Dissapointing Framework Laptop 13 DIY Edition

What a disaster this is, the DIY framework laptop.

The box...

...contains more boxes.

The parts are few...

...so the laptop is assembled in less than a minute?!

Unpacking the thing took longer than assembling it!

Reading this webpage took longer than assembling it!

Installing the DDR5 memory took 1 second: click and done.
Installing the nvme took 3 seconds: unscrew one screw, click and screw.
Installing the bezel was far more challenging, took almost 30 seconds! (*)
Attaching the keyboard: about three seconds?
Installing the four modules: 1 second per module (or less?)

I'm not that good at irony, but I was hoping for at least 20 minutes of fun assembling this thing... and only got one minute. :-/

(*) This gave fond memories of assembling tower PC's in the nineties; ISA/PCI slots click, CD-ROM atapi click, hard disk and IDE jumpers easy. But closing the tower case... well that was the hard part!

Installing an OS

The guide says to be patient when booting (powering on) the laptop for the first time, it may take several minutes.

I timed it, it took 57 seconds to get to this screen:

And now there is this; it has been a long time since I saw a default XFCE, Firefox and terminal.

Let the fun begin!

four books

 

Charlie Mackesy - The boy, the mole, the fox and the horse (2019)

In so far as you can read this book, I read this book. This book allows you to read one page, and then ponder on it for a week. It's a story, but it is also not a story but more a psychological insight into humans. I will probably open this book again several times this year to discover even more about the meaning of a single page.

Brian W. Kernighan - Understanding the digital world (2021)

Kernighan is famous for co-authoring "The C programming Language" with Dennis Ritchie in 1978 and I have always looked up to him.

In this book he gives an excellent overview of computers and networks, including an easy to read introduction to programming, cryptography and (digital) privacy. I would not advice this book for IT-nerds, since it is way too simple. It is though as good an overview as is possible in 260 pages.

David Kushner - Masters of Doom (2003)

Well this was an excellent read! Enjoyable, intriguing, educational and probably only for fans of Doom or of John Carmack.

The book tells the story of the two John's that created the DooM game in the early nineties. David Kushner interviewed a lot of people to get a complete picture of their youth, their first meeting, the development of Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D and of course DooM, and also many games after that like Quake and Heretic.

This book is a nice combo with Sid Meier's Memoir.

Sid Meier's Memoir (2020)

I wanted to link to my tiny review of this book, which I read in 2021, but it turns out I have not written anything about it yet.

The story of the creation of the civilization series of games is a really good read, though probably only if you lived in this era and played some of the early Civilization games. Or earlier 'versions' like Empire or Empire Deluxe, which are mentioned in this book for serving as inspiration for the first Civilization game.

I like the 4X turn-based system of gaming, too bad there are almost no other good games using this (Chess comes close though).

three books

 It took a while, but here are three books I've read.

Kevin Mitnick - The Art of Invisibility (2017)

I have been interested in Kevin Mitnick since his 1980ies hacking. He is mentioned in several books that I read in the past.

This book is about all the personal data one leaves behind when using the internet (or devices connected to the internet). It is a rather simple guide on how to increase your privacy or how to aim to become almost invisible on the internet.

I would not advice this book for nerds, or for IT security experts, the book is probably not aimed for those people anyway. People who know close to nothing about computers/networks could benefit from this guide. 

Robert M. Pirsig - Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance (1974)

Now this is an interesting read. It is not about motorcycles, in fact it is perfectly fine if you replace the word motorcycle by 'smartphone' or 'computer' or 'internet privacy and tracking' in the first half of the book. There are some very insightful comments about how people react in different ways to technology.

The main part of this book though, is not the motorcycle trip with his son through the United States, but his alter ego named Phaedrus. The writer was diagnosed with catatonic schizophrenia and received electric-shock treatment. In the book he remembers fragments of this Phaedrus personality (with an IQ of 170).

