2022-06-22 00:36:05 That python package I noted earlier will do. I can use time.tim() and keyboard.ispressed() to do the job I want to do. 2022-06-22 00:36:34 On top of that, I'll be able to assess the quality of my code output. 2022-06-22 12:43:17 I've been watching some very OLD training videos on YouTube. Stuff made by outfits like General Electric, or the army, etc. on various types of technology (mostly related to vacuum tubes). 2022-06-22 12:43:29 The stylistic differences vs. today are staggering. 2022-06-22 12:43:47 Those old videos project... what's the word? Like a "nobility" or a "grandeur." 2022-06-22 12:44:00 A sense of impressiveness. 2022-06-22 12:44:17 Propaganda elements, I guess you could accuse them of being. 2022-06-22 12:44:33 But it makes me remember what a lot of stuff was like in my childhood. 2022-06-22 12:45:11 One I watched last night went quite deeply in to the manufacturing details of tubes, and coined them "modern Alladin's lamps." 2022-06-22 12:45:25 I guess in a way they were - there was just almost no part of technology untouched by them. 2022-06-22 12:45:50 I think it's pretty remarkable how much our mastery of electromagnetic effects have changed the world. 2022-06-22 12:46:26 Today we take this stuff thoroughly for granted, but I guess the lay audience in, say, the 1950s or 1960s would have found it all pretty amazing. 2022-06-22 12:48:15 It's really cool how SIMPLE tubes really are. Much less sophisticated physics than semiconductors. 2022-06-22 12:48:34 It's actually stuff a good high school physics class can prep you to wholly understand. 2022-06-22 12:49:26 All there is to it, really, is you heat up the cathode element enough to "loosen" its electrons. And then get all of the air out of the way so those electrons can be drawn across to the plate. Simple. 2022-06-22 12:58:18 Here's an example if anyone is interested, which has some good basic info and somewhat less of the "rah rah rah America" stuff. :-) 2022-06-22 12:58:20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2TxR6alPMg 2022-06-22 13:00:13 That tradmark mid-20th century "announcer voice" is entertaining. 2022-06-22 13:00:49 Almost certainly some "voice actor" that doesn't have the first clue about what he's talking about while he reads his script. 2022-06-22 13:24:32 Oh wow - there's a plethora of "archaic knowledge" here: 2022-06-22 13:24:35 http://www.tubebooks.org/Books/seely.pdf 2022-06-22 13:24:43 Oh wait - sorry. That's just one. 2022-06-22 13:24:53 Here: 2022-06-22 13:24:55 http://www.tubebooks.org/technical_books_online.htm 2022-06-22 13:25:05 That looks like a frigging gold mine. 2022-06-22 13:26:54 the announcer voice was a deliberate thing that was intelligible over a ton of static and distortion 2022-06-22 13:31:38 That makes sense. 2022-06-22 13:32:07 I always figured they just thought it "sounded good," but that may be because it's just what I grew up commonly hearing. 2022-06-22 13:32:55 A particular guy online whose guitar and music videos I found useful - Jake Lizzio - has exactly that voice. It's almost comic seeing it come out of his youngster mouth. 2022-06-22 13:33:38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbeRVJMT5CY 2022-06-22 13:33:45 He starts a bit under a minute in. 2022-06-22 13:34:21 That first link I posted is the book I opted to download and look through from that library. 2022-06-22 13:34:59 By the time I got to college, there was not a shred of tube-based knowledge left in my university's EE curriculum. 2022-06-22 13:35:07 Everything was transistors. 2022-06-22 13:36:28 And 90% of it was digital; I did have a couple of courses on analog stuff, and one on semiconductor physics. But the rest was all digital. That would partially be because of the core specialty area I opted for - some of the other core areas probably had a higher analog component. 2022-06-22 13:36:56 tubes are cool but there's really not much good to say about them. They take a ton of space, use a ton of power, and generate a ton of heat 2022-06-22 13:37:00 I was fortunate to draw a really good professor for the basic transistor course, though. 2022-06-22 13:37:21 oh, and they literally have a warm-up time 2022-06-22 13:37:32 Indeed. But they also *handle* a ton of power, so if you want a really high power output they're still useful. 