Computer fixed

The Lenovo Thinkpad was fixed and it is working wonderfully. The repairman came and replaced the motherboard, sitting at our kitchen table; a guy about my age, who didn’t want to drink coffee because then he would have to pee en route between destinations. It was a pleasure to watch him work at the computer, with his practiced hands. He had been working for IBM for 20 years. Asked whether IBM is a good company to work for, he said it used to be better, before the 2008 crash.

Thoughts on Brexit

The UK has not been my home since childhood. I will probably never go back to live there. Yet my only passport is British, and I might wish to live one day in a European country.  Here’s what I think about Brexit.

Any major change in the status of a country should require a referendum with a two-thirds majority. That would take care of situations where the majority is slim, as was the case in this one. Joining the EU should have required such a referendum; leaving it too.

The referendum on leaving the EU should have been built from the outset on the principle of holding a second referendum, once the conditions agreed between Parliament and the EU would be known.

Since joining the EU made every British citizen a citizen of the EU, any automatic abrogation of that citizenship should be illegal. Although the gaining of EU citizenship is dependent upon national citizenship in an EU member country, losing of such citizenship should be conditioned upon the acceptance by the individual. It is not for a country to take away citizenship, even of a dual citizen, without due cause (i.e. individuals themselves have done something that would be a cause of revoking citizenship) – otherwise, this only causes anguish to the individual. The case should be adjudicated by the European Court of Justice.

Whatever I think about Brexit, it seems to me that at this moment, Johnson’s deal is the only one on the table. Parliament should decide on that deal and stop quibbling. Labour should support the deal on condition that there will be a second referendum; that’s what they said they would do. They might still have illusions of passing their own deal, but that’s not going to happen. Even if, as I suspect, a second referendum would come out in support of Brexit, the step is still necessary as a means to national healing.  All this literal demonization of the other side, whichever side, should stop.

lunch was…

home-made hummus/tahini from:

  • raw tahini
  • frozen chick peas (cooked a little)
  • freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • a local (extra-virgin or whatever) olive oil
  • muji (maybe) miso paste (mixed with a little hot water to create a liquid)
  • Mexican hot pepper sauce
  • water

all mixed in the food processor.

+  3 slices of spelt bread

+  salad from organic cucumbers, tomatoes, with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, Himalayan salt.

Cross-platform foss apps (again)

Now I’m on MS Windows (see earlier post), because that’s what I acquired with the Thinkpad given or loaned to me by my son. But we seem to be reaching a stage where the actual operating system is not of prime importance.* I mean I had to fiddle quite a bit in order to set up the machine as I wanted it, minimizing the connections with Microsoft and setting up the same software I always use on Linux. I’m beginning to think it’s a useful constraint to go for software that’s available everywhere, on all Linux desktops as well as MS Windows and Mac. Not everything works as well as the non-FOSS options. For example, Foxit Reader (which isn’t FOSS) is much more feature-rich than Evince, which I also have set up. But for everyday tasks, Evince is enough.

For those willing to work with the terminal, the limitations become much more insignificant, but it’s a struggle to identify the right scripts. For example today I was looking at Imagemagick, and I didn’t find yet an easy explanation of how to do stuff. There’s a routine operation I always do when importing photos from my phone or elsewhere, in order that I can put them online. This involves reducing the size of the photos according to their longest side (but only those that actually need to be shrunk), and then saving them with a new name. This is very easy in Xnview (which isn’t FOSS), but it seems like a struggle to obtain through Imagemagick.

I’m still trying to obtain a FOSS alternative to XNView, and yesterday looked at Digikam. Naturally it can do a lot more for digital assets management than XNView, however its batch routine is still primitive compared with the latter. There are no options for shrinking only large photos (rather than blowing up the smaller ones), and no option for shrinking them by their longest side (in order that it will work the same for portrait and landscape shapes). That’s when I started to look at Imagemagick, because why be upset with GUI options, when in the CLI you can do everything, right? But it isn’t quite so simple in the case of Imagemagick. And I know myself. Things that take a long time to learn are just as easily forgotten – especially the ones that I don’t need to do several times a day, so that they become a routine.

