@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

simon_brooke

@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot

Anarcho-syndicalist, autistic, crofter, cyclist, depressive, entrepreneur, geek, searchable, Zapatista. Politics & environment, especially #LandReform. he/him.

Twitter: https://mastodon.scot/@simon_brooke
GitHub: simon-brooke
FetLife: Simon_Brooke

Credo: Life is harsh. What we can do - and what we should do - is strive to make it less harsh for the people around us.

Addendum: you would not deliberately block a wheelchair ramp. Do not post images to social media without alt text.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

jackdaniel, to Lisp
@jackdaniel@functional.cafe avatar
  • [x] REPL line editing

#ecl #lisp

illustration of line editor

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

@jackdaniel it's pretty, but I've been doing that in for more than forty years, and I don't think it was state of the art when I first learned.

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

@jackdaniel BBC Micro #Lisp back in 1982 (on a 6502), followed by Cambridge Lisp from about 1984, followed by Interlisp-D from 1986. I did use Harlequin's LispWorks about 1989, but not extensively. Can't remember whether Franz had REPL editing in those days, and there was an early PC Common Lisp called Golden something, but I can't remember whether it had REPL editing either.

It strikes me as really embarrassing that so many modern Common Lisp REPLs don't.

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

@lispm @jackdaniel I think two features are important: to be able to move the cursor within the input expression and to make changes to it, and the ability to scroll back through previous input expressions, to edit and redo.

petelittle1970, to windows
@petelittle1970@masto.alittleofnothing.co.uk avatar

ok people. Lend me your brains!

My 2TB HDD died. I didn't lose anything too precious but I did lose some stuff I'm annoyed about.

I'm buying myself another HDD (not an SSD) and Ive considered RAID (5 or 10?) but I doubt I'll go with that as I'll need to buy several HDD's

However I'm looking at backup options. I've looked at Macrium but don't know what/where to back up to.

Another HDD? DVD? Blu-Ray? External SSD? Cloud? Hand inscribed binary in Tungsten sheets? XD

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

@petelittle1970 I use external SSDs plus cloud. But SSDs are said to be not as good for long term storage as actual rotating rust, especially if left unpowered for extended periods.

One advantage of an external SSD (or hard drive, for the matter of that) is it's a small enough package to conveniently rotate off site, if you don't have a cloud option you trust.

simon_brooke, to random
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

Yesterday I put the new oil seal into the transmission input shaft of the tractor. Pushing the seal and bearing back into place beyond me, so once again I took it to my friendly local blacksmith, who interrupted work on a customer job, made up a special adapter, and pressed the bearing into place with his hydraulic press – and would accept no payment. I'm fortunate to live in a place where this is normal.

Finn cutting a 90mm steel pipe to make an adapter to press the bearing home. He is kneeling on a concrete floor and using a cut-off grinder.
Finn grinding the adapter to size on a linisher. Behind him is the job – a chassis for a mobile cabin – he was working on when I interrupted him.
Pressing the bearing into its seat with the hydraulic press.

Richard_Littler, to sport
@Richard_Littler@mastodon.social avatar

I still find it utterly absurd that is a mandatory part of all news broadcasts. For someone with zero interest in sport, it has sounded like this to me for 50+ years: "Those were the main news headlines... Now, rodent news: Manchester Zoo has loaned Señor Fluffi, a Spanish gerbil, from Zoo Aquarium de Madrid for £20 million. They have also expressed interest in acquiring a squirrel..."

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

@Richard_Littler a favourite political podcast of mine invariably ends with some random irrelevant football (or golf, or hockey(!)) guff. I find it hard to believe that even 10% of the audience appreciates it.

Snoro, to Scotland
@Snoro@mastodon.social avatar

How do Scottish People Feel About Current Climate Policy?

Only 12% of Scots reported feeling satisfied with the current pace of climate action. Meanwhile, 45% of Scots expressed dissatisfaction with the current climate policies, with 24% being very unsatisfied and 21% unsatisfied

https://www.digit.fyi/how-do-scottish-people-feel-about-current-climate-policy/

#Scotland #MassExtinction #pollution #ecology #environment #climate

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

@Snoro it's certainly why I shall not be voting again. You cannot have growth on a finite planet, and on a dead planet would be a very hollow victory.