The second half is a tough read. I often needed to reread several sentences to grasp what he was saying. (Which was never the case in the Mitnick book above.)

Prusa 3D printing handbook

I finally bought a 3D printer and would advice this to anyone who has lot's of time. Yes, this is not yet ready for end users that only want a 'File - Print' option on the computer. But a whole new world opens, at least for me it's a new world with many possibilities and adventures.

It's a small booklet, but I mention it anyway because it is really good, as are all the follow-up guides on prusa3d.com.

Software I am thankful for

An alphabetical list of software that I really like.

Apache: Not as popular as it used to be, but I know it and so still use it

apt/aptitude/apt-get: The origin of all 'apps' and the most user friendly and secure way to manage software

Audacity: Or is that too controversial now with their telemetry?

bash: The best interface to my computers

convert: From Imagemagick, for batch converting images 

Civilization IV: Yes 4, the only software that is not (yet?) open source

cron: It wakes me up every day (using mpv and bash)

Debian: I run it on almost everything

ffmpeg: to convert video formats

find: because I tend to forget where I put stuff :)

Firefox: because an alternative browser is crucial

FreeCAD: Amazing CAD software, and I like math

gcc: Because coding in C is fun!

gimp: Easy image manipulation

git: How did I ever live without it?

gramps: To keep track of my ancestors

grep: Often very useful.

Homebrew: To make a MacBook usable

Inkscape: Because vector graphics are essential

Linux: in background of course, like so many other tools that I am rarely aware of

make: For software that is not part of Debian

mariadb(mysql): So easy to build a database

mpv: For audio and video (and for their API) 

Openshot: To create Lego NXT or Prusa video's

PrusaSlicer: A 3D printer opens a whole new world of possibilities 

Python: I hate this language, but it is used so much and coding is still fun

return Youtube dislike: How else is Youtube usable?!

rsync: For backups

Singlefile: because web pages tend to disappear forever 

ssh: Multitool for anything remote

Thunderbird: Reading my mail since 1996 (as Netscape Mail)

tmux: used daily, configured to a quiet and relaxing layout

Video downloadhelper: because video's tend to disappear forever

vim: By far the best editor for text, code, config files and more.

wine: To play that one game on Debian (though I wish its 32-bit had as much memory as 32-bit Windows XP)

Wireshark: The best tool to learn about networking

XFCE: My GUI since almost 20 years

xfce-screenshooter: Because screenshots are useful

 

Inspiration HN.

tmux resurrect

Why did I not know about this until now?

https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-resurrect

It restores all windows, all panes, all ssh sessions.

Drie boeken

Door omstandigheden wat minder kunnen lezen, maar bij deze nog eens drie boeken:

De Hel van Deurne-Noord is een verzamling getuigenissen van voetballers en trainers, en reporters, over hun ervaring op den Bosuil. Het dateert van 2016 ofzo denk ik, dus het is vooral dromen van een groot Royal Antwerp FC. Ik denk niet dat er toen iemand was die Naingolan of Alderweireld als spelers van den Antwerp zag.

Het boek leest zeer vlot, elke getuigenis is maar een blad of twee, soms drie. Ideaal voor bus en treinritten.

Ons Antwerpen heeft me blij verrast! Dit is een van de beste boeken dat ik al gelezen heb. Het dateert van rond 1931, de auteurs zijn dus al lang dood, anders had ik hen zeker bedankt.

In dit boek wandel je rond in het Antwerpen van 90 jaar geleden. Er wordt bijvoorbeeld gezegd dat er plannen zijn om een Rubenshuis te maken in de buurt van de Meir/Wapperstraat. Het plein dat nu 'Wapper' heet, bestond nog niet. Er is ook geen Astridplein (dat heette toen Statieplein), maar ze hadden wel net meer dan tienduizend schepen gehad in Antwerpen op 1 jaar tijd.

