Week of 23rd May, 2016

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Monday, 23rd May

I'm archiving more TV to DVD today, via the new-to-me Panasonic DMR-EX86 I was forced to buy last week. 2 hours done yesterday, and another 4 hours today - maybe even 6 hours, if so be as Jane lets me continue to use the TV in the lounge. After the first 2 hours today, I have 47% free on the $ky+ HD box.

And no, I am not upgrading to a Sky Q - most TV is just not important enough. That's despite the fact that my working career was in broadcast television. Or, perhaps, because of it.

torrentpi has become unstable lately, to the extent that he's become almost unusable - he crashes randomly, for no very good reason that I can see. Although I have knocked him off the shelf a few times of late, which normally results in a crash. This is probably either hardware damage from the disturbance (although, since he only ends up hanging by the cables, this seems unlikely) or a corrupted SD card mage from the crashes.

This, of course, means that mrtg graphs are incomplete - there appears to be about a 2-week hole. But I can live with that - after all, my BT Infinity 2 connection is uncapped. And, unlike what appears to be the case in the US, there are no weasel words here - uncapped is indeed unlimited. Oh, I make no doubt that BT would get antsy if I were pulling 40Mbit/sec 24/7, but I'm nowhere near that - my usage is spiky. I'll post an mrtg daily plot as soon as I have a representative sample.

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Tuesday, 24th May

I managed 6 hours of archiving, corresponding to 6% of disc capacity - now at 51% free. And, before you ask, I've been backward in coming forward on the archiving front. Some of this stuff has been lurking on the $ky+HD box for a year.

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Wednesday, 25th May

OK, let's see about torrentpi. I'll isolate the hardware first - I have a spare RasPi, an original Model B 512MB.

So swap that one in - and it doesn't boot. That's pretty conclusive - corrupt SD card. I'll re-image. Luckily, I took a backup image 2 weeks ago.

<pause>

And torrentpi boots again! As I type, mrtg is running from cron every 5 minutes, and the graphs are updating, although there is the 2-week hole I mentioned on Monday (that was typed during this mega 3-day update) and I'm catching up with get-iplayer downloads. This is with torrentpi's original brain - a Pi Model B Rev 2. It's easier to do that than it is to bring the Pi B up instead. All I need to do now is box him up again. And probably physically move him, and his network connection, onto the study Netgear GS108 switch, to hopefully, obviate any future recurrence. I should probably do this for op-i as well, since he's in the identical situation. And I really should expend one of my limited supply of Round Tuits on getting op-i configured and running.

I note, from a post at Ars Technica, that Google appear to have posted the beginnings of support for the Raspberry Pi 3 in the Android repositories.

I put an order in to Amazon yesterday. I'm finally setting up password management. I'll be using Password Safe to store my passwords, with access control to the vault using a Yubikey Neo. You can get a Yubikey pre-configured for this use direct from Yubico, but it costs more. The setup doesn't appear too complex, says he. More when I know more.

The Amazon order included the Yubikey Neo, with a Yubikey 4 as a backup; a set of 3 sticky-back faux leather sleeve pouches that can stick to the back of your mobile phone; a slimline USB external CD-ROM drive; and 3 packs of Caricol papaya puree stickpacks, 20 to a box. That's for Jane - I don't indulge in such things. Except perhaps Vitamin C caps, or cod liver oil - that last was recommended by my GP during the arthritis episode a while ago. Lubricant for my stiff joints?

The Caricol shipped the same day - and, what's more, it arrived today. Kudos to World Wide Shopping Mall (the seller, via Amazon) and Postie.

<pause>

All caught up with get-iplayer downloads, torrentpi is boxed up, and Amazon have shipped the rest of the order. They claim delivery Friday.

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Thursday, 26th May

Comes e-mail from Amazon this morning, "Your order is out for delivery". And, sure enough, about 14:30 there's a knock on the door. It's an Amazon Logistics guy with a box.

So first thing is setting up the password management. Two downloads required - the Password Safe installer, from the home site, and the Yubikey Personalisation tool, from here. If you buy a pre-configured Yubikey, the Personalisation tool is unnecessary.

Install and run Yubikey Personalisation. You must use a machine with a vertical screen resolution of 768 or more. The window is too tall for a 600 pixel high screen, and it doesn't scroll! The screens you will see are similar, but not identical, to those in the Yubico instructions above. These were obviously written for a previous version. Configure Slot 2 of your Yubikey with Challenge-Response, and save the secret key when prompted. It is recommended to create a backup Yubikey. The instructions are good for this.

Now you can install and run Password Safe. I put it on a USB key - the so-called "green" option. It will still create, and attempt to use, a directory on your hard disk for your password vault. This can be configured around.

Importing existing passwords programmatically can be done, but requires specific formats, either .csv from KeePass, or .xml, or another option I mis-remember. My password list is in a .xlsx file, which pwSafe cannot read, and I cannot export to formats which are readable - not without further research. Still, I've made a start.

The sticky-back card pouches appear to work. I've stuck one to the back of the Moto E's pouch case, and my Freedom Pass fits snugly. There is a SIM pocket inside the card pouch, and the credit card-sized cards may well foul on it. But the number of times I'll need to pull the card out can be counted on the fingers of one hand, with lots left over, so that shouldn't be a problem. I couldn't do this with the N5, because the NFC reader/writer in that phone would probably clash. And I keep all my wireless-enabled plastic money cards in a separate, metal, card holder, just to reduce the risk of card skimming. I probably can't reduce that risk to zero, but any restriction is good. The Freedom Pass has no potential to drain a money account, so I'm safe there. Paranoid, moi?

