Remote
Ian Chard
@flup@mastodon.scot
mastodon 4.7.2Musician, IT maestro, and #law nerd. Tech manager at a bit of the University of #Edinburgh. Opinions are my own; boosts/favourites != endorsement. #Jewish and secular. Occasionally GM7OMZ.
Profile pic: me looking happy on a beach near West Kilbride, pointing cheesily at the camera.
Header pic: Aberdour harbour looking calm and peaceful.
Live in #Edinburgh, grew up in #Brighton, lived in #Manchester and #London.
#Scotland #UK #LiveMusic #Percussion #HamRadio #Tech #RetroTech #infosec
402 Followers
585 Following
50 Posts
Joined November 03, 2022
Location:
Edinburgh, UK
Website:
Pronouns:
he/him
Vote tomorrow. Just vote. Get out and vote.
If you’ve cleared that hurdle: vote for the party who has the interests at heart of the most disadvantaged people you know.
A squirrel among the graves. #silentsunday #edinburgh #photography #wildlife
I work in a university history department and this is absolutely representative of what’s happening. #ai #academia #cheating #AcademicMisconduct https://www.techspot.com/news/113243-professor-invisible-prompt-trap-catches-32-students-cheating.html
According to my phone, #homeassistant just started working!
I was astonished to find that my other half had never heard of 'My Bonnie Flies Over the Ocean'. Is this not something absolutely everyone knows?
Trying to get my parents’ astronomical Sky bill down, and the woman on the phone tried to sell Dad a new TV using terms he didn’t understand. I had to intervene and stop it before it was too late. Turns out they’re already in the middle of a 24-month contract that he had no idea about and they’re facing a 14% price increase next month. What a scummy predatory company.
Thinking about dual-booting my laptop but terrified by secure boot, bootloaders in general, and Windows breaking itself in a way I can't fix.
Two weeks into returning to #Linux on the desktop (specifically #Mint), and I'm really struggling with its handling of my laptop's 4K display combined with an external HD monitor.
Windows 11 just works, but no combination of scaling and font changes leaves me with a usable experience. Some apps work well while others either look huge or tiny.
That, plus Bluetooth audio glitches, plus GPU-related hangs, plus it never boots first time, is making me wonder if this is really worth doing.
Replying to
@LilahTovMoon I like the timespan idea, but what if change is urgently required? Example: let’s say, just a random example off the top of my head, that there was no 25th amendment, but there was a pressing need for one. That couldn’t wait 15 years.
Just seen that one of our main student-facing systems is dropping #Firefox support. Sad to see Firefox being relegated even further -- although I myself stopped using it a few months ago.
Just introduce capybaras to the UK. I foresee zero downside.
@JackTheCat@mastodon.scot Precisely right. I don’t want to hear one more person talking about independence in terms of oil revenues. That tanker has sailed.
Almost got taken out by the same two wee scallies on powered scooters *twice* on my way home. Gave one of them a hell of a fright by stepping out without seeing him on his black scooter dressed all in black. #edinburgh
When Black Sheep Coffee crashes and burns it's going to be brutal. #edinburgh
Replying to
@CmykStudent@fosstodon.org @cockneylaurie@mastodonapp.uk I know you’re not :) but if you want a bit of IT manager feedback: if I’m going to dump Adobe (our largest software bill except for the big ‘M’) I need a drop-in replacement that can be made to look and feel close enough that no training is needed for non-technical folk.
I know that’s not GIMP’s mission, but I reckon most people that complain about its UI are expecting to just pick it up and use it with their existing skills.
Replying to
@cockneylaurie@mastodonapp.uk Oh absolutely. It's the dilemma free alternatives face: naive users will expect things to work, and hearing things about outdated/non-free drivers, distros, and window managers just drives them away.
Maybe part of this is that when I was young I was happy to calculate video timings by hand to put in the X config to make my monitor work... and now debugging display and audio problems just distracts me from my real work.
Replying to
@penguin42 If you have rules you need experts and an arbiter, none of which are free. I get the whole ‘how much did this nonsense cost’ thing, but it’s only nonsense to us because the decision only affects us in that big marshmallows are now a bit cheaper. Actually thinking about it I’m quite happy for the taxpayer to cover any number of these if it means cheap and plentiful nosh.