Ik ben zinnens eens met dit boek rond te lopen, want echt elke straat waar ze zijn wordt vermeld, tot huisnummers toe. De weg zou dus helemaal moeten te volgen zijn.

Starten met C is mijn introductie tot programmeren in C (ik kende totdantoe enkel Basic, Assembler en PASCAL, ah en COBOL). Dit was ons cursusboekje in Leuven in 1991 denk ik... en maakte mij een grote fan van C.

Ik ben het terug aan het lezen nu en beleef er weer veel plezier aan. Nog steeds fan van C dus, helaas ben ik momenteel niet zo'n goeie programmeur. Nu het bijna uit is, zal ik mijn odio applicatie maar snel aanpassen, voordat iemand deze klucht kan zien :)

HifiBerry AMP2

Setup of a HifiBerry AMP2...on a Rapsberry Pi 2.

First attempt was with Volumio, as advised by a friend. Well that works, but I personally find the interface a horror, and I seem to lose control of the Pi since Volumio is a full OS that seems only accessible by web interface. No thanks.

Using Raspberry Pi OS:

- download Raspberry Pi OS lite (command line is fine)

- extract the image

- dd the image to the sd-card

dd if=/home/paul/2022-04-04-raspios-bullseye-armhf-lite.img of=/dev/sdb bs=1M

- mount it to enable ssh

touch /boot/ssh

- I also had to set a password for the pi user, since 'raspberry' was not accepted?

- Boot the Pi (the HifiBerry is still attached)

- ssh into the Pi 

apt update
apt upgrade
apt install vim
vi /boot/config.txt
#dtparam=audio=on
#dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d

# added by paul 2022-07-29 for HifiBerry AMP2
dtoverlay=hifiberry-dacplus
force_eeprom_read=0

Comment out the first two lines, add the last two. Check here for other HifiBerries.

Now, before using mplayer or something, LOWER THE VOLUME! Use a really low value, and gradually go up while playing music since the default is extremely loud.

amixer -c 0 sset Digital "20%"

Thanks for listening :)

Vier bezoekjes van de voorbije maand

XPO Space

Zeker doen als je interesse hebt in ruimtevaart, er staan enkele boeiende objecten op ware grootte en dat geeft toch een andere indruk. De geschiedenis van de ruimtevaart wordt er goed in beeld gebracht, helaas gaat de rest van de XPO enkel over de Verenigde Staten, Rusland en een beetje ESA. Geen woord over de Indische, Japanse of Chinese ruimtevaart van de laatste tien-twintig jaren.

Er staat ook een foute schaal bij een Saturn V (1:144 ipv 1:72) en ze geven een nieuwe betekenis voor een 'dag' (op Aarde is een dag 24u, volgens XPO is een dag op de maan 14 Aardse dagen, maar dat moet 28 zijn gezien de nacht ook een integraal deel is van de dag).

Maagdenhuis Antwerpen

Het Maagdenhuis is enerzijds een standaard museum met schilderijen (ze hebben Pieter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens en Antoon van Dyck!) en oude voorwerpen, anderzijds geeft dit museum duidelijk aan hoe de tijdsgeest kan veranderen.

Hier staat ook de houten Clara (helaas bestaat het restaurant met dezelfde naam niet meer).

Mayer van den Bergh Antwerpen

Mayer van den Bergh is wereldberoemd voor al wie 'de Dulle Griet' van Suske en Wiske heeft gelezen. Het schilderij met dezelfde naam van Pieter Breugel is gerestaureerd sinds ik het de laatste keer zag, en ja, het ziet er geweldig uit vandaag.

Behalve de schilderijen en de (soms heel oude) voorwerpen, vind ik hier ook de kamers zelf al de moeite om te bekijken.

Rockoxhuis Antwerpen

Voluit het Snijders&Rockoxhuis is boeiend als je graag oude schilderijen ziet. Je krijgt hier een ipad om informatie te lezen over alles wat er staat (of hangt), en dat vind ik veel beter dan een audioplayer omdat ik veel liever lees dan luister (of kijk).

