Stuart Longland (VK4MSL)

https://mastodon.longlandclan.id.au/@stuartl

Software developer, electronics enthusiast, Amateur radio operator, lover of classic rock.

Location: Brisbane, QLD, Australia (QG62ln)

Blog: https://vk4msl.com
Github: https://github.com/sjlongland
Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/sjlongland
Matrix: @vk4msl:matrix.vk4msl.com (experimental)

Public Key

npub12n5weher8thl0qlj398tvw2rmwpr33z8j443lpg28xyuzkef9dksnd9dex

NIP-05 Address

stuartl_at_mastodon.longlandclan.id.au@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs9f68vmu3n4mlhs0egjn4k89pahq3cc3re26cls59rnzwptv5jkmgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsdu6jue

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nos.lol

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npub12n5weher8thl0qlj398tvw2rmwpr33z8j443lpg28xyuzkef9dksnd9dex

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Last Notes

2026-08-02 21:41:29 UTC

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So what do we have here?
USB memory stick → USB to PS/2 → PS/2 to RS-232 DE9 F → RS-232 DE9 M to RS-232 DB25 F → DB25 M-M gender bender → presumably a LPT port.
I wonder what pins the USB power and D+/D- come out on, and if you could bit-bang USB over that parallel port to make the USB drive talk?

2026-07-31 21:23:56 UTC

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Everything I do is "godless".
- Sleeping
- Eating
- Drinking
- Having a shower
- Doing laundry
- Feeding the cat
- Changing the cat's litter
- Going to work
- Doing the grocery shopping
I'd literally die (of starvation and thirst) if I had to stop doing those things.

2026-07-26 06:52:54 UTC

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Yep, aware of that. I've watched it evolve over many years… from static management → `devfs` → `udev`. `udev` was introduced around 2005 so… initially it used plain `tmpfs`, but then they made `devtmpfs` as a hybrid of `devfs` and `tmpfs`; some default nodes were seeded by the kernel then `udev` did the rest.
`udev` initially started as a helper script that the kernel executed, later they also added a comms channel using netlink sockets.
Small embedded systems often have to cut niceties that make life easier, but they also have the luxury of a more fixed hardware configuration.
NetBSD has, from what I've seen, not made that same journey. I'm not suggesting that the way Linux has done it, is the way NetBSD *should* do it either. `udev` rules are obscure to debug, with a very bespoke domain-specific language describing the configuration file format. Not a fan of this approach … but that doesn't mean there aren't ideas that could be carried across.
An Intel NUC isn't a small embedded system: it is a desktop computer. I'm trying to do the sort of "desktop computer" tasks that I typically do with a "desktop computer".
Sometimes this means I have a few USB serial adaptors plugged in, and I'd rather address them by serial number through a symlink, than have to faff around with `dmesg` to figure out which one is which and manually edit configuration files to adapt to the order they enumerated.

2026-07-26 03:02:26 UTC

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Whilst researching this, I had a look at some of the libraries out there to see how they do it on different operating systems.
Microsoft Windows and Apple MacOS X provide system APIs for doing this.
On Linux, some libraries go poking around in `/dev/serial/*`, others go nosing through `/sys/class/tty/*`. Some just look for specific names in `/dev` and hope for the best. `pyserial` also checks `/proc/tty/drivers` on Linux, but everywhere else in POSIX land it uses `glob`.
Most do not consider BSD at all. You're on your own to learn what serial ports your computer has. It's a mess.
#NetBSD has a `/kern` virtual filesystem which is similar to `/sys` in Linux… so there *is* scope there to maybe put some sort of virtual text file that dumps a mapping of devices and what device nodes they're at. My mind also thinks about OpenFirmware's DeviceTree.
BSD in general, has the same problem Linux had years ago: it assumed the hardware never changed. In the 80s and 90s, that was mostly true, your devices were hard-wired into "busses". You mostly ignored that there was a ISA bus, you just "knew" you had a device at address 0x300 and "talked" to it. It was there at power on, and there at shutdown.
SCSI was a little more complicated, you spoke to your disk drive *through* this HBA card.
Then came along Firewire, USB and Bluetooth. Devices could come and go as they pleased. Moreover, USB is a tree structure and Bluetooth is a mesh radio network. A flat structure doesn't quite describe the situation. I'm seeing a lot of wisdom behind the idea of Open Firmware's DeviceTree… and it seems to me, the kernel of a modern OS needs to track a live changing representation of this. A big part of keeping track will be providing a mechanism for the userspace to learn of changes in this tree, and to find where things are.
While I don't expect them to wholesale copy Linux, I think there is merit in the kernel calling a userspace application to "set up" devices when they are detected, and "tear down" those devices when they are removed.
This is `udev` in Linux and it is very handy even if it can be a pain in the bum to debug.
I've also seen the virtual `/dev` filesystem route used. Linux used to have `devfs`, and SyllableOS also used such a system. Not saying that's the best approach, but it is another way of exposing this information to the system.
Not sure which is the "right" approach, but I don't think a static "nothing ever changes" approach is viable here.

