Book read: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/485894.The_Metamorphosis

Film: The Last Jedi directed by Rian Johnson

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2527336/?ref_=nv_sr_2

So I felt compelled to keep up with the franchise reboot.  First the good things, the opening space battle is really good.  This is something I've wanted to see on the big screen for years.  Star Trek never goes near it, but Star Wars finally did.

The downside is that's where all the CGI budget went!  The rest of the in space scenes are the universe's most dull chase scene.

Now onto Princess Leia, they seemed in two minds over to kill her off or not.  The right decision was to do that given the sad departure of Carrie Fisher.   But no we are teased with the characters death, pushing that problem further down the road.

The casino segment where they are trying to find the codebreaker is a little tenuous.  It was trying to point out the ethics of such places but it all felt too shallow.

Cross Compiling Qt for Raspberry Pi

These are notes on getting Qt 5.9.2 built on RPi cross compiling from a PC to avoid a long build time.

Target:  RPi model 2
Host: Ubuntu 16.04

1. (Target)
   Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and uncomment the deb-src line

   Install required libraries for target:

    sudo apt-get update      
    sudo apt-get build-dep qt4-x11
    sudo apt-get build-dep libqt5gui5
    sudo apt-get install libudev-dev libinput-dev \
                 libts-dev libxcb-xinerama0-dev  libxcb-xinerama0

   Setup target directories:

    sudo mkdir /usr/local/qt5pi
    sudo chown pi:pi /usr/local/qt5pi

 2. (Host)

   Setup working directory and get a toolchain

    mkdir ~/raspi
    cd ~/raspi
    git clone https:://github.com/raspberrypi/tools

    mkdir sysroot sysroot/usr sysroot/opt

   Libraries from RPi to Host:

    rsync -avz pi@rpi:/lib sysroot
    rsync -avz pi@rpi:/usr/include sysroot/usr
    rsync -avz pi@rpi:/usr/lib sysroot/usr
    rsync -avz pi@rpi:/opt/vc sysroot/opt

   Adjust symlinks to relative:

      wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/riscv/riscv-poky/master/scripts/sysroot-relativelinks.py
      chmod +x sysroot-relativelinks.py
     ./sysroot-relativelinks.py sysroot

 3. (Host)
    Get opensource package for Qt (e.g qt-everywhere-opensource-src-5.9.2.tar.xz)

   The configure was tricky to setup, I got a clean build with:

    ./configure -release \
                -opengl es2 \
                -device linux-rasp-pi2-g++ \
                -device-option \
                CROSS_COMPILE=~/raspi/tools/arm-bcm2708/gcc-linaro-arm-linux-gnueabihf-raspbian-x64/bin/arm-linux-gnueabihf- \
                -no-use-gold-linker \
                -sysroot ~/raspi/sysroot \
                -opensource \
                -confirm-license \
                -make libs -prefix /usr/local/qt5pi \
                -extprefix ~/raspi/qt5pi \
                -skip wayland \
                -skip qtwebengine \
                -hostprefix ~/raspi/qt5 -v

   Note the linux-rasp-pi2 which might need updating to linux-rasp-pi3 for newer models.  I dropped the qtwebengine and wayland to avoid some compile errors.

4. (Host) Deploy to Rpi

      rsync -avz qt5pi pi@raspberrypi.local:/usr/local

5. (Host) build an example app

     cd qtbase/examples/opengl/qopenglwidget
     ~/raspi/qt5/bin/qmake
     make

     scp qopenglwidget pi@raspberrypi.local:/home/pi

Sources

These were my starting points for this post:

https://wiki.qt.io/Native_Build_of_Qt5_on_a_Raspberry_Pi
https://wiki.qt.io/RaspberryPi2EGLFS

Film: Hidden Figures directed by Theodore Melfi

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4846340/

Book read: Calculating the Cosmos by Ian Stewart

I've not read much of Stewart for a few years, so I tried this book.  It's a good survey of the mathematics behind modern astronomy.  Right from the basics up to exo-planets and dark matter.

It is a little heavy going in place, could have done with a few more formulas rather than worded descriptions of formulas!

Book read: The Korean War by Max Hastings

A book I've wanted to read for many years to plug a gap in my knowledge.  With Trump at loggerheads with N Korea I thought it a good time to read up on the original conflict.

This book was from the late 1980s, and N Korea was as closed as it is now.  Hastings describes the conflict very well and the subversive involvement of China which soon became China versus America which is probably little appreciated.

