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First published 28th April 2015 (Last Modified 9th January 2021)
  • Compressing log files (8 December 2024) - I have a status shell script that runs every minute (see Sleeping until top of the minute). This shell script generates a daily log file bu adding a few lines of text to a file. Every few months I want to compress and zip these files since they compress well (I do have plenty of […]
  • Setup for joining us on Fantasy Grounds (3 September 2024) - We use a couple of bits of software to allow us to play roleplaying via a virtual tabletop: Discord To allow voice communication we use discord. The desktop version can be downloaded for free from here. You do not need to pay anything to download, setup and use discord1. Once installed and you've registered yourself […]
  • Mum's Wedding Photos (23 June 2024) - Can be downloaded form Sandra_Vines_Wedding_Photos.
  • Installing MQTT (13 May 2024) - In order to install MQTT on mu linux server machine I took the following steps: sudo apt update sudo apt install mosquitto-clients sudo apt install mosquitto sudo systemctl status mosquitto to check if mosquitto has been installed sudo systemctl enable mosquitto to get mosuitto started on system start sudo mosquitto_passwd -c /etc/mosquitto/passwd david to set […]
  • MegaCivilization Logistics (6 October 2023) - Here are my thoughts on logistics for my MegaCivilization Game, but if you have any questions please let me know and I'll try to answer them! Timing I'd like to try to get us actually gaming by 11am on both days, so ideally people should plan arrival for, say, 10:45. That will allow time for […]
  • Copyrights and all that (23 July 2022) - This site First of all, just to reiterate my Legal page, unless otherwise noted on the relevant page all the text on this website is my own and is thus copyrighted by myself (David Vines). Again unless otherwise noted on the relevant page you may copy and reuse the text as long as you abide […]
  • Even more WordPress plugins I've used (but don't currently) (28 June 2022) - I've audited again the plugins I've used on this site. I've removed the following, but not because they aren't useful (they are), but because I don't need them right at the moment: Enhanced Media Library Originally used to improve the functionally of the Media Library, but since outclassed by the Media Library Assistant plugin. Custom […]
  • More panoramas (26 June 2022) - I enjoy taking panoramas (usually stitched together using Microsoft's Image Composite Editor1. They are quite a few on this website and here's a few more: Footnotes Apparently now no longer available for download 🙁 ↩
  • Italy Photographs (24 June 2022) - In 2011 I was sent to Rome to help support the Italian Post Office with problems they were having with their new computerised terminals. While there I was able to do some sightseeing in Rome and managed a day trip to Florence (which, if you ever get the chance I highly recommend - it lived […]
  • Early photographs (19 June 2022) - While I'm not a keen photographer like Zygmunt, I do take photographs and use them on this website. Some of my earliest photographs come from the pre-digital era but I have scanned some them in and present them here. You might also find quite a few of the others indirectly via the Image Tag Cloud […]
  • Don't create your own Map class/global in javascript (7 April 2022) - In my Domain of the Ancients javascript game I have a class (which, of course, is therefore a global variable) called Map to represent the game map. As it turns out that's a bad idea! There's a perfectly good global object in javascript already called Map and so, of course, my definition ended up replacing […]
  • One of my early programs (26 February 2022) - I recently rediscovered one of my early programs dating back (at time of writing) almost forty years! I've copied onto this website at Snazzy Snake.
  • Getting to hidden menu on Samsung Tablet (24 February 2022) - In the calculator, enter (+30012012732+ Then enter *#9900# in the menu that opens.