2026-07-26 01:11:57 UTC

Playing around with #NetBSD again… so I have a Intel NUC running it. One of the thing I frequently have to deal with, being an embedded software developer *and* an amateur radio operator, is #SerialPorts.
More often than not, USB serial ports. Now, I'm used to the Linux way of doing things, where everything is accessed through a /dev/tty* device.
We used to do it the BSD way with a device like /dev/cua0 (16550 UART on ISA 0x3f8 IRQ 4; COM1 for you DOS people) being your serial port ignoring carrier detect, and /dev/ttyS0 was the same serial port but required CD to be up. This got deprecated years ago, so /dev/cua0 disappeared, and we were left with /dev/ttyS0.
I grabbed a test rig I made for work, this is Zephyr RTOS on a Raspberry Pi Pico. It enumerates two CDC-ACM serial ports, one with the Zephyr shell, and the other is a USB serial port. You use the shell port to tell it how to route the RXD/TXD lines on the other serial port, with the board supporting RS-485, RS-422 and TTL serial. On Linux, it shows up as `/dev/ttyACM${n}` and `/dev/ttyACM$(( ${n} + 1 )`. `udev` also creates these symbolic links:
```
stuartl@rikishi ~ $ ls -l /dev/serial/by-id
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Jul 26 10:58 usb-WideSky.Cloud_Pty_Ltd_WideSky_Hub_Test_Rig_E663AC91D3665F30-if00 -> ../../ttyACM0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Jul 26 10:58 usb-WideSky.Cloud_Pty_Ltd_WideSky_Hub_Test_Rig_E663AC91D3665F30-if02 -> ../../ttyACM1
stuartl@rikishi ~ $ ls -l /dev/serial/by-path/
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Jul 26 10:58 pci-0000:00:14.0-usb-0:2:1.0 -> ../../ttyACM0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Jul 26 10:58 pci-0000:00:14.0-usb-0:2:1.2 -> ../../ttyACM1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Jul 26 10:58 pci-0000:00:14.0-usbv2-0:2:1.0 -> ../../ttyACM0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Jul 26 10:58 pci-0000:00:14.0-usbv2-0:2:1.2 -> ../../ttyACM1
```
This is handy because if I have two of these, it doesn't matter which gets detected first, I know which device is which. The links ending in `-if02` or `.2` will be the data port, and the `-if00` / `.0` ones will be the shell control port.
In NetBSD, I plug this same MCU in and I get 4 devices:
- `/dev/dtyU0`
- `/dev/dtyU1`
- `/dev/ttyU0`
- `/dev/ttyU1`
The files actually always exist, but they get mapped to this physical device when the driver detects it and enumerates it on USB.
If I plug in another dongle, I get another pair, a `/dev/dtyU2` and a `/dev/ttyU2`. The choice of `/dev/dtyU[012]` is dependent on which order the devices is detected… which on USB is indeterminate as they can be hotplugged.
The only clue I get is the `usbdevs -v`; it shows a device number and serial number information.
```
vk4msl-nbsd# usbdevs -v
Controller /dev/usb0:
addr 0: super speed, self powered, config 1, xHCI root hub(0x0000), NetBSD(0x0000), rev 1.00(0x0100)
port 1 disabled
port 2 disabled
port 3 disabled
port 4 disabled
Controller /dev/usb1:
addr 0: high speed, self powered, config 1, xHCI root hub(0x0000), NetBSD(0x0000), rev 1.00(0x0100)
port 1 powered
port 2 addr 17: full speed, power 100 mA, config 1, USB-Serial Controller D(0x2303), Prolific Technology Inc.(0x067b), rev 4.00(0x0400)
port 3 addr 1: low speed, power 100 mA, config 1, CASUE USB KB(0x6a21), vendor 2a7a(0x2a7a), rev 0.01(0x0001)
port 4 addr 18: full speed, self powered, config 1, WideSky Hub Test Rig(0x5678), WideSky.Cloud Pty Ltd(0x1234), rev 4.03(0x0403), serial E663AC91D3665F30
port 5 powered
port 6 powered
port 7 addr 3: full speed, self powered, config 1, product 0a2a(0x0a2a), Intel(0x8087), rev 0.01(0x0001)
port 8 powered
port 9 powered
port 10 powered
port 11 powered
…
```
lacking is the knowledge that there are *two* devices allocated to device 18 (the test rig).
Given a `/dev/ttyU${n}` or `/dev/dtyU${n}` device node, how do I find out about the device attached to it? Seems assuming a device node is fraught with danger.

2026-07-23 00:02:34 UTC

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Well, "sluggish" and "bloated" is a relative term.
Compared to a lean window manager like FVWM or a lightweight desktop like LXQT, it is.
Compared to Microsoft Windows (Microsoft and KDE have been riffing off each other UI-wise for years), it looks like an underfed supermodel.
At the end of the day, the desktop has to work the way _you_ need it to… and do the things _you_ need. Some are able to make BSD work very well for what they do, and that's great and should be encouraged.
Not familiar with GhostBSD but if you've got what you need working well in it, that's fantastic. Wikipedia tells me the underlying kernel is FreeBSD. Like Linux, the modern versions of this (and sadly OpenBSD) have some slop in them, but aside from that they are fine operating systems.
I recently gave NetBSD a spin, and while there is some promise, I'm struggling with getting my Yubikey going in OpenPGP mode (which I _do_ need) and it looks like the Bluetooth audio support lags far behind what's in Linux (the docs seemed to suggest it solely supports the 8kHz mono CVSD audio CODEC… forget HiFi sound… but maybe the docs are out of date, not sure).
That said, I definitely should look at running more of my servers on NetBSD… starting with migrating the OpenBSD ones initially.

2026-07-22 23:23:51 UTC

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I must admit I was a staunch KDE user up until 2009 when KDE 4 was released. KDE 3 ran okay on late 90s hardware and could do everything one needed.
After that, it seemed to lose its way. It lost its ability to define key sequences as keyboard shortcuts or the ability to just use the logo key on its own as a keystroke in a shortcut (even today, it must be used as a modifier with another key). What didn't help is I was running a Pentium II 300MHz and 160MB RAM which really crawled with KDE4.
The KDE applications were fine, it was just the Plasma desktop environment that was particularly sluggish. So I adapted to using FVWM2 and just used the KDE applications in that.
The laptop in question used a joystick pointing device which was uncomfortable to use and only had 1 USB port, so I made the configuration keyboard-oriented. It works a bit like `vi`: I press the logo key, it pops up a menu… that's like `vi`'s "command mode".
From there, I press different keys to invoke actions… the menu has a helpful label and underlined keyboard mnemonic guides me as to what I'm after.
I wish I could do the same with XFCE actually. I have XFCE on my tablet (keyboard navigation is a moot point when you have no keyboard), and its a nice desktop environment to use… but I'm still yet to see something as configurable as the classic window managers like FVWM & co.
I'm now looking at dropping its applications because of slop.