Hier hangt het beroemde spreekwoorden schilderij van Pieter Breugel. Er staat nu een touchscreen bij dit schilderij dat alle spreuken verraadt... maar misschien is het leuker om er zelf een paar te ontdekken die vandaag nog gangbaar zijn.

Scripting FreeCAD with Python

A wise person recently told me:

"Release early, release often!"

So here goes... I know a teeny-weeny bit of Python and have recently learned to enjoy FreeCAD. This morning I discovered that FreeCAD can be scripted using Python, so here's my first attempt. Any hints are welcome.

 

 

The script creates a (very flat) cube, attaches four smaller flat cubes that serve as tenons, and then cuts out four small cubes that act as mortises. It ends by creating four simple copies of this piece, forming a four-piece puzzle.

The next step is to automate the inclusion of an SVG file on the surface of these pieces.

Three books

 Two books about The Witcher and eentje over onze maatschappij.

 

I never played The Witcher game, but I did see the TV-series' first season in the months before Covid-19. The books are about the same characters, Geralt, Ciri, Yennefer and the others, but the story details differ from the TV-series. I saw the second season before I read any of the books.

Some dialogues are identical in both books and TV. And yes, the books also mix time periods! Anyway, so far these books are entertaining and I will definitely read more (I got eight, which is all of them I think).

While looking for wine in Antwerp I came across a 'Books & Wine' store. I did not find the wine I was looking for so I bought this book.

Bart Verhoeven is een millennial (een dertiger vandaag) en geeft zijn kijk op onze maatschappij. Hij slaat met momenten de nagel op de kop en het was leuk om typische Gen X observaties te lezen, maar dan geschreven door een snotneus. Het boek mocht ook 250blz langer zijn.

Hier en daar had ik wel mijn bedenkingen, zo kon ik me niet identificeren met de 'typische mens' in het begin van het boek. Ik laat immers mijn gsm achter als ik de stad in ga (het is rustgevend om offline te zijn in First life) en heb bijna nooit een smartphone bij.

Three books

An emotional book about shame, a historical book about Constantinople and an interesting take on prehistory (and society).

 

 

Brene Brown has a world famous Ted talk, though I must admit I didn't really understand it back in 2010. But when a beautiful South American lady gives you a book, then you read it. I read this in the summer of 2019 I think, before Covid-19.

This book about vulnerability, about shame, gave me a lot of insight in human behaviour, including my own. I did not realise how important shame was in life. Thank you Brown for writing this.

 

Lost to the West was upvoted on Hackernews as an interesting read. I was not disappointed. The book is about the East Roman Empire, on which we did not spend much time in school. We studied Egypt, Greece and Rome in detail, but only the Western part of Rome until the split in East and West Roman Empires. School only mentioned that the Eastern Empire lasted for 11 centuries, but that was it.

Some people may find this book with 1100 year history of emperors boring, there is a lot of repetition, but the message is intriguing. Constantinople, now Istanbul, and sometimes called Byzantium, really did shape Western Europe. This empire is at least as important as the Greeks and the (West)Romans to the current society in Europe.

The Sapiens book has been recommended to me by several people. I like prehistory a lot, it's my favorite time period. The book is interesting, and really easy to read, but is it science? I don't know. It's a good book though!

 

Scary car software updates

I have a user account (yes really) in a Hyundai Kona electric car.

A while ago there was a software update and now the owner cannot play radio (or any other music) through the car when Bluetooth on her smartphone is active. The car demands that music is played through the smartphone?!

Disabling Bluetooth on the smartphone solves this problem, but then phone calls are not handsfree?! The owner never accepted the new EULA for the update...

Yesterday I drove the car with my user account and was confronted with the new EULA. I decided to read it, but even though my account is in English (and the other account is in Dutch), this EULA was presented in French?!

