News from Great Castle Wilson – Page 5

Commenting

I have set the blog to require registration before you can comment. Apologies. It’s an experiment to see if this will help me manage the egregious amounts of spam I’m getting (even with akismet’s help). If it doesn’t help I’ll turn it off again, but to give you some context, in 12 hours I received 17 pages of spam!

https

I decided I wanted to be able to log in and post from outside my home network, and using vanilla http to do that while running on unencrypted wifi at the coffee shop was just asking for trouble.

Thankfully, Let’s Encrypt has made setting up https on your site both easy and, more importantly, free!

The “wonders” of how my old install of WP was set up has meant that older posts may still have bogus links in them, but on the front page (and going forward) at least, you now see:

Woot!

GCW gets a new home

After many years of running Great Castle Wilson on some flavour of Mac, I’ve finally decided to give it dedicated hardware of its own. In part, this is because I enjoy proving to myself that I can still set up and configure a webserver and all the other required accoutrements — yes, I’m weird like that — but mostly it’s because I’m fairly confident that macOS Catalina is going to break my current configuration anyway, so it seemed like a good time to make a change.

For those who aren’t aware, Catalina is the first version of macOS that only supports 64-bit applications. There are some fairly significant changes under the covers, and the odds are low that my personal mix of random open source software and existing Mac tech is going to continue to work.

So without further ado, here is the brand new GCW:

Yep, it’s a Pi 🙂

Specifically:

So far the setup process has been relatively painless, but I did learn that WordPress does *not* like it when its API URL points at a different instance of WordPress than the one that’s making the request — that took a couple of hours to debug. 🙂

Anyway, if you can read this, then we’re live. The site seems quite responsive and the only posts that aren’t displaying properly are ones where some of the original content they linked to no longer exists

Welcome!

Some history…

I don’t post to NfGCW very often any more, but I love the fact that there’s years of history from our family here. I’ve blogged about many topics over the years, including the site itself. Here are some previous posts about the hardware GCW ran on.

Watch Bands

So I just bought a watch band for my Apple Watch. I can’t believe that a strap made out of nylon with plastic hardware is worth $70. And that’s only a fraction of what you’d have to pay for an Apple branded one. It’s just silly.

My dad

I don’t have a lot to say here… He was a tough old guy, and he had a good run, longer than he expected. He was up in the middle of the night, playing with his computer and he just tipped his head back, fell asleep and… stopped. Given all the health issues he had, … Continue reading “My dad”

I don’t have a lot to say here…

He was a tough old guy, and he had a good run, longer than he expected. He was up in the middle of the night, playing with his computer and he just tipped his head back, fell asleep and… stopped. Given all the health issues he had, I expected he was going to be in the hospital with tubes sticking into him for months, so he got the best outcome he could have.

I’m going to miss him.

OMG! Chromebooks are useful!@

As of this weekend, I’m the proud owner of a new ASUS Chromebook Flip C213 For around 450 $CAN, you get a laptop with The “flip” form factor (i.e. keyboard folds under screen so you can use it like a tablet) A touchscreen (as well as a trackpad) 12 hour battery life 2 USB-C ports … Continue reading “OMG! Chromebooks are useful!@”

As of this weekend, I’m the proud owner of a new ASUS Chromebook Flip C213

For around 450 $CAN, you get a laptop with

The “flip” form factor (i.e. keyboard folds under screen so you can use it like a tablet)
A touchscreen (as well as a trackpad)
12 hour battery life
2 USB-C ports as well as two as two regular USB3 ports

Obviously, there are limitations, like unexciting screen resolution and limited storage, but I can honestly say that this machine is as responsive as my MBP, for all of the basic tasks I do day to day, and now that ChromeOS can run Android apps as well, I’ve been able to find all the missing features I need (like 1Password support) too.

Let me be clear: This machine is *fun* to use. And that’s even before you factor in the linux app support that is incoming — I’ve already heard of at least one person who has gotten Scrivener for Windows running on WINE. 😉

Divertimento Spring 2018 Concert

[man, I really have to blog more often] The Divertimento Orchestra in cooperation with the Embassy of the Czech Republic, is proud to present a program of Czech music, this Thursday and Friday (April 20 & 21, 2018) starting at 8PM. The concert venue is: Woodroffe United Church, 207 Woodroffe Ave. The program is going … Continue reading “Divertimento Spring 2018 Concert”

[man, I really have to blog more often]

The Divertimento Orchestra in cooperation with the Embassy of the Czech Republic, is proud to present a program of Czech music, this Thursday and Friday (April 20 & 21, 2018) starting at 8PM. The concert venue is:

Woodroffe United Church,
207 Woodroffe Ave.

The program is going to be great:

Smetana — The Moldau: This piece, originally titled “Vltava”, is a beautiful tone painting that charts the course of the Vltava river. It has a very busy and difficult cello part.
Dvořák — Slavonic Dances, Op. 46: These dances are wonderful, exuberant splashes of music. They contain numerous parts that are extremely difficult to play.
Dvořák — Symphony No. 9 “from the New World”: I love this symphony. The oboe part at the start of the second movement is definitely on my “goosebumps” list.

