Peter Mount @peter@area51.social

from birdsite

RT @Raspberry_Pi

If you're too youthful to remember the BBC's Ceefax teletext service, shush. There's a lovely Raspberry-Pi based version over at today's blog, where we can either reminisce or educate ourselves.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/keeping-ceefax-alive-with-nms-ceefax-the-magpi-118/

#teletext #ceefax

Nice, a spreadsheet for the Linux command line!

Someone has ported Lotus 123 for Unix from 1990 to #Linux

https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/linux123.html

You can find 123elf here on GitHub https://github.com/taviso/123elf

#lotus123

One day I'll finish this project off.

It's my web front-end for GoTek drives running the Flash Floppy firmware.

It runs on a Raspberry PI 0W or 0W2 which then acts as the flash drive for the GoTek

You can then access the UI over WiFi, select which disk to present to the GoTek, create, upload or delete disk's without having to unplug from the flash drive.

This works with any Flash Floppy version who's GoTek has the oled display and wheel installed.

Apparently it's not just #towelday but also #525FloppyDay

So Happy floppy day 🤗

Here's a couple of drives, one on the BBC Master 128 (loaded elite from it) and a 1541 for the C64

From birdsite RT @P_Malin

Happy Towel Day.

https://twitter.com/P_Malin/status/1529447261318565891

#TowelDay

Copy of what I posted on birdsite posting here under a CW as most probably not interested in this:

There's 8 photos in the Sue Gray report, all with one common individual present in every one...

4 are for 19 June 2020
4 are for 13 Nov 2020

The full report is here https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1078404/2022-05-25_FINAL_FINDINGS_OF_SECOND_PERMANENT_SECRETARY_INTO_ALLEGED_GATHERINGS.pdf

#partygate

On this day in #space 10 years ago:

At 25 May 2012 16:02 UTC the SpaceX Cargo Dragon flying the COTS Demo Flight 2 first berthed to the #ISS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_COTS_Demo_Flight_2

Although there was supposed to have been 3 demo flights (the first one was to test maneuvering & reentry) but they merged the second two into one mission.

#onthisday

The Martian atmosphere is a problem for landers... dust & static means that dust accumulates on the solar panels.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/red-dust-has-completely-covered-nasas-seismic-spacecraft-on-mars/

Pic of NASA InSight

Top on day 10 after landing
Bottom on 1201 days later

Panels originally generated 5kWh but now only 500Wh

I saw that one, lovely bolt...

From this view I've been nuked 😉

https://www.lightningmaps.org/#m=oss;t=3;s=0;o=0;b=;ts=0;z=10;y=51.1582;x=0.4999;d=2;dl=2;dc=0;

Ah nice to have some storm activity.

It's been raining on and off today, sometimes heavy but just heard thunder for the first time in ages

from birdsite

RT @KariLawler

Early days ... but in the last couple of hours, just trained a #machinelearning model to independently play C64 Track and Field.

Need lots of fine-tuning, but pleased so far!!! (if anyone is interested, PyDirectInput library is a godsend to generate keyboard input). #girlswhocode

https://twitter.com/KariLawler/status/1528827963659235329

from birdsite

RT @RealJamHamster
I've finished my curved screen CRT emulator! 🥳

It has an upscaler to play original systems and an internal Pi 4 with an SD card slot in the back to change operating systems.

It works way better than expected and looks rather nice too! ☺️

https://twitter.com/RealJamHamster/status/1528453104806551553

There's no words for this, and no wonder people are so pissed off with it.

https://www.itv.com/news/2022-05-23/exclusive-pm-pictured-drinking-at-downing-street-party-during-lockdown

At the time we were all in lock down, couldn't see family etc and for those who did break it & had similar parties got £1000 fines whilst this lot only got £50 fines..

All we need now is the report being published & hopefully shows up more of this.

Colin Cantwell, the artist who designed many of the spacecraft in the Star Wars films, has died at the age of 90.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-61547986 #rip

Cantwell's first credit came on Stanley Kubrick's 1968 sci-fi movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Star Wars creator George Lucas then asked him to design and make prototypes for the Death Star, X-Wing, TIE fighter and Imperial Star Destroyer.

Stargate in Lego

https://ideas.lego.com/blogs/a4ae09b6-0d4c-4307-9da8-3ee9f3d368d6/post/02b37887-c361-4d4b-877e-b239d2ca2c8c

Oh brilliant!

Welcome to Luton sign, on the approach to Gatwick.

For those who don't know geography, London Luton is the other side (to the north) of London from London Gatwick

RT @max_fosh
Guilty…

and the quoted tweet

RT @abbdesmond
Flying in to Gatwick, just before landing this is what is out the left window… great prank, deffo at Gatwick 🤣

https://twitter.com/abbdesmond/status/1527923159428653056

This always gets me. If at work we had a maintenance window this long heads would roll.

Even my own stuff it's usually less than an hour at it's worse.

So why is it normal for UK Govt or related sites to have outages measured in days?

from birdsite

"This property is protected by a highly trained chicken"

https://twitter.com/monkeydibbly/status/1527938250052182018

Now the box of continuous paper has arrived the dot matrix printer is now fully working, just need to sort out where to put it 😉

On the linux side it's using this PPD https://www.openprinting.org/printer/Oki/Oki-Microline_IBM_compatible_9_pin

In Cups it's called ML280-Elite and you can use it as any normal printer - except it will print as graphics.

To print from the command line as plain text, which looks better & is quicker, use:

lpr -P ML280-Elite -o raw filename

the -o raw part tells cups not to convert into graphics.

from birdsite

RT @FrancesW96

My mother shielding the robot lawn mower from the rain. Somebody please make a sitcom about my family.

https://twitter.com/FrancesW96/status/1526957942704164865

Also RT @FrancesW96

Update: Larry is now inside “warming up”.

https://twitter.com/FrancesW96/status/1526980462798901249