questa voce è stata modificata (1 anno fa)
in reply to Catherine RW

@Catherine RW I mean, it's a great unit, it's just missing a sensible name

although, the wikipedia page for grammage suggests area density, which is probably what I was looking for

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammage


rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua ha ricondiviso questo.


My experience with a PinePhone


Posted on February 15, 2023
I’ve had and used1 a PinePhone for quite some time now, and a shiny new blog sounds like a good time to do a review of my experience.

TL;DL: I love it, but my use cases may not be very typical.

While I’ve had a mobile phone since an early time (my parents made me carry one for emergencies before it was usual for my peers) I’ve never used a typical smartphone (android / iPhone / those other proprietary things) because I can’t trust them not to be designed to work against me (data collection, ads, tricking users into micro payments, and other antipatterns of proprietary software design), and bringing them to sanity as most of the people I know do is too much effort for my tastes.

Instead, as a phone I keep using an old nokia featurephone2 which is reliable, only requires charging once a week, and can easily survive falling from hand height to the ground, even if thrown 3.

And then I’ve been carrying a variety of other devices to do other computer-like tasks; earlier it was just a laptop, or a netbook, a Pandora (all of which used a dongle to connect to mobile network internet) then I tried a phone with FirefoxOS (it could have been better) and now the PinePhone has taken their place, at least when I’m not carrying a laptop anyway.

So, the tasks I use the PinePhone for are mostly:

  • sending and receiving xmpp messages, with no need for notifications (when somebody needs to tell me something where urgency is required, they know to use the other phone, either with a call or an sms);
  • tethering an internet connection to the laptop;
  • reading djvu scans of old books while standing in a queue or something;
  • checking something on the internet when I’m not close to a real computer (i.e. one with a keyboard and a big screen);
  • running a timer while heat-setting fabric paint with an iron (and reading a djvu book at the same time — yes, this is a very specific task, but it has happened multiple times already :D );
  • running a calculator with unit conversions;
  • running the odd command line program;
  • taking pictures, especially those that I want to send soon (I often also carry a DSLR camera, but I tend to wait a few days before I download them from the card);
  • map related things.

3 and 5 work perfectly well, no issues there. 1, 2 and 4 usually work just fine, except for the fact that sometimes while the phone is suspended it forgets about being a phone, and needs to be restarted to turn the modem back on. It’s not a big deal while using the phone, I just need to check before I try to use it after a few hours.

For 1, I also had to take care to install dino-im from experimental, as up to now the features required to fit the interface in a mobile screen aren’t available in the official release, but I believe that this has just been fixed.

Somewhat related to 4, I’ve also installed kiwix and the dumps of wiktionary and wikivoyage, but I haven’t had a chance to travel much, so I’m not really using it.

For 6 I’m quite happy with qalculate, the GUI version of qalc (which is what I use on my laptop), even if it has a few minor interface issues, and 7 of course works as well as it can, given the limitations of a small screen and virtual keyboard.

8 is, let us say, problematic. The camera on the PinePhone is peculiar, only works with a specific software, and even there the quality of the pictures is, well, low-fi, vintagey pictures are a look and that’s a specific artistic choice, right? Thanks to the hard work of the megapixels maintainer the quality has improved a lot, and these days it is usable, but there are still limits (no webcam in the browser, no recording of videos).

9 is really bad. A few times I can remember getting a GPS fix. A few times in many months, and now and then I keep trying, to see if a miracle has happened, but usually I only get a vague position from wifi data (which isn’t great, when walking through less densely populated areas).

I’ve seen another PinePhone running gpsd and getting data from an external GPS receiver via bluetooth, and if I really needed it I may seriously consider that solution.

Also, the apps available in mobian aren’t great either, even when compared to running tangogps on an OpenMoko with pre-downloaded maps (I mean! I don’t think my expectations are too high!).

I’ve heard that PureMaps is quite good as a software, but a bit of a PITA to package for Debian, and I really hope that one day there will be a linux-first mobile device with good GPS hardware, so that people will be encouraged to fix the software side.

Thankfully, I don’t usually need GPS and navigation software; when I’m driving into places I don’t know I usually have a human navigator, and when walking into places I can do with just a static map (either printed on paper or on the PinePhone), maybe some pre-calculated route from the OSM website and looking at street names to find out where I am.

Overall, for my use cases the PinePhone works just fine and is an useful addition to the things I always carry with me, and I don’t feel the pressing need to get an android phone. I don’t think it’s ready as a daily driver for everybody, but I think that depending on one’s needs it’s worth asking around (I’d recommend doing so on the fediverse with a #PinePhone and #mobian hashtag), as there is a non-zero chance that it may be a good fit for you.


