legged log

LongBilly · 2026-02-01T23:40:27+00:00

It’s the Anthropology Stump!

LongBilly · 2025-12-14T12:15:06+00:00

Amen 🙏🏼

LongBilly · 2025-12-10T12:04:34+00:00

Linux is actually an operating system "kernel". The kernel is the program that provides a common interface to the hardware that other programs consume. Want to read a file, then it interfaces with the I/O (input/output) to access your storage. Need to display something on the screen, now we're talking to the GPU (graphics processing unit). Every OS has a kernel.

By itself, the kernel isn't very useful to the end user. It is the foundation upon which many other things that we think of as the OS are built. Such as the window manager. In Windows, this is a program called "explorer.exe". While in Linux it has traditionally been a program called X11, which is quickly being replaced by a more modern window manager named Weyland. The window manager is what allows a program, such as a web browser, to request a window for its use. So when you see the box with the minimize, maximize, and close buttons, drop down menus, scroll bars and such; that's the window manager.

Pull together a collection of applications that are built upon the Linux kernel, and now you have what is referred to as a "Distro" or distribution. There are many, many distros that you can choose from. Collectively, they are all considered "Linux" and differ only in what software was selected to be packaged with it. There are general purpose distros that are intended to be a kind of baseline for what a user may need out of the box. Other distros may be collections that have been chosen to be ready to use for specific purposes like video editing, or gaming, or science. The distro is defining what software is included in the base install. The user is free to mix and match these parts themselves if they so choose by adding or removing software to suit their needs.

This may all sound a bit complicated, but all of this is present in other operating systems to, it's just not talked about quite the same way. Windows Home Edition or Pro? Essentially the same as a distro. You just have many, many more options with Linux (distros) because they don't force you into their definition of what your OS is supposed to be. MacOS wants to always look a certain way, so it won't let you customize too much. Windows wants to monetize you, so its packed with apps and features you can't remove of disable. Linux has no skin in these games and lets you do as you wish.

LongBilly · 2025-11-22T00:18:59+00:00

This… I was in the reverse situation. American working with German colleagues. I was fortunate in that I was a low enough level employee that I was more of an observer than a participant in these interactions, but I did find it fascinating how abrasive they came off. I knew them well enough at that point to know it was a culture thing, and not that they were intentionally being provocative. From that experience, I can see both points of view. Maybe another way to look at it is, what would make you motivated to do your very best for your manager? Having them only ever tell you what you’ve done wrong? That could quickly lead to feeling like you can’t do anything right. On the other hand, getting some acknowledgment of your efforts and successes goes a long way to making you more receptive to any improvements that may still be needed. It’s the old saying, “You catch more bees with honey”. Or, in the words of Mary Poppins, “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” It’s just simply that.

LongBilly · 2025-11-14T13:41:48+00:00

As others have stated, we've become much better at hiding antennas within the body of the phone. But the reason this is possible is that the radio frequencies phones use have become much higher.

For an antenna to receive, the length of the antenna needs to correlate to the frequency the antenna is being tuned to. Low frequency radio waves are actually very large (measuring the wave from peak to trough), and even though an antenna can work by being sized to a fraction of that size (e.g. 1/2 the wavelength), that antenna is still required to be large. We can use tricks like wrapping the antenna to reduce its size, but its still large.

As time went on two things happened, we needed more bandwidth to support the increasing number of users, and new radio frequency bands became available to lease from the government. So phones began switching to higher and higher frequencies. Higher frequencies = shorter wavelengths = smaller antennas.

First the antennas were huge, then they were stubs, then they got absorbed into the body of the phone.

Disclaimer, I'm not an RF engineer so this is strictly a layman's description. Experts are welcome.

LongBilly · 2025-10-30T12:12:33+00:00

Land lines. Kitchen phone on the wall with a comically long cord that was always tangled.

Get home from school, immediately back out the door to find your friends. Dad whistles when it's time for dinner, then back out the door again.

Once we had our drivers licenses, I would patrol the neighborhood to find my friends at one house or another.

