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Profile for paul

Header for paul: A view from, we assume, the space station of a rocket launching from the planet earth, through the clouds, and into space.
Avatar for paul: A black dog holding a tennis ball in his mouth.
Display name
Paul Wilde :dontpanic2: :smeghead: :archlinux: :freebsd:
Username
@paul@notnull.space
Role
admin

About paul

Bio

Husband
Dog owner
Cat owner (multiple)
FOSS Enthusiast
IT Professional
Coffee, no milk, no sugar

I've made some stuff like these things below:
https://norgbackup.net - a borg and restic orchestration tool
https://codeberg.org/pswilde/note - a simple pastebin (inspired by bin)
https://codeberg.org/pswilde/nemini - a gemini server
https://pswilde.codeberg.page/threadlogging_docs/threadlogging.html - threadlogging library for #Nim
https://codeberg.org/pswilde/gts_emoji_importer - an emoji importer for GoToSocial
https://codeberg.org/pswilde/fedi_auth - a basic fediverse authentication library for #Nim

I've also made a cool website for wholesome responses to error codes. Check it out here: https://errors.notnull.space

I make no apologies for using H2G2 puns. We apologise for the inconvenience.

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Well there.
I've done it.
I've released the first version of my Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy mod for @Luanti

https://codeberg.org/pswilde/h2g2_luanti

or, a pending review link on ContentDB
https://content.luanti.org/packages/paulwilde/h2g2/

The nodes and tools are waaaaaaaay overpowered, but that's all part of the fun!

#H2G2 #HHGTTG #Luanti

(whispers: @rl_dane ... of course it's live on the server already :dontpanic_nobg: )

Recent posts

Me as a kid: "Nooo, don't take Data's artwork from him. He made it fair and square. It's his!"

Me now: "No, that computer did not create that artwork. It stole it from many real artists. Shut the thing down and remove it's processor. Quick."

#AI

Star Trek, Luanti, and navigating the whole thing.
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Today I learned on the schematic of the 1973 #StarTrek Blueprints of the Constitution class ship, there is no staircase, nor corridor, between the main saucer section and dorsal section (Deck 8).
There are staircases between all other decks, but the only way to get between the saucer section and dorsal (and, of course, on to the secondary hull) is via turbo-lift.

This makes sense of course - Deck 8 is where the attachment lugs are between the saucer and dorsal/secondary hull - so in the event of separation, a staircase would naturally be vulnerable area - would need to have some sort of bulkhead, and has the potential of people being trapped on the staircase mid-separation.

Anyway, I found this out while trying to time how long it would take to walk between the end of a warp nacelle and the bridge on my #Luanti build of the Enterprise. I found myself unable to walk out of the Dorsal section on Deck 8.

For those still wondering how long it may take - if you use the turbo-lift to get between Deck 8 and Deck 7, and continue walking from there, it's about 3-4 minutes (not accurately timed, just rough)

 a Luanti made representation of the USS Enterprise 1701 from Star trek.

Wow, I feel special!
I've had a nonsense issue raised on one of my @Codeberg repos
Although... it seems to have disappeared, so I'm guessing Codeberg have been awesome and realized it's spam and deleted it 👍️

"Frustation", "Why can't there be", "Basic functionality", "Tedious", "Driving me nuts"... all seem a bit of an overreaction, are people really stealing emojis from other instances so regularly it causes frustration? (No, no they're not, this is AI slop)

#AISlop

 I'm facing some serious frustration with the emoji overwrite behavior in GoToSocial Emoji Importer. From what I understand, if I have a custom emoji named happy.png, I cannot overwrite it with a new happy.png file unless I delete the original first. This makes managing custom emojis a total headache, especially if I want to update them frequently without having to jump through hoops every single time. Why can't there be an option to automatically overwrite existing emojis? It just seems like basic functionality to me. It would save so much time if we could simply import the new version and replace the old one without this ridiculous manual deletion step. Additionally, what if I have multiple emojis that need to be updated? Do I seriously have to delete each one before I can upload the new versions? This is not only tedious, but it also leads to a lot of potential errors and management issues. Seriously, is there any way to implement a smoother emoji updating process? I hope this gets some attention because it's been driving me nuts trying to manage these custom emojis under the current restrictions.

On the highly unlikely event that somebody who is in the process if booking a holiday there, I highly advise NOT booking your stay at Hoburne Cotswolds Reach holiday park.

We aimed to get away for the weekend, just a quick stay away - done it a hundred times, at the same vendor's (Hoburne) parks. But this place specifically was horrendous.

As soon as we arrived we noticed an awful smell from the carpet of our designated place. It was so late that we just hoped it was a smell that would pass so opened all the windows. Next morning - no better. Went to reception to ask what they could do and they sent housekeeping around. When we got back, the smell was still there and a bottle of room deodoriser was left for us.... Hmm.
When we complained again to reception and got the manager involved they simply didn't want to know - they didn't even come to our place to see what we were complaining about.

