@david@theblower.au
@david@theblower.au avatar

david

@david@theblower.au

IT geek of many trades, hobby Blacksmith, cook and photographer hailing from the southern end of Queensland (Australia)
Beware, I am a fully qualified Dad Joke practitioner.

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nixCraft, to fediverse
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For the past several weeks, whenever I post any media, I always take the time to add ALT text to it. Although it may be a little time-consuming, I believe it is important to describe the media for those who are visually impaired or have accessibility concerns. Do you also add ALT text to your media for accessibility reasons?

david,
@david@theblower.au avatar

@nixCraft absolutely. I have my mobile client set to prompt if i forget too.

Sheril, to australia
@Sheril@mastodon.social avatar

I took this photo last year at Curtain Fig National Park in .

This spectacular strangler fig is nearly 165 ft (50m) tall, with a trunk circumference of 128ft (39m) & estimated to be >500 years old!

david,
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@Sheril It's pretty amazing eh? So is the other large fig down the road, The Cathedral Fig.

Massive fig tree with a wooden raised boardwalk next to it. Some people walk along the board walk and read the sign nearby, completely dwarfed by the tree.

nixCraft, (edited ) to random
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At what age did you start writing code as a programmer or software developer?

david,
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@nixCraft My first paid coding job on an actual real system was at about 17 years old. (Porting some routines from a Vax to Oracle on Xenix).

david, to random
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How’s your morning? Mine has started with one dead tyre and one flat spare tyre.

Very flat spare.

david,
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Got back to that car tonight to go home, original spare was flat again. Glad I bought a new spare this morning.

A screw stuck in the spare tyre

david, to random
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What I didn't need this morning before leaving home to drive 3.5hrs north, was my OpenDirectory server seems to have died overnight.

(why yes, I do have centralised accounts in an OpenDirectory server for my home network, doesn't everyone?)

The downside of this, is I can't fetch my mail at the moment as the mail server users are all authenticated via ldap/opendirectory.

I presume the power supply on the server has died, I have a spare, but didn't have time to deal with that this morning.

So, unlikely as it is that anyone here is going to email me this weekend, rest assured, I won't see it if you do. ;-)

david,
@david@theblower.au avatar

After completely disassembling the Mac mini and replacing the power supply with the spare unit I had, it turns out, that no, it's not the PSU. The system is still very dead.
I can't complain too much, it was a 2011 model, so I got 12 years out of it. BUT, no I need to work out how I implemented the LDAP account lookup on OpenBSD, and revert that to local accounts. Something I set up quite a while ago, and unfortunately, past me didn't document it.

david,
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The old adage - "It's always DNS" strikes again.

Mail client issues at my parents ended up being a combination of aggressive DNS caching at their ISP, and my round-robin DNS entry for my mail server.

I can't do much about the caching, but have rejigged my mail server DNS entries such that round-robin isn't needed anymore and I'm running a proper split-dns setup now to deal with mobile clients.

Phew!

david,
@david@theblower.au avatar

Turns out it wasn't too hard to disable ypbind/ypldap and the ldap module from saslauthd, and then create local accounts on the mail server, pointing to the existing home dir's for the previously ldap users, carefully matching the UIDs and GIDs from the ldap server.

We have working IMAP again! (and more importantly the server shouldn't hang if it reboots - a side-effect of using ypbind when the ldap server is unavailable).

jpmens, to random
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    david,
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    @jpmens can’t guarantee it, since I’ve not used that app, but to my knowledge, provided the backup has a password set (and was therefore encrypted) it /should/ contain all the app data.

    david,
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    @jpmens gah!

    david,
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    @jpmens Yep. The whole Keychain is only backed up if the backup is Encrypted. Of course, if she has an iCloud backup, she might be in luck.

    david, to random
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    Soo far this morning I’ve:

    • installed a new tank inlet filter with mesh sides on the tank that regularly overflows the previous filter
    • sanded all the handles off Mum’s knives ready for restoration
    • applied a coat of red oil to one knife and a coat of tung oil to another
    • cut down a metal panel to form a shelf for a trolley
    • cut my finger filling the rough edge of fair shelf
    • attached the shelf to the trolley with hinges

    To Do:

    • folding legs for the shelf
    • lunch
    david,
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    Folding tray is done, and holds weight.

