NAB

NAB, 1 month ago to Eurovision

Last #eurovision thoughts of the season.
#france should have won - a better song and better sung.
#norway deserved more points.
#unitedkingdom tried to make up for a so-so ditty with incredible staging, but I'm not sure the sweaty-sexy side of it worked well (but it could just be that it wasn't aimed at me).
#netherlands were missed (the song, anyway, we'll see what has to be said about the singer)
#ireland was still my favourite and for bonus points the singer seems to be a nice person too.

NAB, 2 months ago to random

A quick favour if anybody can help - I volunteer with a charity, Clothing Coventry (https://clothingcoventry.org/). They've just taken on a full-time administrator who needs a computer. I have a PC, keyboard and mouse, but I'm short of a monitor.
So.... Does anybody happen to have a monitor they don't need any more and they're happy to post to Coventry? Ideally 16:9 1080p minimum?
Your help would be very much appreciated.

NAB, 2 months ago to random

If I'm following somebody and remember that they posted something within the last fortnight (which I failed to bookmark) and I know what one of the words was in their post, how on earth do I search for that post?
It can't be difficult, so I'm missing something obvious. Feeling grrr with myself.
Posting this here as I've given up and am hoping somebody will point me at the (no doubt blindingly obvious) button to click.

NAB, 2 months ago to random

Argh. Panic. samknows.com, that trusty site for broadband availability and exchange capabilities, has disappeared - well, it's now Cisco and all the useful stuff has disappeared. Shame.

NAB, 2 months ago to random

A friend wants to use Splitwise to sort out who's paying what for a holiday. I've read their privacy policy and I don't like it one bit - "personal details used for advertising and may be passed abroad where anything can be done with them".
If it were up to me, then a shared spreadsheet would be fine, but I wondered if anybody knows of and can recommend a FOSS alternative?

NAB, 3 months ago to random

This morning's 'WTF?' moment - I've just been asked by a solicitor to provide my name, DOB, NI number, address, telephone numbers, bank account details (name, sort code and number) and facsimile of my signature ... BY PLAIN TEXT EMAIL.

NAB, 3 months ago to random

A good evening spent online with the @emf kitchen team menu planning/sizing a week's worth of food. If you're coming and if you're volunteering, you should be well fed!
And if you're eating breakfast there, you can thank me for a great full English (or curse me if you don't rate it).
#emf #emfcamp

NAB, 3 months ago to discworld

‘Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?’ - Going Postal
#GNUTerryPratchett
#Discworld

NAB, 3 months ago to random

Today is the last day of a dry month. I thought not drinking may help me break through the weight loss target I set last year. It didn't - it seems I don't drink enough for it to have made a difference.
So what has a dry month done for me? About the only thing I can put my finger on is it's made me more grumpy - I really missed sitting down with a decent glass of wine or pint of beer at the end of the day two or three times a week.
Ah well, I won't be making that mistake again - live and learn!

NAB, 3 months ago to random

Being optimistic for a change, I'm hoping that this news will see BT/OR start to concentrate more on areas VM don't cover. Like MY BLOODY HOUSE.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/19/virgin_media_product_to_rival_openreach/

NAB, 3 months ago to random

E-mail from Disney telling me our D+ subscription will be going up to £110/yr. Or I can click on the link and see what other options are available to me...
Except when I click on the link, everything is shown at the pre-March price increase prices, so I'm none the wiser.
Even the current £80 made me stop and think, so I suspect a ridiculous 40% (nearly) increase will just see me cancel completely.

NAB, 3 months ago to random

@neil I know it's not what you're after, but this has been on my mind for a while and I think I have a solution for my use case. Posting it here as I have this thread bookmarked... 🙂
For various reasons, I want to be able to play audio around the house (like "Front door has been left open", "Garage unlocked" etc.) and so having some form of cheap remote speaker hanging off a media server I can control from the home automation system would be perfect.
...