We'd normally put up with some things, dirty mugs, unclean shower etc. as those can be washed but this was too much. Long story short, we're back home now - but even 200 miles doesn't clear our nostrils of the smell 🤢

(The smell was not unlike a dog that had rolled in fox poo and then rolled around the entire carpet as well - the carpet had the colour to match that too... though it was supposed to be grey)

/rant

Google seems to have its tentacles in the #NHS now.
Absolutely no good reason why the chrome app would make anything faster or more secure. The whole app is basically just a website anyway - it should work in any browser.

 A screenshot from the UK NHS App showing a pop up prompt. Title: Chrome Recommended Message: install the chrome web browser for the best NHS app experience. It lets you log in faster and more securepy. Without it app may not work as intended. The poor grammar above is real, it's not just me mistyping iy.

Wow, the latest (or recent - I hadn't updated in a while...) version of #Gatus is fantastic!

External Endpoint heartbeat alerts (effectively the same as other software's "Push" monitors), which I've been a requester for, are awesome!
But what I didn't realize is that Gatus now supports #SSHTunnelling ! I can remove my clunky self-written rubbish from production and put everything in Gatus - fantastic!

https://github.com/TwiN/gatus

I thoroughly recommend visiting Terence Coventry's Sculpture Park near #Coverack in #Cornwall

There's about 50 different sculptures made from a range of materials all spotted around a lovely group of fields near the coast.

Admission is free, but please leave a donation

#ThingsToDoInCornwall #Art #Sculpture

 A sculpture of a large white horse made of a powder coated metal. It's stood in the middle of a large field.

Pets and Cattle.
We all know the "pets and cattle" paradigm for servers? I.e. pet = a server you tirelessly maintain to keep it active and operational whereas cattle = a server you can flatten and reprovision as and when needed?

Well, I'm gonna say it, if your entire business infrastructure relies on a single provider and you confidently say things like "There's no alternative to #AWS, #Azure and #GCP" - you have pets. A lot of pets.
Worse actually, they're pets you treat as cattle

#PetsAndCattle

It seems #3CX are going to be hiking their prices again - I forgave this last time as it's fair they get money for the development of the product, but now the price hike is for apparent AI integration.
I do not want, nor need, #AI in my phone system.

Definitely not happy - especially considering I run 3CX on infrastructure I operate and have control of. I should have the choice not to have AI enabled, and I should not be paying for it if I'm not using it.

Time to seriously sort out an alternative - any recommendations would be welcome!

#PhoneSystems #PBX

I wonder how everyone is feeling now, having all their shit in #AWS.
I had one client out, and that was only because their internet provider had some of their backbone on AWS... i think, might have been a coincidence, but the downtime is rather similar.

My client? Oh, they're fine, #OPNSense switched over to their secondary connection and ensured they have some kind of connectivity, if a little slower.

What #command do you use most often across systems?

Me:
#Linux and BSD: cd or ls
#MacOS: cd or ls... After I've found my way to the actual terminal
#Windows: probably sfc /scannow

(That's right, this was a Windows insult buried in a social question!)

For those that don't know, England has had a weird thing going on recently where people have been spray painting the English flag (white background with red cross) on white road markings around the country.
I don't want to get into the "right to use our flag" nor the history of questionable empire, colonialism and modern day thuggery that means showing the English flag has aggressive and racist undertones, but I do want to say one thing:
It's an awful flag.

Got an email from a middle-manager at a client's at 00:45 last with a simple line: "Can I use Fyxer AI for my emails?"

Obviously my answer is much longer than a simple "Yes/No" like they are expecting (and yes, it will be "No"), filled with reasons why allowing an LLM free access to your entire mailbox is just a horrifically bad idea, but does anyone know anything about Fyxer AI?

I'm not really after reasons why it is perceived to be good, a simple internet search shows me hundreds of these reviews (many written by LLMs of course!). I'm after an honest critique explaining what it does, what it has access to, and potentially any stories of where it didn't work as expected, for good or bad reasons, and what problems is caused or prevented in the process. And of course the long term plan for it when the money stops.

#AI

Recursive slop machines, they're recursive slop machines.

Had the "no option but, for this service" misfortune of having to use a Recursive slop machine

Me: "How can I export xyz with the associated abc information?"
RSM: "brilliant question. you can do this by ..." Proceeds to give a response for how to export xyz without talking about abc, which is obvious.
Me: "No, I need the associated abc with each xyz"
RSM: "I'm very sorry, you're right I did not read the question properly. You can export xyz by ... But this will not include the abc. You can export all abcs by ..." Answer of how to export abc, only a list of abcs, with their reference ID, but the xyz export does not include these IDs so it's useless.
Me: "is there a way to export all the xyz, with abc reference IDs?"
RSM: same as answer 1

Rinse and repeat.
When does my productivity get better? i'm waiting.

I hate them.
They need to go away.

"But wait, Paul, it might just be a badly trained LLM" - is there a "well trained" LLM? (Hint: the answer is No)

Well - I just absolutely lost my temper with a client and their website provider because the website provider deciding sending contact form emails from an unregistered domain name is perfectly fine - ignoring my advice of why you should not use basic SMTP authentication for contact forms and I recommended they either set up their own mail server to handle it or, preferably, use something like formspree or basin.

But no, unregistered domain name it is, and apparently everything is fine.

I am strongly not in support of this. It's stupid. And I have told them so.

#SysAdmin #Website #Security