2026-07-22 09:39:08 UTC

Tell me you don't know how IPv6 addresses work without saying you don't know how IPv6 addresses work.
#IPv6
https://mastodon.longlandclan.id.au/system/media_attachments/files/116/962/952/316/721/095/original/0b9693ccc09794ef.png

2026-07-17 20:49:07 UTC

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No, there'll be a fuse in the connection from the grid to the premise… usually on the pole or in a pillar box.
Inside the switchboard of the house you'll find circuit breakers, but at the grid end, it's a fuse.

2026-07-16 23:30:52 UTC

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They require helmets here too… imagine my surprise a week or two back, I see one fellow riding a motorcycle along Milton Road near Lang Park Stadium… wearing only a backward-turned baseball cap on his head.
(Don't get me started on off-angle baseball caps either… but that was beside the point.)

2026-07-16 05:30:51 UTC

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It can also happen that you're not on the same phase as your neighbours, one might be on phase-A, you're on phase-B and the other is on phase-C; A and C might be working but B might not.
I've also had it where the fuse on the street pillar blew. Very weird having no power in our house while all the neighbours have power like nothing had happened.

2026-07-15 02:43:39 UTC

Hmm, so gfortran (part of the gcc suite) now has slop in it.
https://slopscan.ava.pet/repo/https%3A%2F%2Fgcc%2Egnu%2Eorg%2Fgit%2Fgcc
Of course it's got a long way to catch up to LLVM…
https://slopscan.ava.pet/repo/https%3A%2F%2Fgithub%2Ecom%2Fllvm%2Fllvm%2Dproject
Given Zig uses LLVM, I wonder where that puts them?
#NoLLM #gcc #fortran #llvm #zig

2026-06-26 01:28:39 UTC

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Found the font… after a lot of searching made painful by a certain company choosing to name its word processing product "Word™"…
https://charlieharvey.org.uk/page/font_of_the_month_sans_bullshit_sans
Sadly its a 2015-era list of buzzwords it's based on:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150208034847/http://ngenworks.com/blog/250-buzzwords-we-love-to-hate/
We need to do a 2026-era port of this.
https://mastodon.longlandclan.id.au/system/media_attachments/files/116/813/812/082/184/325/original/23ad4c129018aa8b.png

2026-06-25 22:58:06 UTC

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Ligatures, it determines how to render groups of glyphs.
I did hear of one font that took various management buzzwords and replaced them with the word "bullshit" for example.

2026-06-20 03:01:27 UTC

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William Dampier was one of the first…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Dampier
He was part of a pretty exclusive club regarding European exploration of Australia until the Batavia crashed into the Abrolhos Islands off WA in 1629.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batavia_(1628_ship)
Two from that trip wound up the first permanent European residents.

2026-06-19 10:22:54 UTC

Anyone who thinks Australia ever had "one" culture, is ignorant.
Prior to European exploration, there would have been hundreds of indigenous "nations" spread across the continent in something more like continental Europe.
Some of those in the far north also traded with seafaring traders from South East Asia.
When Europeans *did* finally rock up, they brought with them a motley crew made up of English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh and a smattering of other nationalities as well.
When exploration began through the centre, they took with them Middle-Eastern people who brought camel trains to the outback.
The gold rush brought people from northern Asia to our gold fields.
Multiculturalism has always been here. It won't go away just because some red-headded clown "doesn't like it". #auspol

2026-06-18 06:47:30 UTC

Silly question of the #NetBSD folk… I know some of the BSD kernels (notably #FreeBSD, and once upon a time, #OpenBSD) were capable of Linux syscall emulation, meaning they could run Linux applications.
Is this still the case, and if so, does it extend to containerisation like #Docker? Platforms of interest would be `x86-64` and `aarch64`.
https://kb.shells.com/tutorials/NetBSD/Docker/ seems to suggest it was at least at one point, a thing, but the link to the Docker download site is a 404.

2026-06-09 03:50:53 UTC

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Would be a terrible shame if the members of that regime were denied entry into Australia for 2032…?

2026-05-18 21:17:26 UTC

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I think [@Mer__edith](https://mastodon.world/@Mer__edith ) might know (or the people behind @npub1rkw…5q62).
One possible alternate videoconferencing platform (I realise is not Signal) is Jitsi. Haven't tried it with a largish group, but I did try it 1-1 and no sign-up was required.
You set up a meeting, then got given a link you could pass to the other party.
https://meet.jit.si/
That said, I'm interested in whatever others suggest. Video conferencing is hard to self-host because the bandwidth and CPU requirements means VPS hosting gets expensive and home Internet connections are rarely fast enough.

2026-05-14 21:37:11 UTC

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How on earth do they email someone who's not using Office365?
Pretty sure Postfix doesn't support MAPI, nor does Gmail.

2026-05-03 21:17:14 UTC

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I can't see a `mobile` directory below `/var`.

2026-05-03 21:06:15 UTC

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File not found.

2026-02-25 10:29:19 UTC

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Yep, best of luck with that.
I have a meeting with a similar camera in a couple of weeks time myself, but it'll be taking a different route.

2026-02-24 09:42:35 UTC

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MP3? Youngin'!
We just had to settle for the MIDI version, none of this waveform stuff.

2026-02-19 19:45:09 UTC

Looks like Debian are considering their position on "AI" assisted contributions.
https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2026/02/msg00000.html
#Debian #AI
(via [@jaypatelani](https://bsd.network/@jaypatelani ) on #bsd:matrix.org)

2026-02-06 08:13:14 UTC

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Another is PICNIC: Problem In Chair Not In Computer

2026-01-20 21:15:10 UTC

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That migration program was a product of the "White Australia" policy.
An ugly piece of legislation really. Then again, I'd have been born somewhere in the UK had it not been in force as my grandparents would otherwise not be able to afford the move.