  • Bookmarks to links (24 October 2021) - Over time I've collected a fair number of bookmarks and it's time to move some of them to links on this website of mine. Of course the home page is basically a collection of links, but those are, in general, links I regularly use. In this post I'm going to record the more interesting ones […]
  • Setting up a ubuntu for my development enviroment (13 May 2021) - So I'm experimenting with a new development environment - this one is a ubuntu 20.04 running inside of Oracle VM Virtual Box. The initial installation was done following the cookbook from Abhishek Prakash. Initial VM setup Download and install VirtualBox Download the ISO for Ubuntu Start Virtual Box and create a new VM - I […]
  • Yet more wordpress plugins I've uninstalled but want to keep a record of (7 February 2021) - I've recently done another audit of the plugins used on this site. This was in response to the Media Library insisting that it couldn't update the metadata for media in the media library because it already existed in the library. To track this down I ended up doing a review of the media related plugins. […]
  • Enabling updates for self-hosted WordPress themes and updates (30 January 2021) - I recently experimented with changing my themes and plugins to support self-hosted updates. For plugins this was relatively straight-forward once I'd found two articles, one by Misha Rudrastyh, which got me to adjust the contents of the zip files down one level (which allows WordPress to understand that the new zip file being uploaded is […]
  • Fixing the Simply Static plugin (18 November 2020) - After updating my Ubuntu system to 20.04, I discovered that my method for generating the static version of the site no longer works. It turns out that the Simply Static plugin has a hidden dependency on PHP 7.2 (and upgrading Ubuntu from 18.04 to 20.04 incidently updates the PHP level from 7.2 to 7.4). After […]
  • More wordpress plugins I have used but are now uninstalled (but want to keep a record of) (8 October 2020) - Another plugin I've used but is currently uninstalled is: Enhanced Media Plugin Seemingly now unsupported I used to to more easily manage the tags from within the media library. A shame since the standard way is definitely long winded 🙂
  • WordPress plugins I have used but are now uninstalled (but want to keep a record of) (19 May 2020) - I have used (indeed am still using) a number of wordpress plugins. I have actually written quite a few myself as well as several others. There are a few I've used in the past and may well use again, but are currently uninstalled. They are: Merge + Minify + Refresh Used to minimise the size […]
  • Automating the static upload (14 February 2020) - I've automated some of my static upload process. This post is partially to provide a new post and partially to document/record the automatic part of the process. I created a batch script that generates a winscp script to upload files that changed, and will show the other differences (file adds and deletes) involved in the […]
  • Dublin (25 August 2019)
  • Going static (17 December 2018) - For a variety of reasons I reckon it's time to convert the public facing version of my website to go to a static version. The reasons include: After the suspension of En Garde there's no dynamic input to the site other than my own (When I restart that campaign I will need to modify the hosting […]
  • Suspension of "En Garde!" (26 March 2018) - I'm sorry and sad to announce that I'm going to suspend my En Garde campaign. Having had a couple of players tell me this month that they either do not want or do not have the time to play, combined with those who have previously left and the impression I have from several other players […]
  • Sham Castle and the moon (28 February 2018) - I took this picture because it's the clearest view of Sham Castle I've had from the centre of Bath. As a bonus though there's a nice indication of how small the moon in size actually is - it's the small white blob above the castle. I really need to experiment with getting an additional clip-on […]
  • Winchester Panorama (3 February 2018) - Includes bonus of my shadow! Taken from St. Catherine's Hill on 1st February 2018 during a walk with Brian, Sue and Matthew. At usual you can click on image to see a bigger version.
  • Bristol Harbour panorama (26 January 2018) - I'm quite pleased with how this panorama of Bristol's floating harbour turned out, I perhaps should have been further along to the east so that perhaps SS Great Britain would have been included - but then I'd have had to contend with the black pipe visible on the right edge of this image and would […]
  • Life on Mars Bars (22 January 2018) - Thursday Lunchtime Robbie and Ash skipped the morning lessons (with Tank successfully updating the registers to indicate that they were actually present!) to head back to check the den. Apparently there was no sign of Andy and it looks like the D&D game ended normally. The pair then tracked our route back from the den […]
