hello welcome to
category five coffee break i'm bp nine
welcome and uh way over to my
left is sobu top left give us a wave
sobe thank you very much
next to him is doug give us a wave doug
thank you sir
and then me on bp9 and then uh
bottom left is peter give us away peter
thank you and then brian give us a wave
sir
hello brian good to see you thank you um
i understand you all switched to uh uh
to daylight savings time in europe so
i'm glad you all made it no problem
um i'm on a new setup my my i'll tell
you the whole story about the laptop in
a few minutes but
we had tornadoes blew through here um
earlier earlier this week and knocked
the power out so i wasn't sure if i was
going to be able to
do the coffee break this week but it
looks like
it looks like we're all good there
all right peter sorry man
right there we go um right
uh let's see the laptop saga
what a mess um i had planned
to put in a shiny new one terabyte
ssd that was my plan so
the first thing i did before i uh before
i uh put this
you know went to pull out the old ssd to
plug that one in
turned it back on again to make sure it
would all boot up right and do all the
right things
it would not boot it would not turn on
i should say but no activity on the uh
on the lights at all normally what
happens when you
very first turn it on is the caps light
lock
flashes that's the only indication that
i know
that the power is is working on that
machine
and it the caps lock light did not flash
the screen did not come on none of it um
so i just said i am done with this i've
had enough of this garbage
i packed it back in its box and i sent
it back to dell so
it's their problem now i'm not going to
repair it i'm not going to ask for a
repair
stay those those um
i'm not going to say i've got to be
careful what i say
but those support folks um
uh get into you i got off the script you
know it didn't take
like five minutes to fall off their
script because
all they do as you know is they they
work through whatever the computer tells
them to tell them
and the initial problem was that i
couldn't
get the laptop to recognize my
sata sata
hard drive i had a spinning hard drive i
reported this last week i had a spinning
hard drive
and i had an ssd sat a format
and it wouldn't work it didn't even it
didn't
uh even want to um want to play
so uh it wouldn't the bios would not
even recognize the uh
the the sata drive so um i said
i'm done i'm not i'm you know
the support folks said well you know
you're gonna have to you're gonna have
to send it in you're gonna have to pay
us like
60 and hopefully you'll get it back
uh you'll get the laptop back in in like
two weeks or something
and i said no this is a brand new laptop
it's not even two weeks old
and you and you um and it's faulty it
won't recognize the buyers might record
i'm not paying you to fix this you fix
it under warranty
and they kept coming they kept looping
around and saying no no no
you're gonna have to you have to send us
money to estimate what it would take
to fix i said no i'm not doing it
and guess what i am going to send it
back for a full refund so
how about that so
money back your money back well of
course i've done that i've
they won't send they won't accept a
return
until they get my customer number my
customer number doesn't show up
my customer number only shows up in my
confirmation
email i never got a confirmation email
i only ever got a um
an email to say we can't send it to a po
box you have to give us a street address
so i sent the street address but i never
got the confirmation email
so i i got the uh
so i got the device but i never got the
customer number so then i had to email
the support folks again and the support
folks
would not give give me a customer number
until
i told them look i am using this the
date on this email as the basis for my
return
i am not going to miss my 30-day window
to return this thing so you better give
me a customer number
and all of a sudden the customer number
showed up because they
they wouldn't but i'm sure they were
just um i feel sure they were just going
to sit on it
and and not do anything and just let it
you know
laps i said no i'm not putting up with
that you better give me a customer
number or i'll just send it back
to where i got it one or the other
that's messed up
yeah it is it just left a sour taste in
my mouth i was not happy
so i've normally had
sorry stormy i can i see already i see i
get audio from you but i don't have a
camera
i don't have any videos yeah that's
because my room's an absolute
just it looks like a tornado went
through my room right now yeah okay
and and for giza geeks same thing for
you as well i don't see any camera or
audio from you
so uh i've i've allowed you into the
meeting but uh i don't working on it
yep not a problem just wondered if you
are aware that's all
so yeah um so that's
that was my that was my whole laptop
saga as i say i'm finally done with that
garbage and i sent it back
normally i've had really good luck with
dell but this this time
as i say i just left the sour taste in
my mouth i was not a happy camper
so there you go um
specially thank you sir because
you put a uh a a nice little
smiley face dog on the uh on the discord
chat
and it cheers me up no end with all the
with all the mess that was going on
today
and i want to say thank you because we
had we had tornadoes blew through here
we had power off for
over a day um luckily i was able to get