NAB, 4 months ago to random

With the next tranche of #emf tickets about to go on sale, a reminder that if you want feeding while you're there, volunteer to help run the event.
Just a short shift gives you a meal voucher for food from the camp kitchen. If you want a full English (veggie/vegans catered for too), then I'll even cook it for you!

NAB, 4 months ago to random

Aaaaargh. d'Oh, d'Oh, d'Oh.
Next time, use ">>" and NOT ">" when trying to append to /etc/fstab.
#stupid

NAB, 4 months ago to random

The two sides of AI:
1 - That it can interpret a single command and produce something as complicated as this, and
2 - That it can get it so completely wrong.

That it can (1) is, when you take a step back, quite amazing. That (2) makes you wonder how (1) is even possible.

NAB, 4 months ago to random

So The Sunday Times are reporting that universities are offering much lower grades for admittance to foreign students willing to pay ££££s than they are to UK students.
Well now, who'd have thought that turning universities into businesses would see them start to behave like... businesses?

NAB, 4 months ago to random

I do some work for a charity and I've been asked to advise on software to use for internal communications - both day to day, but also to document trustee and CEO decisions to demonstrate compliance. For ephemeral conversations, Matrix is fine, but it's a longer term documentation management system I'm struggling to find - it needs to store documents (docx, xls etc.), but also have some form of wiki/diary type entry. But all this needs to be immutable and/or audited.
Any ideas?

NAB, 5 months ago to random

This morning - conversation with a friend about food hygiene certificates. "Pah, it's all common sense", says I, "I bet I could pass with full marks without doing the training".
Well, I won that bet. Twice over, in fact - whilst food hygiene is common sense, my reading the description of what I purchased was a complete failure and I now have a Level 2 in Catering and a Level 2 in allergies. Both at 100% though.

NAB, 5 months ago to random

For some strange reason, YouTube has started recommending 'reacts' videos - you know, where some 'expert' you've never heard of reacts to something that, if they truly were an expert, they would have heard/seen many years previously.
I watched five minutes of one (musician reacts to Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb) and I don't get it - why are these a popular thing?

NAB, 5 months ago to random

After much faffing about, people surveying, people not bothering to survey and so on, it's apparent that we don't have "the right roof" for solar.
So, I want to put panels in the garden instead. Local council planning says 9m² maximum without permission (and we won't get permission for more - which counts as a 'solar farm') as we're in the green belt.
Anyway, I'm now looking for mounts/poles/frames, but yet again my google-fu is letting me down. I'd be grateful for any pointers...

NAB, 5 months ago to random

I'd like to say "happy new year to all". Unfortunately I seem to have drunk rather a lot and am speaking incoherently. I still appear able to drunk-toot though.

NAB, 5 months ago to thinkpad

HELP!!
My nine year old laptop is dying (falling to bits, wireless network flakey (probably a loose solder joint somewhere), screen needs the occasional clout).
I'm looking at a 7th generation 4K #Thinkpad #X1Carbon. Has anybody with one had any problems putting #Debian on it? Is there anything I need to watch out for?

NAB, 6 months ago to random

I'm after a Tasmota (or at least MQTT) mains switch that will happily support a sustained current of 16A (a 3kW heater will be plugged in, but the voltage here does drop to 200v at times), so I need margin for error.
I can build my own, but it'd be clunky. Does anybody know of a cheap-ish (<£25) one box solution?

NAB, 7 months ago to random

My #htmly server keeps breaking (won't let me log in to add pages). A re-install gets it working again, but then it breaks a couple of weeks later. No idea why. Nothing in the logs. Fed up.
Is there a good very simple and lightweight blogging/web platform anybody would recommend?

NAB, 7 months ago to random

Continuing the "why can't I get #FTTP when there's lit fibre right outside my gate" saga...

A couple of #openreach engineers turned up today so I went out for a chat. Yes, there is lit fibre right outside my house and what's there is the main junction for the cable going North back to the exchange, into the two villages East and West and then down to multiple villages to the South.

The engineers had turned up today to patch in a new customer in the village to the South.