I declined this EULA (the choice was 'agree' or 'disagree' in English even though the text was in French). The car immediately said "Audio Off". I could not open the "radio" menu on the screen, and also could not access the "media" menu to play the songs that I had been playing in that car from a USB stick since this summer?!

I find this very scary. 

Luckily I don't "own" a car. But can it even be considered "owning" if features can be disabled by the manufacturer?!

Three books

 One book about science, one book about spying and eentje over mensen.

I finished "Lost in Math" by Sabine Hossenfelder last month. It is a story of her interviewing scientists that try to find order in (mainly) the smallest of elements. The gist is that while there is a lot of (mathematical) beauty in science (think how nice the atoms are for example), that most scientists are distracted by beauty while there is a real possibility that breakthroughs are going to be ugly (e.g. the standard model of Fermions and Bosons).

 

I am late to the party for reading "Permanent Record" by Edward Snowden. He tells his life story, from his first connection to the Internet, to being a 'document manager' in the NSA. The first half of the book is predictable, the second half is exciting. I learned that he never meant to go to Russia, he just got stuck at the airport in Moscow because the USA had revoked his passport.

Strange world though, I grew up with Russian dissidents fleeing to the *free* West. Today Snowden (and Assange in a way) are making the reverse journey.

In het derde boek "De meeste mensen deugen" van Rutger Bregman zit ik nog maar aan blz 70, maar ik wou toch al een citaat meegeven; blz 28:

"Koningen en dictators, gouverneurs en generaals denken dat gewone mensen egoïstisch zijn, omdat ze dat zelf zo vaak zijn. Ze gebruiken grof geweld omdat ze iets willen voorkomen dat zich alleen in hun eigen fantasie afspeelt."

Yep, niet alle koningen uiteraard, maar ook heel wat managers, vrees ik.

EDIT: Dit boek is zeker de moeite om te lezen. Het geeft een originele kijk op een tiental zeer bekende psychologische experimenten. Helaas komt het allemaal wat sensationeel over; boeiend en leuk dus, maar misschien niet correct.

Reading books

This post is meant to encourage me to read a bit more (paper books). By the way, I thought I was reading four books simultaneously, but when I put them next to each other it turned out to be seven.

Form left to right (writer-title(year) pages read-total pages):

Daniele Benedettelli - Creating Cool Mindstorms NXT Robots(2008) 24-575
Leo Tolstoj - Oorlog en Vrede(1869, NL translation 1973) 115-462
Dirk De Wachter - De kunst van het ongelukkig zijn(2019) 35-101
Allen/Fonagy/Bateman - Mentaliseren(2008/2019 edition) 30-368
LEGO and philosophy(2017) 56-226
Charlie Mackesy - The Boy, the mole, the fox and the horse(2019)
Michael Collins - Carrying the Fire(1974) - finished

Personal goal: finish at least three more of these before 2022.

I just finished Michael Collins - Carrying the Fire and it took me five weeks, which I consider a bit too long for a 470-ish pages book. It was a very good book though. If you're into space travel, then I would definitely recommend it. It also proves how the Sixties was vastly different to today, for example of the fourteen astronauts selected in 1963, four died during training. Two of the nine also died. Such numbers are unacceptable in 2021, even for 'dangerous' jobs.

The Daniele Benedettelli book is about programming Finite State Machines using Lego robots. I don't know much about programming, but this looks like fun. Thing is I need to build some Lego robots (like this one) to continue this book.

And I probably need to start from page 1 again in War and Peace because of the many characters that I forgot.