  • Strange things in Dedcot (12 December 2017) - Thursday - First break Andy has a lot to answer for! There we were enjoying our Sunday game of D&D, when it went all strange! Nothing to do with me or my character (Will was miles away from the box) but the next thing we know we're all a long way from the den in […]
  • A gloriously sunny day (8 November 2017) - After completing my En Garde newspaper yesterday and with the day dawning bright and clear, it was time for a pleasant walk. This time I did the walk around Bath that takes in the Sham Castle but in the reverse direction. This starts with a walk along the Kennet and Avon where repairs and maintenance […]
  • A real white horse (12 September 2017) - Today I visited the white horse at Uffington as part of a morning walk that covered the nearby Dragon Hill, the White Horse and Wayland Smithy before returning via Compton Beauchamp enroute back to Uffington. The walk took about 8 miles and just over three hours (part of the reason for the slow speed was […]
  • Walking to Wales (3 September 2017) - Yesterday I did a walk from Severn Beach to Chepstow via the old Severn Bridge (the newer one (M4) doesn't have a walkway/cycleway on it). This is a walk that is only recommended on days without much wind as you're quite exposed once on the Severn bridge crossing. Also worth noting that you're actually not […]
  • Weston-super-mare (27 August 2017) - Taken a couple of days ago, looking towards Wales from above the (sadly) derelict Birnbeck Pier
  • Westbury (27 August 2017) - Taken just a few days ago from nearby Westbury's White Horse. On this trip I discovered that the horse, while once from Chalk, was concreted over by English Heritage in the 1950's to preserve it. The fact that the horse was corrected in the 1700's means that there's isn't as much archaeology to preserve as […]
  • Clifton Suspension Bridge (27 August 2017) - This was taken in March 2015 from the Leigh Woods side of the Bridge (i.e., looking towards Clifton. It looks a bit weird (no roadway for example) as it's composed from images from both the north and south sides of the Bridge Parapets.
  • Knaresborough (27 August 2017) - A panorama I took while visiting Knaresborough last Septemeber.
  • Bristol Harbour (27 August 2017) - Another panorama from my visit to Bristol during the Heritage Days last year. I was near the end of the floating harbour when a flotilla of boats passed through the lock into the harbour - so the swing bridge across this end of the harbour was open while I was collecting this panorama.
  • Concorde Cockpit Mockup (27 August 2017) - Composed from a set of pictures I took in Bristol during the Heritage Days last year.
  • Panorama 1453 Historical Museum (27 August 2017) - Another panorama from my visit to Istanbul in 2012. If you get the chance to visit Istanbul this is one of the places I'd recommend visiting about half-way down the list of must visit places - if only to get a feel for a different viewpoint on the fall of Constantinople in 1453. This image […]
  • Istanbul Panorama (26 August 2017) - One thing I've been experimenting with over the past few years is using Microsoft Research's Image Composite Editor to build panorama pictures from multiple pictures taken from my phone (initially a Samsung s3 mini and more recently a Samsung s5 neo). So over the next few blog posts I'll show a few of the results. […]
  • Sleeping until top of the minute (23 June 2017) - I recently wanted my bash script (running on Ubuntu) to sleep until the top of the minute. The suggested code snippet from goggling is: sleep $((60 - $(date +%S) )) This works well, unless the current seconds count is 08 or 09. Bash interprets numbers starting with 0 as octal and 08 (and 09) are […]
  • Errata for 21 Years of The Chronicle (3 June 2017) - I recently printed a few copies of a collection of The Chronicles (PDF ODT). As you would expect I've noticed a few errors that had I spotted them before printing I would have fixed. I did do two proofing runs which did flag up quite a few other errors which were, of course, corrected. So, […]
  • Manually updating a Ubuntu kernel (21 May 2017) - For some reason that I've yet to get to the bottom of, on my Ubuntu server box the kernel wasn't getting updated (the header files to go with the kernel definitely were, but the kernel itself seemed to stay stuck. To manually update to a kernel level: sudo apt-get install linux-image-extra-4.4.0-xx-generic
  • Setting up ubuntu (Apr 2017) (1 April 2017) - Since I'm in the progress of setting up an Ubuntu machine on another older machine as a server I want to record my steps... All based on Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS To ensure latest level of Ubuntu: sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get dist-upgrade To select 2D graphic effects instead of 3D: Add the older UI via: […]
