Silly brain
Posted on Wed, Aug 30, 2023
| Alan Pope
A re-enactment of an event yesterday evening.
I was just leaving an online game when I noticed a conversation among the Late Night Linux Telegram group about printing. One person quipped that people don’t print much anymore. Someone else suggested that they print more these days than they used to.
My brain saw this and thought “Huh, I wonder how many pages my printer has completed in its lifetime. I imagine that’s easy to find out.
[Read More]Why use Microsoft Edge on Linux
Posted on Tue, Aug 29, 2023
| Alan Pope
Yesterday, I wrote a little about the applications I’ve seen crash on my Ubuntu Linux laptop over the last six months.
Some people questioned why I use Microsoft Edge as my primary web browser on Ubuntu. I thought I’d write up why, and how a couple of the built-in features are appealing to me.
tl;dr it’s multiple profiles, stability, speed, tab sleep, and vertical tabs.
Multiple personality disorder I have tried to keep work and personal browser profiles separate for some years now.
[Read More]Six months of crashes in Ubuntu
Posted on Mon, Aug 28, 2023
| Alan Pope
tl;dr: I downloaded the application crash data for my work Laptop. To probably nobody’s surprise, Zoom is the most crashy thing in the last six months on my laptop.
New laptop When I joined Axiom at the end of 2022, I was given some budget to buy a work laptop. My friend and co-presenter of Linux Matters Podcast, Martin Wimpress was looking for a new company laptop around the same time.
[Read More]i386 in Ubuntu won't die
Posted on Sun, Aug 27, 2023
(Last modified on Mon, Aug 28, 2023)
| Alan Pope
(yet)
tl;dr In a recent thread on Mastodon, it was revealed that Ubuntu 23.04 users can’t install the Steam deb package from the Ubuntu archive without jumping through some technical hoops. It turns out this was a mistake, a bug was filed, and future builds shouldn’t have this problem.
It’s not immediately apparent whether the (currently ‘broken’) ISO images for Ubuntu 23.04 will be rebuilt (unlikely) or if this will stay broken in 23.
[Read More]Goodbye ZX Spectrum Next
Posted on Sat, Aug 26, 2023
(Last modified on Sun, Sep 10, 2023)
| Alan Pope
Rainbow love I’ve previously written about how the Sinclair line of computers kickstarted a life-long love of computing.
I still sometimes go back and play classic Spectrum games on my Nintendo DS.
I’ve also bought brand-new games for the platform in recent times. I love that people still code for these ancient devices.
Modern vintage classic In April 2017, I backed the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Next Kickstarter campaign, which was ultimately successful.
[Read More]It's not working from home
Posted on Fri, Aug 25, 2023
(Last modified on Mon, Aug 28, 2023)
| Alan Pope
I’ve worked from home since November 2011, when I started working for Canonical. I’ve had enough though, and have chosen to go back to working in an office on a regular basis.
No, I don’t have investments in city-centre office spaces, and I’m not a Zoom paid shill. I just think it’s better for me, and here’s why.
Commuter hell Before 2011, all my roles were all on-site, commuting between six and sixty miles a day, each way.
[Read More]Eufy RoboVac: Three years later
Posted on Thu, Aug 24, 2023
(Last modified on Mon, Aug 28, 2023)
| Alan Pope
Back in 2021, I reviewed the Eufy RoboVac 30C (affiliate link) vacuum cleaner. I’d owned the device for three months by then. Enough time for it to chew up some socks, cables and shoelaces. In between all that, it did some vacuuming!
So I thought I’d re-visit the blog, and figure out if it’s still a decent device, three years after initially buying it.
We named him Harvey.
Harvey the cleaner, after the character played by Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction.
[Read More]Only good vibes
Posted on Wed, Aug 23, 2023
(Last modified on Mon, Aug 28, 2023)
| Alan Pope
Just a few thoughts about the origin of Linux Matters podcast.
Prior art Over the thirteen years of the Ubuntu Podcast the presenter lineup, format, duration and frequency changed here and there. In the early days, we would record a segment, have a cup of tea, and then record another one. It was a long and laborious process that took up most of a Sunday afternoon. After a little while we tweaked things and settled into our stride.
[Read More]Charting EV Car Charging
Posted on Tue, Aug 22, 2023
(Last modified on Mon, Aug 28, 2023)
| Alan Pope
This blog post accompanies episode 10 of Linux Matters Podcast where I talked about this subject for a bit. You can listen to the episode here once it’s out. If you’re a Patron you can listen ahead of time, and with no adverts.
Hackathon In July at work, we had a short mid-week internal Hackathon. Everyone was encouraged to take part if they could. Here’s the blurb to introduce it, taken from our internal Notion.
[Read More]Why I use Ubuntu
Posted on Sun, Aug 13, 2023
(Last modified on Mon, Aug 28, 2023)
| Alan Pope
It’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m cooking the family dinner, so I’m also listening to a podcast. I just listened to the latest episode of Linux Downtime. In it, Amolith, Gary and Joe discuss why they use the Linux distributions they do. While the food cooks, I thought I’d take 20 minutes to bang out a blog post mulling why I (still) use Ubuntu.
However, this turned more into a bit of a trip down memory lane and certainly didn’t get banged out in 20 mins.