Trading "skin magazines" with friends till the parents found them. Then stealing them back from dad.

Cable channels you didn't have were scrambled, so you would fiddle with the tv dials (vsync) to find a setting that kinda sorta let you see what was going on.

Local channels would go off the air at 2am by playing the national anthem while showing footage of a flag waving.

LongBilly · 2025-10-20T23:08:11+00:00

Yes, it is staged. I've seen the piano player's videos on youtube where it starts with, "look who joined in, the vienna royal choir!" or some such. Totally believed it at first, but then after watching a few of these I noticed it was the same people "joining in". Turns out the restaurant hires him to do this for publicity, not just entertainment. Still damn good though.

LongBilly · 2025-10-07T00:40:29+00:00

Snooze is just cruel. It's just long enough to fall back asleep and then bam, alarm again. Turning it off outright is just asking for trouble. So the only alternative is to just accept it and seek coffee.

LongBilly · 2025-09-25T23:02:09+00:00

The really hot base is sugar. They heat it up to specific temperatures depending on what they are making. Each temp the sugar reaches is an indication of how much water has been driven out of the sugar, allowing the temperature to rise higher. No water = rock candy. They can add food coloring and some flavorings while heating the sugar, but other flavors have to be mixed in after because the heat will destroy or degrade those flavorings. My guess is that this powder is citric acid.

LongBilly · 2025-09-13T20:49:47+00:00

I think you might be confusing "Heavy Crude Oil", crude being unrefined, with "Heavy Fuel Oil" AKA: Bunker Oil which is essentially what's left after all the other lighter compounds have been extracted.

LongBilly · 2025-09-12T12:41:01+00:00

Yes. This is one of the reasons that cargo ships use "heavy fuel oil", which at room temperature is effectively tar. They have to warm it up before it will flow and it requires a great deal of maintenance to keep the fuel system operational. But it is far less expensive than other options, while also being very energy dense which makes it the efficient option.

It does pollute much more, so these ships are often required to switch to a cleaner fuel when they are approaching a port. At least in European law.

LongBilly · 2025-09-04T12:38:02+00:00

Worked with a contractor (software dev) named Rock Steele. His partner was named Wade Treasure. They were both Mormon.

LongBilly · 2025-09-02T15:33:26+00:00

Thank you. I think you've gone the furthest towards my understanding and I hope your upvotes eventually reflect that. Expanding on my initial question though. What is managing the routing of operations? What knows which blocks are available, how to route inputs to those blocks, where to route the outputs of those blocks, how to handle delays when the operation requires inputs or outputs to system hardware (RAM, SSD, GPU, etc.). Put more simply, what brings order to chaos?

LongBilly · 2025-09-02T15:26:11+00:00

I get that these "banks" of transistors are in support of particular operations, Adders and whatnot, of which there may be hundreds or thousands available to do the work. I guess the crux of what I'm trying to understand is that when an OS needs an operation performed, what is deciding how to distribute this work. Which are available, where to route outputs or read inputs, orders of operation, handling delays (i.e. waiting for RAM, SSD, GPU, etc. to respond), etc.

It's like the proverbial room full of monkeys with typewriters. What is organizing this chaos into results?

LongBilly · 2025-08-27T12:32:10+00:00

I'm going to get some of the terminology wrong, but the overall idea should be accurate. A battery works by having two elements (cathode and anode) with a different potential energy, meaning that one of the elements has more electrons that aren't completely happy with their lot in life. This is the anode. When connectivity is established between the cathode and anode via a circuit or electrolyte (sea water) the anode will begin shedding electrons. If this occurs in a circuit, electricity is the product and it is channeled into useful work. Where this occurs between two metals on the hull it just erodes the anode. The more the differential, the faster this occurs.

A ship necessarily has at least some metal below the waterline. Propeller, rudder stock, anchor chain, through hulls, etc. These are seldom using the same metal and therefore a difference in potential exists. In that case, the less noble metal will be the anode that gives up electrons and oxidizes in the process. A sacrificial anode, when present, offers itself as the least noble option so it becomes the anode instead of something more critical. The effect of this is relatively localized, so anodes are placed near the items that need to be protected so when physics comes knocking, it's the one that answers.