  • which, if I’m not mistaken, is often not implied by the fact of owning it :D↩︎
  • for very low values of feature: it doesn’t have any kind of internet access, and there are only 3 games, one of which is snake.↩︎
  • don’t ask.↩︎

blog.trueelena.org/blog/2023/0…

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

@debacle Yeah FoxtrotGPS saves my points of interest. But not sure about loading or searching external POI.


Cernit Sets for the Royal Game of UR


Posted on February 13, 2023
Some months ago I stumbled on the video where Irving Finkel teaches Tom Scott how to play the Royal Game of Ur and my takeout was:

  • Irving Finkel is Gandalf or something;
  • the game sounded quite fun!;

so I did the almost sensible thing, quickly drew a board with inkscape, printed it on 160 g/m² paper and used my piecepack pieces to try a few games.

two copies of a game board made of plain squares: a 3 × 4 squares area at the top, a 3 × 2 area at the bottom, connected by a 1 × 2 corridor in the middle.

I say almost sensible, because rather than drawing the rosettes with inkscape I decided to carve a rubber stamp and use that to print them on the board (which is why the svgs on this page are missing them: if you print them you’ll have to add the rosettes in some way).

And if I had been a sensible person, that’s where I would have stopped, since that’s perfectly enough to play games and find out that it actually is quite a fun game, and one of our staples.

As some of you probably know, I’m not a sensible person.

I also have quite a few blocks and half-blocks of cernit, and one day after I’ve had used some, my hands were still moving and accidentally made some pyramidal dice, and a handful of tokens.

Royal game of Ur pieces in marbled grey and white plastic: the tokens are small coins in one colour with a small circle of the other colour in the middle, the dice are tetrahedrons in one colour with two points marked in the other colour.

And after baking and trying them I liked them, but they had not been planned in any way, and they were a bit too small for the board, so the next time I was using cernit I tried to make a new set.

And while I was doing that I tried a new shape for the dice, as coins marked with a dot in the middle of one of the sides, because I don’t really like tetrahedral dice.

A set of red and green tokens, like the ones above, plus tetrahedron dice and four more coins with a dot of a different colour just on one side. Everything is on top of a board that folds up.

And now, I realized this wasn’t going to be my last set, and urgently felt the need for some container to keep them in and avoid missing pieces.

(Yes, in the picture above one piece was already missing. While taking it I didn’t realize it, and neither I did when picking up everything to put it away, getting the missing piece and storing it safely together with the rest of the set. It must have been hiding in plain sight nearby, but I will never know where.)

Anyway, back to Inkscape, and to a board printed on scrap paper that I tried to fold up until I came up with a layout that folded up in a small drawer, and then I added a case to wrap around it to keep it closed.

A white box, about 2.5 cm × 2.5 cm × 7.5 cm; a drawer is sliding out of one small end.

The drawer from the box above, extracted to show it's made of a folded game of Ur board and contains a set with tokens and dice.

I played around with the case until it was big enough to actually slide around the folded board, and this is the result, ready to be printed out on A4 paper, cut, folded and glued. (This takes most of the sheet, and I’m not sure that the case would still fit around the board/drawer if printed with scaling, so if you want to print it on Letter paper I’d recommend to move the pieces around.)

two copies of the game board above, plus two cut / fold / glue boxes

Now, the only problem left was that green isn’t really my colour, and while I did like the stone effect of this set, I wasn’t exactly pleased by the colour scheme. (why did I do it this way in the first place? probably because I was trying to use up old cernit blocks before opening new ones.)

So, the only possible way out was to make yet another set, right?

A set of red and grey tokens, tetrahedron dice, coins with one side marked with a dot that are square-ish rather than circular and four lozenge-shaped coins with each side of a different colour.

I still used stone effect cernit, but this time in a red/grey scheme that knew I would have liked more, and while I was doing it I tried a few improvements on the randomization devices.

The tetrahedral dice are still the same: they work, it’s what they use in the replica sets, so I keep making them even if they’re not my first choice.

I’ve changed the coins to make them almost square for two reasons, however: one is that the round one tended to roll away into inconvenient places when throwing them with emphasis, and the other one is to make it easier to recognise them from the tokens with no need to flip each one around before starting the game.

The lozenges were a bit of a failure, instead. They work fine when thrown, but I don’t think that there is a self-evident way to decide which side should be counted, and the only intuitive way I can think of (count the ones in the player’s colour) would be unbalanced.

