14 January 2026
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The temperature has been up and down this month – touching on double figures yesterday – but mainly down, so I was glad to capture a image of a frosty morning today. The brushing of white brings a clarity to some of the details. Everything holds itself still, waiting for just a little longer before bursting out with fresh life.
13 January 2026
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One of the (many) reasons I like to have access to a Linux style system for computer work is the venerable but mighty command line utility grep. For the longest time, I thought it stood for “Get Regular ExPression” but I’ve since learned that the term actually comes from “Global Regular Expression Print”, stemming from the editor command it started with (g/re/p). In its simplest form, it allows you to search a specified directory for a string of text but you can extend it in all sorts of ways both with the command line arguments (such as -i for ignore case or -R for also search recursively through all subdirectories) and with the power of regular expressions to define exactly what you are looking for.
Today I wanted to search for the use of a couple of keywords in some of the codebase I have access to in my new webdev role. I fired up a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) terminal in one part of that and ran a simple grep command. It took a while, so I wondered about trying a similar search on my Debian Linux box. This is running Debian 12 from an external USB hard drive on my laptop, an older and, I assumed, less powerful set up than my main box. Shiver me timbers! The laptop returned results while WSL was still working on it. I then moved up a directory on the Linux machine and tried the same search again – that gave a lot more files to search and it was still done before WSL.
By this point, WSL was beginning to trickle out results but, having run the same grep command on Linux and got the results I hit Ctrl-C to cancel the Windows version. Clear Debian is a bit better at file system operations than Windows. That doesn’t surprise me although I am impressed just how much faster it ran even on older hardware. Anyway, I’ve got my results… time to do something with them.
12 January 2026
by wpAdmin
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It is just over a couple of weeks until this year’s RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch (23-25 January). Last year I remember that we had a surprisingly high number of goldfinches and, as I recall, not so many sparrows. This year, I’d love our local flocks of long-tailed tits to make an appearance. They were out in force this morning, having their breakfast on the feeders in the garden at the same time we had our breakfast indoors.
There are no guarantees of course. While we tend to get some visitors coming every day, including those sparrows and also blue tits, the gang of long-tailed tits only makes a more irregular appearance. However, if we do spot them at any point over the birdwatch weekend, that will probably be the hour we choose to count and record.
Is that cheating? No more so than making sure feeders are well stocked and other tricks. I’m pretty sure that if the RSPB tried to exact a more rigorous routine, like setting particular hours to watch, their numbers would drop a long way both from the birds that chose to visit at different times and the watchers who couldn’t make the particular times. Mind you, I’d love to know how their statisticians account for the fact that a good number of their observers have done everything they can to have bountiful observation times.
11 January 2026
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There were lots of new and little used pieces at tonight’s CSWO rehearsal so a lot of sight reading to do. It wasn’t quite as daunting as it would have been a couple of years ago but I wouldn’t claim that I nailed everything. One thing I’m getting better at is reading tuba parts, where I have to cope with the fact they are written at pitch instead of an octave higher. The latter is standard for electric bass, partly because you’d need a lot of ledger lines to get down to the low E (already below the bass clef) and lower notes on extended range basses.
However, it was one of those tuba parts that caused me to come most unstuck tonight, on a Philip Sparke piece called a Yorkshire Overture. Sparke writes great music but with lots of details and that, combined with the mental gymnastics of transposition meant I did get lost for a while (although I’m pleased that I managed to eventually get back on the moving train!). That will be one for some homework.
Next week we’ll start drilling through the set for our next concert, including some of those pieces, in more detail but I have to say that, even when I don’t keep up all the way through, I do now find myself tending to enjoy the occasional reading rehearsal.
10 January 2026
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Here’s the new drive holder in use. It printed fairly well although, for some reason, didn’t snap together as firmly as the prototype despite not altering that part of the design. Perhaps a reminder that domestic 3D printing on a low-end printing is not a high precision process? Anyway, a dab of glue will keep the connection firm and I think it will work well.
I also took another photo, where you can see the honeycomb grid on part of both side walls. That reduces the weight and filament usage a little, means the drive gets a little more airflow (it doesn’t seem to generate much heat but I haven’t taken careful readings) and looks pretty. It was also pretty easy to do using the BOSL2 library (see walls.scad). I remember trying to create an effect like this before I discovered the library, which took a lot more head scratching to accomplish something not nearly as flexible as this version.
For reference, the drive is a Kingston XS1000 USB 3.2 drive – files available on request, although I’ll probably put them up on MakerWorld once I’ve used the holder for a week or two.