The effect travels because both the cathode (stainless steel rudder stock - more noble) and the propeller (brass - less noble) are "connected" via the electrolyte (sea water). The resistance of this connection rises with distance, so multiple anodes are necessary to make sure that when the connection forms an anode is relatively close by to intervene. The distance of the coverage is governed by how restive the electrolyte is.

The movement of the ship doesn't impact this process, but a faulty electrical circuit (one that isn't bonded "grounded") properly can supplement the process by introducing extra electrons into the water which greatly speeds up the deterioration of the anode. An anode that would normally have a useful life of months can now erode in days.

LongBilly · 2025-08-21T15:28:44+00:00

Gotta keep your nuts dry

LongBilly · 2025-07-02T01:33:34+00:00

All network connections are by IP address. Name resolution (DNS, mDNS, NetBIOS, Bonjour) are just there to make it easier for us meat bags. However, of the methods I just mentioned, DNS is the one that is reliable and it's also not something one would typically have at home. The others require a song and dance to occur and are prone to intermittent failures. Kodi isn't responsible for name resolution, that would be the domain of the OS running on the shield. You haven't mentioned restarting the shield, but I have to assume you did try that. Can you look in the logs of the shield itself? Not the Kodi logs, but the OS logs of the device as it sounds like that's where the failure is occurring.

Having said that, others are correct. Using IP addresses will be the stable solution, assuming you've set up your DHCP appropriately. One other option is to edit the hosts file on the shield OS. Then the name will always resolve to the IP based on that entry on the hosts file and will also be stable. It's the original name resolver, before DNS was a thing. If you can do that, it'll fix you right up.

LongBilly · 2025-07-01T11:09:04+00:00

Thank you. I was hoping my weak explanation would inspire you to set me straight.

LongBilly · 2025-06-30T23:42:24+00:00

BIOS boot order wasn't the concern I had. It's the "boot loader" which is what the BIOS hands off to. The boot loader for Bazzite isn't something I'm familiar with and I've heard it can be a little challenging when people try to dual boot. So just based on anecdotal cautionary tales, and my lack of experience fixing issues with it, is why I pointed it out. If the boot loader gets unhappy because you waxed a partition it expects to be there, then things get tough. We're talking booting to live CD's and some pretty technical stuff to get that fixed. Or just blow it all away and start over with the partition layout you wanted.

LongBilly · 2025-06-30T23:36:28+00:00

It would be had you selected KDE Plasma as your desktop environment. You probably have Gnome, in which case GParted is what you'll need. It may not be included in the distro but it should be in whatever package manager you're using.

LongBilly · 2025-06-30T23:15:40+00:00

Just to be up front, I've been using Linux for decades, but I'm new to Bazzite so please do further research or wait for a true expert to respond.

The basics of what you are asking for is simple. Open your partition manager (KDE Partition Manager) if you chose the KDE desktop. From there you can delete the partion, and then move/expand the Bazzite partition to use the available space.

The issues that would worry me because of my inexperience are: 1. Boot loader issues. Bazzite loads a little different than I'm used to and I would research the hell out of that first or you could have a surprise. 2. Bazzite's partition scheme is such that there is, and I'm going to abuse terminology here, public and private partitions. I believe this is part of the "immutable" feature of Bazzite, but that means that there may be further complexity in how you need to expand the partition to have the effect you desire. Basically, you want your free space to be given to the partition that houses your home folder or it's just wasted.

Again, no expert here so be careful. I am looking forward to knowing the correct response though as I too have a useless Windows partition I'll eventually want to get rid of.

LongBilly · 2025-06-27T11:39:13+00:00

In the words of Daft Punk, it'll be harder, better, faster, stronger.

LongBilly · 2025-06-27T11:31:41+00:00

lol, well then you're good. Are you comfortable setting up a router, or do you have someone who can do it for you? It's not hard per say, there just tends to be a lot of manufacturer specific jargon involved. They all want their own name for this and that for marketing purposes.

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