## hpr3829 :: The Edinburgh cohort of HPR hosts stops Mumbling!

 
Introduction
Hosts:

MrX
Dave
Morriss

We recorded this on Saturday March 11th 2023. This time we
met in person, first at a pub called The Steading close to the
entrance to the Midlothian
Snowsports Centre where we had something to eat and drink -
though they only serve breakfast items before 12 noon. Then we adjourned
to Dave’s Citroen car (Studio C) in the car park and recorded a
chat.
The last of these chats was over Mumble in September 2022, so it was
great to be away from home and to meet in person again after a long time
of COVID avoidance.
Topics discussed

Google Docs - Dave and MrX use this to build shared notes to help
organise these sessions

There are issues with cut and paste when using Firefox – it doesn’t
work!

It can be fixed by selecting about:config in a new
tab.
Change the attribute dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled
to true.




Is email still relevant in 2023?

Google Wave
- Google’s possible email replacement seemed not to have lasted very
long
Alternative access to Gmail using the IMAP protocol
Folders versus labels. Tom Scott’s video “I
tried using AI. It scared me.”
Dave’s experiences with email:

Digital
Equipment Corporation’s Vax VMS used DECmail, which needed DECNet networking.
The UK Academic network (JANET) initially used its
own Coloured
Book protocols, including Grey Book mail. This ran over an X.25
network.
Gradual transition to TCP/IP and SMTP mail (over JANET Internet
Protocol Service, “JIPS”).
In early Unix days (Ultrix) there was MH
(Message Handler)
Later, this was replaced by nmh.
A GUI interface was available called xmh
A very flexible open-source front end called exmh was
crafted using Tcl/Tk
Using procmail
allowed an enormous number of capabilities, like sophisticated
filtering, spam detection and automatic replies.
Now using Thunderbird,
and has been for maybe 15 years.

MrX used Eudora in the past, but mostly uses Outlook now.
Both agree that many useful features of email, available in the
past, have gone. Both of us still find email relevant however!



Calendars:

MrX misses the calendar on the Psion Organiser
Dave used to use an X-Windows tool called ical on
Ultrix (no relation to the later iCalendar standard). Moved
to Thunderbird and its calendar called Lightning.
Both have used the Google Calendar, Dave uses a Thunderbird add-on
to share family calendars



Lifetime of storage media:

SD cards can last a fairly long time, but getting the right type is
important. Using older-style cards in new projects might turn out to be
a false economy.
Hard disks can last a long time if the right sort is used. One thing
that shortens their life is getting them hot.
MrX has used Western Digital Passport hard drives for some time, and
they have been very reliable – none have failed.
There are different drives from Western Digital which have different
performances and they are colour coded. See the Western
Digital website for details.



Complexity and single points of failure:

Chip shortages and lack of resilience:

Modern components that do a single job used to consist of multiple
discrete components that could be replaced individually. Now, if a
component fails it has to be replaced in its entirety, and because of
the shortage of chips it uses it may be unavailable.
Older devices and components may still use older less specialised
parts and so can be repaired.
Unnecessary reliance on GPS in devices, cloud services in Smart
Home equipment, etc.
For example, managing enormous warehouses requires a lot of services
that may not be too resilient, and could fail catastrophically.

Coronal Mass
Ejection (CME):

Such an event could destroy many satellites (such as those providing
GPS). It could also cause a massive overload of the power grid.
Transformers used in the grid can be damaged or destroyed and replacing
them in a timely fashion can be difficult.
Carrington
event in September 1859 telegraph machines reportedly shocked
operators and caused small fires.
March
1989 CME caused a power outage in Quebec, Canada.
Recent YouTube video from Anton Petrov: Wow! Sun Just
Produced a Carrington Like Event, But We Got Super Lucky




Keeping systems up to date:

MrX has had problems getting various RPis updated and running.
Dave has had similar problems making the jump from Raspbian to
Raspberry Pi OS.
In some cases the operating system on the Pis have needed to be
completely reinstalled, and the work in installing and reconfiguring
software has proved to be too much!
MrX’s PiFace
Control and Display board is giving problems, as is the simpler PiFace
Digital. It looks as if the company has gone out of business
unfortunately.
Dave has a Pico RGB
Base from Pimoroni, a 14-key board with RGB LEDs which could be used
as a way of controlling things.
Dave’s Magic
Mirror system (a Pi 3A+ attached to a monitor) failed because
the Pi needed to be upgraded and then the Node.js code
didn’t seem to be maintained any more! Needs work!!
MrX’s desktop PC is small and quiet, but since it’s in a cold room,
tends not to get used too much in the winter! Dave’s PC is in an
extension (addition) to the house and tends to get used quite a lot, but
in cold winter weather, less so.



YouTube list:

We were going to mention a few YouTube channels we’d watched lately,
but felt we’d already talked long enough!
Rather than just adding the list to the notes, as we discussed, we
will leave this section to the next time we make a recording such as
this.



Completing HPR shows:

MrX has a show he has recorded but is held up preparing notes to go
with it.
Dave tends to write draft notes first, then build the recording
around them, but this approach isn’t necessarily faster!


Links

Google:

Google
Wave
Accessing
Gmail with IMAP



Early mail tools:

MH
Message Handling System
MH
& xmh: Email for Users & Programmers, Jerry Peek,
1996
nmh - Message Handling
System
procmail mail
filter



Solar storms / Coronal Mass Ejections:

Wikipedia article on Coronal Mass
Ejections (CME).
Wikipedia article on the Carrington
event in September 1859.
Wikipedia article on the March
1989 CME.
List of solar storms
Transformer
shortage in the USA