Apparently there are four ways to eat oversized marshmallows, some of which will mean you have to pay VAT on them. As judgments go this is thoroughly enjoyable (much like the marshmallows). https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKFTT/TC/2026/500.html #food #law #uklaw #tax
Lesson from tonight’s concert: you can tear the house apart, rip up books, stomp bats to death, and torment cats… but bandage one squirrel’s arm and all is forgiven. #ravel #classicalmusic #opera
Replying to
@Dolphinchaz It does seem to be getting a bit better here… if they could sort out the insane delivery cyclists that would also be very nice!
Replying to
@iaruffell yeah, unfortunately I have specific use cases for Windows that I can’t get away from. I used to dual-boot all the time, maybe I’m just getting old and slow!
Replying to
@Anomnomnomaly@beige.party And they would have gotten away with it if it weren't for us meddling kids.
Replying to
@Indyposterboy@mastodon.scot How do you convince the half of the Scottish population that doesn’t agree with you?
Replying to
@cockneylaurie@mastodonapp.uk @ftranschel@norden.social I can only speak to my own experiences this time around and they have been far from smooth.
I'm glad things are working for you, but the last time I tried this ten years ago was only marginally more painful than this time.
Replying to
@ftranschel@norden.social It honestly saddens me too -- the last time I ran Linux on the desktop was about 10 years ago and the end-user experience hasn't much improved for people who run more than an email client and a browser.
(to be fair that's a lot of people, and Mint might work well for many of my colleagues and family)
Replying to
@ftranschel@norden.social I'm sure they do -- but as a 33-year veteran of the Linux world I don't want to be my own sysadmin any more, I just want to use my laptop. I tried fractional scaling but it makes video playback choppy :/
I might try one more distro if I can face it, but this is such a time sink I'm on the verge of giving up again.
FWIW I tried Ubuntu first but 'sector 2048 is already in use', so Mint is already my second go at this.
Replying to
@frabcus Right behind you. Man, I would really like a day where I don’t end up being disappointed by something.
Replying to
@frabcus You can have a viable business model, but wads of VC cash still look awfully attractive.
Replying to
@cockneylaurie@mastodonapp.uk It's OK, and I'm sorry if I appeared to be short with you. I've become increasingly intolerant of an attitude in the FOSS world that real-world user experiences just don't matter. I'm absolutely not saying that you're like that at all, but it's made me oversensitive to hearing 'it works for me' :)
Replying to
@cockneylaurie@mastodonapp.uk I haven't used Libreoffice for a while but I always felt an uncanny-valley-type-feeling: it's kind of almost the same as Word but not quite, and the 'not quite' things are subtle and uncomfortable. But I did write several years' worth of essays with it, and it's perfectly capable. But I miss WordPerfect...
(oh and don't get me started on GIMP)
Replying to
@Indyposterboy@mastodon.scot How would that work for general elections? Elections are very different animals from referendums, which (in my view) have a default result.
Replying to
@Indyposterboy@mastodon.scot If it was a steady rise I'd agree but I don't see that trend. It's only in the last year or so that 'yes' has overtaken 'no' again, and they've both danced around the 50% point for years. I know it's unpopular to say so, but I strongly believe that we should learn the lesson of the disaster that was the Brexit referendum and require (e.g.) a 60% 'yes' vote for a valid result. The nightmare scenario would be another close (and ambiguous) result.
Replying to
@mos_8502@studio8502.ca Management is salivating at the potential salary savings. It doesn’t care about quality because apparently no-one cares about that any more.
Silent Witness really has gone down the toilet. The first two episodes of this series were really good, but the rest.. ugh. Watching ep 9 made me want to chew through crockery.
Replying to
@cockneylaurie@mastodonapp.uk My designer colleague described GIMP’s UI as ‘openly hostile’!
Replying to
@struan No idea, but they’ve expanded so fast it must be expensive private equity debt that’s fuelling it. They’re about to open their twelfth branch in Edinburgh.
Replying to
@linuxgnome I’ve seen this go wrong so many times… it works and Linux boots, but Windows either doesn’t, or something bitlockery goes wrong, or some other stupidity.