tech related – Richard's blog

NixOS and Darwin – Partial success

Byrichard 19 April 2024

Yesterday I experimented with NixOS and Debian. I managed to install NixOS on the Pi4 and I managed to implement several changes to the configuration.nix file before the Pi started to overheat and become much slower. At this point I tried to run Debian and that worked.

At first Debian was running in command line mode so I took the time to install the KDE desktop and that’s when I ran into the same limitation of the Pi4. It tends to get hot and slow down to a crawl.

This could be seen as a failure, or as a success. The reason for which it is a success is that I managed to get NixOS to work on a Pi, in the first place, and that I managed to compile a few changes before the system became too slow to work.

With Debian too, I class it as a success, rather than a failure. I class it as a success because I read documentation, understood it, and then installed Darwin first in command line, and then with the GUI. It was working well enough for a bit. it’s when I left the machine to “sleep” and the display time out that the system failed to start again.

It counts as a success because if I had been using a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB or higher it would have worked well. It’s only because of the limitations of the hardware that this could be considered as a failure.

The other success that I am counting is that I was able to get my log ready for editing on three linux machines, within minutes, rather than quarter hours as I had previously. I have learned the work flow to get the hugo version of my blog downloaded locally, and set up the theme, and then git-ftp to upload the latest hugo compilation.

And Finally

Today I wrote my blog post using VIM rather than Wordpress and VS Code so it went faster. I find that I am gravitating towards simpler blogging habits once again. I only broke with blogging via VIM because I thought it would take hours to set things up again on the current machine.

tech related

NixOS on a Pi

Byrichard 17 April 2024

For a few weeks I have tried to install NixOS on a raspberry Pi without much success. I have finally managed to get NixOS to work with a GUI/Desktop environment. I kept getting stuck at the command prompt but in the end I found a blog post that helped me.

What I Struggled With

The first thing I struggled with was finding a version of NixOS that played nicely with Pi’s processor. With some distributions you download it, install and it’s easy. With NixOS it took some searching to find the right ISO image that I also had to download a tool to unzip.

The Command Prompt That Updates

I think I could have got NixOS to work much sooner but I was confused by the command prompt. Every few seconds it gives messages about bluetooth devices and more. It made me think that the install had failed and that there was an error. I also had to learn to use the passwd command at the first prompt to set the password for the nixos user before moving forward.

The Other Challenge

When you install NixOS on an HP laptop, or other device you can download the standard ISO, make a bootable USB stick, and then install NixOS from NixOS. With the Pi you can’t do that. You have to do some things in the command line. The key step is to set the password, find the IP address and then SSH from xour usual machine. Once that is done it is easy to experiment with setting up NixOS.

And Finally

Now that I have NixOS up and running on a Pi I can experiment with the OS. When I update the configuration file I can keep a copy of it. Any time I install Nix on a system I can re-use the config file and replicate a setup within minutes, rather than hours. I set it up on a Pi4 with 2gb of ram but I could move it to a Pi4 with 4 or 8gb of ram, when I see that it requires more ram. Now that I am at this point I can experiment with more flexibility.

On Being Asked Why I Wear Two Watches

Byrichard 16 April 2024

During the Via Ferrata I did on Sunday I was asked why I wear two watches and I answered with a joke before giving the serious answer that I wear two watches at once because I want the data from both watches. I was asked why I need the data from both watches and that’s where there is a change that is happening at the moment.

A Waning in Garmin Watches

By wearing the F-91 for a few days and wearing the Garmin watch less and less I find that my desire for heart rate, steps, recovery and other things to be recoreded is declining over time. I wore the Garmin for the Via Ferrata because I wanted the data. In the end I just looked at the temperature data and not much else.

Over a period of weeks I think I have weaned myself off of the desire to quantify everything I do, to several different services. I’m wearing a casio on my left wrist, as the primary watch, and the Apple watch as a secondary watch on the right wrist. For weeks, or even months, I have been keeping data from walks but I don’t feel the need to check that data at the end of walks, runs or other sports. I’m happy just to do things.

