Author: davidg

Factorio to-do list (WIP)

On my next game, I think I am going to try these as my next set of blueprints, in order:

  1. Factorio Master Class (by Nilaus) (MSTR) – Jump Start 0.18 – Initial Assemblers
    1. This gets me red science, which lets me research:
      1. Automation
      2. Logistics
      3. Steel Processing
      4. Electronics
      5. Fast Inserter
      6. Green Science
      7. Military
      8. Gun Turret
  2. Early coal mining rig
  3. Early game smelting
    1. Well, this time I used the (MSTR) – Early Game Smelting – Copper and Iron blueprint, one each.
      1. Should have done three (or six)
  4. NRC’s Mining
  5. (MSTR) – Early Game Smelting – One more small one, but smelting Iron plates to Steel this time
  6. (MSTR) – Green/Red/Blue Circuits – Green [1]
    1. This task has a bootstrap problem; the blueprint calls for Medium Electric Poles, but those come from Electric Energy Distribution 1 below. 120 green science needed
      1. Medium Electric Poles require Steel ….
  7. (MSTR) – Science 1.5 – Automation
    1. This gets me green science, which lets me research:
      1. Electric Energy Distribution 1
        1. Steel power poles; which are needed for the 0.17 Big Mall below
      1. Automation 2
      2. Engine
      3. Advanced Material Processing
      4. Fluid Handling
      5. Oil Processing
      6. Plastics
      7. Sulfur Processing
      8. Battery
      9. Advanced Electronics
      10. Blue Science
  8. 0.17 Big Mall by SwaggoFlamingo
  9. (MSTR) – Science 1.5 – Military Science
    1. Not because I want it, but I’m probably going to need it.
  10. Now it gets a little difficult. The number one goal is to get to robots. That requires all of (MSTR) – Science 1.5 – Chemical Science – but Chemical Science has prerequisites. Namely:
    1. Oil (pre-req to plastic)
      1. I’m using Oil Processing which says This blueprint is part of the “Base-in-a-Book” Tutorial series by Nilaus
    2. Plastic (pre-req to red circuits)
      1. (MSTR) – Chemicals – Plastic with red belts
    3. Red Circuits
      1. (MSTR) – Green/Red/Blue Circuit Designs – Red Circuits 1
    4. (Although I did Blue Science first, I probably should have done Sulfur production first).
  11. The other thing blocking me from my number 1 goal (robots) is that I am running out of resources.
    1. To that end, I had to build rail, a station, a locomotive, ore cars, and I used Autotorio to build a smelting setup for an iron patch.
    2. Now I’m running out of coal.
  12. Nilaus suggests that I should have built Utility Science (Yellow) before building Chemical Science (Blue)
  13. (MSTR) – Science 1.5 – Chemical Science
    1. This gets me blue science, which lets me research:
      1. Advanced Oil Processing
      2. Advanced Electronics 2
      3. Lubricant
      4. Electric Engine
      5. Low Density Structure
      6. Robotics
      7. Logistic Robotics
      8. Yellow Science
  14. (MSTR) – Science 1.5 – Utility Science
    1. A prerequisite is Blue Circuits
    1. This gets me yellow science, which lets me research:
      1. Logistic System
  15. I really like Autotorio, but that means researching Brick Walls is high priority.

Factorio blueprints

Don’t you just hate getting run over by a train and respawning without your blueprints?

Four belts for a 4 lane bus:

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Underground belts spaced across, to tunnel under a 4 lane bus:

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Split off the left most lane (let’s call it Lane 1) to the right:

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Split off Lane 2 to the right:

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Split off Lane 3 to the right:

TDB

Split off Lane 4 to the right:

TDB

The Factorio community is amazing, and the guys at Wube should be applauded for an amazing job. One of the particularly insightful things they did was to build an import/export function into the game (not surprising) but then make that available to the community. Perhaps that comes from it’s Minecraft beginnings. Either way, it was a fundamentally wise choice. In the spirit of open source, the community can share their ideas with each other.

Which lead to Factorio Prints (later re-written and hosted at Factorio School). And then someone came up with FBE: Factorio Blueprint Editor.

Particularly, I like Square Mall (see it here: FBE Square Mall) and Early Game Smelting (FBE: Early Game Smelting)

LibreOffice is working better now (somewhat), and I don’t know why

Okay, so I had a theme that wasn’t installed correctly, which made automatic updates for all of OpenSUSE complain they wouldn’t work. I did a re-install of everything KDE, and the missing theme dependency no longer prevents automatic updating from working seamlessly. Cool.

But, I saw the full re-install of KDE “upgraded” LibreOffice. Sure enough, I’m back to running version 7.1

Well, at least I have version 6.4 on disk, and could pretty easily downgrade if needed. Might as well try it out and see.

At first blush, I didn’t appear to have the problem. But, I’d seen that before. I moved the window to the secondary monitor, and the problem returned. Not cool.

But this time, if I move the LibreOffice window back to my primary monitor, the problem vanishes; the window returns to normal. That used to never happen: once the window layout was corrupted, no matter where I placed it, it remained corrupted.

So I can use the current version LibreOffice – I just need to use it on my secondary monitor. I’m okay with that. If that’s the worst thing I have to put up with this month, I’m a lucky guy.

Actually, I just started doing some SharePoint work. Already, I have way worse going on, and it has nothing to do with LibreOffice or KDE or OpenSUSE. 😉

Apple is smarter than I am so I’m buying an Amazon Echo alarm clock

It’s been a week, and apparently that was Apple Music’s reset timer for re-enabling all the songs I told it I hate.

Okay then. Time to take it to the next level: delete every song in iTunes. THAT will keep the stupid app from offending me.

Problem is, I used some of the songs in the iTunes library as my alarm clock songs. I loved that feature. But this is the dilemma: keep iTunes and wake up to inspirational music, but, also have Apple Music assault me in my car when I don’t pre-launch some other audio app. I can have one, but would have to accept the other too. That feels like a violation I shouldn’t have to put up with.

The Apple Clock app does play ringtones even with the music library empty – because I didn’t empty the ringtones library. This would have been a nice work-around, but the songs I listen to are 3 – 4 minutes long, and ring tones are limited to 30 seconds.

How about a third option? Instead of using my iPhone as an alarm clock, I can buy a stand-alone alarm clock that knows how to access my Amazon Music library. That would be Echo Dot (4th Gen) Smart speaker with clock.

This still leaves me in a bind when I’m traveling. Normally, every day or so I go through all the open apps in my iPhone and “swipe up” to get rid of them – all of them. If I need an app I can launch it again. The Apple Clock app doesn’t have that choice, so it is always running (which is a good thing). My alarms in the morning were set it once and forget it which was pretty nice. But now, none of those alarms are going to work*.

This means that when I am traveling, I’m going to have to 1) remember to be running the Alexa app on my iPhone when I go to sleep, and 2) set alarms to launch in the Alexa app “on this device” which is the iPhone. This is definitely worse than when I was able to rely on the Apple Clock app.

It sure would have been better if Apple would give me an option of which app to launch when some Bluetooth device (my car) announces it is ready to play.

Still, if this is the worst thing to happen to me in a week, I’m living a pretty charmed life.

*It would more accurate to say they will launch, but no sound is going to come out of them, because the Apple Music Library has been emptied.

Hey Siri, I hate Apple Music. Siri replies: “Got it. I’ll remember that you don’t like this song.”

I had to say that over and over and over again. Eventually it appears that I won.

Backstory: I’ve complained before that I dislike people who feel the need to push their accomplishments on me because they can. One of my life lessons is that I dislike things in others that I see in myself, so ….

But this is about them, and not me. 😉

I’ve complained that Microsoft, for example, couldn’t just add something to Windows, but they had to push it on every customer whether the customer wanted it or not.

I have the same problem with Apple and Apple Music. Specifically, when my car and my iPhone get near each other, they connect via Bluetooth. So far, so good.

If I happen to be listening to something, this is really nice. Say I’m walking to my car with my headphones on, I get in the car, and the iPhone and C-MAX figure it out and the audio keeps playing. This is excellent.

But if I happening to be listening to nothing, then that’s what I want. Some programmer at Apple disagrees. I end up listening to Apple Music because … why, again? Because some programmer feels the need to push his/her accomplishment on the world? Is that it? Please bother someone else’ life and leave mine alone.

So I get in the C-MAX, the iPhone sees the Bluetooth connection to audio, and the iPhone doesn’t see any audio app playing. So it launches Apple Music which picks some random song and begins playing.

I hate that.

Hmmmmm.

“Hey Siri, I hate Apple Music”

Siri replies: “Got it. I’ll remember that you don’t like this song.”

Hey Pinky – are you pondering what I’m pondering?

It worked.

The logic was “If I can get Siri to mark every song it has as do not play then maybe I won’t get bullied by the programmer that I insists I listen to something“.

It worked. Last night on my way home, the iPhone lit up Apple Music and found nothing to play. Sweet silence at last.

Well, until I said “Alexa, Playlist Earworm” and Alexa launched my Amazon Music playlist named Earworm:

  • Darude Sandstorm
  • Noisestorm Crab Rave
  • Tony Igy Astronomia
  • Nyan Cat
  • Harold Faltermeyer Axel F.
  • Drumspyder Rumba Hijaz

I did not join Planet Fitness, because of their payment policy

Update: user K replied with what I think is the best insight so far:

Just happened to me today when I went to sign up after a year since I was a member. Noped right out of there. You’re right about the merchant fees but I suspect the real reason they are not billing with cards anymore is because of the high volume disputes they have. I used to work for a bank in the claims department and gym memberships and credit scores were our bread and butter. Visa and Mastercard have set rules in regards to merchant rights and would almost always return the funds back to the customer. An ACH transaction does not have the same protection and NACHA regulations does not cover product and services therefore if a customer disputed the transactions the likelihood of receiving the funds back is slim to none.