2026-01-18 23:09:42 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@VeroniqueB99/115918603027941868
In the interests of Science… what's your age group?
#note1gt6…n443

2026-01-18 23:04:36 UTC

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Yes, but Donald Trump is less like the captain of the Titanic, and probably more like the captain of the Costa Concordia.
> A widely reported recorded conversation between Schettino and Gregorio de Falco, the on‑duty Italian Coast Guard commander, captured de Falco repeatedly ordering him to return to the ship, rejecting his explanation that he had accidentally ended up in a lifeboat and could not return because it was dark and the boat had stopped moving. During the exchange, de Falco’s exclamation, "Vada a bordo, cazzo!" (“Get back on board, for fuck’s sake!”), became emblematic of public outrage over Schettino’s conduct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Schettino
You can bet Trump will try to escape the mess he's created.

2026-01-07 06:07:41 UTC

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Like I said…hopefully they're putting that knowledge to good use melting Russian Shaheed drones out of the sky.

2025-12-26 05:52:18 UTC

Pete Townshend would like a word…
https://mastodon.longlandclan.id.au/system/media_attachments/files/115/784/308/307/816/399/original/0a7aa4d1a2ee99c0.png

2025-12-19 21:56:21 UTC

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…because a song never makes it into the charts years after release…
(*sigh*)

2025-12-17 05:37:03 UTC

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Today I realised that using a Matrix identity like `me:matrix.vk4msl.com` is a bad idea, as the client goes "ping" any time they use the word `me`.
Here I was thinking it'd either use a prefix like a lot of modern systems do, or require the fully qualified ID.
And unlike IRC, there's no `/nick` command… so I deleted and re-created with a new user ID. `@vk4msl:matrix.vk4msl.com`
At the moment I'm lurking in:
- `#linux:matrix.org`
- `#matrix:matrix.org`
- `#hamradio:m.scd31.com`
`m.scd31.com` seems to be down, but there's a trick to joining it: https://matrix.to/#/!xWUTZRzMBsXtzvLDoJ:m.scd31.com?via=matrix.org gets me in, but not sure how many people I'm reaching due to the server throwing HTTP 503 errors.
If there's other channels for amateur radio discussion though, I'd be all ears. #AmateurRadio #Matrix

2025-11-19 23:25:19 UTC

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Yep, they've been slowly chipping away at this for years.
Landline phones were considered a priority service and so legislation existed to ensure they were always reliable and worked. Mobile phones were an expensive luxury, if those failed (and they often did in the 90s) there was a nearby payphone you could use.
Technology has marched on, the telcos have shut down the old PSTN and ushered us on to either 4G cellular or VoIP services delivered over the NBN.
These are not traditional landlines, thus not covered under the guarantee. Thus there's no regulation requiring that the NBN even work to a minimum standard during a power outage.
Thunder crashes, lights go out… you've put effort into having the NTD and NBN router run on back-up power, but the NTD sits there in a constant reboot-loop because the NBN did not consider the need for back-up power with the HFC network infrastructure. No VoIP "landline" for you.
Or you've got a phone that has some unique features, serves you well, is advertised as "4G" but you find out it dropping to 3G for voice calls was not a reliability-enhancing feature, it was the only way voice calls could work because the device didn't support VoLTE. So you find yourself, say in Binna Burra, with an elderly friend that needs an ambulance to meet you at the trail head, and because Telstra shut down 3G at that site months ago, you've got no ability to call 000.
Luckily on that latter occasion, I have a radio license and VK4RGC Springbrook is easily reachable on a 5W hand-held radio.

2025-11-02 05:09:47 UTC

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... unless they decide to put ads over the top of the HDMI video stream.

2025-10-30 09:52:51 UTC

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Not sure when @npub1rxr…9ngs posted that but that's quite the hack… and component abuse.
@npub135m…490p would probably be quite interested there.

2025-10-25 05:05:13 UTC

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There are good use cases and bad ones.
Nothing wrong with an OCR that uses a little machine learning and statistical error correction to accurately read text on a page so it knows when something is a O and when something is a 0. Or a machine learning image recognition system that can point out critical elements in a scene (without mistaking a bag of chips for a gun for example).
Big difference between those assistive tools and things like these so-called "agent" features being added to big-name applications that claim to try and do your work for you. Or offer a summary that winds up being the polar opposite of the text it was summarising.
There is a class of user out there, who thinks the latter is the bees knees and thinks "AI" should be in everything, and to hell with irritating things like copyright law or responsible consumption of resources. Frequently these are people that do not have any physical impairments to using a computer normally and would not see value in something that can read text off a page for them.
They're the lazy ones.

2025-10-23 21:06:16 UTC

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"Ohhh, but it's too expensive for us to shift away from Microsoft!!!"
It's a drug effectively. With a pushy dealer that's got them over a barrel for every shot.

2025-10-10 01:29:27 UTC

Trying out different front-ends for #Mastodon… as I'm finding the stock web client, whilst it does everything I want in a UI I'm happy to use, has a shockingly bad memory leak. If I leave it on the home feed for a day or so, by the end of the day the UI tab is consuming >5GB RAM and pushing everything out into swap.
That's bad on my laptop which has 8GB… it's even worse on the tablet with 4GB.
I gave #Elk a try on their hosted instance, looks promising, but when I try to build it on #NodeJS v22 to host it here, the post-install scripts try to feed the NodeJS binary a raw #TypeScript program, and of course it barfs not knowing how to interpret that. Had a look at the `Dockerfile` for it and the base container, no clues there… so that rules out Elk.
I'm giving #Phanpy a try now. Building it wasn't difficult, however I had to dig a bit down further in the `README.md` to realise I needed to set some environment variables before calling `npm run build` (notably `PHANPY_WEBSITE="${ABSOLUTE_URL}"`, or else it won't run when you deploy it).
Not liking the fact that boosting or favouriting is a two-click process, but that is my principle gripe for now. Other than that, things seem to be reasonably responsive, so we'll see how this goes. If I can get away from needing to keep `top` open sorting by resident memory usage and periodically killing the worst offender (which more often than not, is the Mastodon tab)… that's a plus.