  • Blaise Castle (28 March 2017) - Yesterday I upgraded my castle visit by taking a day trip out to Blaise Castle. This kind of trip is very possible to do when there's no trouble on the trains (I need to change at Bristol Temple Meads onto the Severn Beach line, so if there's a long delay on the line between Romsey […]
  • Bath Castle (25 March 2017) - Today I did a walk from Bath to Bradford on Avon via Bath Castle. I had originally planned to do a circular walk from the book On Foot in Bath by Andrew Swift, but changed course halfway through. The first part of the route, following the book takes you up to the hills east of […]
  • Emsworth to Langstone and back (10 March 2017) - Yesterday myself, Sue, Matthew and Brian arranged to take a walk from Emsworth to Langstone Harbour attempting to do a figure of eight so that we got two stretches along the shore line while still stopping for coffee and lunch along the way. The day started overcast but, as can be seen from the picture […]
  • Calgary (1 March 2017) - As I reported in my last post, I visited Lake Louise last week. As to get there I flew into Calgary, I decided that on the way back I would spend two nights in Calgary so that I had a day to explore this city rather than just use it as an airport. As I […]
  • Lake Louise (28 February 2017) - Last week I visited Lake Louise in Alberta, Canada to join Alasdair to celebrate his wedding to Erin. Getting there was actually pretty straight forward: a flight from Heathrow direct to Calgary, an overnight stay at one of the airport hotels and then a coach from the airport to the Chateau Lake Louise 1. After […]
  • Facebook (18 February 2017) - For reasons I'm not going to go into here, I recently reversed my facebook stance and gave in. That said, however, it did get placed in what I'm going to call a "facebook" jail. I added a new user account to my linux server. As that happens to be an ancient Thinkpad A31p1, it can […]
  • 100 Million seconds (6 November 2016) - According to the Arduino that is counting the numbers of seconds since I retired1, so it's probably time to record a few thoughts: As with most people I'm glad to have retired - the freedom from time pressure (in the main) is very liberating. The freedom to decide what I'm doing with a day is […]
  • Over 6 miles a day (30 October 2016) - I keep a track of what my pedometer says I've walked (actually I first multiply its claim by 5/6 - Walking 80 chains in the Combe Down tunnel gives a distance of 1.2 miles according to the pedometer, but 80 chains is only one mile...). I then keep a 100 day running total so that […]
  • Bath to Bristol (25 October 2016) - One of my minor goals has been to successfully walk all the way from Bath Spa to Bristol Temple Meads. My previous attempts have usually involved the Bristol to Bath cycle route (which follows the old Midland Railway from Bath Green Park via Bitton). This route, while flat like most routes that use old railway […]
  • Weight loss target reached (5 September 2016) - Back at end of May I discovered that my bathroom scales were reading about 10kg too low1. As result my BMI was 28 (deep into the "overweight" category) rather than hovering around 25. I therefore embarked on a programme to reduce my BMI to 24 by restricting my lunch and evening meals to 500 calories […]
  • Barcelona? (2 September 2016) - I've been enjoying my books giving city walks, and while the author sometimes concentrates too much on the architecture (and not quite enough on history in my opinion), it has lead me to this gem: (As this image is a stitch together of a bunch of pictures I took (and have then scaled down in […]
  • Maplin's Touch LCD Shield for Arduino (2 September 2016) - I've been playing around with Maplin's Touch LCD Shield. It's not a bad device (it does seem to be a little slow, but I suspect that's mostly down to the library being used to drive it. That said, I did take a while to get it working since there's not a lot of documentation for […]
  • Thoughts on Fossil (26 May 2016) - I've now been using fossil for about six months after I was unable to move my previous Rational Team Concert repository from one machine to another and it's time to do a small amount of reflection on that move. First of all I ended up contributing to the fossil project to add the ability to […]
  • Recovering from an Oops! Backup rollback error (23 February 2016) - After a problem with coretemp that hard crashed my CPU (at least that's what the symptom looked it), on the subsequent reboot, Oops! Backup reported that it attempted to rollback the backup that was in progress at the time. Sadly the rollback failed and left sufficient damage to prevent backups from proceeding. To be fair […]
