@ahnlak@kavlak.uk
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

ahnlak

@ahnlak@kavlak.uk

Freelance (Web|System|Game) Developer. Builder of BlitHub, among other things. Can still be found https://kavlak.uk/@ahnlak on Twitter. Ex-Londoner Livin' la Vida Loca in Rural(ish) Wales. He/Him. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

reader of sci-fi : average cook : lazy gardener : intermittent homebrewer : semi-retired drinks blogger

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revk, to random
@revk@toot.me.uk avatar

My book seems to be growing fatter!

ahnlak,
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

@revk you've obviously got too much data in it, try deleting some books.

ahnlak, (edited ) to opensource
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

folk:

Given an open source project on GitHub (let's skip the debate about whether it should be) - should it mirror? And if so, where?

ahnlak,
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

@spodlife it was more of a thought exercise seeing some ... mutterings about the evil of GH tbh. I don't expect to see any repos i own getting much forking :-)

ahnlak, to random
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

If anyone is itching to dive into a new based project, you might find my shiny new boilerplate a handy starting point.

Gives you a mounted USB drive (so you can have an easily-editable configuration file for your WiFi details, for example), and a couple of helper libraries to handle config files, and pull data from web APIs by making http(s) requests painless.

The documentation explains it slightly more coherently than I have there!

https://github.com/ahnlak-rp2040/picow-boilerplate

revk, to random
@revk@toot.me.uk avatar

Basically is broken if you want to avoid even one-off command line memory leaks.

https://www.revk.uk/2023/04/popt.html

ahnlak,
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

@revk amusingly, googling around this throws up a mailing list from 2010 where somebody reported this as a bug, and maintainer pretty much says "it's a feature, it's only a few bytes anyway quit yer whining".

gadgetoid, to random
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

I got in a bit of a slump yesterday and needed to do something so I wrote (or at least started writing) a command-line version of Pico Pinout that's searchable and configurable. Try it here: https://gist.github.com/Gadgetoid/192af85a3eb05d4a6ac1db076c4ef118

ahnlak,
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

@gadgetoid what options to I pass to switch between Pico and PicoW pinouts? 😉

revk, (edited ) to random
@revk@toot.me.uk avatar

And my next #C question 🙂

I use a lot, it is great.

I always find some memory issue left over when running , caused by popt. It is always small and so not something I worried much about.

I noticed it seems to be that a string argument to my command from popt is in fact malloc'd. I.e. I can free() it without error, and that fixes the valgrind complaint.

But the man page on popt does not say which things it malloc's.

Does popt always do it?

ahnlak,
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

@revk FWIW my manual page does mention a couple of points where you're expected to de-allocate things (poptFreeContext to free up dynamically allocated bits of the poptContext, and if you use popGetOptArg)

(not that I've ever used popt)

ahnlak, to random
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

Another question for techie followers:

Given our slowly-dying DECT phones, and the imminently-dying copper line provision it would seem reasonable to look harder into VOIP.

So, is there a decent (but not "business" priced) VOIP/DECT type solution, where just like now I have a single station and a handful of handsets that talk to it?

VOIP right now seems to either be "hardwired desk phones" or "astronomically expensive", although I may be searching badly...

ahnlak,
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

@HeyEddie technically true, but I meant more "SIP device that looks and acts like a conventional landline".

Should probably have been more precise.

ahnlak,
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

@Artoo well yes, there is that as well. about the only people who use it land lines are parents...!

ahnlak,
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

@tj53 @Artoo i meant who called on our land line

revk, (edited ) to random
@revk@toot.me.uk avatar

C Coding debate.

Normally, obviously, I am somewhat careful to ensure freeing memory. Memory leaks are a bugger.

Sometimes I use alloc(), strdupa() in a function to avoid the question.

But when I have a non looping standalone command that always runs to the end, and hence any allocated memory during the process is freed when it exits, and a growing memory leak cannot happen... Do I free all the things at the end?

[Loving the debate on this]

ahnlak,
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

@revk I will always free everything I've allocated before I end.

Firstly because it's tidier and 'right', and secondly because it defends against future code changes where things don't end where I expect them to.