hold of a generator so that kept the
region all
nice and cold which was nice um
and and that that just cheered me up it
normally doesn't you know that sort of
stuff doesn't normally cheer me up but
that did so i appreciate that
thank you so much for that so and i felt
really good having access to a generator
that made a huge amount of difference
so normally i don't have that so well
it was good to be able to get access to
it so yeah i remember when i saw that uh
it made me laugh yeah
i don't know if that was if that was uh
uh
photoshopped or what but he had a big
old grin on his face and i like that so
yeah all right let's let the new folks
uh have a go first
yeah nice background there stormy good
job nice
or is that your real is that your real
this is the real background i was just
trying to get all the garbage out of the
way so there would be okay
no problem no worries at all looks good
that's probably not a problem
and guess what outside i see i see that
yeah so let's let the new folks let's
let the new folks go first
since they're uh since they're new and
everybody else has already
you know for the regulars we'll let them
go last if that's okay so
brian i'll let you go first sir um
from scotland since you've marked that
on your rum
i just noticed that i thought put a
little um
put a little location on it just just
out of interest whereabouts are you
bp i'm in uh central time zone in the
usa
right right because the accent threw me
off i thought you were somewhere around
down the side of the world
uh i'm from australia originally but
i've been here something like 20 years
or so
so i am well and truly uh
well and truly settled here in the
states yeah
yeah um well
i'm actually i don't know if there's any
difference on the um
the quality of this um
connection today i i told you last week
i couldn't get uh
for some reason my um
my zoom application on the
computer wouldn't they let me log in it
didn't like my password for some reason
i've got i use massive passwords i've
used bit warden for passwords
for years now and i'll i always do the
biggest possible
the biggest possible password i can do
what i've found
is if you sign up either on an
application or on a website
you know you sign up on one with a huge
password but quite often
it won't let you do the other so you've
got to end up bringing down them down
and down the password
so that's obviously a lot of fun to do
so just so you know you do
not actually have to sign in to zoom
in participate in the meeting all you
need to do is just uh
uh enter the room number and
the the name you want to be known by
in in the in the chat and that's enough
to get in
that in the passcode so do not have to
sign into zoom to
uh i also noticed when i when i actually
logged in today
that it's it's already stored
the room number from last week even
though i was on the phone
yeah well i had to do yeah i was putting
the actual password in this time so
all right yeah yeah the password is the
only thing that it
doesn't remember yeah
i'm so yeah i've had this installed for
a while but
um i've not used it
quite a lot um i had problems with um
webcams on linux desktop
in years gone by i used uh i had a
logitech
c 720 which is a lower sorry
price thing and it was great but twice i
had one
and it worked brilliant i was using a
thinkpad at the time work brilliant
maybe a year just over a year and then
it would just
go invisible it couldn't see it at all
it just didn't work
my my usb my usb
webcam which i've had for years and
years and years i think has finally
given up the ghost because i i would sit
it on top of the monitor
and the light would come on to say that
the thing was active
in zoom but you'd get no image so
literally the lights are on but nobody's
home
[Laughter]
the eyes are open the light lights but
mr brain has long since departed
yeah yeah let's let's uh have a go
he's a geek would you like to get
started and
let us know what you've been up to in
the last week or so
well this is a busy season for me as i
mentioned to you last time i saw you i'm
a pastor
and so went through easter is one of the
busy seasons
of course um a lot a lot of video
production for the church so
oh nice okay so that keeps that keeps
you out of mischief
now where did you get that background i
liked that background
that is actually from um pixabay
um all of all of their pictures on
pixabay are free
and that reminded me of
a place where i like to go fishing here
in maryland oh nice
okay very nice one of the uh
one of the zoom backgrounds that i like
to use when i'm on my work laptop
which i won't use here for personal use
but
the work laptop lets me put a tropical
background
behind me which is very nice i like that
but
if you're familiar with marshman in the
forums
uh in the discord chat whenever he
participates here in um
in zoom one of his backgrounds is a
a um a beach scene way back down in the
uh peter if you're gonna keep making
noise i'm to have to mute you again
sir
uh yep all right we're done okay
so he puts a nice
beach background behind him and then he
has one bird
that just saw it just sort of flies
across like that i really want to get
that one because it's
it's a it's it's it's nice
it looks like someone is having a piece
of string and just uh moving it up and
down
i know that that bird is so persistent
trying to get through
and uh he's never gonna make it so he's
never gonna make it i think he