2025-10-08 11:57:45 UTC

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No, it will work if you add that to a desktop icon too.
As I say, all they need is the ability to automatically manage said icons. The core function is there.

2025-10-06 07:48:16 UTC

Just finished helping lug 5 120W panels off the roof, and 3 350W solar panels onto the roof.
The 120W panels are stacked up ready for me to get out into some bright sunshine with a multimeter and a current shunt to test to see how well they're working. Two different lots: two slightly larger 120W panels and 3 smaller ones.
The new ones are connected… and in the fading afternoon light were producing a grand total of … 25 W.
Well, we'll see how things are tomorrow morning.
Didn't get to making the current shunt monitors, so the only real indication I have is to observe indirectly via the battery voltage, or go downstairs and poke the solar controller (unless someone knows how to talk to the CANbus on a Redarc Manager30?).
#SolarCluster #Solar #HomeServer

2025-10-04 06:35:00 UTC

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Every phone has a mindfulness app built-in… even the ancient AMPS phones from the 80s.
It's called the off button. 🙂

2025-10-03 07:51:07 UTC

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30V doesn't really arc very far… air dielectric strength is in the order of 3kV/mm, or is there something I'm missing?
I could understand it being a problem if this was a typical solar installation for mains-grid generation, in which case panels are wired up in series for 600V DC or more. A 600V AC fuse won't like that.
While 100V+ DC might be a problem, I think an AC fuse rated at 250V should cope with 30V. https://forum.digikey.com/t/under-what-general-circumstances-can-ac-fuses-be-directly-used-in-dc-circuits/50746 suggests I can get away with it here.
One challenge I have is actually sourcing a DC "midget" fuse from the bigger suppliers, their offerings are all 125V and above, but AC.
I'd buy DC rated fuses if I knew where to get them from. This last lot came from Mouser, I've looked at Digikey, RS and Element14, they don't seem common.

2025-10-03 04:29:09 UTC

Silly question for the #ElectricalEngineering people here… I have DIN-rail fuse holders in my server's solar set-up which take a so-called "midget" fuse (10×38mm cylindrical).
The holders are rated to 30A, I've actually got two lots of holders, the original ones are 600V rated, the others are 1000V. I'm using panes with an open-circuit voltage of <30V and they wire up in parallel *after* the fuse holders.
I have 10A fast-blow fuses in there now (Littelfuse 0BLF010.T). The panels I'll be putting up on Monday have a short-circuit current of ~18A, so they'll definitely blow at midday. I have some new 20A fuses (Littelfuse 0BLN020.T) coming.
They're kinda pricey and I've got to order them. I was looking at a 5AG fuse today, which I have a stack of 40A ones in stock (I realise my holders are 30A and the panels won't even break 20A)… but really, what is the difference between a 5AG and a midget fuse?
The dimensions are reportedly the same. This is an extra-low-voltage DC install (<48V)… are the midget fuses just a higher rating for industrial use or is there some other gotcha I need to be wary of?
#CircuitProtection #Fuse #5AGFuse #MidgetFuse

2025-10-02 10:09:47 UTC

Just lugged (with my father's help) 3×350W solar panels from the front door up to the back deck ready for installation on Monday.
https://www.snowys.com.au/12v-350w-fixed-solar-panel-glass-roof-top ← 20.1kg a piece, 1850mm×1015mm×35mm.
Bloody exhausted.
I've got some homework to do first… a RPi Pico and three INA-219 featherwing boards turned up yesterday. I have to knock the 0.1ohm resistors off those boards and solder up some connectors so I can hook them and the Pico up… then write some firmware for the Pico that'll poll the INA-219s and give me voltage and current measurements.
The current shunts are already on the rack: one on the battery feed, one on the solar and one on the load. I'll then plug that into the TS-7670 and write something to poll it over USB and feed `collectd`.
Maybe Modbus/RTU, since I think `collectd` supports that… not sure. (I did find `collectd`'s support for Modbus was crap though, might look at better options.)
Means next week I may have some 120W used panels… still producing a decent amount of current … looking for a new home.
#SolarCluster

2025-09-28 21:47:12 UTC

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My bicycle is a manual… but yeah, I can't drive (at all).

2025-09-28 21:34:19 UTC

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Is a pig really heavier than a bull?

2025-09-28 19:52:12 UTC

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Seems Viktor Orban would be a lot happer if Hungary were an exclave of Russia.
Not sure that's what their people want though.
In which case he should hold a vote to get a mandate for Hungary to leave the EU and join them. If the vote fails, he should resign his position.

2025-09-27 08:17:25 UTC

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Looks like this alert has been de-escalated to #Advice level with an #AvoidSmoke action. See Alt Text for full alert text.
https://mastodon.longlandclan.id.au/system/media_attachments/files/115/275/265/526/586/742/original/f85d050e24b06c24.png

2025-09-27 00:08:10 UTC

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I can't hear you over the DAB+ radio I've got running on an old Linux-based laptop. 🙂

2025-09-26 22:11:44 UTC

Dashboard tweak… I have a Raspberry Pi Pico and a couple of INA-219 "featherwing" boards that I plan to knock the shunt resistor off of and wire up to the current shunts that are already installed on the rack.
The plan is to make a firmware image that can poll the INA-219s and present the voltage/current/power readings over USB serial for the TS-7670 to read. Then I'll be able to plot that information here instead.
But for now, the information from the CET PMC-512 in the mains switchbox will do. GP1 is the mains circuit that the rack connects to, it shares that with the dishwasher, dryer and washing machine… so a big spike here isn't bitcoin malware — it'll be something else on the same circuit.
I should have the other bits in a couple of weeks.
https://mastodon.longlandclan.id.au/system/media_attachments/files/115/272/876/121/738/141/original/baa7d95c9e661503.png

2025-09-12 08:17:45 UTC

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With vernacular like that, I'm guessing this cartoon must've taken place around southern Australia?