  • running popfile as a daemon process (23 February 2016) - This is just a note to myself in case I need it 🙂 To run popfile as a daemon process on Ubuntu. I did the following: Created a popfile user and home directory and gave it a copy of the popfile executables and copied across its data into /var/popfile. Created a /etc/init.d/popfile file Issued sudo […]
  • running fossil as a daemon process (23 February 2016) - This is just a note to myself in case I need it 🙂 To run fossil as a daemon process on Ubuntu. I did the following: Created a fossil user and home directory and gave it a copy of the fossil executable and the website fossil file Created a fossil/etc/init.d/fossil file Issued sudo /etc/init.d/fossil start […]
  • Moving from RTC to fossil (14 December 2015) - I am a fan of IBM's Rational Team Concert, but have reluctantly decided that I need to move from it to something much easier on the operations side. My specific problem is that the Ubuntu machine on which I run the RTC server needs a clean reinstall1. Having tried (on my laptop that also has […]
  • Spider Caves Fixed (7 November 2015) - Yesterday I discovered that my spider caves plugin was broken (in fact it looks like it's been broken since at least the conversion to wordpress. All the problems I discovered have now been fixed 🙂
  • Iceland (30 September 2015) - Earlier this month I took a holiday to Iceland. Here's my attempt at summarising it! I flew out on a Saturday afternoon, arriving in Keflavik (the international airport in the late afternoon. Once at my hotel in Reykjavik. I set out to explore the local area around the hotel (ignoring the local city airport that's […]
  • Reaching Devizes (29 August 2015) - Earlier this week I took advantage of having the Portsmouth Harbour <-> Cardiff Central diverted to Swindon to travel direct to Melksham (on the single track line that joins Trowbridge to the Great Western Main Line. I did this so that could easily complete another section of the Kennet and Avon Canal, this time the […]
  • Whitehaven (8 August 2015) - I recently visited Whitehaven to meet up with Sue & Matthew as they sail their boat up to Scotland. As is usual for their travels, this wasn't the original plan (which was to meet up in Liverpool). I travelled by train, with my original plan being scuppered from the start as the train from Romsey […]
  • Menu woes (2 August 2015) - If you've recently tried to use my top navigation bar, you may have encountered problems with the sub-menus disappearing as you try to move the pointer down into the sub-menu. I'm still working on that (I know the change that caused the problem is that I'm now using a custom menu for the navigation rather […]
  • Logic Puzzles (23 July 2015) - I'm a big fan of logic puzzles and way back in November 2009 I purchased Everyday Genius: Square Logic. It's a computerised form of KenKen. It provides a truely huge number of this kind of puzzle and today I completed all of the 6x6 puzzles (I completed the 4x4 puzzles in March 2013, and the […]
  • Wild Strawberries (3 June 2015) - Sometimes being lazy gets you unexpected discoveries. In this case wild strawberries growing in the patio.... In this case I'm sure if I'd tried to grow strawberries I'd have failed (and to be fair these are just a few millimetres in size).
  • Favourite Walk (3 May 2015) - In my spare time I do a lot of walks. That's not long distance walks, but more straight-forward, but still multi-hour length walks. Ignoring the walk into Romsey, the most common walk I do is to/from Bradford-on-Avon to/from Bath and last time I did this I took some photos to enable me to attempt this […]
  • Quiet (9 April 2015) - One of the reasons that you don't see many posts here is simply down to the fact that I'm an extreme introvert (from memory, on the Briggs-Meyers test I ended on the extreme end of I). I thus really enjoyed one of my recent reads - "Quiet" by Susan Cain (ISBN 978-0-141-02919-1). While I don't […]
  • Converting to WordPress (27 January 2015) - I've recently redirected my website to a WordPress driven site. While the page generation is longer (the Feeds page is definitely longer to generate), I'm finding the CMS capability to be much better than hand editing my pages. WordPress has a relatively well thought out design and philosophy, so we'll see how it goes. I, […]
  • Recently Read (20 May 2014) - I read a lot of books (enough that I have separate rooms for fiction and non-fiction bookshelves and that's still not enough!). Here's I'm going to attempt to record at still some of the most recent ones I've read and perhaps manage a few words. The most recently read will be at the top of […]
  • Holiday '97 (4 January 1999) - Note: Footnotes and images added in June 2022 The trip started in Perth (Australia) after a long flight from Heathrow. This actually helped me to avoid too much Jet Lag as I was able to stay awake until dinner time before going to bed on the first day. To past the time before then I […]

Last updated: January 9, 2021 at 10:41 am