[Read More]Monitorama PDX 2023 Retrospective
Posted on Fri, Jun 30, 2023
(Last modified on Mon, Aug 28, 2023)
| Alan Pope
Introduction This week I attended Monitorama in Portland, Oregon, USA. I was there in my role as Developer Relations Manger at Axiom. This was my first time at Monitorama, and only my second time in Portland.
I had a great time, and wanted to write up some of my thoughts and experiences. I expect a more formal company blog post will follow, but I wanted to get my personal thoughts down while they were fresh.
[Read More]Simple RSS Mastodon Bot
Posted on Mon, May 29, 2023
(Last modified on Mon, Aug 28, 2023)
| Alan Pope
Linux Matters I recently started presenting Linux Matters podcast with my friends Martin Wimpress and Mark Johnson.
In episode 4 (that link will only work once the episode is released) I briefly talked about some simple bots I setup on the Ubuntu Social Mastodon instance (which, incidentally I talked about in episode 1).
This blog post accompanies episode 4. Linux Matters is part of the Late Night Linux (LNL) family. If you support us on the LNL Patreon, you’ll often get the episode delivered early, as well as advert free.
[Read More]Year of The Broken Desktop
Posted on Thu, Jan 5, 2023
(Last modified on Mon, Aug 28, 2023)
| Alan Pope
This morning I attempted to start work on my desktop PC and couldn’t. The screen is black, it doesn’t want to wake up the displays. I used the old REISUB trick to restart, and it boots, but there’s no output on the display. I did some investigation and this post is mainly to capture my notes and so others can see the problem and perhaps debug and fix it.
The setup is an Intel Skull Canyon NUC connected to an external GPU enclosure which contains an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060.
[Read More]Adding giscus Comments
Posted on Thu, Dec 15, 2022
(Last modified on Mon, Aug 28, 2023)
| Alan Pope
My blog at popey.com/blog has gone through a number of iterations since I started it back in the 1990’s. First it was created using Microsoft FrontPage, and hosted on some free web space at CiX, and has morphed into a self-hosted WordPress site, Nikola static site, and now a Hugo static site.
At various times I’ve had comment systems available underneath posts. Over the years I’ve used Microsoft FrontPage extensions (which, amusingly used to crash the entire Web Host at CiX back in the day), WordPress comments, and Disqus to facilitate visitor interaction.
[Read More]Visiting The Cave
Posted on Sun, Nov 20, 2022
(Last modified on Mon, Aug 28, 2023)
| Alan Pope
If you only want to know about my visit to The Cave and not the nonsense about my aracde boards, feel free to scroll down to “Three Wise Men”
Note: I’ve embedded some posts from Twitter (where there’s engagement with other Tweeps) and other posts from Mastodon, because, y’know.
Yesterday I had cause to visit Bristol in the west of England. I live in Farnborough, in the South East of England, so it’s a two-hour journey each way.
[Read More]Find Your Twitter Friends on Mastodon
Posted on Fri, Nov 18, 2022
(Last modified on Mon, Aug 28, 2023)
| Alan Pope
Depending on who you speak to, Twitter is (or isn’t) in turmoil, and Mastodon is (or isn’t) here to supplant (or backup (or not)) the “de facto town square”.
Whether any of that is true or not, there’s been a surge in people signing up, and trying out the Mastodon experience.
(via this tweet)
For those who aren’t familiar with all this, learn more about Mastodon over at the friendly-looking main Join Mastodon site.
[Read More]Reading My Own Blog Posts (no bots!)
Posted on Wed, Oct 12, 2022
(Last modified on Mon, Aug 28, 2023)
| Alan Pope
Download audio I had some fun when I blogged about using a bot to read my blog post. While fun, it wasn’t a particularly pleasant way to consume blog content. The audio is still a bit robotic, with little care for timing, ephasis and stress on words. So in my next blog post, in which I detailed how to setup Mimic 3, I actually read the blog post out loud, recorded that and attached it as an MP3.
[Read More]Setting Up Mimic 3
Posted on Wed, Oct 12, 2022
(Last modified on Mon, Aug 28, 2023)
| Alan Pope
Download audio Yesterday I blogged about using Mycroft AI’s Mimic 3, an Open Source Text-to-Speech engine I used to generate audio of a blog post.
One thing I didn’t mention, which might be useful, is how to setup Mimic 3. It’s pretty straightforward, so here we go.
The Mimic 3 developers have some releases over on their mimic3 GitHub repo, which include deb packages. If you want the easy way, maybe use those, but I wanted to try the latest and greatest, so I grabbed the latest master branch.
[Read More]Blog To Speech - In My Voice
Posted on Tue, Oct 11, 2022
(Last modified on Mon, Aug 28, 2023)
| Alan Pope
Recently my Internet friend Terrence Eden crafted a blog post titled Blog To Speech which you might want to also read. It serves as an inspiration for this post.
In short, there’s a trend in blogging (and on some news sites) to add an audio transcription of the page you’re reading, usually at the top of the article. Mostly this is done semi-automatically using a bot to read in an “AI generated” voice such as Amazon Polly.
[Read More]Team Building via Chess
Posted on Fri, Jul 16, 2021
| Alan Pope
One of the things I really love about working at Influx Data is the strong social focus for employees. We’re all remote workers, and the teams have strategies to enable us to connect better. One of those ways is via Chess Tournaments!
I haven’t played chess for 20 years or more, and was never really any good at it. I know the basic moves, and can sustain a game, but I’m not a chess strategy guru, and don’t know all the best plays.
[Read More]