Aotearoa Weekly Kōrero 19/4/2024

purrtastic, 14 days ago

I’ve been reading up on the H5N1 bird flu situation in the USA. I doubt our health system would cope if it starts spreading human to human… particularly as it’s being gutted by Luxon.

Ozymati, 15 days ago

Work finally picked up but also this is the first day where I have free time in aaages. So I used it to clean.

Dave, 15 days ago

Noooo! Have you considered chilling and doing nothing while ignoring your chores?

Ozymati, 15 days ago

It’s too late. They’re done…

Dave, 15 days ago

Maybe next time then

eagleeyedtiger, 16 days ago

We picked up a chest freezer yesterday and it’s so much more freezer space! Just need to find more things to fill it with now. However, we’re in the position now that we have two fridge/freezers + chest freezer… not sure if we should get rid of one or both and a get a vertical fridge only. But it’s kinda nice having all the extra space as we tend to do a big lot of shopping all at once and end up over packing the fridge/freezers

NoRamyunForYou, 15 days ago

My parents have got three fridge/freezers (two in the garage) and it’s amazing how they manage to always have them bursting at the seams lol 😂

Edit: we’ve “only” got two and feel we need another lol. It’s the freezer space that gets us.

eagleeyedtiger, 15 days ago

That’s actually how we ended up with two of them. Our first one was a hand-me-down that was a little too small for us - we packed it so tight the whole defrost system froze over and it stopped cooling the fridge. We bought a new one and after defrosting the old one completely it was running fine again so we just left it in the garage.

But yeah the freezer space is always the limiting factor after a big shop. Now I feel a bit more comfortable buying more bulk items we can freeze 😁

NoRamyunForYou, 13 days ago

Yeah definitely great to have that extra space :)

Though our second one is on the ground floor, and our kitchen is up on the floor above - so I find myself not really using the bottom one too much, and/or forgetting whats in the one downstairs.

NoRamyunForYou, 16 days ago

I wonder if I’m doing something wrong/ theres a setting somewhere, but pin posts aren’t actually pin for me. I though this was just a thing on the Voyager app I use, but it’s also the same when I access in on a browser via lemmy.nz

Dave, 16 days ago

Lemmy has different pinning options. This post is pinned in “Community”. If you go to !newzealand, you should see it at the top.

Lemmy can also pin for local users, in this case any users on Lemmy.nz would see the post at the top of the Local and All feeds. I haven’t done this, as I find it annoying and suspect others would too.

Basically the idea is if you want to find it, it should be easy to find when going to that community page, but it shouldn’t be in your face all the time.

NoRamyunForYou, 16 days ago

Ahh ok that makes sense. I keep forgetting I’m not on the “NewZealand” Community, as I browse on the “Local” page(?) for all my NZ stuff, since I use Lemmy.nz

Thanks for the explanation 👍

Dave, 16 days ago

Yeah, “Local” is like “All” but only for communities on Lemmy.nz. !newzealand is one specific community here, and there are a bunch of others. So you have to actually go into the community to see the pinned post, because that’s how it’s set up.

Having it pinned in Local but not in All would probably be OK, but I don’t think that’s currently possible.

NoRamyunForYou, 16 days ago

I was like urgghh must be another Lemmy bug lol. Good to know it’s how it’s meant to be 👍

NoRamyunForYou, 18 days ago

Continuing on the catflap project, I purchased a rpi5 and raspberry cam 3 (both of which are the latest versions that they make - both from the same company obviously). Realized when I opened them up, that the camera uses a 20pin connector, and the rpi5 uses a 15pin connector. And of course the camera doesn’t come with such an adapter. Now waiting again, as it seems not many stock it in NZ (pbtech only have it in their head office and it’s like 3 times more expensive than purchasing from element 14).

I was keen on getting a bit done on the project over the long weekend, but that plan might’ve taken a big hit.

Dave, 18 days ago

Weird. Does the Rpi4 have a 20 pin connector? With the Rpi5 so new, the camera was perhaps designed for the RPi4.

Exciting to hear you’re slowly making progress! I’m assuming from looking at it that the camera is not weatherproof, is your plan to have it inside through the window or to weatherproof it in some way (or do nothing and hope for the best)?

NoRamyunForYou, 17 days ago

Yea it seems the rpi4 has the 20pin connector.

It’s a shame. Don’t know if it was a last minute decision to change the connectors on the rpi5, but the camera3 came out in early 2023, and the rpi5 came out later in 2023. You’d have thought they would’ve release the camera with some thought into compatibility, maybe have both types of cables in there? I don’t know.