did you say maybe 10 seconds to go
everyone
around across the screen i know i know
it's so funny
all right stormy what have you been up
to sir
oh not too terribly much i suppose uh
let's see i'll be developing an android
application
um for one of my one of my college
classes
it's going to be c plus q six
um sort of thing uh it's going to be
like a to-do list with a time
managements
with time management capabilities i
don't know and that's
i haven't really gotten started too much
on that yet i'm just going to read
through the documentation and everything
but um i like to i like to use um
task warrior for my uh to do stuff
um i've been very very pleased with that
um with uh with task warrior and time
warrior
they do they do
peter don't unmute unless uh unless you
got something to say because you're
making an awful lot of noise in the
background
so um i'm going to leave you muted for
right now that's okay
all right so stormy um
yeah i i like um uh i like
uh time warrior and task warrior they
seem to work really well for me
and there's even an android and even an
android client
that works it has the task warrior
executable built into it
but it shows up as a normal ui under
under um under uh android
so that might be worth looking into i
would go check
github and see how they've done that
yeah i tend to like
finding projects that haven't been
solved before
um when i when i go looking i mean
i'm not going to reinvent the wheel
but it's a good but yeah if you're
looking for a niche to scratch then yeah
that's a good good place to start for
sure
so it's a tournament right now it's a
console application no it's a
it's an ad oh where were you talking to
me or i don't know
the linux ver the task warrior yes is
console but
um there is a version for android that
um
uh that overlays the
command line version with um a ui
which is how you drive it in under
android but
under the covers it's still running the
command-line version so it works really
well
yeah all right peter it's your turn now
i'll let you talk now what's going on
with you sir
i am i just i discovered
uh with that board from uh andrew
uh from android um that
what was wrong with it i bought that
from android
what is that board what does it do it's
a synthesizer
rf synthesizer and i discovered
that uh the thing worked but
there was the output was terrible the
upward wasn't even some way
it was awful so i had to
like you i wouldn't uh i would have been
money back
and they keep coming in and keep bloody
arm in an hour and then and uh
and i'll see those questions you have
pictures about it it's posted
yeah i'm not saying you pictured his
busted the thing
does that bloody work i i've been in
jail for 30 40 years
the thing is broken do you understand uh
and uh
but if if i went further back on the
circuit on
this apple transistor would knock it uh
i'd go back i'd say why the reason was
and
if you go back to the trade the price of
the transit and the big inputs of
transit that
there was a good waveform out of it so
my friend of mine decided yesterday on
day four yesterday to take the
transistor throughout
the surface man horrible yeah
bloody bloody horrible that's getting
used by french but uh
anyway we took it out but i i actually
had some you know what i did
yet last time and those big wheel of
transit is in our little backyard now
peter is that
is that the thing that you were trying
to use to soften the uh
the harshness of your of your voice is
that what it was
no this is a project that a friend of
mine wants me to build
and uh something i went to school with
and uh
we were trying to get the thing to run
so there's some another friend of mine
so i took the treasures throughout put a
new one in
strangers to work for the strangest drop
straight away
it blew up the transistor yep
oh it worked
because it was absolutely crazy uh
biased on it wow so i took it out
and this time i connect the capacitor
from the input to the output
to the socket and money like that and
then i went to explain them yesterday
uh the guy i i will put into a box and
i i will put an external amplifier on
onto the output so i could put the
output up by
i got 10 db so he can have at least
about volt
output but uh they give me 50 percent
off
they would not give me money back
but i told one in the end because
basically i got the thing
to reasonably work which it could be
usable
also it's my birthday also it's my
birthday today
oh happy birthday man happy birthday
birthday
there was a court case uh five years ago
which
stripped the the agency who had the
copyright because uh
they couldn't prove that they never
proved back in the forties
that they actually got the copyrights so
it was oh
and they have to and they have to pay
that's for her as well i'm not doing it
twice it's bad enough
no no no i i i i arranged
i took a sample of my dog and got my
doctor's thing happy birthday oh
good oh my god i'm sure that was
excellent yeah
congratulations
[Music]
just to let everybody else know peter's
had his voice box taken out from years
and years and years ago he's got a valve
in that's why his voice sounds so
so interesting so um
how about now how about you sir what are
you up to
you can start by um um i
looked up the uh wikipedia page for the
uh song happy birthday
um yeah the lawsuit was in uh 2015
um and the agency they lost the case um
and the copyright in their countries
wherever they have a live