(mind you, I also explicitly set free'd pointers to NULL even if they're never going to touched again so I might have a track record for adding 'unnecessary' code!)

gadgetoid, to random
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

Fun problem of the day, our Pico C++ modules + MicroPython builds are triggering some kind of race condition where a PIO header is used before even pioasm has finished compiling. Eek!

In theory PIO headers should be added as dependencies to their respective targets, but that seems to be failing here.

https://github.com/pimoroni/pimoroni-pico/issues/761

ahnlak,
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

@gadgetoid it's nice to see that make -j still screws up as thoroughly as it did when I first started using it 30 years ago... 😉

damien, to random
@damien@layer8.space avatar

Does anyone have / know of a list of UK mobile data sim deals? Potentially those prepay ones, but I'm helping someone who wants it as a fixed line broadband replacement, so potentially 75-100GB per month expected usage?

ahnlak,
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

@damien having looked at the same sort of thing recently, it's worth keeping in mind that not all "mobile data" is the same.

Smarty (3 by another name) are probably the cheapest data out there, but their terms specifically say their SIMs aren't for "home broadband replacement".

I mean, they're "no contract" so it's easy enough to trial, and I await with interest to see how they will determine my usage is "replacing" home broadband, but...!

gadgetoid, to random
@gadgetoid@fosstodon.org avatar

I think I’ve spent just over a quarter of my life now doing embedded and SBC stuff at Pimoroni 😱

ahnlak,
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

@gadgetoid i must be closing in on 2/3rds of my life poking at C...

ahnlak,
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

@gadgetoid I've done a lot of that at the same time but it's always come back to my first love ;-)

neil, to random

The Torygraph's headline that the test was a "farce" is nonsensical even for the Telegraph.

It was a test.

That is what tests are for.

Yes, there were issues in doing cell broadcast at a massive scale. Of course there were. And now we know about some of them.

If nothing is learned from the test, sure, call the lack of learning a farce, in due course.

grumbles

ahnlak,
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

@neil while i mostly agree, they really weren't doing anything that isn't done all around the world without trouble. it's surprising that they seem to have had such significant hiccups with very established tech.

ahnlak,
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

@neil well yes, but again it's not like they were building anything new or unknown.

it was more like rolling out an existing system then creating one - yes plenty of opportunities for cockups, but every one of our network operators are already doing this in other countries.

but overall, this is precisely why you test. as you say, as long as they figure out what went wrong and fix it, by definition it's a successful test

ahnlak, to random
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

So did anyone on 3 get an emergency alert? Or are we on the sacrificial network?

Ryanteck, to random
@Ryanteck@fosstodon.org avatar

That was uneventful.

Only two out of 4 phones in the house went off. The two that did are on an O2 mvno. The two that didn't on a three mvno.

ahnlak,
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

@Ryanteck interesting, nothing on Three here either

revk, (edited ) to random
@revk@toot.me.uk avatar

That was crap, one phone seems to have done nothing (Voda NL SIM), and another (EE UK) beeped quietly for a fraction of a second, showed something full screen, which vanished before it could be read. And no indication of any message to anything.

Fill in response survey here: https://surveys.publishing.service.gov.uk/s/A7XZXQ

Survey does no ask even which country you are in, or which network you are on. That is really useless!

ahnlak,
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

@revk every one else's phone in this coffee shop went off, but not mine. less than inspiring, especially given this is very proven technology elsewhere...

revk, (edited ) to random
@revk@toot.me.uk avatar

Bit of kerning…

FYI, the kerning, automatic using the bit maps, was easy. The making it scroll without jumping was harder as the apparent size of each character changes, obviously, and I an scrolling by character and pixel... Simple in the end, but was like the third way or doing it that finally worked.

ahnlak,
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

@revk hmm, how are you encoding your

ahnlak,
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

@revk also my mobile client likes to send toots prematurely!

ahnlak,
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

@revk hmm, will glare at my server/client later...

ahnlak,
@ahnlak@kavlak.uk avatar

@revk ha! yeah, filming led sets is messy!

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