Week of 14th May, 2018

Last Week

Next Week

Monday, 14th May

It's sunny and reasonably warm today. Another example of the perversity of British weather.

I decided that it would be worthwhile checking out Maplin's stock of phono-to-XLR adaptors, to see if I can still get a set, ahead of the shop chain's pending closure due to bankruptcy. The store in my local big shops had one - the XLR3F-to-female phono. So I bought it - allegedly half-price. But I need the mating XLR3M-to-female phono as well. None in the local branch, which is almost sold out of everything - probably less than 20% of the floor space has goods to sell. A sad sight. Although Maplin stocked expensive tat latterly, they were still one of the few sources of small bits. An expensive source, but still a source. Must see if any of the other nearby stores has the adaptor I'm missing.

<pause>

Not possible, the website is closed, just a holding page. I'll go back to the shop and see if they can do stock checks.

<pause for shop visit>

Nope. Even Maplin staff used the website. And I'm not wandering all over West London on spec.

After I got home, I did some further online research. And Amazon came up trumps. A matched pair of no-name adaptors, for about half the full cost of one of the Neutrik version I just got. So I ordered. Delivery Thursday or Friday.

The reason for all this bustle and movement is to let me set up the electronic keyboard more than a couple of metres from me at May Day. I have leads to allow that short distance, but more length is better.

Back to Daynotes


Tuesday, 15th May

Let's have another look at the Ubiquiti airCam Mini. Somehow I need to get the correct date onto it. Even Ubiquiti say there is no way to do it manually - you need a Ubiquiti NVR server running on a machine on the network. That server is written in Java,  as we have seen before. The airCam installer CD has aan old version, which has a hard dependency on an old version of Java, which it tries, and fails, to download. But the latest downloadable calls up a newer version. I installed version 3.1.5, and it works, installing JRE 7.1 in the process.. You have to create a local user, which appears not to talk outside the local network, as it shouldn't, unless told to.

It finds any cameras on your network, and once you teach it the username and password for the camera, it will set the date and time.

And that's all I want it to do. Seems like overkill, but it appears to be the only way. At some future time, I'll try to do this on a Raspberry Pi - after all, it is Java, so multiplatform. Or else, retry installing on tord, with a pre-installed 32-bit JRE. Maybe the installer only tries to install JRE 1.4 if it doesn't find one already. Although, why hard-code a dependency on V1.4, rather than "latest"? Can't do any harm to try - after all, it's only my time, and I have lots of that.

Back to Daynotes


Wednesday, 16th May

Today, the technician is due to return to fix Sarah and Jenny's ventilation system, which appears to have succumbed to a stock fault - according to the last tech., there have been a number of fault call-outs for other installations.

The original appointment was "from 12:00", but just before 10:00 we got the phone call from Sarah, "Tech. can attend early". Apparently because his previous tasking was for the flat across the hall in Sarah's block, and his head office scheduled a long gap, probably for travel time.

So I'm on site, 25 minutes or so early for the revised time of 11:00, waiting while the tech. does a bit of shopping - lunch? This gave me time to put the rear seats back up in Ulysses, which I hadn't done after folding them for the May Day on Saturday.

<pause>

All done. Modified control PCB fitted, which should mitigate the problem in future. I also checked on a fix for a drainpipe. Sarah had left the garden gate unlocked for a plumber, who had attended, and done his thing. So I locked the gate, before visiting the nearby Lidl supermarket for Jane. Nothing there she wanted, so I'm sitting in Costa, eating lunch and typing this.

Later: In the early evening, I realised that I didn't have my main phone (the Nexus 5X on Vodafone) This was worrying. There were only 3 places it could be (since it obviously wasn't in the house) - Sarah's flat, the Lidl supermarket and the nearby Costa. Of the 3, Lidl was the most likely.

Tile on the other N5X suggested a location which covered either of the latter. Not much help. But using Google's "Find my phone" suggested that the handset was at Lidl. So I jumped into Ulysses, and went to the store, where inquiry of the manager resulted in the phone being produced. Just to confirm to him that it is my phone, I unlocked it, which proved ownership to his satisfaction. Phew!

That said, I should be thinking about replacements for the N5Xes, since Google's support ends in September, just before Android P rolls out. So no more security patches.

Unlike most people, such patches are important to me, as is minimal-to-no skinning. I want vanilla Android, regularly and rapidly updated. The set of phones that offer that is small - just One Plus, and Nokia, plus maybe a couple of others. Samsung, HTC, Xaomi and Huawei/Honor all fail on skinning, and Lenovo (Motorola) fails on timely updates.

Google are, of course, the poster child for all my needs - except the Pixel range are way too expensive. And you want my personal data as well? Sorry, no.