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

@muminitaly @Snoro for me. Which is pretty much the same as spoiling my ballot paper, unless a lot of other folk do the same. Which I guess means I ought to start campaigning for that to happen.

It would be kind of nice if @ScottishGreens had more seats at Westminster than the English – but even nicer if the English Greens overtake the LibDems.

TechDesk, (edited ) to ai
@TechDesk@flipboard.social avatar

A female computational neuroscience and machine learning expert took to X at the weekend to describe a “dark side” of the startup culture in Silicon Valley.

Sonia Joseph alleged that a culture of sexual coercion has taken hold of San Francisco’s community housing tech scene, with “heavy LSD use” and “sex parties held by mainly male tech and entrepreneurial elites that involve mock-violent role playing with female participants.”

In particular, “early OpenAI employees” were referenced by Joseph, as well as their friends and “adjacent entrepreneurs.” Salon has more.

https://flip.it/t5RReK

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

@TechDesk why does this not surprise me in the least?

fedops, to random
@fedops@fosstodon.org avatar

@fitheach @simon_brooke @giantspacesquid do any of you sell your trees?

Thinking of getting a piece of land cleared to convert into a pasture with fruit trees. That means removing 300 dense-stand silver firs; 40 years old, average 40 cm breast height diameter and 15m high.

The offer I've gotten is 5 Eur/tree, for thermal use. This is ~8% of what firewood goes for, or 10% of the equivalent cost in heating oil. But it saves me min. 5 years of work and still leaves me with 700 trees.

Thoughts?

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

@fedops @fitheach @giantspacesquid I've not even thought of selling my wood. The labour of hauling it out wouldn't be worth it for the profit you'd make. So I'm mostly giving it away, because when you give stuff away you somehow don't count the labour cost!

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

@fedops @fitheach @giantspacesquid I bought a bandsaw sawmill to cope with the wind-blown timber, and so far we've built one house for a friend with the timber and have enough already cut to build a substantial hut for another friend. The sawmill was a good buy.

simon_brooke, to random
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

I've been listening to the second half of The Rest Is Politics interview with #Kwarteng, and my take away is what TRIVIAL people everyone involved is. Kwarteng is supposed to be one of the intellects of the #Tory party, but they can none of them – not Kwarteng, not Campbell, not even Stewart – string two concepts together.

Leading: 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2)

Episode webpage: http://therestispolitics.com/

Media file: https://pdst.fm/e/chrt.fm/track/A27C8C/traffic.megaphone.fm/GLT7979855855.mp3?updated=1715358972

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

At the end of the interview, Stewart sums up by saying "you get the sense that [#Kwarteng] is very clever". I didn't. I got the sense that he was rather stupid, rather shallow, rather trivial; but very posh.

And I think that the problem at the heart of UK parliamentary politics is that they mistake a posh accent for intelligence.

#Conservatives
#Eton
#UKPol

waldoj, to random
@waldoj@mastodon.social avatar

Heat pumps and induction ranges are two strong examples of products that are better environmentally and better products than their gas/oil competitors, for almost everybody. (EVs will get there, but they’re not there yet.)

Because carbon emissions are free, it’s important that low-emission new products be clearly better than the polluting status quo. It’s a high bar, it’s not fair, but I’m glad we have heat pumps and induction ranges as a model.

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

@waldoj EVs actually won't get there. They're already obsolete. What we need is smaller, lighter, less powerful vehicles, not bigger, heavier, more powerful ones.

Something much more like is the answer.

alanferrier, to random
@alanferrier@mastodon.scot avatar

A typical nuclear reactor produces about 1 GW of electricity.

The Pentland Firth alone has the potential for about 4.2 GW of tidal stream power.

Waiting for the naysayers to ask me what we'll do when the moon no longer orbits the earth.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960148113005466

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

@lostsettler @alanferrier The tidal drag already exists with rocky coastlines. It's unlikely that even very many very large tidal arrays will increase that drag to a measurable degree.