Some other books that I read the past three years are:

Celestin-Westreich/Celestin - Observeren en Rapporteren
Dick Swaab - Ons creatieve brein

Dirk De Wachter - Borderline Times
Dirk De Wachter - De wereld van De Wachter
Etienne Vermeersch - Over God
Etienne Vermeersch - Provencaalse gesprekken
Jan Van de Craats - Basisboek wiskunde
Jude Woodward - The US vs China
Paul Verhaeghe - Autoriteit
Paul Verhaeghe - Identiteit
Randall Munroe - Thing Explainer
Randall Munroe - What If
Rebecca Smethurst - Space, 10 things you should now
Robert Bly - De Wildeman
Terry Goodkind - Law of Nines
Terry Goodkind - Severed Souls
Terry Goodkind - The first Confessor
Terry Goodkind - The Omen Machine

Terry Goodkind - The Third Kingdom
Terry Goodkind - Warheart
Thomas D'ansembourg - Stop met aardig zijn

Most of it non-fiction apparently. I really enjoyed 'Borderline Times' and both books of Paul Verhaeghe and Dick Swaab. I couldn't really get into Robert Bly or Thomas D'Ansembourg (but collaborative communication gives me a lot of insight in people).

VRT radio streams en reklame

De VRT radio streams, zoals deze (http://icecast.vrtcdn.be/radio1-high.mp3) hebben sinds kort de neiging om reklame te spelen als je ze start. Niet altijd, maar wel regelmatig.

Zonet (21u en enkele seconden) wou ik naar het nieuws luisteren , maar er begon reklame te spelen. Ik laadde de stream opnieuw en de reklame begon opnieuw (terwijl het nieuws bezig was, maar dat kreeg ik dus niet).

Een paar dagen geleden had ik dat ook al met de Radio 1 stream, telkens reklame als je de stream start. Dit is irritant.

Tijd dus om het script aan te passen en de eerste 60 seconden van de stream te muten. De cronjob om het nieuws te spelen kan dan een minuut eerder starten.

 

UPDATE 2021-09-15: dit werkt

#!/bin/bash

export HOME=/var/www
pkill mplayer

mplayer -volume 0 -slave -input file=/var/www/master http://icecast.vrtcdn.be/radio1-high.mp3 &

sleep 60

echo volume 100 1 > /var/www/master

exit

Vaccinated

Got my first Covid-19 vaccine shot today, and apparently also a new wireless device on my home network:

Tide bestek (Deel 2)

Elf jaar geleden blogde ik over mijn Tide bestek. Bij deze een update.

Ik weet totaal niet waarom dit mij nu weer boeit, misschien omdat dit in de jaren 70 ons thuis bestek was? Toch zou ik graag de ontbrekende vleesvork, minivork en vismes hebben, wie wil ruilen?

Hier twee foto's van wat ik nu heb: (De inleg van de vleesvork, het kleinste vorkje en het vismes zijn copyright S.R.)

De geschiedenis van dit bestek: Het was te krijgen via premiebons die bij Tide waspoeder zaten in de jaren 1950 (en jaren 60?). Er bestaat een FB-groep voor Tide bestek, maar ik zit niet op FB. Veel kans hebben ze daar meer foto's en ruilmogelijkheden.

 

UPDATE 2021-05-20: Joepie 6 dessertvorkjes

UPDATE 2021-06-21: Danku Laura C. voor de vleesvork in uitstekende staat. Foto hieronder van deze grote Tide vork naast het grote mes (in mindere staat).

 

 

 

Nu enkel de vismesjes nog...

 

EDIT 2022-02-28: foto achterkant voor Hans

 

 

 

 

tmux black

tmux upgrade from 2.8 to 3.0...

# invisible separators
set-option -g pane-border-fg black
set-option -g pane-border-bg black
set-option -g pane-active-border-fg black
set-option -g pane-active-border-bg black

becomes

set -g pane-border-style bg=black,fg=black
set -g pane-active-border-style bg=black,fg=black

as mentioned in the changelog.

new data center

My new data center is under construction (two Raspberry Pi 2 and one Raspberry pi model B).

Raspberry Pi case with Lego

In case you want to build a Raspberry Pi case out of Lego, here is mine.