Yeah at least there’s some progress lol. Got the Image Recognition up and running on my laptop to test it out (on their basic pre trained models) and it’s pretty cool how it all works with a live video feed. Got me pretty excited lol. All it took was 4 lines of Python!

I actually hadn’t thought about weather proofing at all, probably because the door we’d have it installed at is under quite a large canopy, and so rain doesn’t get in (there’s sort of a retaining wall right in front of the canopy as well so sideways rain isn’t really an issue either). But it’s actually an interesting thought. It seems that there are a couple of weather proof housings on the market for the rpi cams though, if I need to go down that route. Also the plan is to have it on the underside of the top of the cat flap body (if that makes sense lol) and I plan to 3d print a bit of a shroud for it, so hopefully that’ll help protect it Abit as well.

Dave, 17 days ago

If it were me I’d probably just leave it and hope it’s OK rather than get a weatherproof cover 😄.

I’m away from home but seriously considering setting up a driveway camera with image recognition once I’m home and can get parts. Mostly becase it sounds cool 😆.

So it’s to stop the cat if they are holding a mouse, right? How does the “stopping” bit work?

NoRamyunForYou, 17 days ago

I’m away from home but seriously considering setting up a driveway camera with image recognition once I’m home and can get parts. Mostly becase it sounds cool

Yeah, I want to setup some POE wired Security cameras around the house, but it’s going to be too much work as the house is made of concrete blocks and bricks, and its a 2storey, so running the cabling through the ceiling space and out the soffit is not an option.

So it’s to stop the cat if they are holding a mouse, right? How does the “stopping” bit work?

Yeap exactly. I was initially thinking of triggering an electromagnet, but have since swung towards a “push/pull” linear solenoid actuator, which would physically block the door from opening. The reason I’m leaning towards the solenoid is that it would give me the flexibility to configure to either a “normally locked” or “normally unlocked” state (when no power is applied), plus I wouldn’t have to think about how strong of an electromagnet is needed (and the increasing power requirements for it).

Dave, 17 days ago

Ah yes, that makes sense. It also allows you to have it only locked for “in” and always open for “out” without needing some mechanism to release the lock for an outgoing cat. Assuming I understand right that an electromagnet would be used to hold the door shut under that option.

NoRamyunForYou, 16 days ago

Ahh yeah, Very true! Another benefit haha. Another solid reason to go with the solenoid then :)

I just realised I actually have a rpi4 that can connect to the camera unit - could’ve been testing things out the last few days while I wait. Might have something to play with over the long weekend after all.

Dave, 16 days ago

Awesome! I look forward to hearing the progress!

NoRamyunForYou, 16 days ago

I’ll try and not be distracted by other projects lol

Dave, 16 days ago

Haha I know the feeling. I bought IR blasters due to a comment on Lemmy and one of these days I’ll do something with them!

NoRamyunForYou, 16 days ago

Haha. I know that feeling too well.

What were you originally thinking of doing with the IR Blasters?

Dave, 16 days ago

Originally heat pump stuff, but then it got too complicated and also we were looking at moving house so I thought I’d wait, then I thought maybe the TV so I could turn it on and off but in the end I got a PC/TV remote which we use instead.

So they are just sitting there waiting for me to think of a new project 😆

NoRamyunForYou, 15 days ago

I keep buying components cause they look cool, or I think I’ll need them for some project later lol.

I use nice tactix storage organizers to try and keep everything organized, but I just learned that they’ve stopped stocking the “deep” version :(

Dave, 15 days ago

I try not to buy stuff until I’m planning on using it, but sometimes plans don’t work out.

My storage is to just throw it in a box of junk 😆

NoRamyunForYou, 13 days ago

My storage started off pretty similar, then I added some storage containers, and then I couldn’t find stuff so I repurchased things I already had etc, so I put together a simple Google Sheet with all my inventory lol. Might add which container etc, each part is located to make it extra easier lol.

liv, 18 days ago

No one is saying anything in the korero this week? I was hoping to hear about your weekends, everyone!

I had a really weird/bad virus recently, turns out apparently it’s going around the rohe’s children. It mustn’t have got the memo that I’m a grown up!

In garden news I only have 3 caterpillars but they are enjoying it, feijoas are crazy, there is an incursion of Morning Glory.

Dave, 18 days ago

I’m in New Plymouth for the second week of the school holidays. And haven’t done much. I spent about 16 of the last 24 hours sleeping as I’ve got some sort of cold. I wonder if it’s the same thing.