2022-06-22 13:37:37 They're also dangerous as hell. 2022-06-22 13:37:50 Hundreds of volts sneaking around, typically. 2022-06-22 13:37:54 useful for analog circuits, not so much for digital 2022-06-22 13:38:05 Definitely. 2022-06-22 13:38:42 That voltage hazard is my main reason for hesitating to experiment with them. I'd have to raise my discipline level for sure. 2022-06-22 13:39:09 You can run them at somewhat lower voltages, but then you don't really get their main benefits. 2022-06-22 13:39:21 my dad made a calculator with them when he was a teen 2022-06-22 13:39:23 I'm mostly just curious about them. 2022-06-22 13:39:41 I just like understanding new parts of tech stuff. 2022-06-22 13:39:47 "new" :D 2022-06-22 13:39:53 :-) 2022-06-22 13:39:55 New to me. 2022-06-22 13:43:33 They have a physicality to them, maybe, that solid state electronics lack 2022-06-22 14:23:21 Yeah - and I think the simpler, more intuitive physics helps with that too. 2022-06-22 14:23:52 I feel like most folks that remember their high school physics at all could grok what's going on in tubes. 2022-06-22 14:24:15 Plus everyone has a lot of experience with light bulbs, and there's some commonality there. 2022-06-22 14:24:37 Though who knows - my grandkids may be so steeped in LED lighting that incandescent bulbs seem mysterious to them. :-) 2022-06-22 14:25:36 When Edison first stumbled across thermionic emission, he was trying to figure out why his filaments always failed near the positive terminal. 2022-06-22 14:25:52 Apparently he noted it in his journal as an "interesting but useless effect." 2022-06-22 14:26:01 That was quite a wrong turn. 2022-06-22 14:28:42 I'm still snickering a little over the whole "new" reference to tube tech. That was fairly comic. 2022-06-22 14:38:46 actually my kids don't know about light bulbs :p 2022-06-22 14:39:32 I was just explaining to them a few days ago how computers used to be in a building, with a building next to it that had the air conditioning 2022-06-22 14:40:10 "You know how light bulbs get really hot?" Them: ??? 2022-06-22 15:43:00 :-) 2022-06-22 15:44:34 How old are your kids? 2022-06-22 15:44:49 After reading a book on chemistry, I'm curious to play around with some different chemical lamps like Neon and 2022-06-22 15:44:52 Argon 2022-06-22 15:45:19 Oh, there's a 'banned book' out there called The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments or something close to that. 2022-06-22 15:45:23 I've got a copy on DVD. 2022-06-22 15:45:38 Apparently kids hurt themselves - it seems to be "the real deal." 2022-06-22 15:46:47 There's a video on YouTube, from Thoughty2, I think, about one kid who "got his start" with that book, and after he caused several explosions in his home he graduated to an obsession with nuclear stuff and wound up building a "pseudo breeder reactor" in his mom's shed with stuff he scavenged from all over. 2022-06-22 15:47:00 Apparently he wandered around with a Geiger counter seeking out useful materials. 2022-06-22 15:47:29 Found a old glow-in-the-dark clock in a pawn shop that inside its compartment had a small CAN of radium-laden paint. 2022-06-22 15:47:52 Kid's dead now - I think he died in his 30's. Fouled himself up good. 2022-06-22 15:48:16 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi0oi-u3OxU 2022-06-22 15:49:00 But when it all came out the feds were at his mom's place in their hazmat suits and so on. 2022-06-22 15:49:17 His cleverness along the way was... pretty spectacular. 2022-06-22 15:50:06 Anyway, my kids are 17-30, so they all remember light bulbs just fine. 2022-06-22 15:50:46 But I bet that next decade probably makes a key difference. 2022-06-22 15:51:41 I was most amused along the way by my oldest daughters absolute fascination with turntables, of all things She wanted one for Christmas one year, and started collecting vinyl albums. 2022-06-22 15:52:37 My wife and I were like, "What the heck? It's a record player." 2022-06-22 17:05:40 I am referring to https://wiki.forth-ev.de/doku.php/en:projects:microbit:start 2022-06-22 17:06:46 It should be simple to convert the same code for the V2 - or does it work out-of-the-box? 2022-06-22 17:08:16 Once I have this running - my project is to get the Bluetooth SoC going - Did anyone do that already? 