Speaking of balance issues: of course the hand-modelled dice and coins aren’t perfectly balanced but:

  • they don’t feel obviously unbalanced;
  • both players use the same set, so any subtle unbalance isn’t going to affect the chance of winning in an uneven way.

Maybe one day I will find a way to easily roll them a statistically significant number of times, collect data and analyze it to find out how imbalanced they are, but that’s not going to happen with manual data collecting, and I’m not really ready to go down the yak shaving filled road to automatize it.

To wrap up: is it going to be the last set I make for the Royal Game of Ur? lol. Is it going to be the last cernit set I make this month? definitely yes, I now have one I’m happy with, I’m routinely playing with it and I’m currently doing other crafts rather than cernit.


blog.trueelena.org/blog/2023/0…

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

uooops, what happened to the pictures in that post?

(at least it's showing the alt texts, that I'm not sure are correctly working on the blog itself)

(it seems I still have to fix a few things on that blog :) )

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@Rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua this is interesting. friendica isn't showing them.

the src in the feed point to /path/to/image.jpg, without the site url, which I'm not sure is the right thing to do

but a planet that shows my blog correctly shows the images.

oh, well.

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

In the source I see

<img src="../../../../blog/2023/02/13-royal-game-of-ur-cernit-sets/full_set-red_grey.jpg"

Unknown parent

Elena ``of Valhalla''

@David de Groot uh, I've seen a video of him talking about ghosts, but it was much shorter!

this is going in the list of things to listen to!

(I can also recommend the video about the replica of the Ark, and all of the other ones I did, really :D )



Comunque, la cosa più faticosa dell'andare a votare è far passare tutte le tasche dei vestiti alla ricerca di cose che ecco, magari non è il caso di portarsi al seggio, dai telefoni ai coltellini svizzeri al calibro (sì, avevo un calibro in tasca, è normale, no?)

Anyway, the biggest hurdle when voting is going through all the pockets in your clothing looking for things that one shouldn't bring with themself to the pooling booth, such as phones, swiss knives, calipers (yes, I had a caliper in one of my pockets, that's perfectly common, right?)

(not exactly FirstWorld Problems, but, yes, FirstWorldProblems)

Dún Piteog reshared this.

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

certainly not, but carrying around a caliber that could be used as a weapon is not recommended....😆
in reply to albertux

@albertux anything can be used as a weapon with the right amount of ingenuity.

I wouldn't use the expensive metal caliper I inherited from my grandfather for that :)

(also, the one I'm always carrying in my handbag, and had in my pockets this morning, is a simpler and less precise one in mostly plastic with a more compact design. It's also from my grandfather, so I wouldn't use it as a weapon either :) )


rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua ha ricondiviso questo.


currently on my table

somebody (say, @Abi Sutherland ) knows what's going to happen :D

in reply to Abi Sutherland rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua ha ricondiviso questo.

@Abi Sutherland well, of course the top bar has split while I was carving the cutout, the biggest dowel I have for the alternative spool is 10 mm, and I've just barely been able to cut the 6 mm holes in it on my second try, and when all of this was happening I realized I've cut one of the holes for the spool in the wrong position.

The sun is setting, I've decided I'm done for today, and will try to see whether I'll be able to fix everything tomorrow.

But it's all caused by my lack of woodworking practice (even for these simple values of woodworking), the instructions have been quite clear so far.

Also, not seen in the picture above, there is another BEKVÄM still in its package waiting for me to finish doing mistakes on this one, because I know my limits and decided to plan in advance :D



I've noticing that lately on Fridays I've tended to gravitate towards working on documentation, mostly because I'm tired and checking that some docs are up to date is easier than, say, debugging stuff that is not working.

However, the more I think about it the more I start to believe that it's actually a good thing, so the only thing that is missing before this can become A Thing is a fancy alliterative name: anybody has ideas? :D

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

FriDocs?

(I'm almost too embarrassed to post that (and I know it only works in English really and it lacks alliteration), but I'll just let my embarrassment ride...)

Questa voce è stata modificata (2 anni fa)


dream
this morning when the alarm clock woke me up I was dreaming that there was a freely downloadable dvd image with Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota books, they run on linux, but they installed things in the home directory and the school(s) we work with at $DAYJOB was asking us to help them installing them in a sane way in their labs.

Elena ``of Valhalla'' ha ricondiviso questo.