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

@lostsettler I wouldn't expect the net effect of many wind turbines to affect the earth's rotation, because

  1. Wind turbines are driven by wind, which is essentially convection and driven by power from the Sun, not the Earth; and
  2. Although the prevailing winds in Scotland are Westerlies, and so wind farms in Scotland will tend to (slightly) impose additional drag on the rotation of the Earth, turbines in areas with prevailing Easterlies will tend to (slightly) accelerate it.
mir, to random

wait.... self hostable static website holster...

that's literally just nginx. and apache. every webserver that does anything can serve static sites. that used to be the point...

RE: https://tech.lgbt/users/ShadowJonathan/statuses/112461245478442637

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

@crmsnbleyd @zyd @grinn @mir

"I believe the vision is a Web UI where you can drag and drop HTML/CSS/js files and have them show up as part of the final site"

That's called Nautilus + scp (or just WinSCP if you're a heathen).

Personally I use scp -r, because does the good book not say, "in the beginning was the command line"?

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

UK government adviser on disruptive protest accused of conflict of interest:

John Woodcock, whose review proposes bans for protest groups, has lobbying links to firms in arms and fossil fuel sectors (and is recommending bans on protests against both those industries)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/17/government-adviser-on-disruptive-protest-accused-of-conflict-of-interest

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

@BashStKid @HighlandLawyer @glitzersachen @cstross they'll all have to go because there's no place for an appointed legislative chamber in a democracy. The whole institution is systematically corrupt.


simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

@BashStKid @HighlandLawyer @glitzersachen @cstross where in the world do you have an appointed legislative chamber that isn't corrupt? Ours includes many people who have simply bought their way in, including one who is the son of a very senior foreign spy from a hostile country, and others who are there simply because they were friends and/or sexual partners of former prime ministers.

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

@HighlandLawyer @BashStKid @glitzersachen @cstross Or you could have no second chamber at all, like all modern democracies.

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

@HighlandLawyer @BashStKid @glitzersachen @cstross Name one democratic constitution written in the past fifty years anywhere in the world which mandates a second chamber.

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

@glitzersachen @melanie @BashStKid @HighlandLawyer @cstross it's not democratic at all. The Council of Ministers do not really have any democratic accountability, and in any case meets behind closed doors. The Commission, although in principle a civil service function, acts more politically than most civil services do, and has no accountability. The parliament, while a good thing in itself, has little real power.

simon_brooke, to random
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

This week's major project is splitting the tractor, to replace the failed oil seal which is leaking oil from the gearbox into the clutch housing. We've got to the point where the only thing still holding the front half of the tractor to the rear is the steering linkage, and I can't remember how we split that last time!

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

The Book Of Words says "unhook return spring (11) from release fork".

Aye, right.

With what infernal power are we expected to do this?

The actual internals of the clutch housing. The return spring is wound from rod more than 4mm in diameter, and hooked onto a tab more than 20mm long.

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

And that's another achievement unlocked, but I confess I had to recruit the aid of my friendly local blacksmith to find the solution.

Next challenge: remove the input shaft retainer (that's the small circular plate near the top of the big circular plate). I've removed the five screws that secured it.

The manual just says "withdraw the retainer", and I'm looking at it and thinking "aye, right". There must be a way...

simon_brooke,
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

And that's done, too, resulting in a flood of filthy oil out of the gearbox. Fortunately I had a catch tray handy!

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • JUstTest
  • rosin
  • ngwrru68w68
  • osvaldo12
  • DreamBathrooms
  • mdbf
  • magazineikmin
  • thenastyranch
  • Youngstown
  • khanakhh
  • everett
  • slotface
  • tacticalgear
  • kavyap
  • provamag3
  • cisconetworking
  • Leos
  • GTA5RPClips
  • ethstaker
  • InstantRegret
  • cubers
  • modclub
  • Durango
  • anitta
  • tester
  • normalnudes
  • megavids
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •