HPR4082: No swans at Swanston

Introduction

Hosts:

MrX
Dave
Morriss

We recorded this on Saturday February 25th 2024. Our
favourite pub for lunch, The Steading, seemed to have closed
since we were last there. Research into what was going on led to the
information that the company owning this and several other pubs in the
area was selling them all.

We decided to try another place in the Pentland Hills area, and went
to the Brasserie at Swanston Farm for lunch, which was pretty
good. After lunch we as usual adjourned to Dave's Citroen car
(Studio C) in the car park, and recorded a chat.

YouTube channel recommendations (Dave)

A channel about astronomy and science. Anton goes into a fair amount
of depth about subjects in the news relating to these themes: Anton Petrov

Recent episode: Study Explains Dark
Energy and Inflation as Parallel Universes Colliding

A channel which is all about making things out of junk. No speech,
and only a small amount of music as the build comes together: Epic UpCycling

Just watched this one, and am in awe! A Treasure Chest of
Secret Drawers made from Pallets and Scrap

Terrible weather with highs winds and / or lashing rain (MrX)

Seems to be never ending.
Have noticed quite a few fences down
Large tree down blocking entrance to local park
Both parents houses sustained damage, fences and roof tiles.
So far we have been lucky with no damage
My mother was injured while going out to rescue her outside
bucket

Possibly related, it seems car insurance prices are increasing (MrX)

I have seen some link this to the high repair cost for modern cars
because they have lots of high tech included. In particular the sensors
placed in bumpers.
Some have speculated this to be because the high repair cost of
EV's.
I came across this YouTube video that shows that global insurance
claims have been historically large in recent years due to natural
disasters. While the video concentrates on properties I'm sure it also
will be affecting car insurance. I believe this likely to be having the
most prominent factor for insurance increases. Insurers ABANDONING high
climate risk properties

I got a Steam Deck for Christmas! (Dave)

I borrowed my son's Nintendo Switch in November 2023 to see if I
could see the screen and play games on it. I could, but haven't played
games since the 1980's so I'm terrible at it!
I told them I might buy myself a Steam Deck in 2024, but wasn't
sure.
Much to my surprise my family jointly bought me a Steam Deck for
Christmas!
I am pretty bad at using it, but I'm practising
I'm learning Stardew Valley at first, but I'd quite like to
try Kerbal Space Programme at some point.

Cinema visits / movies: (MrX)

Hunger Games pre sequel

Was not rated very highly but me and Mrs X actually really enjoyed
it.

Oppenheimer

Knowing something of the background story was advantageous

Barbie

Watched on DVD!

Ticks (Dave)

We spoke about this subject last time we met. Later, I was reminded
of a disease called alpha-gal
syndrome, first detected in the USA, which can follow a tick bite.
It is caused by the injection of a carbohydrate by the tick, which
it has obtained by feeding on another mammal. The carbohydrate is called
Galactose-α-1,3-galactose, also known as alpha-gal. This causes
a strong immune reaction because it's a foreign substance which isn't
found in humans.
The result is an allergy
to red meat, which contains alpha-gal!
This syndrome has been found in the USA and Australia and several
other places, but now seems to be coming to Europe and has been seen in
the UK.

Dog-friendly places (MrX)

Waterstones
book store is dog friendly. Possibly only relevant to people living in
Britain? They have a cafe upstairs which accepts dogs.
The pub we used to meet in, The Steading, was dog friendly as well.
The latest venue does not seem to be, but is a restaurant, not a
pub.

Raspberry Pi stuff (both)

Dave pre-ordered a RPi 5 in November 2023 and it arrived in
December. He decided to get a Pimoroni NVMe Base to take an SSD, and
ordered that once it was available on pre-order. Now the RPi 5 is
equipped with a 500GB SSD attached underneath, running off the PCIe
interface.
Dave is working at setting up two RPi 4B systems, and a RPi 3A to
run various services in his house. Currently setting up Pi-hole. The RPi
5 will be added to this combination in due course.
MrX bought a RPi 4B in 2023 (as they became more available) which he
initially intended setting up with XBMC. He had problems playing certain
video resolutions with the latest version of LibreELEC running XBMC. He
has now decided to use it to replace an ageing server located
upstairs.
Dave's 'what_pi' script that tells you about your Pi's
settings doesn't work on Raspberry Pi OS since this OS stores the
information it needs quite differently from Raspbian.

Visit to Blackpool (MrX)

Met up with family for the long weekend in Blackpool.
It was bitterly cold and very windy, but we had a good time.
While there we were lucky to get a trip on a 100 year old tram.
The tram had very unique seats that allowed you to flip the back
over, so they are pointed in either direction, depending on the
direction of travel. I thought this was very clever. Haven't seen this
on modern buses or trams, perhaps because they don't meet modern safety
regulations.

Edinburgh
Trams (MrX)

Following Dave's recommendation from our last show. Me, Mrs X and
our 4 legged companion took the tram all the way from Ingliston park and
ride to Newhaven. Our four legged companion loved the trams.
Seems there has been so much development.
Saw lots of new things along the way.
Lots of other interesting places and walks for future trips.
Can't believe it's taken us so long to appreciate the tram. We have
used the train in the past but it's a bit limited by the places it goes
though it is very convenient from our location.
Think we may be using the tram a bit more in future.

HPR changes (Dave)

Ken has enhanced some aspects of the calendar page:

Reserved show overview - a list of what's in the reserve queue with
date, host and show title (suggestion from Archer72).
Statistics - a call interface that returns JSON data containing most
of the old statistics plus a few more (requested by MrX).

These changes were also mentioned in the last Community
News

TLDR (MrX)

Mentioned in one of Klaatu's
recent shows
From the slang expression TL;DR or tl;dr, short
for "too long; didn't read" (see Wikipedia page)
Quote: The tldr pages are a community effort to simplify the
beloved man pages with practical examples.
Details:

Website: https://tldr.sh
GitHub: https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr
Mastodon: https://fosstodon.org/@tldr_pages (@[email protected])
Matrix: https://matrix.to/#/#tldr-pages:matrix.org

Many clients available: see https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr/wiki/tldr-pages-clients

Bash help command (Dave)

There is a help command in Bash which is useful for
getting information about Bash built-in commands. For example
'help read' will give you a one-page summary of this
command which saves a lot of searching through the Bash man page.
The example mentioned in the audio 'help test' also
works, but since it's a stand-alone command the result is quite similar
to typing 'man test'.
There are very few (if any) examples though, and that's where
tldr will be better!