9 January 2026
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One of the physical things I’m using in my new job, in order to access a wide range of useful software, is a small, fast external hard drive I picked up about nine months ago. I got Debian 12 installed on it but got a bit stuck trying to get Dropbox working. It turns out that I probably just needed one more reboot for everything to click together. With that sorted, I’m now using my laptop as a Debian box, giving me a platform for various technical tools and one that I can experiment on with relative impunity. However, the drive hangs off the side of the laptop on a USB cable so I decided it was time to create a holder for it.
I took some measurements, did some sketching and then set to work in OpenSCAD. I used negative modifiers in Bambu studio when I printed the prototype in order to carve out sections and keep the filament usage and time down. There were a couple of points to adjust and so I made my tweaks and set version 2 to printing. It turns out I’d missed one vital element of a compound dimension and so, although it fitted comfortably over the USB cable, the drive couldn’t slide in on top. I’m now waiting for the third prototype (back to printing a cut down version with just the dimensions I need to assess) to cool down to test.
Could I have avoid this? OpenSCAD isn’t brilliant at letting you easily measure things. Thinking about it though, I could also have created a model of the drive itself and, as long as I’d measured that correctly, I could have positioned my part and the phantom drive next to each other to visually check for crossovers.
What the second version did let me do was test one of the “joiners” you can add via the BOSL2 library. My design was going to have overhangs whichever way I orientated it, so rather than use supports, I decided to print it as two symmetrical halves. I went for snap pins, hollowing out holes in both halves and then also printing two of the small pins. They have a hollow portion in the centre so you can clip them in but they resist coming out. It might be possible to lever the pieces apart with a screwdriver but they are securely joined for my purposes.
Anyway, that third test (a mere 2g of additional filament) has confirmed that I’ve got the fix right so time to get the final version ready to print so I can take it off the printer tomorrow morning.
8 January 2026
by wpAdmin
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The MetOffice map of the UK is presently covered with multiple weather warnings, including a rare red one round the Cornish coast indicating a serious danger due to high winds. Here in the East Midlands we’ve got an amber warning for snow although temperatures are forecast to stay above freezing.
I was on a video chat with a friend tonight and between the start and end we went from cold rain to some snow and (when I opened the front door to check a few minutes ago) back to rain. I don’t know what I’m likely to find tomorrow morning although I don’t have to go out anywhere. That said, if the snow has stayed, I’ll probably need to stick my boots on and tramp up to the allotment. I laid down some fleece on certain beds last week but only weighted it down at the edges rather than taking any measures to lift it above the broad bean and garlic shoots that were showing their heads.
We’ll see. Tonight I think I can safely crawl under my warm blanket and sleep without worrying too much about what kind of cold blanket might be on the ground outside.
7 January 2026
by wpAdmin
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For some reason, I’m not having a very good week for trousers. The first pair I put on developed a fairly substantial rip in the seat. Worse still, I noticed earlier in the day and forget to change them before going to Monday’s choir rehearsal. I didn’t keep my outdoor coat on but I think my fellow choir members must have been preoccupied with the mixture of low temperature and new music – certainly no-one pointed out the hole!
I switched to a pair of hiking trousers. No rips in those but the zipper wasn’t working well. It is a nylon coil one and I realised it was becoming detached from its backing – harder and harder to pull up and down and increasingly likely to fail entirely. I’ve now picked up a new pair of trousers (smart black corduroy using a cotton / lycra blend) and they seem to fit well. Hopefully they won’t succumb to any similar fate, this week at least!
And, yes, I did pick them up on a grocery shopping trip in Lidl. There’s a temptation to buy all sorts of additional stuff in there but every now and then they do manage to have exactly what you need down the magical middle aisle.
6 January 2026
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Tonight’s rehearsals were with the Charnwood Training Band and the Charnwood Concert Band and I’m pleased that the heating at our rehearsal venue (All Saints Church, Thorpe Acre with Dishley) was working well.
For the training band, I’m still playing tuba but I have to confess that I’ve been a bit slack on practising it over the Christmas break. By half way through the first song, my lips were starting to feel uncomfortably hot which I suspect is a sign that I should have done some maintenance practise with the mouthpiece if nothing else. Lesson learned! I’ll be back to weekly rehearsals for the term but I’ll also try to make time for some practise to keep my lip in shape and help my skills improve.
5 January 2026
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The university choir had a bit of a cold start this evening. The heating was sometimes flaky last term and despite being checked earlier today, it was not helping much by the time we arrived. Fewer people than normal had come out in any case due to icy conditions so we ended up having a shorter rehearsal than normal – enough to get a start on the main piece for our next concert in May but not so much that we had turned into blocks of ice by the end of it.