plus 70 years that expired in 2017. so
it is
a public domain
to sing foreign anymore no i'm not going
to get whack man
i'm not going to get whacked by youtube
and it's also and it's also
it was also the uh lyrics that
that recorded because there was the
melody
she uh reused already existing melody
which was a good morning to you which is
used for her
kids at school i thought you said good
morning to unix
so sobu i'm working my way through uh
the mail server configuration so i'm
gonna probably pm you
um separately to uh to chat about that
um imap and uh dovecock for imap
and uh and uh postfix for
uh for local email only right now um
i wanna see if i can get just a really
basic installation working first
but uh i see why it took so long to get
used to it because
or to understand it because there are a
lot of moving parts
in post fix and uh and dovecot for sure
yeah but
you know postfix there's really only one
file that you're
in in order to get going there's only
one profile that you need to uh
that you need to look at and it's the
main.cf
configure file all right i'll i'll look
at that
very very soon i was looking at it
before i started uh
before i started here so um
i will send you a link to um how i
have configured my instance uh so you
can look at
what i have configured i'm looking at
i'm looking at letting
dovecot store all the all the mail and
just all my mail clients
using imap to talk to dovecock in order
to display the emails
that's the that's the plan that way any
of my clients will get the full
the full email list whereas right now
um one the main client uses pop to get
everything
but once it's come off the server the
pop server it's no longer visible to
anybody else
that's what i'm that's what i would like
to fix so
doug how's that raspberry pi coming
along dare i ask
well um i found a version of
android that will run on the raspberry
pi believe it or not
it actually did load to the main screen
um i hesitate to use the word desktop
because it
was built for a phone but yeah it made
it to the main screen
and i tried to run a few different
programs on it some of them wanted to
rotate so that it was
in vertical orientation obviously that
doesn't work on a tv
um yeah and it kept crashing and i just
finally gave up
i've ordered an an x4u so we'll see what
happens when that comes in
okay very good well um
my plan is to take this this ssd that i
plan to put in the laptop
and i think what i'll do is put it in
the main machine because uh
in the main desktop machine because um
the hard drives are um
are a little slow for boot up so i think
that i'll probably be able to do that
fairly easily so that's going to be
yeah that is what i did to my
main system uh last summer i bought two
new computers i told this in an earlier
coffee break
but um i moved uh two of the
drives from the uh one of the new
systems which turned out to be
just as old that did as this one but my
old system was
a lot more silent
and the bit of time is completely
different
okay well i just have to make sure that
the main system
which is pretty new it's only a few
years old can take an nvme
because that was one of the things that
robbie mentioned he said you know an m2
ssd can be nvme or it can be i think he
said
sata sata even though the
connector is identical it's two
different types and you've got to make
sure the motherboard supports the right
type so
that's what i'll be checking before i do
anything else the socket and pin out on
the two
versions are different oh are they okay
how big in their slot that it
all right that's good that's good so if
it fits it should work then is that what
you're saying
pardon me if it fits it should work is
that what you're saying if it fits it
should work right
okay so it's okay to use a like a hammer
to knock it in to make sure it goes in
the warranty expires at that point i'm
pretty sure
it would be that it would be the
opposite of the
opening text of the dog picture um get
in there
on that note we're at the end of the uh
can you believe
30 minutes has passed that's crazy
fascinating
thank you to all the thank you to all
the new folks brian i much appreciate it
i'm glad you made it
giza geek welcome glad you made it too
and stormy same for you as well i'm glad
you made it all so
yeah please come back any time you are
more than welcome to join in any time
yeah yeah usually usually there's a
scheduling conflict for me but today
that scheduling conflict didn't exist so
i was able to get in today
if if there was a way we could
reschedule the meeting to like an
hour later at some point in time or
whatever wasn't there like a plan to
have like a second coffee break in the
week or something
well i'm open to that but robbie's uh
not able to do more than one a week
so we're not going to be we're not going
to be able to do two coffee breaks so
okay uh but the most likely thing would
be rescheduling and
and unwelcome you know i'm open to input
from any of you
in terms of but when's a good time to
reschedule i know solibu also wanted to
to talk about rescheduling as well so
yeah
uh feel free to hit me up on discord and
i'll be happy to uh i'll be happy to
take that input and
ignore it or not
all right all right everybody have a
great week stay
safe and uh and and thank you again for
uh for joining in i thoroughly enjoyed
it
well let's do it again next week yeah
and then and
then until next week have a happy easter
thank you
[Music]
you