Centroid.EU Blog

(this blog is mostly encrypted - adults only)

The Frankfurt train pusher

August 2nd, 2019

Difficult situation. What happened here is a few days ago a supposedly psycho man from switzerland (with roots from Eritrea, Africa) pushed an 8 year old and his mother off the platform as the train was pulling in. The kid did not survive it. That this man was african is not a warning to me. That he was psycho had to do with his background (horrible living conditions in war-torn Eritrea), but I can attest that having lived in Frankfurt during a psychosis that the train station there is an intimidating place.

I have a memory of waiting for a train in Frankfurt and someone parked a utility waggon with blinkers right in my field of view and turned the warning blinkers on. There wasn't a reason to do this and it really annoyed me in the state of mind I was in. I don't think I was taking medication anymore due to running out back then, and the psychiatrist I had in Frankfurt was not a good psychiatrist, I fell out of the security netting there so to speak.

To describe the train station in Frankfurt to you. It's a dead end train station and trains that move in to a platform have to go out backwards. You enter from the "front" of the station and walk down the platforms to your train section. Before you enter the platforms there is kiosks that sell things, and there is always a bunch of men standing against the wall of these kiosks. They're always there.

In my psychosis I called these people the secret police, because they weren't pick-pockets or else they would have been dispersed but they were surely loitering if they weren't the police. Funny how I remember it in that way. Another annoying thing in the train station there is when announcements are made as it echos through the entire building and it gives merit to the german saying "ich versteh nur Bahnhof" meaning "I only understand train-station" meaning I don't understand what they just said.

For people subjected to stress and particularily psychos like me it is a very energy robbing time to be taking the train. Stress levels reach a maximum I'd say whenever I take the train to a larger place like Frankfurt. Unfortunately the train-pusher also was stressed out and I'm sure he didn't want the kid to die. Also it's impossible to know what was said. If they insulted him in some way then that would have been a factor for the murder. I'm not defending him or his illness but I think you have about a 50/50 chance of bettering a situation in train stations when you have more police presence.

I've seen Ordnungsamt (these aren't really cops they are ticketers for law and order) staff give tickets to a young man because he had an insult written on his jacket. That was a few levels below the train station in the S-Bahn rapid transit platform. The guys jacket said something like "you're all assholes" or something like that and that caused him to be ticketed with being insulting to the public. All in all Frankfurt is an insane place and if you want to escape the insanity you drive into it per car and avoid the public. That's what the rich bankers do. Not very economic or green for todays climate though.

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Yes, I'm code-dyslexic

August 1st, 2019

I don't know if this is common out there, but I can't read code. I have a very hard time concentrating on others code. This in part is why I have started my DNS server project for example because I couldn't concentrate, or understand the BIND code. It is an embarrassing setback to be code-dyslexic because I rely on others to make sense of code. And others don't have the time to re-read what I've read, to confirm what I mean.

In the past I've blamed code-dyslexia on obfuscation. But there is a more subtle explanation. Not only do I have code dyslexia but I also have a slight or more than slight learning disability. For example. With C code there was very little people that taught me this. I picked up the K&R and read it. Not just once, but many times, because I couldn't understand it the first time through.

So, where does this leave me with Open Source code then? In a very difficult position because whether open or not I can't really do an audit. Sure in audits there is method that needs to apply. You just don't grab a code and start reading it. You have to make a plan, I'm sure. In the past I've taken people's words that code is OK to use. But lately I have more questions. So when someoen says "read the code, it's there" that's a big obstacle for me because I lack the concentration.

As a rule I've had "no obfuscation" at the top of my list. Comments aren't so important because they often don't reflect reality when a dozen or so programmers have refactored code. But the question remains, "how do I read this code"? It's a difficult situation.