Cisco looking for buyer for NDS

After 5 years of bad management and massive reductions in work force, they probably will not get $5Bn for it

https://www.bloomberg.com/technology

And breaking on rumour site:

https://www.thelayoff.com/t/Q1IZko3

Great goal clip

http://digg.com/2017/puhiri-super-fast

Film: Blade Runner 2049 Directed by Denis Villeneuve

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1856101/

Film: The Lobster directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3464902/

Carrier arrives at Portsmouth

Great piece of engineering, crazy that we have two of these white elephants ordered in the care free Blair years:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-hampshire-40936075/the-31bn-hms-queen-elizabeth-arrives-off-isle-of-wight

A drone landed on it up in Scotland - asymetric threats anyone?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-scotland-40910090/drone-films-giant-carrier-before-landing-on-deck-at-invergordon

Film: Dunkirk directed by Christopher Nolan

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5013056/

Film: Baby driver directed by Edgar Wright

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3890160/

Carrier sea trials

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-40402153

get_iplayer Script

A great script for downloading things off iplayer.

https://github.com/get-iplayer/get_iplayer

Great for grabbing the streams if you are going to be offline or on the move.  I think the iplayer apps do let you do this but to a limited extent.

This is the kind of thing BBC should not be too upset about, license fee payers accessing the content they've paid for in a convenient way...

Film: Sully directed by Clint Eastwood

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3263904/

After reading the book I saw the film was cheap on google play, so I gave it a go.

It's pretty authentic to the book although does go into more detail over how the inquiry board doubted that he had to land in the Hudson rather than a emergency runway landing.

Book read: Sully by Chesley Sullenberger

The book about the pilot who landed in the Hudson in 2009 after both engines were taken out by a bird strike.

It's an interesting read about his background and life story, you get to appreciate that pilots of his generation were typically from a military background and were used to dealing with adverse conditions.

World extents (4)

My holiday in Edale extended my world extents a little, the list now reads:

1. North - Edale UK
2. East -Brisbane Australia
3. South - Sydney Australia
4. West - St Austell UK

Holiday 6 - 13 May 2017 Edale

Day 1 - Travel to Edale

A day of driving, made good time ~5 hours Southampton - Edale ~230 miles
So that's M3 / A34 / M40 / M42 / A42 / M1

Stopped off at Warwickshire services half way.  I was looking for signs of the difference between north and south.  Past Lecistershire the traffic petered out quite a bit.

I was using a Garmin sat nav, which did pretty well.  On the preperation I noticed it was doing something strange on the M40/M42 changerover, throwing in a couple of A roads.   I kept to what it said and it did have a spurious come off and back on the motorway scenario.   Chesterfield was a bit confusing and I followed the A61 further north than I should have done, but the sat nav corrected fine.

Past Warwick castle was the furthest north I have ever travelled.  I'd heard bad stories about the M1 congestion but it wasn't too bad.  There was a long stretch of lane conversion road works at 50 mph - but if anything this temporary thing helped traffic flow.

The local roads to Edale and the farm we stayed at were fine, only right at the very end going to single track.

Day 2 - Initial trail walks

Today we set out and walked some of the basic trails.  The morning was spent walking 4 miles on the Penine way.  The afternoon was spent walking about 2 miles in the other direction which leads to a second farm.  Beautiful weather and a lot of people on the trails.  Had lunch at the Coopers Cafe in Edale which served some nice sandwiches.

Day 3 - Trip to Manchester

I've never being to any big cities, and Manchester now marks the furthest point north I have travelled.  Edale is a direct train so I thought this was my one chance to do it.  I was expecting a lot of run down and seen better days type of city centre.  But Manchester seemed like it has had a lot of redevelopment mixing the old buildings with new.  There are some classic old architeture like the Corn exchange, or the Midland hotel - but also some new pedestrianisation of the city centre.  What looked like a neat tram system also ran through the centre which seemed a lot better than an underground or fragmented bus network.  We had a good walk round a nice lunch, did not quite make the art gallery as it was tricky to find (once we'd given up, someone asked us for directions!)

Day 4 - Chatsworth House

Took the car out today to find Chatsworth house, about 20 miles away.  We got there as it opened, and spent the morning looking around the house and the afternoon walking the gardens.  The house had a fashion and sculpture twist as well as giving a family history.   The gardens were beautiful with lots of features.  This included a hedge maze, and a water walkway down to the house.


Day 5 - Walking, Grindsbrook and Ringing Roger

Today we tried some of the harder climbs.  At the top of Edale we walked along Grindsbrook which was a weaving path alongside the river.  This ended with a quite hard climb to the ridge we we declined.   We tried another route which was a path climb up onto Ringing Roger which gave some spectacular views. down onto the valley.

Day 6 - Walking, Penine Way and Jacobs Ladder

Did about 5 hours of walking today back to the Penine way we initially did some of on day 2.  This time we followed the trail on to the climb at Jacobs ladder a long spiralling climb up to the ridge  This took us onto a ridge and we stopped at a high point at a group of rocks.  This walk took us to the open country proper and the views were spectacular.  On the way there and on the way back we saw two RAF Tornado's flying overhead.

Portsmouth League Two champions

Portsmouth leave league two in style, with a win and draws elsewhere that mean they become champions:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39753910

It has been a long haul for Portsmouth, four years in the division.  A couple of seasons fighting relegation.  For the first couple of years they suffered from the problem of drawing from the ranks of their own ex-pros as managers.  People like Awford and Whittingham - total club heroes, but never good enough as managers.

Paul Cook at first seemed an unlikely guy - I don't know what he's got, but he has delivered the best win rate since Redknapp.  The club feels very different to the overspending days of Redknapp and co. - Money flying out on unsustainable signings and wages, something Portsmouth paid a heavy price for and those responsible never really held accountable for their misconduct.

But we could be going back there with the Eisner bid - I don't think they can turn down the bid, but why on earth does this guy want to buy a lower league football club?

IoT security risk - who'd have thought it!

I think to anyone in the industry the mad rush to produce pointlessly internet connectivity from everything from light bulbs to fridges while not thinking too hard on the security aspects was always going to become an eventual disaster.

The main problem is the no sense of obligation on the part of the manufacturer to keep devices up to date even if they have done a good job on security in the first place.  You can understand their reluctance, there is no direct money in it - just a small amount of consumer appreciation.   The average consumer will also not really understand the hacking war that is going on around such devices especially if any covert surveillance could be obtained (thinking of the security agencies hacking TV camera functions here).

Also trivial device like a light bulb being connected to the outside world has a short lived wow factor, now a trashy app can turn on your lights when you are out - it's simply not that useful. A read a hilarious article about the Zuckerberg toying with automation at home, and controlling things from his mobile - I hope that keeps him from world domination.

IBM to hire veterans

At first I thought a change of policy, re-employing a tiny percentage of their own veterans that they have fired over the years while moving to cheaper overseas employees with less rights - or "global talent" as IBM would have it.  But no, military veterans to be trained in use of IBM services and software:

https://www.axios.com/ibm-2000-jobs-exclusive-2317626492.html

So cynically this gets IBM back in the governments eyes, and puts them in line for government contracts.  While that's not bad, it is when IBM has done so much to reduce it's headcount in expensive countries.

Social Media Advertising

The world of social media has become to interwoven into regular media, that every news story seems to carry an implicit advert for a social media platform to "find out more".

In the case of the BBC, who are usually incredibly stuffy about not mentioning brands and if they do usually chide themselves with "other brands like this are available" to kid us that there is some impartiality going on.

But in the case of social the BBC forget all this and always trumpet what was said on Twitter, what was posted on Facebook.  So if you do not care for such things you cannot get away from it.  There is an implicit assumption here that this is part of normal life and not a product that although free is selling you're personal data like crazy behind the scenes.

Cisco

I sometimes look at what is happening at the beleagured Cisco systems on thelayoff.com

Here was a great comment that I think sums up the fake image the corporation endlessly tries to promote - but anyone who has worked there for a while would recognise as false: 

"The old Cisco is gone. Sorry to break the news to you.

Take a look at the images and stories on the CEC home page and on Glassdoor and have that paint a picture for you. The marketing tells the story, in every human-interest story and in every picture:

• A gaggle of smiling 20 something's in t-shirts doing a group limbo or a massive selfie at work
  
• All of them a mix of multi racial, good looking kids with an equal number of men and women
  
• Random story about how some salesguy saved up all his PTO so he could climb some peak in Nepal and put a Cisco flag on it
  
• A catchy story about how we are going to be the TESLA of IoT, Smart Cities, (insert shiny object here) and rule the world
  

It is all rather transparent, somewhat desperate and sad. Maybe I'm just bitter about where we are now and I'm seeing stuff that doesn't exist. Maybe not."

Film: Midnight Cowboy Directed by John Schlesinger

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064665/