And finally, the CD-ROM drive seems a little reluctant to install. It has 2 USB leads - a conventional A-B lead for data, and a A-to-EIAJ barrel for power. You must plug the barrel connector in first, and then wait a few seconds before inserting the A-B lead, or nothing happens.

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Friday, 27th May

Maybe I should use a USB hub with the new CD drive. But not just yet...

Today saw a meeting with my IFA, to put the outside pension arrangements in train. I'm receiving my State pension, but the outside pension fund needs to be set up after the consolidation, so that I can draw funds from it to top up the State pension. I've also been given advice on which debts to clear, now that the largest ones are paid off - basically, pay off the ones with the highest interest rates. They expect about 5% fund growth per year, which will comfortably exceed the amount I'll be drawing out, so the fund should increase on average (as the disclaimer has it - "The value of investments may go down as well as up") over time., despite the income drawdown, so the recommendation is to pay off loads that carry an interest rate of more than 5% first. Zero debt is the target, eventually.

The Sansui DB-100 portable FM/DAB/MP3 player has been playing up a bit, lately. So I researched replacements. I need at least 10GB of storage, ideally removeable; rechargeable battery; and a touchscreen. The Sansui uses a scroll wheel, and while it works, it's not very responsive - I frequently overshoot the line I want on the screen.

The best, most easily accessible device seemed to be a Bush FM/MP3 box, their Model 2805BT, which supports BlueTooth headphones, as the name implies - not that I need that. It was available from stock at my local Argos - only a few hundred yards out of my way as I excursed into Central London. It needed to be charged - the battery was flat - but I carry ridiculous amounts of external USB battery, so that was no problem. But it wouldn't read the 16GB microSD/HC card that normally lives in the Sansui. Hmm... is the card corrupt? Or am I doing something wrong? Well, table that until I get home.

Back home, latitude can read that card, so it's not that. Let's try loading my music onto the Bush, via USB (mini-B 5-pin. Why? Nearly everything else uses microUSB. But pass that, there's a cable in the box) On switchon, it builds a set of playlists from the metadata (ID3 V2 tags? or filenames? This subtlety is not explained)

But after that step, the track lists aren't usable. You can select "Sort by Album", which is good, because that's the way my music library is sorted - one directory per album, even if the album is a boxed set. However, you can't scroll the listings, because the touchscreen won't accept press-and-drag. Maybe it's faulty. I should take it back. But not for a week, because we're going to be away...

But resetting the Sansui seems to have banished the glitches, so that's all well, and it will travel with me, all same usual.

torrentpi is still unstable. I'll have to rebuild his SD card from scratch. When I get back... The list of things that I need to do gets no shorter.

My suitcase is packed for the week away. But I need to pack tech kit - radios, computers, etc.

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Saturday, 28th May

So we're ( Jane, Jenny and your humble scribe) now esconced in a rented cottage in the Welsh village of Llanuwchllyn, at the south-western end of Lake Bala, or Llyn Tegid in the Welsh. The cottage is high-end, furnishings-wise, and very comfortable, albeit not warmed up yet, so it's a bit chilly. The rental is supposed to be all-found (except food, of course) but isn't - there's no toilet tissue. And although there's a live internet connection (at BT Infinity 1 speeds, possibly capped at 25GB/month) the information folder says there's a charge of UKP3 per day. But BTHomeHub 4s provide a BT WiFi-with-Fon option, and since I have BT connectivity at home, I should be able to use this. I just need my BT ID - which I have set up, only a year after getting BT broadband.

And it works - connect to the BT WiFi-with-Fon access point, and try to do something. Your attempt will be re-routed to a BT landing page, where you can enter your login details - select the radio button for BT Broadband, and put in BT ID and password as required. There's a fairly draconian timeout on that login.

Maybe I'm borrowing trouble with that, because the website we made the booking through makes no mention of a charge for internet access, so there shouldn't be any problem. I prefer to avoid this completely, by using the BT connection, rather than the actual SSID.

The actual travel was painless enough. Jane drove, and since we have a policy of "driver chooses music" while driving,  we were all entertained (sic) by R.E.M. After about 4 complete repetitions, I could cheerfully have thrown the CD into a waste bin, and we'd only got to just north of Birmingham. After stopping at a motorway service area for lunch, we changed to another R.E.M. CD which got us there, after about 2 repetitions. Have I said how much I hate R.E.M.? By-the-by, I'm not alone in that - Sarah calls them "music to commit suicide to", which is apposite. Jenny had blagged my over-ear headphones, so I couldn't retreat to something civilised - Bach or Beethoven, perhaps - because my earhook sports headphones have no acoustic isolation worth mentioning.

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Sunday, 29th May

We excursed to Bala today, via the Bala Lake Railway (Rheilffordd Llyn Tegid) which is a narrow gauge line (2 foot gauge) running from Llanuwchllyn to Bala, a distance of about 9 miles, return. Outbound traction was loco no 2, Alice, running bunker-first down to Bala.

Bala station is outside the town, although there are proposals to extend the line into the centre.So a walk was required, followed by shopping and lunch. After the return walk, we embarked behind no 3, Holy War, for the shallow ascent to Llanuwchllyn

Alice and Holy War are sister engines, built by the Hunslet Works, as their no 780 and 779, respectively, in about 1902. They are both 0-4-0 saddle-tank steam locomotives, and were originally built to work the now-closed Dinorwic quarry. Bala Lake also runs several diesel locomotives.

Alice may be seen to good effect in this image from 2013.

 
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