I’ve spent most of the 8 waking hours watching Star Trek Lower Decks. I’ve heard people talking about it on Lemmy, and have now watched the whole first season. I’m not really sure what I was expecting, because normally (at least in my experience) Star Trek takes Star Trek seriously, and if you want a non-serious Star Trek then you watch The Orville instead. But Lower Decks doesn’t take Star Trek seriously at all, and I’ve been enjoying it 🙂

d3Xt3r, 18 days ago

That reminds me, I still need to watch Lower Decks. And Strange New Worlds. And Prodigy. Not sure which series I should start with…

Dave, 18 days ago

Depends what you’re looking for! Strange New Worlds is a more classic Star Trek experience, generally a story per episode like the old days.I’m not up to date on it though, I think I’ve only seen the first season.

Lower Decks is almost satirical, making fun of Star Trek in a lot of ways.

I hadn’t heard of Prodigy, sounds like it might be a Star Trek version of The Clone Wars series?

liv, 17 days ago

Yeah? Sounds fun, will give it a go sometime. (We’re currently only watching one show a night and it has to be Forbryndelsen or I will riot). I quite enjoy silly space shows like Red Dwarf and Lexx though it’s probably not quite that far along.

The virus I had wasn’t a cold, it mainly involved severe vertigo, though it then turns into a respiratory infection as a complication in pediatric patients, apparently. I guess if your kids start throwing up, ask them if the room is spinning!

Dave, 17 days ago (edited 16 days ago)

Yeah it’s just on the level of making fun of stuff that happens in star trek from the point of view of low level staff on a not important ship. I think it’s worth checking out, you’ll get a feel for it in the first episode and quickly work out if it’s your thing. But if you only get to have one episode per night then maybe picking a show with 20 min episodes won’t be your best bang for buck!

Oh man I have heard severe vertigo is terrible. I’ve known a few people that have had it badly and it was not a fun experience. One of my kids used to throw up whenever they got a cold, I’m glad that phase is over. Probably down to once per kid per year now, because kids are just not very healthy.

liv, 17 days ago

I thought it’s just that they have smaller bodies?

Yeah viral vertigo was kind of horrendous. If you’ve ever been knocked out by a blow to the head, at one point it felt like that only for hours not seconds. Glad it’s gone!

Cool, I’ll put that show on my list. Forbrydelsen isn’t going to last forever.

I miscounted my caterpillars btw, there’s at least 7!

Dave, 16 days ago

Shouldn’t smaller body kids get sick less because there’s a smaller target for germs to hit? 😅

I know someone who spent months with on and off vertigo and still gets dizzy, something about crystals in their ear? My Dad also had vertigo for a while, and that was off and on for months as well. Someone he knew had it so bad for so long they had to stop work. I’m thankful to have never had it (and to have never been knocked out!).

liv, 16 days ago

But the germs aren’t smaller, I mean if a kid gets attacked by a bear…

The crystals thing is sweet as, BPPV, it’s when crystals land on these balance-sensing hairs in your inner ear and give you vertigo, but there’s this short maneuver exercise you do that dislodges them and shifts them somewhere else. I’ve had it a few times in my life and always shifted them no problem.

Some people get recurring BPPV and apparently you need a physio to help with some other manouver if they’re in a hard to reach place.

But with a virus its when the actual part of your ear with the hairs in it gets inflamed and messes them up, can be for weeks, an unlucky few never recover properly. The manouvers don’t touch it. Then the third cause is this thing called a vestibular migraine some people just get.

Dave, 16 days ago

For that person they didn’t do the exercises as often as they were supposed to and it didn’t get better, but also it turned out they had a brain tumour so it’s hard to say if it really was the crystals 🫤

liv, 14 days ago

Maybe it was the brain tumour, that poor person! The crystals usually get dislodged in just a few iterations (sometimes 1), it’s not like building up muscles. As far as I know.

Dave, 14 days ago

Might be the brain tumour, but it was cut out and the balance issues didn’t go away so hard to know.

Ozymati, 15 days ago

I love Lower Decks so much

Dave, 15 days ago

It’s certainly been a pleasant find. I’m really surprised at the amount of new Star Trek content out in the last decade or so.

d3Xt3r, 18 days ago

Spent a good chunk of my weekend catching up (online) with an old childhood friend, who I lost touch with over 15 years ago. We also played an old-school PC game (Diablo 2) that we played as kids - and it was so much fun. After that, we decided to make this a thing every weekend and revisit some of the old games we used to play back then and relive the good ol’ days, back when the worst of our worries were trying to get get good grades… :)

On to the more mundane stuff, I’m happy to report that my spring onions are doing great. They’ve survived for nearly two months now, on just some water and liquid fertiliser, in spite of harvesting them regularly. I’m never going to buy spring onions from the market again!

there is an incursion of Morning Glory.