Dependencies

Both Garmin, and Apple, made such a huge effort to get us to wear them twenty four hours a day, and work towards challenges, that they have turned me off of wearing them. They “punish” us for not walking, they “punish” us for not keeping a never-ending streak. According to the Apple watch I walked three hours out of five so far. It feels like we’re filling an addiction rather than getting interesting data.

Not the Only One

Funnilly I was not the only one wearing two fitness trackers. Someone else had a fitbit and a Garmin watch but because one was a band and the other was a watch it was less obvious. I suspect that it may become more common for geeks to wear two watches in the near future.

And Finally

If we want to we can use hand held gps devices and we can use our phones as GPS trackers. In my experience relying on phones as GPS trackers is likely to result in incomplete data. If you put a phone into battery saver mode while tracking you may lose the GPS track, including with Sports tracker, among other apps.

During the pandemic I could wear two watches without it being a problem. Now that I am slowly going back into normal society I have to choose whether to wear two watches or not, whether to be normal, or not.

Swiss walks | tech related

A Meetup Weakness

Byrichard 12 April 2024

Before the pandemic, when life was normal, I would go to three or four events per week organised via websites. These days, on meetup.com things are organised every two weeks, and for just 15 people at a time. This means that if you’re not first to sign up you’re on a waiting list and you could be social once every few weeks, rather than three times per week. This frustrates me.

There is a simple solution. There is a demand for events to be organised. I recently bought fresh Via Ferrata stuff and may start doing them regularly once again. I want to accertain that I am comfortable with the sport after such a long break, and once this is done I can create my own via ferrata and walking group. I would organise things at least once per week, maybe more.

The biggest nuissance with Meetup.com is that it requires a monthly fee for having a group. The result is that groups are created, run for a bit, and then destroyed to avoid paying for longer. The alternative is to use Facebook but I absolutely hate what Facebook is and what it represents. Every time it abuses of peoples’ trust it and gets caught it never apologises.

I have car and I have three seats. Like I used to do before the pandemic I can pick people up in Nyon, drive them to and from the activity, and when it comes time to say goodbye they can contribute towards petrol and the cost of having a group.

I would never charge people a fee to participate in an activity because that goes against my ethos, but having people pay a fair share towards petrol is the right thing to do. If you don’t charge people for the petrol used, they abuse of our kindness as drivers.

There is an added benefit. The problem with group activities is that when they end people rush to the train, without saying goodbye and I find this really strange. Before the pandemic there would be a stop at a bar to have a drink, and then drive home. In the Pandemic age that stop no longer occurs. I find this to be a shame. At least by driving from Nyon to the via ferrata or hiking location there is a moment for conversation before and after the journey.

I could be like others, and take the same trains as they take but that would increase my costs for participating in events. It also doubles or triples the journey time.

Last week I walked an extra eight kilometres rather than take a train, so it isn’t that I want to use the car. I have spent five or six years doing almost all of my bike rides and walks from home. The point of the car is to expand my range, once again.

And Finally

As I got to the end of this post I noticed that I am included in the hike that I thought was overbooked, and I see that other people are doing a VF at the same time on the same day and now I am torn about which one to do. The beautiful irony.

The old paradox is back. Nothing to do for the entire week, and then two activities to do at the same time.

tech related

Adult Thoughts on the Casio F-91W

Byrichard 11 April 2024

I was born in the 80s and as I grew up so did the computer industry, the digital industry and more. As watches came out with new features I would desire the latest watch with the latest features, and when a newer watch would come out I would desire the newer, innovative watch. Eventually I lost interest in watches for a decade or two. I only recovered my interest in watches when I started scuba diving. That’s when diving watches became of interest.

As a child I owned simple Casio watches, at least one or two casio Databank watches, watches that had TV remotes that I used to prank teachers with and more. I also had watches with barometric pressure, weather, temperature and more. Usually I had to lose a watch before it was justified to get a new one so my list of owned watches was not short, but the list of actual watches was short.