2022-06-22 17:09:49 (There were not enough space on the microbit V1 for the Bluetooth SoC) 2022-06-22 17:17:04 Ugh - frustrating. 2022-06-22 17:17:24 I just shut down my computer and booted it from a live DVD, so I could use the disk utility to make a backup image of my drive. 2022-06-22 17:17:42 I did this just the other day with a different computer before I loaded Fedora onto it for my daughter, and it worked fine. 2022-06-22 17:17:48 Took a while, but it worked. 2022-06-22 17:18:03 But when I try to do it to my system, it tells me the drive resource is busy. 2022-06-22 17:18:17 Now, why would the drive be busy when I BOOTED FROM A DVD???? 2022-06-22 17:18:34 umount /dev/nvme0n1 says it's not mounted. 2022-06-22 17:18:55 The other system didn't have an nvme drive. 2022-06-22 17:19:01 Maybe there's something different about them. 2022-06-22 17:19:27 I could just try making an image from the running system, but that seems fraught with risk to me. 2022-06-22 17:19:36 I mean, stuff on the disk is CHANGING all the time. 2022-06-22 17:21:32 Not sure mate - if you have a spare disk that will fit your data - you can always test it? 2022-06-22 17:21:55 Well, that's a good point. 2022-06-22 17:22:17 Sure. Lemme see if it will even try to make an image if I just run disks utility now, under a running boot. 2022-06-22 17:22:30 ...are you sure the disk is changing?  Can you calculate a checksum over the disk? 2022-06-22 17:22:39 I'll be a little surprised if it does, but if so, then you're right - maybe I can come up with a way to then test that image. 2022-06-22 17:22:53 Well, isn't Linux always mucking around with /tmp space? 2022-06-22 17:23:12 That was the point of booting from a live dvd - to have nothing going on with the drive. 2022-06-22 17:23:16 just calculate the checksum twice 2022-06-22 17:24:59 Well the swap files are usually mounted on the usb image? 2022-06-22 17:25:13 It gives the same message. Busy resource. 2022-06-22 17:25:29 So I need to go do more research on how to get a backup of my drive, which is a smart thing to have anyway. 2022-06-22 17:25:59 Anyway, this worked on the other machine, so clearly there's just something different between the two systems. 2022-06-22 17:28:02 Can you not do a usb boot.  The DVD has no swap files?  I am not sure... 2022-06-22 17:29:03 List the partitions mounted or only copy the unmounted partitions? 2022-06-22 17:31:44 zfs? 2022-06-22 17:32:30 NN all. 2022-06-22 17:36:13 Instructions here for doing it with dd: 2022-06-22 17:36:15 https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/unix-linux-dd-create-make-disk-image-commands/ 2022-06-22 17:36:23 I can boot from the DVD again and try that. 2022-06-22 17:36:45 Anyway, it's my understanding that the whole idea of live DVD Linux is that it doesn't TOUCH your system drive. 2022-06-22 17:37:02 The point is to let you try out Linux without affecting the system you're on. 2022-06-22 17:38:36 This is a prelude to trying to expand my system SSD partition; I bought (and received) a 512 GB SSD, but it only has a 256 GB partition, with the other 256 GB "unallocated." 2022-06-22 17:38:52 Before I go editing partitions and expanding file systems, I'd like to have a confident backup. 2022-06-22 17:39:52 Of course, if somehow this partition is showing up to the system as mounted, then the partition editing tools may refuse to cooperate as well. 2022-06-22 17:40:26 I've also seen scuttlebutt online that implies it IS possible to re-partition and file system expand while running. That idea just makes me nervous, though. 2022-06-22 17:43:12 My preference is to have everything whole and complete, but I could just define a new partition in the unused space and use it as a separate partition. That I feel safe doing while the existing partition is in use, since I owuldn't be touching it. 2022-06-22 17:43:18 It just seems less ideal. 2022-06-22 17:46:12 Oh - hmmm. It seems I have a lot of options. My existing main partition is an LVM2 partition, and from what I can tell nosing around LVM offers many many possibilities. 2022-06-22 17:46:32 It's worth some research; I think there's likely a clean and safe path forward. I just need to suss it out.