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 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 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 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 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 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 you