I enter the Library of Books You Read As A Child.
"Do you have... er. It was green, and there was a girl and a dog, and..."
The librarian nods.
"Of course. Which version do you want?"
"Version?"
"The one you read, with all flaws you didn't notice, or the one you remember loving?"
#MicroFiction #SmallStories #TootFic

rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua ha ricondiviso questo.


filed under FirstWorldCatastrophe: yesterday evening I've found that the only tobacco shop that sells international stamps in my area is closed until sunday, I only have two stamps for European destinations, and it's the middle of #InCoWriMo :D

yes, there is the post. Do I really want to spend my time waiting for them to go down to the dungeon, feed the crocodiles, disable the killer robots, get some random ugly stamp, come back up, realize they have got the wrong stamps, go back, repeat the procedure, come back up with even more ugly stamps?

Something tells me that this weekend I will send the few postcards I have planned for Italian destinations :D


Elena ``of Valhalla'' ha ricondiviso questo.


If I could have one mundane superpower, it would be to be able to look at any expensive consumer product and instantly know if it’s a Veblen Good or a Vimes Boot. Is it expensive because you can flaunt its expensiveness or is it expensive because it’s the best made one you can get.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_g…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_th…

reshared this



rainbow washing, retail chain, +

It's everything listed in the CW (“rainbow washing, retail chain” for people who don't see them), but I have to admit that the rainbow cover for a device whose name I. always. read. as. enby. looks appropriate.

ikea.com/it/it/p/eneby-frontal…


rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua ha ricondiviso questo.


TIL: if you put water in the kettle, turn the kettle on, put tea leaves in the cup (in a filter) and then leave the kitchen without pouring the water in the cup, you don't get a cup of #tea

#shockingMorningSurprises


Elena ``of Valhalla'' ha ricondiviso questo.


Timekeeping nerdery

There hasn’t been a leap second since 2016. Entire production systems and entire codebases have existed and been retired without ever being tested by a leap second. Knowledge of leap seconds will atrophy to only a few grizzled senior staff. The next leap second is going to be hell, especially if it’s a deletion of a second, which has _never_ happened.

Rather than abolish leap seconds entirely as some are proposing, I propose that we adopt the Let’s Encrypt philosophy (“If it happens every three months, sysadmins will automate it”), and mandate gratuitous leap seconds: +1 every March and −1 every September (leaving June and December for the astronomically necessary ones). Kind of a mini “spring forward, fall back”, if you will.

It’ll only take one or two airline groundings for everyone to get up to speed.

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in reply to Mark Atwood

Timekeeping nerdery
@mark Looks like you get your wish! Enjoy the fun of having UTC and TAI diverge!
in reply to Deborah Pickett

Timekeeping nerdery
Anyone who actually cares exactly when a star rises over the horizon is not going to use UTC anyway, since it may be as much as 500ms off. TAI forever.
in reply to Deborah Pickett

Timekeeping nerdery

@mark

actually it's the other way around. the leap second world is the one in which UTC and TAI diverge (i.e., as UTC keeps accumulating leap seconds and TAI doesn't).

Ending leap seconds means that UTC and TAI stay at a fixed interval apart (though I'd just as soon abolish one or the other...)

in reply to Deborah Pickett

Timekeeping nerdery

I still think we should have two clocks, an absolute clock with no particular relationship to days, and a scheduling clock which works the familiar way. The former would tick once per second with no leaps and the latter would have predictable values for arbitrary dates. Leap seconds would adjust the mapping between them, so we can track real time and keep scheduling convenient

We have those two clocks now, it’s baffling that we don’t use them that way


Ferdinando Simonetti ha ricondiviso questo.


How To Verify Debian's ARM Installer Images


Posted on February 2, 2023
Thanks to Vagrant on the debian-arm mailing list I’ve found that there is a chain of verifiability for the images usually used to install Debian on ARM devices.

It’s not trivial, so I’m writing it down for future reference when I’ll need it again.

  • Download the images from ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/bu… (choose either hd-media or netboot, then SD-card-images and download the firmware.* file for your board as well as partition.img.gz).
  • Download the checksums file ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/bu…
  • Download the Release file from ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/bu… ; for convenience the InRelease
  • Verify the Release file:
    gpg --no-default-keyring \
        --keyring /usr/share/keyrings/debian-archive-bullseye-stable.gpg \
        --verify InRelease
  • Verify the checksums file:
    awk &#39;/installer-armhf\/current\/images\/SHA256SUMS/ {print $1 "
    SHA256SUMS"}&#39; InRelease | tail -n 1 | sha256sum -c 

    (I know, I probably can use awk instead of that tail, but it’s getting late and I want to publish this).
  • Verify the actual files, for hd-media:
    grep hd-media SHA256SUMS \
    | sed &#39;s#hd-media/SD-card-images/##&#39; \
    | sha256sum -c \
    | grep -v "No such file or directory" \
    | grep -v "FAILED open or read" 2> /dev/null

    and for netboot:
    grep netboot SHA256SUMS \
    | sed &#39;s#netboot/SD-card-images/##&#39; \
    | sha256sum -c \
    | grep -v "No such file or directory" \
    | grep -v "FAILED open or read" 2> /dev/null

    and check that all of the files you wanted are there with an OK; of course change hd-media with netboot as needed.