2025-08-30 18:46:06 UTC

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> More cores don't make computers faster: Amdahl's Law proved that in 1967.
"You don't get a baby in a month by getting nine women pregnant." is an expression I've pointed out several times as a software developer.

2025-08-19 20:00:39 UTC

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Be right back, adjusting the thresholds on the frequency gauge.
https://mastodon.longlandclan.id.au/system/media_attachments/files/115/057/203/477/502/250/original/4380778fbf870f49.png

2025-08-01 23:39:56 UTC

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When my grandmother put something in a "safe place" no one, not even her, saw it again.

2025-07-18 19:15:05 UTC

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As I recall…
Windows 2000 had IPv6 as a "technology preview" that had to be separately downloaded and installed.
Windows XP whad it disabled by default, but did otherwise ship with it.
Windows Vista and later turned it on by default.
Anything currently supported by Microsoft right now will have it turned on unless the user/administrator turns it off manually.
So "only few" actually covers a lot of users.

2025-07-05 09:12:26 UTC

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Sounds like you're all revved up with no place to go.

2025-06-20 11:05:33 UTC

I was planning on doing a back-up of the #Ceph cluster today in preparation of migrating it to a later release… but of course, I've misplaced the PSU for my external 4TB back-up drive.
I noticed it was getting pretty tight on space too, and given it's now 5 years old, figured it was time for a new one. I've got a 6TB one coming.
In the meantime, I had another crack at the Ericsson F5521GW 3G module in the Toughpad.
If I boot with init=/bin/bash on the kernel command line, then modprobe cdc-acm, I see 3 ACM devices appear, and I can use `screen` with them.
I managed to remove the old PIN code on the SIM card I have in there but couldn't get the GPS going, most I got out of it was a "Operation not allowed" error.
Doing this in early init seems to be enough to convince the module to stay enumerated. Something though, tells it to go bugger off early in the boot sequence unless I talk to it first.
A bit of a nuisance to be honest… but I'm somewhat closer.
#ToughPad #EricssonF5521gw

2025-05-03 11:56:28 UTC

Yeah, AEC, that's not how you sort numbers… #AusPol
https://mastodon.longlandclan.id.au/system/media_attachments/files/114/443/766/294/484/384/original/c240dec7081b2f06.png

2025-04-28 18:38:24 UTC

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Actually, that's TitleCasing. camelCasing starts with a lowercase letter.
But yes, accessibility matters. Always annoys me when I type out a title-cased tag, and the application "corrects" it to lowercase.

2025-04-17 05:03:28 UTC

We have arrived at #Imbil for another #EmergencyCommsExercise. This time we are supporting Far-a-way Horse Endurance Riders in running their Easter Carnival.
We are based in the Imbil Showgrounds.
https://mastodon.longlandclan.id.au/system/media_attachments/files/114/351/546/395/649/187/original/fa45ac5e09af5455.jpg

2025-04-02 21:18:46 UTC

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I made one final purchase from Amazon as there was a product I literally could not get anywhere else. (Or it was "available" but the shipping was horrendous.)
Really, the EU/UK need to work on alternatives to these marketplaces. I don't think we should outsource this to China as they are equally as authoritarian as the US is becoming.
- Browsers: I think both major engines have significant US-based development, Is there a viable alternative to Webkit/Blink and Gecko? Servo is promising but not ready yet. Dillo's too primitive. (At least they're both open-source.)
- Operating Systems: We can avoid commercial US operating systems (Apple MacOS X / iOS, Microsoft Windows, Oracle Solaris), in their place use open-source ones with international contributors (various Linux distributions and BSD flavours)
- Cloud hosting: Avoid Amazon AWS, Google Cloud Engine, Microsoft Azure, Vultr for cloud hosting, consider smaller local players instead (e.g. BinaryLane in Australia)
- Email providers: Avoid Gmail, either host yourself or consider local and non-US players. @npub1n8z…jgru and @npub1tk7…0m5c could be worth looking at.
- Travel: go local, most people don't explore their own back yards.

2025-03-28 07:14:08 UTC

Ohh goodie… NBN outage.

2025-03-23 10:45:37 UTC

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Think of it this way… you get to see the Olympic rowers race for gold… then a few weeks later, you see them return as Paralympic rowers… 😛
(To be honest, not sure the bull sharks of the Brisbane River are an improvement.)

2025-03-17 20:55:33 UTC

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Contacted the mob in Canada… "ohh no, we don't ship there because it's too expensive".
They're happy for their customers in the USA to pay a 25% tariff *on top* of shipping… but don't like the idea of someone in this part of the world spending 50% of the total bill on shipping.
Well… I tried to #BuyCanadian -- they didn't want to sell in the end.

2025-03-16 20:20:51 UTC

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So, panels fly off at random in cold climates due to the adhesive letting go.
I wonder what they do in hot climates… does the glue melt and the cars shed their panels in the sun?
Tesla Australia is thinking of introducing the CyberTruck to this country … I think the states' various road safety authorities would be mad to rubber stamp this particular vehicle.
A panel flies off on a busy street and some innocent pedestrian gets cut to ribbons by it. No thanks.

2025-03-16 01:40:20 UTC

I see the insects of The Gap decided to put the ANT into ANTenna… talk about upping the ante… time for some AM I guess… ant modulation.
#CycloneAlfred #AmateurRadio
https://mastodon.longlandclan.id.au/system/media_attachments/files/114/169/548/822/132/283/original/ca89a48a1e17c32b.mp4

2025-03-16 00:22:49 UTC

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Not every instance allows that much text in a post either.
Unless patched on journa.host, the limit would be 500 characters, a third of the limit for ALT text. Thus the post would have to be split over several posts…
Time-consuming, and sometimes you've just got to push something up and maybe come back to it later.
I can touch type on a proper keyboard with reasonable speed, but I'm a slow seek-and-peck two-finger typist on a touchscreen. Sometimes the circumstance doesn't let me stand there slowly pecking out an ALT-text … I will post without and come back later to fill it in when I have time.
In this case, someone else stepped up to put the alt text in. A most welcome gesture on @npub1797…5qu8's part.
Not idealin that there's a delay between the content and its description, but let's not let perfect get in the way of good.

