mike

@mike@mikecoats.social

Active Travel 'enthusiast'. IT Manager. Views & tweets are my own. Retweets not endorsements.

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mike, to linux

My latest blog post: Data loss, a blind-spot in my backup strategy

Last week I suffered a catastrophic disk failure, leaving my 1TB NVMe drive completely unreadable. Luckily I have backups, I thought.

https://mikecoats.com/a-blind-spot-in-my-backup-strategy/

#code #linux #opensource

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

My first recycling collection rant - not quite as expected...

https://www.revk.uk/2024/03/the-first-council-rant-and-my-apologies.html

I feel a new e-paper project coming on.

mike,

@revk Bin calendar by UPRN? Very jealous!

mike, to Tesco

#Tesco are having a bit of a moment. Looks like my afternoon’s plans are now battling my way round the local store.

“We're really sorry we’ve had to cancel your order today and for the inconvenience this will have caused. We work very hard to deliver to our customers, but unfortunately, this time something has gone wrong.”

Can’t wait to see how busy it’s going to be if they’ve cancelled half the nation’s deliveries on a Sunday afternoon!

Edent, to android
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

What's the cheapest way to get Google Wallet on a smartwatch?

The Galaxy Watch 4 is about £150 - which seems a bit pricey for a digital watch, no matter how neat. But I accept I may be out of touch.

Anyone found anything cheaper?

(Not looking for 2nd hand. Needs to support several credit cards. Not interested in Apple.)

mike,

@Edent If you’re also in the mood for a new phone, you can sometimes get a Galaxy Watch for free.

When Samsung come out with the new Galaxy Sn, they’ll often try to shift the remaining Galaxy Sn-1 stock by bundling a watch FoC. That’s how my dad picked up his Galaxy Watch for £0.

That presupposes a bunch of other things like willingness to spend ~£1k to save £150, being open to Samsung handsets, etc. but it’s definitely the cheapest watch I’ve seen.

craiggrannell, to random
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

Me: I wonder why the goldfinches aren’t using the feeder anymore.

Feeder: Actually growing plants inside, despite having only been refilled two weeks ago.

Me: Ah. cleans feeder

Goldfinch, now: nom nom nom (But I am leaving a 3-star Yelp review)

——

(I do love seeing goldfinches in our garden. Quite hard to attract them in the UK. But once they find a source they often stick with it for a long time. My job to keep that source alive. The rain isn’t helping…)

mike,

@craiggrannell I don’t know where in the UK you are, but in Inverness our Goldfinches are pretty excited by Niger seed. Once the local population gets wind of a Niger feeder they’ll happily bankrupt you with seed costs.

They are stunning, though.

mike, to random

@simon I’ve a simple, 1 line, fix for a bug/feature in sqlite-utils. Would you prefer I create an issue first, or are you alright with just a PR to address it?

mike,

@simon Perfect! That’s my preference too.

mike,

@simon That’s issue and PR submitted! I think I’ve probably over explained a 1 line fix, but hopefully you get the gist of it.

Edent, to HowTo
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

🆕 blog! “Find the URl causing your WordPress Error”

PHP has some pretty good error handling and logging, but I do sometimes find it confusing. For example, look at this warning message: [18-Oct-2023 12:34:56 UTC] PHP Warning: Something bad happened in /wp-content/something.php on line 123 OK, so we can go to something.php and scroll to line 123 and try to figure out wha…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/10/find-the-url-causing-your-wordpress-error/
⸻
#HowTo #php #WordPress

mike,

@Edent I love posts like these! It’s so obviously scratching such a specific itch that it makes me wonder what you were doing to find the problem in the first place?

True, beautiful, old school blogging.

mike, to random

I’ve never heard of Antoinette Sandbach before. I only know her for one thing now, though.

Well done!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/31/ex-tory-mp-threatens-sue-cambridge-university-slavery-research-antoinette-sandbach

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66648763

Edent, to random
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

Are you able to select the text in the image on this page?

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2014/08/selecting-text-in-images-pure-svg-no-javascript/

I wrote this experiment back in 2014 and I'm keen to know how well it works on modern browsers.

(I know iOS does automatic text recognition, but this should work cross-platform.)

mike,

@Edent It’s working grand in Safari on iOS 16.6.

You’d never guess there’s trickery in play unless you spotted the invisible character widths slightly diverging from the image’s text.

mike, to random

Common sense has prevailed! Councillors have listened to the public and the Academy Street plans are progressing.

If you only read the Inverness Courier in the run up to the vote you’d have thought there was nothing but opposition to the plans but private messages of support to councillors vastly outweighed the naysayers.

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/inverness/6090421/academy-street-inverness-vote-traffic-highland-council/

simonvarwell, to random Esperanto
@simonvarwell@mastodon.scot avatar

Our local rag is a contemptible outlet, not least of late as it rails against the (modest and frankly inadequate) baby steps being proposed by our council to aim to stop through-access for cars on our city centre’s choked up and dangerous thoroughfare, Academy Street. It goes to a vote next week.

So it is a tragic irony that the paper, seemingly with no self-awareness, reports on their website two instances of horrible anti-bike violence by drivers.

Their inability to join the dots is vile.

A news headline: cyclist taken to hospital after collision with car.

mike,

@simonvarwell I’m writing my emails to the councillors indicating my support for Academy Street today in the vain effort that top of inbox might mean front of mind. Those two horrendous incidents will be being mentioned.

mike,

@simonvarwell Of all the local councils I’ve “observed” on social media, THC do seem to have taken the “consultations are not referendums” message to heart more than most others. They “just got on” with making most of the city 20mph, which is encouraging.

I know I’ll never sway some of the more “pro-business” members, but a boy can dream.

Edent, to random
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

A curious phrase:

> One bird’s-eye view of the moon was taken from 70 kilometers (43.5 miles) above the lunar surface

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/22/world/chandrayaan-3-landing-photos-india-scn/index.html

How high do birds usually fly?

(This is a rhetorical question; there are no birds on the moon.)

mike,

@Edent What if we just don’t have telescopes with the optical resolving power to see the birds? They might have been there all along!

Edent, to retirement
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

Boring adulting question time! (Hey, what else are Sunday mornings for?)

Does anyone here have a provider they recommend?

As I've now quit my job (😬) I need to sock some money away for .

Any suggestions from people in the UK would be most welcome.

(FTAOD I know how to use Google - I'm looking for people who have a SIPP provider they personally use.)

mike,

@Edent I’ve not gone “out to market” for a few years, so I’ve no idea if there’s anyone better out there, but I’ve been happy with BestInvest for my SIPP.

I’ve only ever used them for a supplemental pension back in my bonus-earning private sector days - never my main one. I’ve been meaning to consolidate a few old pensions in one place which I believe they allow.

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