Is this the edible variant, ie Ipomoea Aquatica (aka water spinach)?

liv, 17 days ago

Omg I remember Diablo! When Diablo 1 came out, my whole flat’s social life went on pause until we’d finished it! It’s cool that you’re reconnecting with your friend.

Spring onions, mmmm.

Nope sadly it’s just plain old indica. Neighbour seems to have a patch of it but I can’t point the finger too hard since we are the ones who have tradescantia.

Floofah, 21 days ago

Been to the audiologists to get some hearing aids. I was a very regular clubber in my teens/twenties, so many live gigs with massive sound. Good at the time, but oh boy, tough to hear people talking to me now.

Can’t watch tv without subtitles, biut to be honest, I wonder if I’ll still need subs even with the aids when I get them. So many tv shows and movies have mumbled unclear dialog, but I’ll give it a try. Hopefully Mrs Floofah won’t be prodding me anymore when I can’t hear her speaking!!

liv, 17 days ago

Great that you’re getting hearing aids! Probably a whole ton of birdsong awaits you.

Floofah, 17 days ago

I’ve fought shy of getting hearing aids for too long, I’m hoping they will remove my stress and embarrassment of often needing people to repeat what they are saying to me.

The birdsong, especially the piwakawakas as they flit around close by indeed will be lovely to hear clearly again.

liv, 14 days ago

I hope they remove your stress too! I think there’s an adjustment period but hopefully it will be fast. People underestimate the amount of social isolation that comes with hearing loss.

Floofah, 14 days ago

Thanks, me too, and I’m sure Mrs Floofah will be happy as well. She gets frustrated by my poor hearing. I get them next Thursday. Already loaded the app on my phone and iPad!!

Hopefully I will be able to report back here very positively.

liv, 10 days ago

Didn’t realise they could come with an app, that’s interesting.

I’m excited for you!

Floofah, 10 days ago (edited 7 days ago)

I’ll report back, hopefully positively. My appointment has been delayed until next Monday.

liv, 7 days ago

Okay, looking forward to it!

purrtastic, 15 days ago

I used to DJ house and techno in the 90s… what? Was someone speaking? It’s bad 😣.

Floofah, 15 days ago

Do you suffer tinnitus? I wonder how the aids will help overcome that in my ears. They say they will, but I need to wait another week before they arrive to hear how they work for me.

Dave, 18 days ago

As I understand it, modern TV/movies can be hard to hear dialogue even for people with perfect hearing because the sound can be designed for a different speaker setup. Most commonly you’re watching through TV speakers when the sound is set up for surround sound.

In that case, go through your TV settings looking for Dynamic Range Compression, Night Mode, or in my case it was labeled something like “Voice”.

I don’t have surround sound but have heard you can adjust volumes so the speaker doing voice is louder, if that’s your setup.

Also pretty sure you can get headphones for TVs which can help.

Floofah, 18 days ago

We have a 5.1 surround system for the TV. The individual speakers are setup to balance the volumes from each. If I connect headphones, it shuts off the speakers so I loose the surround sound immersion effects.

My hearing it very poor with higher frequencies, hence a big reduction in clarity even with normal voices, any mumbled voices are nearly impossible.

Dave, 15 days ago

For the surround sound, I’ve heard many let you boost the centre speaker for voices but I don’t have surround sound so can’t confirm.

For headphones, my grandmother had them (this was at least 15 or 20 years ago) and everyone else could still hear the TV.

A bit of a search and apparently many TVs have a setting to play out both, otherwise use a splitter on the HDMI or optical connection used for your surround sound. This way you get both. Just make sure the TV headphones you buy take the right connection type.

Floofah, 14 days ago

I’ve messed around for years trying to get something viable, not only for me, but also Mrs Floofah, who doesn’t need aids yet, in order to watch and listen to the same thing. The big issue were the delays in the add on headphone routing. Typically they cause an unacceptable delay in the sound. Remember we need the “normal” full sound, just me needing the boost.

I await the arrival of my aids with interest, hopefully they’ll fit in with our existing sound system, and also allow Mrs Floofah to tell me something without using a megaphone!!

As the aids are local just to me, and the sound they receive is via my normal ear structure, this may be the best solution. I await with interest.

Dave, 11 days ago

Huh interesting about the delay! I wouldn’t have expected that as it seems that would make the headphones a bit useless or at least frustrating to use.

My grandmother was pretty deaf, she had trouble hearing with her hearing aids in, so she probably didn’t notice the TV and headphones being out of sync.

