Introduction

Hosts:

• MrX
• Dave Morriss

We recorded this on Saturday February 25^th 2024. Our favourite pub for lunch, The Steading, seemed to have closed since we were last there. Research into what was going on led to the information that the company owning this and several other pubs in the area was selling them all.

We decided to try another place in the Pentland Hills area, and went to the Brasserie at Swanston Farm for lunch, which was pretty good. After lunch we as usual adjourned to Dave's Citroen car (Studio C) in the car park, and recorded a chat.

Topics discussed

• YouTube channel recommendations (Dave)
  1. A channel about astronomy and science. Anton goes into a fair amount of depth about subjects in the news relating to these themes: Anton Petrov
     • Recent episode: Study Explains Dark Energy and Inflation as Parallel Universes Colliding
  2. A channel which is all about making things out of junk. No speech, and only a small amount of music as the build comes together: Epic UpCycling
     • Just watched this one, and am in awe! A Treasure Chest of Secret Drawers made from Pallets and Scrap

• Terrible weather with highs winds and / or lashing rain (MrX)
  • Seems to be never ending.
  • Have noticed quite a few fences down
  • Large tree down blocking entrance to local park
  • Both parents houses sustained damage, fences and roof tiles.
  • So far we have been lucky with no damage
  • My mother was injured while going out to rescue her outside bucket

• Possibly related, it seems car insurance prices are increasing (MrX)
  • I have seen some link this to the high repair cost for modern cars because they have lots of high tech included. In particular the sensors placed in bumpers.
  • Some have speculated this to be because the high repair cost of EV's.
  • I came across this YouTube video that shows that global insurance claims have been historically large in recent years due to natural disasters. While the video concentrates on properties I'm sure it also will be affecting car insurance. I believe this likely to be having the most prominent factor for insurance increases. Insurers ABANDONING high climate risk properties

• I got a Steam Deck for Christmas! (Dave)
  • I borrowed my son's Nintendo Switch in November 2023 to see if I could see the screen and play games on it. I could, but haven't played games since the 1980's so I'm terrible at it!
  • I told them I might buy myself a Steam Deck in 2024, but wasn't sure.
  • Much to my surprise my family jointly bought me a Steam Deck for Christmas!
  • I am pretty bad at using it, but I'm practising
  • I'm learning Stardew Valley at first, but I'd quite like to try Kerbal Space Programme at some point.

• Cinema visits / movies: (MrX)
  • Hunger Games pre sequel
    • Was not rated very highly but me and Mrs X actually really enjoyed it.
  • Oppenheimer
    • Knowing something of the background story was advantageous
  • Barbie
    • Watched on DVD!

• Ticks (Dave)
  • We spoke about this subject last time we met. Later, I was reminded of a disease called alpha-gal syndrome, first detected in the USA, which can follow a tick bite.
  • It is caused by the injection of a carbohydrate by the tick, which it has obtained by feeding on another mammal. The carbohydrate is called Galactose-α-1,3-galactose, also known as alpha-gal. This causes a strong immune reaction because it's a foreign substance which isn't found in humans.
  • The result is an allergy to red meat, which contains alpha-gal!
  • This syndrome has been found in the USA and Australia and several other places, but now seems to be coming to Europe and has been seen in the UK.

• Dog-friendly places (MrX)
  • Waterstones book store is dog friendly. Possibly only relevant to people living in Britain? They have a cafe upstairs which accepts dogs.
  • The pub we used to meet in, The Steading, was dog friendly as well. The latest venue does not seem to be, but is a restaurant, not a pub.

• Raspberry Pi stuff (both)
  • Dave pre-ordered a RPi 5 in November 2023 and it arrived in December. He decided to get a Pimoroni NVMe Base to take an SSD, and ordered that once it was available on pre-order. Now the RPi 5 is equipped with a 500GB SSD attached underneath, running off the PCIe interface.
  • Dave is working at setting up two RPi 4B systems, and a RPi 3A to run various services in his house. Currently setting up Pi-hole. The RPi 5 will be added to this combination in due course.
  • MrX bought a RPi 4B in 2023 (as they became more available) which he initially intended setting up with XBMC. He had problems playing certain video resolutions with the latest version of LibreELEC running XBMC. He has now decided to use it to replace an ageing server located upstairs.
  • Dave's 'what_pi' script that tells you about your Pi's settings doesn't work on Raspberry Pi OS since this OS stores the information it needs quite differently from Raspbian.

• Visit to Blackpool (MrX)
  • Met up with family for the long weekend in Blackpool.
  • It was bitterly cold and very windy, but we had a good time.
  • While there we were lucky to get a trip on a 100 year old tram.
  • The tram had very unique seats that allowed you to flip the back over, so they are pointed in either direction, depending on the direction of travel. I thought this was very clever. Haven't seen this on modern buses or trams, perhaps because they don't meet modern safety regulations.

• Edinburgh Trams (MrX)
  • Following Dave's recommendation from our last show. Me, Mrs X and our 4 legged companion took the tram all the way from Ingliston park and ride to Newhaven. Our four legged companion loved the trams.
  • Seems there has been so much development.
  • Saw lots of new things along the way.
  • Lots of other interesting places and walks for future trips.
  • Can't believe it's taken us so long to appreciate the tram. We have used the train in the past but it's a bit limited by the places it goes though it is very convenient from our location.
  • Think we may be using the tram a bit more in future.

• HPR changes (Dave)
  • Ken has enhanced some aspects of the calendar page:
    • Reserved show overview - a list of what's in the reserve queue with date, host and show title (suggestion from Archer72).
    • Statistics - a call interface that returns JSON data containing most of the old statistics plus a few more (requested by MrX).
  • These changes were also mentioned in the last Community News

• TLDR (MrX)
  • Mentioned in one of Klaatu's recent shows
  • From the slang expression TL;DR or tl;dr, short for "too long; didn't read" (see Wikipedia page)
  • Quote: The tldr pages are a community effort to simplify the beloved man pages with practical examples.
  • Details:
    • Website: https://tldr.sh
    • GitHub: https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr
    • Mastodon: https://fosstodon.org/@tldr_pages (@tldr_pages@fosstodon.org)
    • Matrix: https://matrix.to/#/#tldr-pages:matrix.org
  • Many clients available: see https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr/wiki/tldr-pages-clients

• Bash help command (Dave)
  • There is a help command in Bash which is useful for getting information about Bash built-in commands. For example 'help read' will give you a one-page summary of this command which saves a lot of searching through the Bash man page.
  • The example mentioned in the audio 'help test' also works, but since it's a stand-alone command the result is quite similar to typing 'man test'.
  • There are very few (if any) examples though, and that's where tldr will be better!