http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter Latest updates to Peter Flynn’s Blog en-ie Fri, 07 Jul 2023 22:12:16 +0100 Fri, 07 Jul 2023 22:12:16 +0100 https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html Custom XSLT 10080 Copyright © 1998-2023, Peter Flynn and Silmaril Consultants peter@silmaril.ie (Blog owner) webmaster@silmaril.ie (Silmaril Webmaster) http://www.silmaril.ie/images/silstamp-rh.png http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter 88 31 Silmaril Consultants peter@silmaril.ie (Peter Flynn) http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#internet It’s not just the theft of your data, it’s the unsolved problem of anonymity, enabled by commercialisation At the end of last year, the wonderful Cat Valente posted her take on What Went Wrong With The Web (). She vividly charts 30 years of survival in the social media desert, from the early walled gardens through the rise and fall of a dozen web ecosystems, each one in turn falling prey to greed, pride, and ignorance. This should be a must-read for everyone under 20 (because everything Cat says will be new to them) and everyone between 20 and — let us be generous — 50, who probably have similar experiences (any older than that and they probably Had A Life Before The Web).]]> Sun, 02 Jul 2023 10:01:30 +0100 http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#internet peter@silmaril.ie (Peter Flynn) http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#dates It was fine, honestly, and nothing has changed… Yes, I am aware that the little calendar block at the top of this blog is showing stupid values for the days. It was even worse when I spotted it a couple of months ago, and found the problem was my own fault in misunderstanding the way in which XSLT3 was handling dates. So I fixed it, tested it, and released it, and now with the change of month it has reverted to a milder form of what I hope is the same disease. I say ‘I hope’ because if it's a coding problem I can fix it. If it's some other weirdness like interference from the lizard-people, then I'm going to open another bottle of wine.]]> Tue, 06 Jun 2023 15:42:21 +0100 http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#dates peter@silmaril.ie (Peter Flynn) http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#apple Do I really want to sell my soul to Apple? I don’t think so, James. A couple of weeks ago, The Verge and several other sites announced that Apple were making their Classical Music app available for Android phones. I know lots of Apple users, varyingly on iMacs, Macbooks, iPads, and iPhones, and many of them listen to their music using these devices. As I live outside the Apple ecosystem, I don’t know how many of them use Apple’s (or someone else’s) streaming service or how many of them are just playing static MP3s they have downloaded, bought and paid for, or ripped from CDs — and possibly, nor do they (for some reason a lot of people seem to be very unaware of where their stuff comes from).]]> Thu, 01 Jun 2023 08:27:16 +0100 http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#apple peter@silmaril.ie (Peter Flynn) http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#reyes Quis custodiet ipsos custodes Today, Christians in some places celebrate the feast of the Epiphany, the arrival of the three wise men from the east. Christians in other places celebrate Christmas, for assorted historical and calendrical reasons. In Cork, it’s “Women’s Christmas”, when men are supposed to do the housework while women take the day off. In other places, it is similarly “Little Christmas” (which may also be on other dates). Calendars are funny things, which reminds me that my linear three-month calendar above is broken, despite having been working uninterrupted for 20 years. Shomeshing wrong shurely? [Ed.]]]> Fri, 06 Jan 2023 11:22:14 +0100 http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#reyes peter@silmaril.ie (Peter Flynn) http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#migration Migration is not just for the birds Last week I switched from Twitter to Mastodon, so I avoided most of the hue and cry over US election candidates. I still have my Twitter account, and I still read posts from a few people who have not yet moved, but pretty much most people have voted with their feet.]]> Fri, 11 Nov 2022 10:35:16 +0100 http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#migration peter@silmaril.ie (Peter Flynn) http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#twitter “If Twitter nosedives, there are alternatives”, as the Mastodon said before the ice took over. I looked at the previous date and saw it was two years ago, mid-pandemic, which is embarrassing for a so-called blog. But we all have our reasons, and I'm sure others have better ones. I survived, which is more than can be said for Brexit, Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro, and many others, although some of them will doubtless be back to torment their unhappy constituents.]]> Fri, 04 Nov 2022 23:26:01 +0100 http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#twitter peter@silmaril.ie (Peter Flynn) http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#phone Everything you once needed to know about how a trunk call was made While we wait for what's left of the democratic process in the USA to lumber towards completion, the topic of STD came up in WhatsApp. No, not Sexually Transmitted Diseases, but Save The Date — a relative is engaged and planning a post-COVID wedding. But I was reminded that to an older generation, STD meant Subscriber Trunk Dialling, the magic that lets you dial a long number and get connected to someone elsewhere on the planet, or at least in another code area.]]