For text editing, I’ve finally ended up with Bluefish.  It can do everything I need, and it was possible to simplify the interface how I liked it, and use tabs.  One need that many people don’t have is simple and painless LTR / RTL shifting, as soon as one changes the input language.  Bluefish handles this painlessly – when I shift to Hebrew or Arabic, it begins the line from the opposite side.  Some programs, for example Geanie, can’t handle RTL languages at all, and others don’t do it very well.

I would like to get into the habit of using a single editor (Bluefish) wherever I need an editor. For example this WordPress post, and maybe also for writing emails. Using a single editor means that everything is taken care of in one familiar interface, and there are no surprises like losing all of my work if the computer suddenly turns off. Bluefish saves every minute by default.

* The upcoming versions the Windows Linux Subsystem offer an even more real Linux experience than what currently exists, and it has better interaction with filing systems.

New computer

My son has given me a new computer; one which he purchased himself for coding a couple of years ago. It’s Thinkpad T470P, which comes with a good 7th generation i7-7000HQ processor, 32GB of RAM and an SSD. So it’s the most powerful computer I’ve had. It has one flaw, which prevents him from just selling it on eBay, which is that if the computer is jolted, it turns off. This isn’t a problem if work is being done on a stable surface, but I could imagine that it might be a problem if working on one’s lap or on an airplane. It’s possible to move it around the house in an ‘on’ state, usually, but there’s always the chance that it could turn off. Anyway, that’s not a serious impediment for the way I use a computer. What is more questionable is that the computer comes with Windows 10 Pro, and I don’t want to remove it in case he needs the computer back at some time.

It’s been years since I worked under Windows. I don’t mind getting back up to speed with it, since I occasionally need to help people with their computers. So I will continue using it for a while. Afterwards, I might just go back to working with AntiX, MX or even Puppy Linux from a pen drive, as I’ve done quite often previously. In terms of software, there is one advantage for my work, in that Windows works natively with Google Drive file stream. My experience with the 3rd party equivalents (of the earlier form of Google Drive sync) have not been good, and on one occasion, disastrous. With regard to the other software that I use, I have really no difficulties. Almost all the programs that I use in Linux exist under Windows: Waterfox, Libreoffice, Gimp, Cherrytree, Xnview, Clementine, Bluefish, Atom, Filezilla, Keepass, Scribus, Inkscape, VLC, Telegram desktop, Tor, Calibr, Transmission. I’ve also now installed Ubuntu under Windows, so that I can use command line utilities. I haven’t checked yet regarding Audacity sound editor or the possibilities regarding movie editing, but I remember that Windows’ own possibilities for the latter were adequate for my needs.

Anyway, it’s a joy to be working on a more powerful machine again finally, as my 7 year old computers, with their slow processors and limited RAM were becoming annoying for some things. I also love the Thinkpad keyboard, which on this model is also back-lit, so I hope to get some nice work done on this thing. The battery lasts for several hours, which is also very nice.

One interesting thing that I have discovered is that Linux is more flexible regarding keyboard language input.  On a Windows US keyboard it’s a bit difficult to obtain a € sign or a £ sign without a numerical keyboard.  What I’ve decided to do is to work under the UK keyboard.  Five keys are switched, but these are mostly obscure, and I can remember the equivalents.  The main switch is regarding the @ and ” symbols.  It’s a weird position for the double inverted comma/quotation mark.  Brits tend to use this less than Americans, but I see that nowadays, they are tending to use double quotes in the same situations as Americans.  The Guardian style guide , like the BBC, Telegraph and Reuters style guides, calls for the use of double quotes for main quotes, with the use of single inverted commas preserved only for internal quotes (or apostrophes).  Both British and US journals use single quotes in headlines and titles, but double quotes in the articles themselves.  If this is true it would probably make sense to move the ” sign back into the QWERTY line.  Anyway, I think I can work with it.