My auntie got hearing aids that connect to her phone via Bluetooth and she loves them! I also have a few other family members with hearing aids and they wish they got them earlier. Hopefully you enjoy them!

BTW comments on our posts by Lemmy.world users seem to be delayed by about 3 days, which is related to the Lemmy.world federation issues we’ve been having which is due to a Lemmy bug combined with our server being on the opposite side of the world to Lemmy.world and becauof the size of Lemmy.world.

Floofah, 11 days ago (edited 7 days ago)

I found the delay occurs with Bluetooth headphones connected via an adapter with an optical link to the TV audio. Physically plugging headphones in works fine, no sync delay, but it turns off the sound system audio. Could never get it properly working on our TV/sound system.

My aid fitting has been delayed until next Monday, audiologist is sick apparently.

Hmmm, this Lemmy.world issue is a nuisance. Maybe I should create an account elsewhere, can I do that and keep everything? IDK how all the Lemmy stuff links together etc.

Dave, 7 days ago

Sorry it takes 4 days to get a response to you! It’s not really lemmy.world’s fault, lemmy has a bug (more like a design problem) that means servers can only send one federation activity (post, comment, or vote) at a time. It has to wait for a response before sending the next one. Because their server is on the other side of the world to ours (plus some other technical reasons), we can only receive around 4 or 5 activities per second. Unfortunately they have gone over that threshold, it’s so big they are creating more activities than we can receive. There are other servers in our area having the same issue, auzzie.zone is over 5 days behind! There are various people working on various things to help this, but it’s all taking time.

So as for accounts, they only exist on one instance. A bit like an email address where dave@gmail.com would be different to dave@outlook.com. However, the last lemmy update added the ability to export your settings (found on your settings page on the website). So now you can create a new account on another instance and move all your settings over, including the communities you follow, but this isn’t quite the same as moving your account. For example, you’ll have to log in to the lemmy.world account to see any replies to comments you made on that account. Nothing is “forwarded” to your new account (Mastodon actually has something along these lines, but Lemmy doesn’t yet).

There are many people on this instance who use multiple accounts. Because how the federation works in lemmy, different instances see different posts in the Local feed (only communities hosted on that instance) and the All feed. This is because the All feed is posts from all the communities that the members of your instance are subscribed to. Different instances have different members with different subscriptions and so you’ll see different content. So many people like to have a few different accounts and switch between them,

Lemmy.world is so massive it would be interesting to hear what other instances are like in comparison! On lemmy.nz our Local feed is mostly posts in the newzealand or politics communities, with occasional regional posts. All has a lot more content, but at the moment we are missing lemmy.world posts for the most part. Because of a special prefetching that’s set up to try to help with the issue, we get them straight away but with no votes on them. We can’t prefetch the votes so they take 3 days to come across, by which point the posts are all three days old. So the Hot posts never have lemmy.world content at the moment because they have no votes on them.

There are plenty of other instances too. At this point most instances are up to date with both lemmy.world and us, just the handful that are having problems. You can actually check which ones are having issues - here’s lemmy.world’s status. Lemmy federates with lots of other platforms so many are mastodon, kbin, or others, but you can have a look for an instance and check how it’s doing by putting it into that site.

I guess the other thing to know is that different sites de-federate from each other. For example, beehaw.org is a nice, big, friendly instance, but they defederated from lemmy.world because Beehaw are strict moderators and have a vision for their site and lemmy.world was too big, too many users from lemmy.world causing issues on beehaw. Some instances don’t defederate from anyone, but that can be a bit crazy too. Most of the larger instances would be fine to join, though.

Accounts are also free, so just pick any and if you don’t like it try another! Most will have registration applications turned on though (so you can’t use your new account until you’ve been approved), as spam is becoming quite a problem and reviewing each new user is an easy way to avoid being the instance spambots like to use. But I’m sure you’re patient enough, most instance will approve new users so long as the follow the instructions.

Happy to answer questions but I know it’s going to take 3 or 4 days before I see your response so maybe pick an instance and sign up, then come back here and ask your questions with your new account 😆

Floofah, 7 days ago

Thanks for your detailed reply Dave, very much appreciated. I’ve signed up to Lemmy.nz with a localised username - FloofahNZ

eagleeyedtiger, 15 days ago

Honestly we almost always watch tv/movies with subtitles on and we don’t have any hearing problems. The most annoying is when the dialogue is soft but the music sound effects are way louder in the next scene so you’re juggling the volume up and down

Floofah, 15 days ago

Been using subs for a very long time and I thought the other evening while watching, I wonder if having to actually listen and comprehend what’s spoken, might be tough to revert to after everything being so clear from the subs.