The Suunto Vector re-awakened my desire for watches. This was a watch that I could use when climbing Via Ferrata. I then moved onto the Suunto D9 Diving watch before getting a Mares Icon HD. To be clear, the Mares icon HD is a dive computer that you wear for diving, not ordinary life. It’s huge. I also owned a Suunto Ambit 2, and then an Ambit 3, A Suunto Spartan Wrist HR Baro, and then an Apple Watch series 3, which broke when indoor climbing, an Apple Watch Series 4 that eventually became useless due to the battery being so old. That watch lasted for five years on my wrist before I swapped it for an Apple Watch SE 2.

If you’re wandering why the SE 2 rather than the more expensive watches the answer is simple. I don’t like Apple watches. I think they’re designed to get you addicted to the competitions and streaks, rather than to actual fitness training.

I also have a Garmin Instinc Solar which I think is a good watch, although because of various issues I was tempted to look elsewhere. The issue is that either the app or the watch would crash. More than once I lost workouts with this watch so I looked elsewhere but only because I began running. That’s where the 45s comes in. It’s the cheapest watch I could find for running. The GPS is mediocre on this watch and I think it’s sub-optimal.

Recently my interest in Casio watches was revived so I bought more than one. They’re cheap so you can afford to be curious, and at least one or two children have received watches that I chose not to keep. Even a step brother bought a Casio from me, so I replaced that one with the one I actually wanted to get when I saw that the price had gone down.

I really like the concept of Casio Watches. I like the idea that some have a battery life from 5-10 years, and that they can count steps, and use the phone to track walking routes and more. I also like that they send the data to Japan rather than the US for a change. Too many products are US based so it’s good to find European or Japanese brands.

That’s where the Casio F-91W watch comes in. At the time of writing this blog post it costs 19 CHF on Galaxus. In the age where digital watches all do the same thing, and feed the same apps, and expect us to get addicted to the quantified self the F-91w is refreshing. It gives you the time of day, an alarm clock, hourly signal, and the ability to change the time, date, month and that’s about it. It’s an absurdely simple digital watch but it does have one feature that really stands out. The display that gives you the time of day is really clear. Within milliseconds you know the date, day of the week and time.

And Finally

If you spend 20 CHF on a watch and it lasts on your writst for 7 years then the investment was a logical one. An Apple watch lasts 16hrs before needing a charge. At a time when innovation on watches is slowing down we can afford to change course, and return to simpler times.

observation | tech related

Experimenting with the Ocean Drive Street E-Scooter

Byrichard 9 April 2024

Over a year ago I sold my petrol scooter because the service was expected to cost more than five hundred Swiss Francs. As a result of this I was without a scooter for a year or two. In that time I missed the convenience of having a small vehicle to take me from A to B with ease, and that I could park with ease.

Sitting Scooters Cost Too Much For Their Range

I considered getting an electric sit down scooter but when I saw the range and the price I decided that this was not a viable solution. I want a scooter that has the range to take me to Geneva and back on a single charge, to go to places like Mediamarkt, Decathlon and the centre of the city. With a 60km range I can barely accomplish that wish.

Years of Deciding Not To

For years I have been tempted by standing e-scooters but what stopped me was price. They cost 600-1200 CHF for years. At this price I considered them to be a waste of money. When I was in Spain I spotted that e-scooters had gone down in price by a considerable amount so I tested three or four scooters. I tried them in Carrefour and Décathlon and they felt fine.

I spent at least two or three days considering whether to get one while in Spain but chose not to. I decided that since they were around the same price in Switzerland I would wait until I was home. I waited longer than that.

Finally at a Reduced Price

I think I waited a further two or three months before committing to getting a scooter. What pushed me to get the scooter I got was that it was the cheapest scooter available at the time. It is currently being sold for 270 CHF but I bought it for 240 CHF. It has a range of 20km at 20km per hour and yesterday I finally got to ride it from the height of Nyon, up to the jura, and back down. In the process I think I used one or two bars of power.

Not as Lazy as I thought

The first thing that struck me as I rode the scooter is that you need to get used to it. You’re higher than on foot scooters so your centre of gravity is slightly higher than usual. This means that you need to familiarise yourself with the feel of this device.

The second thing to realise is that this is a motorised scooter. If you press the throttle and it reaches 20 km/h it will stick to that speed even if you put your foot down. You need to break for the scooter to start slowing down, unlike a human powered scooter.