Tickets prices are…

Adults: $20
Students/Seniors: $10
Children 13 and under: FREE

Please come listen to some wonderful music, including my minor contributions from the back of the cello section.

Divertimento Spring Concert

It’s that time again! I’m very pleased to say that I will be playing in the Spring Concert of the Divertimento Orchestra, April 28th and 29th, 2017. We’re playing three pieces: Halifax Harbour by Elizabeth Raum As part of the Canada 150 celebration, we will be playing this fun piece (with a great cello part … Continue reading “Divertimento Spring Concert”

It’s that time again! I’m very pleased to say that I will be playing in the Spring Concert of the Divertimento Orchestra, April 28th and 29th, 2017. We’re playing three pieces:

Halifax Harbour by Elizabeth Raum: As part of the Canada 150 celebration, we will be playing this fun piece (with a great cello part 😉 ) by Canadian composer Elizabeth Raum. Shhhh! Rumour has it that depending on the night, you might see her in the audience.
Tres Danzas Españolas by Enrique Granados: Enrique Granados was born the 27th of July 1867, 150 years ago. The three pieces that we’ll be playing are orchestral arrangements (by J. Lamote de Grignon) of three of the “12 Danzas Españolas” a piano work published in 1890. There’s a strong Spanish feel and some great solo playing (not by me <g>).
Symphony No. 3 in Eb, Op. 97 “Rhenish” by Robert Schumann: This Schumann Symphony is big, deep music, with complexities that you probably don’t hear on the first listen through. It really wasn’t until I’d played the cello part in context that I felt like I understood it. Very cool!

All and all, it should be an excellent show. And given my recent health issues, I’m particularly glad that I’ll be able to participate. By all means, come and give us a listen.

Here’s the poster for the show. Feel free to print this out and post it wherever people might see it. We love playing for a full house!

Never use iTunes to hold your own music.

(This is an old post from July 25, 2016, recovered via the Wayback Machine…) For pity’s sake: This is ridiculous. I’ve been trying to use iTunes to make my music (that is, the music I created) available on all my devices for *years*. No matter how many times I’ve tried it, and how many times … Continue reading “Never use iTunes to hold your own music.”

(This is an old post from July 25, 2016, recovered via the Wayback Machine…)

For pity’s sake:

This is ridiculous. I’ve been trying to use iTunes to make my music (that is, the music I created) available on all my devices for *years*. No matter how many times I’ve tried it, and how many times I think it might, just *might* have worked this time, I always end up with the bullshit you see above: multiple copies, some local, some in the cloud, some that claim they’re in the cloud but you can’t download them, you name it.

It’s impossible to tell what is causing the failures or how you could fix them. You can’t even just go look at what is in the cloud, except through the lens of how it has been sync’ed to one of your iTunes libraries and that seems to *never* be correct.

Somebody, please tell me about alternatives that work.

Yes, the 9.7″ iPad Pro is the iPad you want.

(This is an old post from June 9, 2016, recovered via the Wayback Machine…) If you’re looking for a tablet because you draw stuff for a living, then there’s no doubt the 12ʺ iPad Pro is the tool you want. It’s fast, the Pencil is as responsive a tool as you could ask for, and … Continue reading “Yes, the 9.7″ iPad Pro is the iPad you want.”

(This is an old post from June 9, 2016, recovered via the Wayback Machine…)

If you’re looking for a tablet because you draw stuff for a living, then there’s no doubt the 12ʺ iPad Pro is the tool you want. It’s fast, the Pencil is as responsive a tool as you could ask for, and it has all the benefits of being part of the iOS ecosystem. And I can say this as someone who also owns a MS Surface Pro.

The thing is though, if you’re actually in it because you want an iPad, you’re better off going with the 9.7ʺ. It’s almost exactly as fast as the 12ʺ, but its weight and form factor make it a tool that you will carry around with you all the time. By contrast, as Deb said, the 12ʺ is something you’d “always be worrying about bending”. It’s just too unwieldy to be anything but something you put in a laptop bag when you’re not using it.

The other side of the question is whether an iPad Air would be just as good as your main iPad. All I can say to that is, if you want that to be true, do not try the iPad Pro. The Air is a great device, but the Pro really is materially faster. Really, with the lighter weight iOS running on it, the iPad Pro feels like it’s faster than my MBP for many tasks. It’s definitely the best way to read Notes email now.

And speaking of which, I did indeed put the IBM security package on it, so I can now read my Notes mail and calendar, and get access to VPN, etc. To give you some idea of how much faster this is than my old iPad. My first gen iPad Mini took about 2 hours to install all the software. The Pro took just under 10 minutes. Very nice.

Anyway, the iPad Pro is too expensive to be an impulse buy. I was lucky enough to have my wonderful wife Deb give me permission to get one as an early Father’s Day gift. Thanks, love. It’s awesome.