2025-03-14 05:38:18 UTC

One pet peeve of mine, is when you want a particular product which is unobtainium in your local area.
I've been doing a lot of bushwalking lately, and a couple of years ago I bought some high-vis shirts that are hooded. They're just like the hi-vis polo shirts you buy at Bunnings, but have a hood instead of a collar.
Brilliant for our hot weather. I thought, "I'll buy some more".
I bought the first lot through #Amazon … but I really want to avoid them just now.
EBay has some, but the shipping is $$expensive$$.
I thought… hang on, why not Canada? I see ForceField have just the product.
Ha ha ha, no. We don't ship overseas.
Might be crossing that picket line anyway.
#Rant

2025-03-12 22:11:59 UTC

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Ookay, so it works, but still a bit flaky on HFC NBN. But flaky is better than nothing.
BUT, that's good enough for email and Mastodon. 4G is no better here, my line-of-sight to the 3 tower that Telstra operate here is atrocious.
We'll see about working from home. This might be working well enough to get something useful done.

2025-03-12 21:58:36 UTC

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I gave Internode a gentle poke via the helpdesk over email… just asking if they've got an approximate timeframe or whether I can get a SIM for the LTE router I have.
Like magic, the link came back up.
Not sure how long this will last, but I'll do a post here and see what happens. We might be back on-air.

2025-03-07 02:13:07 UTC

T-12:00 or so, and Sam could not care less. #CatsOfMastodon #CycloneAlfred
https://mastodon.longlandclan.id.au/system/media_attachments/files/114/118/721/196/880/968/original/8b7533ccfae57aa7.jpg

2025-03-05 10:30:14 UTC

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-05/meta-blocked-facebook-searches-cyclone-alfred/105013014
This is why we can no longer rely on centralised social media. #Meta #CycloneAlfred

2025-03-05 10:08:47 UTC

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612kHz ABC Radio Brisbane has just been knocked off-air for a few minutes.
DAB+ was music with an announcement "We apologise for this break in the programme".
612kHz AM was dead silent according to the FT5-DR I have. I can see the 612kHz transmitter tower out the bedroom window here (Strathpine).
It is now back on-air.
#CycloneAlfred

2025-03-04 09:24:01 UTC

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At least in our case… with the mandatory voting system we have… the election result can truly be seen as "the will of the people". The AEC practically bend over backwards to ensure that everyone is given every opportunity to participate as well.
In the US, it's the will of the noisy minority that bother to get out there. It's rigged that way. Now, the participation rate _has_ been going up, but in 2024, the thing that caused this mess was a small group that decided to not get involved.
This was an implicit acceptance of whatever the most numerous group chose. Consequently, the electoral colleges all fell the way they did, and we now have this mess.
"This is not us" only applies to those who actually got off their bums and tried to vote for progress. If they voted for conservatism or didn't vote … then sorry, no, "this is not us" excuses won't fly.

2025-03-03 03:02:06 UTC

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#CycloneAlfred is predicted to drop between 19 and 200mm of rain in the next few days.
https://mastodon.longlandclan.id.au/system/media_attachments/files/114/096/261/236/157/067/original/3c0abaf6b43b9591.png

2025-03-03 01:48:37 UTC

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ABC frequencies for emergency information. #CycloneAlfred
https://mastodon.longlandclan.id.au/system/media_attachments/files/114/095/978/064/818/214/original/e2dbd14755919398.png

2025-03-02 21:04:29 UTC

Pet peeve… when you're looking at something on a web page, you're about to click/tap on a UI element… just as your finger hits the sensor… the element moves because some DOM element has been inserted or changed size above the UI element.
Consequence, you instead hit the UI element that has just been moved *under* the cursor (or your finger) now receives the click event.

2025-03-02 05:14:39 UTC

Err... #CycloneAlfred #ExtremeWeather #wx
https://mastodon.longlandclan.id.au/system/media_attachments/files/114/091/120/018/816/782/original/149229547c46d837.png

2025-02-28 22:37:25 UTC

Sam is well and truly relaxed on #Caturday. #CatsOfMastodon #cats
https://mastodon.longlandclan.id.au/system/media_attachments/files/114/083/886/580/165/157/original/b4f17dfa932ab28a.jpg

2025-02-28 06:42:39 UTC

> "I'm not responsible for your job and your family, you are," Mr Palmer said.
>
> "If you haven't been employed for two years it doesn't show too much initiative about yourself, does it?
Those with 'Trumpet of Patriots' candidates might want to consider this when thinking about whether this party really has your interests at heart.
Clive Palmer denies responsibility for unemployed Queensland Nickel workers - ABC News
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-21/clive-palmer-court-clive-mensink-queensland-nickel/8731278
#AusPol

2025-02-26 09:30:47 UTC

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Well, BlueSky certainly is a good half-way point if they add @ap.brid.gy to their followers… doing that they become visible here too.
https://fed.brid.gy/
We should encourage the federal government to set up an instance actually. If they're worried about electoral interference, running an ActivityPub server of some kind for all the government people would be a good way to side-step that.

2025-02-26 00:27:36 UTC

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That or the claim is that because the cattle eat grass, that the meat produced is little more than reprocessed grass.

2025-02-25 23:53:09 UTC

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I'm sure "they just are" would be sufficient to convince a jury in a false advertising case. ;-)

2025-02-22 10:00:16 UTC

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Didn't think they were stackable… I'd have to get a second one to find out.
(And hope Sam and his new hypothetical feline mate don't rip each-others thoraxes out.)