This scooter has a “cruise control” as I will name it. If you press the accelerator for a few seconds at 20 km/h it will automatically throttle up or down to stick to that speed for when you’re driving at that speed for several minutes.

When you’re going uphill you feel that your primary leg is working to keep you standing upright. It’s not as lazy as I expected. I see plenty of people riding with both feet together but I ride it like a goofy snowboard. I want to be ready in case I hit something and fall.

The Use Cases

There are four use cases that I envision. The first is to go to the shops spontaneously, to get food. With the car I feel that I can go once, or twice per week, not more. With the e-scooter I could go daily. It’s just 2km anyway.

The second use case is to go to Geneva. I can take the scooter to Nyon, catch the train to Geneva, or Lausanne, do what I need to do, and then do the reverse trip.

The third use case is to have it in the car for when I go somewhere. With the scooter I can park where it’s free to park and then go into towns.

The fourth is recycling. The recycling centre for my area is bad to get into with a car due to the narrow roads. With a scooter I could go there and back with two or three days of recycling, without being part of the problem. By using the scooter I have plenty of space on that narrow road, and I can recycle within ten minutes every few days, rather than once per month as I do at the moment.

It has Lights but No Indicators

One of the most serious issues I see, at the moment, is that it lacks indicators. This means that you really need to keep looking behind you, and checking that you’re safe before manoeuvering. I wanted to go left at a roundabout so I went to the left, after checking behind me. I went extra early, as I saw a motorbike. I did the manoeuvre and tried, as far as possible, to stick to agricultural roads rather than main roads.

Situational Awareness

I feel that it’s very important to have good situational awareness at all times on the e-scooter. It’s important to know where cars are and how fast they’re approaching. It’s important to look at the road surface to avoid any holes that could catapult you forwards if you’re not careful.

Eco and Drive

It has two modes, eco, and drive. If you’re on flat terrain then eco mode will work well but as soon as you’re on a steep climb you need to shift to drive mode. I found that it was either going to be too slow or unable to do one steep climb. Luckily I could stop to change mode, before continuing on.

Balance

I see the same two or three people on their scooters on a regular basis and they’re so comfortable they can take both hands off of the steering column to do things. I am not that confident yet so I barely take my hands off of the handle bars. I want to get used to driving the scooter before I indicate that I want to go right or left, if cars are behind me. There is a learning curve, which we have to be attentive to.

And Finally

Although I loved the idea of getting an electric sitting scooter the lack of range and high price makes them uninteresting. The electric standing scooter has a theoretical range of 20km but after yesterday’s test I expect the range to be greater than that. The point of the electric scooter is that it can be used alongside trains and buses. You take the scooter to a train station, take the train, and then use the scooter on the other side. It shortens the commute time.

It could provide me with an interesting new way of getting around when the weather co-operates.

tech related

Self-Hosted Problem

Byrichard 4 April 2024

Yesterday I was already out when I noticed that I forgot to restart the audiobookshelf instance on my server before the run. I could either go home, start the server, and run, or I could just go for my run and use the normal app instead.

By normal app I mean using Audible’s app rather than Audiobookshelf. Luckily I have books that I am reading on both apps so I can listen to either one or the other, without having to sync the player to the right place.

One of the issues that I come across, after installing the apps on so many instances is that I do some things so that it boots with every boot on one system but not the next. The result is that if I reboot to move the Pi from one place to another I need to restart the services. If I had not moved the app I would have no issue. Starting audiobookshelf takes a few seconds. It’s just a matter of remembering.

On the other side of things I was worried that playing books or podcasts via Audiobookshelf would be complicated by the lack of a car app but this isn’t the case. If you’re parked somewhere with a phone or wifi signal you can queue the podcast or book you want to listen to, press play and it will play through the sound system. It’s more fiddly than using a car play app, but not by much.

And Finally

Audiobookshelf is a great app that I like to use daily, for podcasts and audiobooks. Once it is set up it works very well. It’s great that it keeps track of what we have listened to and downloads recent podcasts. It doesn’t have a way to automate the importing of books but that will come with time.

tech related

SuperDuper, Carbon Copy Cloner and Others

Byrichard 3 April 2024

In 2007 I bought a copy of SuperDuper that I used to backup my laptops for a while. I bought the licence for fourteen GBP in 2007 and it is still valid to this day. That’s less than a GBP per year of use. The tool is simple. It allows you to backup your mac’s system disk or other drives and make them bootable when relevant. This means that you can run your laptop or desktop either from your local drive or an external drive.