And I fully agree that fewer steps would be nice, but this is definitely better than nothing!


blog.trueelena.org/blog/2023/0…



First #InCoWriMo postcard: delivered!

the recipient complained about my fancy insular D that I used becaused this postcard was delivered by hand, rather than having to be readable by the post office machines :D

he's lucky his name doesn't have a W, or as I would write, a Ƿ! :D

(I'm not complaining, it was a *fun* complaint. )


rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua ha ricondiviso questo.


valhalla che continua a rantare contro le poste

aaah, i siti di qualità, dove i link sono tutti verificati e funzionanti (anche per il pubblico, non solo per chi scrive dall'ufficio)

wcs-editing.intranet.poste/sit…

linkato da poste.it/aggiornamenti-operati…

*intranet punto poste*, eh?

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

valhalla che continua a rantare contro le poste
Va già bene che non hanno messo 192.168.1.1.

Luca Gasperini ha ricondiviso questo.


Hello World!


Posted on January 29, 2023
Welcome to my new blog!

Or rather, strictly speaking, welcome to my first blog!

Back when everybody had a blog, I had an old-fashioned personal website where pages were organized by topic rather than by date, so now that blogs are dead (or so they say), I guess it’s time for me to have one :) .

The old website is still online, but updating it is getting harder, both for organizational reasons and because the static generator I’ve used is no longer supported and requires python 2; lately I’ve started publish some specific categories of material such as sewing patterns into their own website (you can find a list in the about page), but I was missing a place to post about the history and experiences of the things I publish elsewhere, as well as more uncategorized things.

Of course I’ve chosen to use a static site generator, but since I’m picky I’ve discarded most of the common ones mostly because they enforce assumptions I don’t agree with.

On the other hand, one day I wouldn’t mind learning a bit of Haskell, so I decided to look for trouble and use Hakyll, hoping that nobody will add a level 20 wandering monster to it.

Right now I’m using mostly the default theme, because I know that if I start fiddling with it I’m not going to start posting content ever; maybe one day I’ll decide to completely change the look.

As for contents, on the bits side of things you can expect me to talk about Debian, the Fediverse, Python, my inventory manging program and a bit of arduino-level electronics; on the atom side you should definitely expect sewing, modern and mostly historically inspired, some fiber crafts (spinning, knitting, crochet), maybe some bad attempts at painting (watercolours and acrilics), printing (screen and linocut), things that are written on paper and, well, any other craft I will happen to collect.

Before the blog gets too full I plan to add tag management to help people who are only interested in some of these contents.

This being a blog, of course it has an atom feed you can add to your favourite (and ideally self-hosted) rss reader, and since this is a personal blog there will be no periodicity, posts will happen when I’ll have something to say on some topic.

Until next time


blog.trueelena.org/blog/2023/0…


rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua ha ricondiviso questo.


Soooooo, I haz a blog!

Valhalla's Things

with a working atom feed and everything!

And if everything is going as it's supposed to be, friendica should be posting everything that appears on that feed as a post from my user.

Now, I only need to do things and write posts about them :D

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

Looks good! I have a goal to get my site to a state where I can update it easily. Right now I just hand type html. I stopped myself before hand typing an atom or rss feed. 😆 But that also means I don't have an rss feed. :/


me, while walking around the house: I'm a cat, I don't need lights!

me, while doing something: give me ALL OF THE LIGHTS!!! (turns all the harsh white leds on)

me, this morning, while spreading photo-emulsion on some screens with just the early winter morning light coming in from a small window: *confused



my mother in law told my mother I was right, that life's too short to baste things, pins are enough (my mother prefers to baste everything, even straigth hems on curtains).

this happened at the same time as I was basting pieces on seam lines that had been marked with tailor's tacks and then basted to the sew-in interface and flatlining :D

(I still claim that life's too short to baste most things :D )

#sewing

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@Rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua would that be basting or more like pinning?

(but I guess that working with rigid parts there would be less of a difference)

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