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5 months left until Delphinusdnsd 1.4

July 28th, 2019

Delphinusdnsd this year has seen a lot of changes and refactoring. There 5 months left and I'm doing the most important work of the year for it then. I'm making the slave/replicant dns mode happen hopefully. Hopefully we don't get another heatspell as this would take away time from development. I'M hoping to be done with the replicant work in december and then have 2-4 weeks of testing. Release is at december 31st most likely.

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My home is now WIFI-less

July 28th, 2019

I have finally cabled everything at home so that I could turn my wifi access point off. I'm enjoying it for the time being. I still have an ipod that requires occasional net use, but for that I can boot the OpenWRT access point that is in the hallway (it's usual state is off though).

Above is an image of the office switch. All ports are basically used, but I was able to offload ports from my Xeon workstation to it. I tried zzz'ing the xeon once but the NIC does not come back after wake. So I'M thinking I may do a nightly shutdown to save electricity. Another thing I want to do is replace the Lanner router that I have in the living room with an APU router. With the APU I want to put another OpenWRT router beside it when I need the extra ports, I think though I'm gonna turn the WIFI off on it (that's a thing one can do). So.. lots of changes happening in my house.

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Second heatwave of the summer is coming to an end

July 26th, 2019

Today was the third or fourth day where we had temps over 37C. But it's almost over. We're expected to get thunderstorms tonight/tomorrow and by monday temperatures are expected to go below 20C. Whew. How many more of these heat spells do we have to do this year? Productivity for me was near zero. Sleep was uncomfortable and short. There were days when I just thought "please let this day be over soon", that's how bad it was.

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Why I don't own a car, since 1993

July 26th, 2019

There is several factors why I decided to not own a car:

I got the drive bug. Just because I could I drove everywhere, I was ashamed of this somewhat.
I had/have concentration problems back in those days making me scared of driving, it was a safety issue
I don't trust other drivers either, but surely not myself

These are the main factors. When I had my car gasoline cost 50 canadian cents a liter. I predict that's about 50 euro cents today if you account for inflation. It was ridiculously cheap. Today we're looking at around 1.50 EUR per liter give or take 20 cents. Owning a car is not what it was in the 1990's and I'm sure people get the drive bug as well. It just makes no sense to drive anymore. Use a computer.

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There is assessments for scrubbing CO2... go for it!

July 26th, 2019

TED talk of Jennifer Wilcox, explaining CO2 scrubbers on global scale. This we gotta do in the very near near future. Problem is that it's a race of time to remove CO2 from atmosphere so that frozen methane in russia and canada don't thaw. She said it requires a powerplant the size of new jersey so that's where we're at. Put it in the sahara desert and use solar power. This is an absolute must. The ISS cost 150 billion $, I'd personally give twice as much, that's how important this is. And that's just a start because it will cost a lot more than that overall. How important do you think life is? What's the budget or dollar value for life?

She says also that we need to reduce output of CO2. This means cars and powerplants that pollute.

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We gotta exit coal by 2022

July 25th, 2019

BBC is saying similar here. I said this back in 2017 here. Unfortunately our "Energiewende" was not fast enough. We only produce 30 gigawatts from Solar and Wind, compared to a 72 gigawatt demand... see here. We sorta screwed up.

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Intend to install small solar powered CO2 scrubber

July 25th, 2019

I'm looking for solutions to buy or build a CO2 scrubber that requires electricity from my solar panel. It shouldn't take a lot of space and not much electricity since I have only 4 to 8 KWh's for the panel I have.

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Got the switch, and a little disappointed at the quad card

July 24th, 2019

I got the switch. It's performing as should after I upgraded its firmware. Only the bandwidth on iota sucks. I could only get 420 Mbit/s routed through 2xdual aggregated ports so 840 Mbit/s throughput on the quad card. I was hoping for well 4x that. Now I have a nice purple quad cable 5 meters long and it's useless. I should have known. It's the CPU that can't keep up. The PowerPC 970FX at 1.8 Ghz (only one shown in top to have load) can only do that much, and that's with jumbo frames at 9000 mtu. Shux.

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