> Wed, 04 Nov 2020 22:01:00 +0100 http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#phone peter@silmaril.ie (Peter Flynn) http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#brexit The full scale of the disaster is beginning to become apparent, even to former Leave voters They bin and gorn and dunnit. Like the Gadarene swine, they are racing downhill. No-one seems to be able to stop them, and the UK population is going to have to suffer some more before they can start to repair the damage. The EU, meanwhile, has moved on, and is quietly happy to be rid of its most troublesome and least cooperative member, and the UK can now sink quietly into a pre-1066 oblivion.]]> Mon, 09 Apr 2018 21:50:02 +0100 http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#brexit peter@silmaril.ie (Peter Flynn) http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#postinstall No, not a rant (thank goddess, sez you) but it’s time to face the facts Having originally wiped Dell’s preinstalled Windows off the new XPS 15 lapdog in order to install Linux, I decided that perhaps a corporate image might be useful, on the rare (once-a-decade) occasions that I actually need to boot Windows for something.]]> Wed, 22 Nov 2017 16:35:00 +0100 http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#postinstall peter@silmaril.ie (Peter Flynn) http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#uptick Crawling out from under the bushes Having very nearly given up on the XPS 15 as simply too hardware-dependent for meaningful installation of Linux, I had one last try at building Enlightenment from source.]]> Thu, 16 Nov 2017 21:20:13 +0100 http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#uptick peter@silmaril.ie (Peter Flynn) http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#morelap Sometimes you just need a little patience Having fired off a huge screed of stuff to the wonderful people on the Ubuntu support list, and having taken Ralf Mardorf’s advice to Google first, even for things I don’t believe anyone would ever have encountered, I started reading more deeply.]]> Thu, 09 Nov 2017 22:25:00 +0100 http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#morelap peter@silmaril.ie (Peter Flynn) http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#hangup A boot routine — of all routines — should be the most stable This ain’t good. I powered up the new laptop and typed the encryption key as prompted, but I noticed I made a mistake in typing. No problem, it asked me for it again, so I did it right and it started turning the white dots red under the Ubuntu logo…and then hung on the third dot. The message underneath said:]]> Mon, 06 Nov 2017 22:35:00 +0100 http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#hangup peter@silmaril.ie (Peter Flynn) http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#lap Yes, it was right there on the screen and I didn't see it. Probably general age and debility. Last time I built Enlightenment I used a build script, and I had completely forgotten that.]]> Mon, 06 Nov 2017 08:45:00 +0100 http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#lap peter@silmaril.ie (Peter Flynn) http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#guido Update your OS before something worse comes along No, not that time of year when the British burn the image of a perfectly well-meaning Catholic who felt that history would be better served if he blew up their Houses of Parliament with everyone inside. He was probably right, anyway: they can’t have been any worse than the current shower of self-deluded sycophants and time-servers in Westminster.]]> Sun, 05 Nov 2017 16:00:00 +0100 http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#guido peter@silmaril.ie (Peter Flynn) http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#hastalarevistababy Your quality of service depends on the quality of your data just as much as on the quality of everything else We’re constantly being told that organisations “must go digital” or die, and experts like @damienmulley run courses to get you started or bring you up to date. Which is all very well, but there’s little point in tweeting or facebooking your organisation’s finer points if your services fall over because your data doesn’t flow.]]> Fri, 06 Oct 2017 09:55:02 +0100 http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#hastalarevistababy peter@silmaril.ie (Peter Flynn) http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#slope Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it The human race has probably been down this particular slope in one form or another many dozens or hundreds of times. Just in case anyone has missed it, the politics of western civilisation in parts of Europe and north America have taken a hit from the disgruntled, disenfranchised, dispossessed, disregarded, and disconnected (perm any three from five). It shows up in the UK as a vote to leave the EU, in the USA as a vote for the so-called President Trump, and in France as a vote to return to fascism with Marine Le Pen.]]> Fri, 10 Feb 2017 13:27:42 +0100 http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#slope peter@silmaril.ie (Peter Flynn) http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#fiagain Online technical books need constant curation OK, so it’s been a year since I put finger to keyboard on this. Mea culpa. Trying to reconstruct a life after so long with my head below the parapet took over 12 months, far longer than I anticipated.]]> Sun, 03 Apr 2016 22:15:20 +0100 http://blogs.silmaril.ie/peter#fiagain