BTW, Apple's iThings fail on cost or size - big enough=too expensive, cheap enough (but not too cheap)=too small.

Back to Daynotes


Thursday, 17th May

There's an increasing tendency for food retailers to plaster "May contain nuts" warnings on everything, which is arguably counter-productive.

I don't doubt that allergies can be nasty - severe nut allergy (mostly cashew nuts, I'm told) can be life-threatening. But warning about everything is just making it difficult for those who are unfortunate enough to have to deal with the problem - if everything has a nut warning, how do you know whether or not they mean it, or are covering themselves out of an excess of (legal) caution? Jane  and Jenny have this problem, because some of their Rainbows  have allergies - one in particular appears to be allergic to a laundry list of things. Such a long list, in fact, that I jokingly say, "She's allergic to the world". But some of these allergies appear to go away as the child gets older - Lainey, the "world-allergic" child, has grown out of a couple of allergies, I understand.

And the reason I'm commenting about this is that most of the ice cream manufacturers have jumped on the "nuts in everything" bandwagon, to the extent that it is difficult to find a "no nuts" brand. We know of two - Beechdean and Duchy Organics. Knowing of them, and finding them, are two different things, however... Luckily, Waitrose stock both, and today I was tasked with purchasing "nut-free" vanilla ice cream - Beechdean brand. Pricing was outrageous - a 1 litre tub was UKP3, a 2 litre tub was UKP3.65. So, of course, I got the 2 litre tub. As it turns out, that was a good thing, Jane reports that most of that 2 litres, plus more of different flavours, disappeared into the stomachs of the 18 members of the Rainbow pack (is that the right term? I don't know)

Back to Daynotes


Friday, 18th May

Postie delivered the XLR-to-phono adaptors today, so that's all well.

Back to Daynotes


Saturday, 19th May

This morning comes a software update to the Gemini, dated 2018-05-05, which brings security patches to Feb 2018, still on top of Android 7.1.1. There are traces of Chinglish in the prompt screens, so I suspect this has come via Mediatek, whose SoC is in the Gemini - originally an X25, which I have, later updated to the X27. And I shouldn't have got that X25, all shipped Geminis should have had the X27 SoC, but there was a SNAFU. I'm not complaining - I pledged when the listing was for the X25, the upgrade happened later. And it's a minor improvement, anyway.

Talking of crowdfunded things, the Invizbox 2 Pro VPN/TOR router is now expected to ship in early July, from Ireland, the boxen having been individually flashed with the final software build after delivery from the assembler in China. The Zendure X6 USB powerpack, and the matching, now 63 watt, USB PD charger, is currently on track for June delivery as well, but I suspect will be further delayed - after all, when has a crowdfunded project ever shipped on schedule?

And last, but not least, the PocketLab Air is still predicted for November.

The world, and his wife, are currently going bananas over today's wedding of Prince Harry to the American actress Meghan Markle. Much is being made of the fact than Ms. Markle is a divorcee, and of mixed race. The last occasion of similar hysteria was the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and before that Prince Charles and then-Lady Diana Spencer.

And the outcome of that last occasion leaves me somewhat worried about the happy couple. "Goldfish bowl" is not too strong a term for the attention they will get. Can anyone stand up to such detailed, indeed intrusive, scrutiny? And should it be required of them? I don't believe so. But what say do I have in this matter? Very little, I fear. I will certainly not go out of my way to intrude on them.

That said, I wish them both the very best of luck.

Back to Daynotes


Sunday, 20th May

As is customary, upon his marriage, Prince Harry has had additional titles bestowed upon him and his new wife. They are now the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, a previously-vacant title that was last bestowed a couple of hundred years ago.

And, just to make sure that other parts of the UK don't feel left out, Prince Harry has also been created Earl of Dumbarton, and Baron Kilkee. No mention of a Welsh title, though.

Returning from the heights of the nobility to more proletarian matters, Sarah and Jenny are making a short break excursion to Edinburgh. They left yesterday, with Steam Dreams, behind 4472 (60103) Flying Scotsman, for an outing that will see them return on Tuesday.

Yesterday was the trip to Scotland, along the East Coast Main Line, via York. Jenny grabbed a number of photos there, and Telegrammed them to me:

These are all iPhone images, at original resolution 1280x960, resized to 640x480 for display here.

Today, they excursed, again behind Flying Scotsman, into Fife, north of Edinburgh, via the iconic Forth Railway Bridge:

This shows today's route, and at the bottom is a partial image of the bridge

A view from the train while crossing the bridge

Here you can just see the bridge against the land, after the crossing. This view is from the north-east of the bridge.

Last Week

Back to Daynotes

Next Week