    I also rigged up a jig to hold the rest of the knife set and this red oil them all at once.

    Tray folded up. It will hold a laptop and small label printer
    Weight test of the tray by using a piece of railway track
    Knife handles all coated in red oil, blades sandwiched between two pieces of pine

    jpmens, to random
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    david,
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    @jpmens We'll be doing a similar kind of distance in Oct/Nov on our trip to and around Tasmania from Brisbane. (1880km or so BNE -> MEL, ferry across the Bass Strait, couple of thousand kms touring around Tasmania, and then another 1880km home). The BNE -> MEL legs will be done in two stints, BNE -> SYD; SYD->MEL (and reverse obviously).

    david,
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    @jpmens One of the rare Europeans I know that has travelled these sorts of distances by road. ;-)

    david, to random
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    Randomly throwing ingredients together like a madman.

    Here's hoping the result is tasty.

    frogglin, to random
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    Back from the shops, my father is inspecting my shopping and mumbling about it. You don't have to eat it, dad.

    david,
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    @Quokka @frogglin @LifeTimeCooking that sounds like something made up by people who can’t taste coriander for what it is (delicious).

    david, to random
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    Spotted on a work chat today, the word: okease

    I can only assume they were trying to say ok and please at the same time.

    david, to baking
    @david@theblower.au avatar

    When life gives you lemons…

    …Bake an Italian Lemon Custard Tart

    A top down view of A lemon custard tart in a glass pie plate on a cooling rack. The tart is lined with a sweet lemon pastry, filled with lemon custard, and the top is surrounded by discs of overlapping pastry, and then the whole thing dusted with icing sugar.

    david,
    @david@theblower.au avatar

    The recipe:

    Custard :
    500ml. milk
    2 eggs
    4 tablespoons cornstarch
    6 tablespoons sugar
    80 g. mascarpone
    1 lemon 🍋 (juice)

    Cook to a thick custard, cool, add the cheese and lemon juice. Stir well.

    Pastry:
    1 egg
    120 g. sugar
    lemon zest 🍋
    320 g. Flour
    6 g. baking powder
    140 g. butter

    Reserve 1/3 of pastry for top (clinkered rounds, around the edge).

    30min 180ºC.

    Allow to cool until set.

    david, to random
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    I have an uncanny knack of looking at a clock at 12:34

    david, to animals
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    Pepsì has come to stay for 2 weeks this time. Here he is occupying my lap and preventing me from playing computer games.

    jpmens, to random
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    david,
    @david@theblower.au avatar

    @jpmens By carefully writing a title that warns of the content without actual using any of the triggers that might be in the content.

    A job, clearly, for a public servant.

    david, to food
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    Dinner tonight will be Walnut Gnocchi with mushrooms and broccolini in a butter sauce.

    A tray of slightly pink walnut gnocchi ready for boiling

    david,
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    @jpmens I find potato gnocchi works well boiled. (also nice finished by frying on one side only too)

    Ricotta gnocchi is excellent fried in sage butter in a skillet.

    david,
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    Back in April, I made Walnut

    We didn't eat all of it at the time, so I froze the leftover. I remembered at the time that it was quite soft if boiled, so tonight, I put a good deal of butter in a baking tray, and baked the gnocchi in butter, then added a liberal amount of grated parmigiana regiano on top and we had it as an entrée.
    It was delicious, and worked so much better than boiling this particular style of gnocchi.

    david, to random
    @david@theblower.au avatar

    Currently running the new macOS Sonoma beta off an USB-C connected nVME drive in order to try out the game porting toolkit.

    Who'd have thought 10Gbps was so slow.

    david,
    @david@theblower.au avatar

    Whoohoo It actually works.

    Valheim, running on my M2 Max laptop, at better frame rates than I get on my dedicated windows gaming machine with dual 6 core xeon processors, and an AMD RX6600XT graphics card, all while doing that via a translation layer.

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