2025-02-08 07:21:13 UTC

I just managed to get the first of my #sabots going to help clog up AI.
This is running on the node I resurrected yesterday. Single CPU VM, 1GiB RAM… AlpineLinux 3.21.
It is using this tool:
https://zadzmo.org/code/nepenthes/
Not the most well documented in terms of installation requirements… I've fed it with some of my blog posts for corpus input. I note every third link it generates is a 404 too.
Now I've put the bait out, I just wait.
Might try another engine out and deploy a VM for that elsewhere. Then maybe I can load-balance between them.

2025-02-03 00:30:09 UTC

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We do not need to co-operate with the facist regime that is the Trump government.
We need to throw sand in the gears of facism. We do not stop on the 11th of November every year just to wave the nazis through on parade.

2025-01-26 06:05:29 UTC

Just made a major shake-up of my infrastructure… having cleared my 16-core workhorse of VMs, I've replaced the Debian Buster OS on there, with a shiny new #AlpineLinux OS.
My Mastodon instance is currently running on the 8-core node I resurrected last week and finalised yesterday.
I'm finding a few things are different with #libvirt under Alpine, notably support for SPICE seems lacking out-of-the-box (so VNC console only) and I've still got oddities with RBD pools, but VMs still successfully connect to RBD back-ends anyway.
It's nice to have nodes running up-to-date OSes. I might need to fine-tune some things, but generally I'm happy with this.

2025-01-16 02:25:52 UTC

I know this was written nearly 21 years ago… and at the time it was referencing the #SCO vs #Linux case… but I can't help but see the parallels between that, and #AI scraping our shitposts for profit…
https://www.theregister.com/2004/03/09/bofh_protecting_bodily_waste/

2025-01-15 22:08:27 UTC

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Does it bug you?

2024-12-02 22:12:37 UTC

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… and I just realised 2048 is a power of two…
```
stuartl@rikishi ~ $ echo $(( 2 ** 11 ))
2048
```

2024-12-02 22:10:22 UTC

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Apparently we'll see this again in 2031. A year before the Brisbane Olympics.
Now, 2020 and 2024 are both examples of this happening _on a leap year_. The next leap year that begins with WTF will be 2048.
The last leap year _before_ 2020 which began with WTF was 1992.

2024-12-02 07:03:26 UTC

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Actually, if you have a smart television or digital video recorder… I'd almost put money on it being a Linux machine beneath the covers.
If you have a home Internet router, the vast majority of those are Linux based. Some did experiment with other OSes like VxWorks back in the day, but those experiments died out.
If you're using Android anywhere, that's the Linux kernel running the show. Very different user-space stack, but still Linux at the core.
It hides in a lot of places you may not even realise.
Largely because it's a blob of code that people have already spent the effort in writing, that can light up a large amount of hardware including embedded devices, and with a licensing cost which many can stomach.
To make an OS that runs even a basic home router would be prohibitively expensive in terms of software developer time. It's cheaper to just accept the license of whatever's "on the shelf" and build on that.

2024-11-29 04:02:36 UTC

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Yeah, I'm not sure what's dragging `systemd` in. It's not installed (I run a "hardened" profile, where it is not the default).
Something is wanting it though, so I'll update pieces until I find the culprit.

2024-11-29 00:30:55 UTC

```
The following USE changes are necessary to proceed:
(see "package.use" in the portage(5) man page for more details)
# required by sys-apps/systemd-256.7::gentoo
# required by sys-apps/gentoo-systemd-integration-9::gentoo
>=sys-apps/dbus-1.15.8 systemd
```
… over my dead body! Ugh!

2024-11-25 21:42:58 UTC

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Don't work for Jacques Electronics… when I was working there… I had a consistent trail of those little buggers going straight to my tea cup.
Worse was out at Laidley… the cheeky sods would sit on the rim of the cup and bite you as you took a sip.

2024-11-25 21:37:52 UTC

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Those tiny ants are good news… means you don't have termites … they do not get along.

2024-11-24 01:37:28 UTC

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I utterly hate RP-SMA.
Not to mention having to explain the difference to non-RF people.
"No, that thing is not a 'spacer', that's an adaptor because if you look, the antenna you just screwed on there has no centre pin and nor does the shaft you screwed it on to."
Maybe you get lucky and the two "sockets" press against each-other, but more likely you'll leave a 1mm or so gap… that's not a connection, that's a capacitor!

2024-11-16 22:03:42 UTC

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Teenager hospitalised _where_?
Where was the infection sourced from?
How was the infection acquired?
A link would be most helpful. I don't doubt what you have posted, but I cannot rely on rumour alone.

2024-09-29 05:23:43 UTC

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A way I can generate that image with that exact code is via `curl` (I haven't written a full front-end yet)
```
stuartl@rikishi ~ $ curl --insecure -o /tmp/rendered-image.png 'https://192.168.65.188/sstv/tx/template/render' -X POST -H 'User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/115.0' -H 'Accept: */*' -H 'Accept-Language: en-AU,en-GB;q=0.7,en;q=0.3' -H 'Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br' -H 'Referer: https://vk4msl-bm.local/sstv/template.html' -H 'Content-Type: text/plain;charset=UTF-8' -H 'Origin: https://vk4msl-bm.local' -H 'Connection: keep-alive' -H 'Sec-Fetch-Dest: empty' -H 'Sec-Fetch-Mode: cors' -H 'Sec-Fetch-Site: same-origin' -H 'DNT: 1' -H 'Pragma: no-cache' -H 'Cache-Control: no-cache' --data-raw '{"template":"no-watermark","mode":"M1","values":{"msgtext":"Message text","msgheading":"Message Heading","background":"vk4msl-qsl-2024.png","callsign":"VK4MSL","name":"Stuart","grid":"QG62ln"}}'
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 137k 100 137k 100 193 37379 51 0:00:03 0:00:03 --:--:-- 37429
```
https://mastodon.longlandclan.id.au/system/media_attachments/files/113/219/158/844/017/902/original/4c7b06a906fe4acd.png