Superduper

If the internal drive fails you can switch to the backup drive within seconds. Just hold option at boot, select the backup drive, and boot into your external hard drive. Continue working. The same licence now costs 27 CHF but since this is a lifetime licence it’s worth having.

Carbon Copy Cloner

I heard about Carbon Copy Cloner regularly through various podcasts, and work, so I decided to play with that backup solution but it requires you to pay for an upgrade every few years. It’s 50 CHF now, to buy for the current version, and half off for the next version. I stopped using Carbon Copy Cloner around 2017 or so because MacOS changed to APFS and broke backup solutions. At this point we had to switch back to slow and clunky Time Machine.

The issue with apps today is that they’re built on the ‘pay yearly’ and ‘pay monthly’ model, which both makes sense, and makes no sense. It makes sense that in the age of incremental upgrades we would pay constantly to have apps updated but at the same time this constant paying for apps becomes expensive.

Apps are Expensive

For a long time I would download a dozen or more apps per week from the iOS app, to play with, and enjoy. Over time every single app began to cost 27 CHF per year or more. At this point a dozen apps at 27 CHF per year comes to 324 CHF per year. This is too expensive. It’s good for Apple but awful for users. The worst thing about paying per year is that the companies that are charging are not even making enough to survive, so we’re paying for nothing. Apple benefits but we, and developers, just pay through the nose, just to exist.

And Finally

I am grateful to Shirt Pocket, the company behind SuperDuper for updating the app and allowing us to use it for over a decade without having to pay a yearly upgrade fee. Paradoxically they thanked me too, in their aknowledgements too. If you’re looking for an affordable bootable system disk backup solution then I would still recommend them today.

tech related

Five Hundred and One Days Later

Byrichard 30 March 2024

I have written a blog post a day for five hundred and one days. My legs are achy from a twenty minute run yesterday and I am writing this from a 2016 Mac Book Pro running Ubuntu 24.04 on an external SSD. I am running it this way because I wanted to test whether the OS bothers me, encouraging me to return to MacOS or whether it is stable enough for me to use this browser seriously.

Creux Du Van

Tomorrow I am going to the Creux Du Van for the first time in nine years. I went nine years ago alone, and now I’m going with a group of people. It’s my first group activity since the World sXR Forum in 2019, or maybe the last was the Black Movie Film Festival in Geneva in January 2020. In either case this is a big step. The pandemic never ended so I never resumed being normal.

Yesterday I was sent a message asking if I would like to cancel my participation tomorrow. I saw it this morning. The cruel paradox is that I hesitted. I’m an introvert. I feel that someone would enjoy doing the group activity more than me so I would leave them my place.

Four Year

It’s four years since I did something with a goup. If I like it “tant mieux” and if I don’t “tant pis”. I could be like the others and catch trains and buses but that would add an hour to the travel time, and I love that my lungs have been COVID free so far. I don’t want that to change.

If I like the group then I would do more activities with that group, and if I don’t then I can do things with others. I could even organise things, as I used to, for a few events, a few years ago.

Spring and Summer are coming back, and the pandemic will never end.

Pestered by the Trackpad

As I write this with the Mac Book Pro running Ubuntu 24.04 I find that I keep clicking the mouse every so often and moving the cursor to where I do not want it to be. When I was getting used to this laptop I had this problem and now I seem to have the same issue with the new OS.

Nextcloud and Photoprism

I installed Nextcloud and Photoprism on this machine, as part of the experiment. I want to see how different the experience is with a higher spec machine than a Raspberry Pi. Photoprism seems much faster. When I get used to using Ubuntu on this machine I will install it on the local drive.

And Finally

The light is yellow today, due to sahelian sand being in the clouds. I noticed that the wind felt warm yesterday and today we see evidence that the warm wind came from the Sahelian region. Things will be covered in sand by the end of the day.