(emphasis added by me)

I did join a different gym. I was ready to join Planet Fitness; I took the tour, a pleasant young man explained the membership plans, and they sent me a link to sign up at. The facility seemed good, and it was closer to my home than the one I did end up at. But their sign up process demanded that I hand them my checking account number and routing number. That’s a nope, and we’re done.

I even found the Contact Us part of their web site and sent them an email asking what other options were available. They never bothered to respond.

The gist of the problem is computer security; Planet Fitness internal IT security isn’t that good. Well, no-one’s internal security is all that good – just ask T-Mobile: their 2021 data breach was T-Mobile’s fifth incident in four years. Worse, when T-Mobile was asked about the potential for security problems, their answer was “What if this doesn’t happen because our security is amazingly good?“

I can’t help but think that Planet Fitness feels the same way.

Why can’t I have the membership fee charged to my credit card? When their IT infrastructure gets breached (not if), I can easily get a new credit card number from my credit card company – if Planet Fitness would allow me to use a credit card. I’ve actually had to do that before; I got a physical letter in 2016 letting me know of a breach with a particular company that I did business with every couple of months. Changing the credit card number was pretty easy. Slightly annoying, but if that was the worst thing to happen to me in 2016, I’m leading a pretty charmed life.

But what happens when Planet Fitness loses my checking account number (and routing number)?

That would be a disaster.

Sure, I could close the compromised account, and open a new one; but my paycheck gets deposited there. Everything funnels through there. I even had a need to get paper checks printed up a year ago, and that expense of the rest of the paper checks would go in the shredder. Is Planet Fitness going pay me to get new checks printed? If I sued for it, I’m pretty sure I’d win – unless their defense was “well, if you are stupid enough to give us your checking account number, then that’s on you.” Maybe that is the way they think about their customers. 🤷

It also bothers me that Planet Fitness is only being somewhat truthful about why they want to pull the money directly out of my checking account. From their web site:

The method in which members are able to pay for their monthly membership varies by location, but many Planet Fitness clubs accept payment through checking accounts only. We require an Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) through checking accounts for your convenience: This allows us to be able to continue your membership without interruption or the hassle of updating your payment information if your credit cards are lost/stolen, invalid or expired.

https://www.planetfitness.com/about-planet-fitness/customer-service/billing-faqs

I have a problem with “… for your convenience ….”

This is flat out falsehood. It’s not for my convenience, it’s for Planet Fitness’ convenience.

Also, Planet Fitness doesn’t have to pay the credit card company their commission. That’s the real reason they are willing to risk my security; they are being cheap. My security versus a tiny bit of extra profit? SELL ‘EM OUT BOYS!

It’s also important to note that there’s a major discrepancy in ACH vs. credit card fees. Broadly speaking, ACH transactions have the lowest costs associated with any payment system. On the other hand, credit cards typically charge 2.5% of the transaction value in fees, plus an additional processing fee. So, when it comes to ACH vs. credit card fees, ACH is the clear winner.

https://gocardless.com/en-us/guides/posts/ach-vs-credit-cards/

So, I found a gym that lets me pay by credit card. It is farther away from my home. It doesn’t have as many locations. But it does let me subscribe with a credit card, and it doesn’t lie to me about why they prefer to have my checking account number. They did ask; but they were honest and said it was because they wanted to avoid having to pay the credit card merchant fees. If I was willing to pay more to cover that, they’d let me use a credit card for billing. Yes, I am, because I know that no company’s IT security is all that good. I’m paying now for for easier recovery later. That gives me peace of mind.

LibreOffice broken – it’s version 7 that is broken, and the problem is multiple monitors

What confused me before is that sometimes it appeared to work, but then it would break again. I finally figured out that it was sliding the window from one monitor to the other that invoked the broken behavior.

I went back to the earliest version of LibreOffice that is “official”, and it was still broken. I went and got the latest version of LibreOffice 6, and it is no longer broken.

LibreOffice has been painfully broken on OpenSUSE KDE for a couple months now

And the solution was to install libreoffice-gtk3

I’m rather surprised that it remained so painful for so long. If I were a new user, I’d still be broken.

I don’t know what it takes to figure out that this package should be in the “required” list. Perhaps I installed something else that added GTK3, and now that it’s there, the LibreOffice UI became significantly damaged? Perhaps LibreOffice sees some GTK3 component and then runs as if libreoffice-gtk3 is present?

The result is that every LibreOffice document would open with a split in the middle of the document, and, the main menu was gone.

I had found a document that said that perhaps KDE dark themes were to blame, or were out of date. Man I fouled some things up chasing that wild goose. I also lost some documents I had built, as tried to delete bad configuration files that seemed they might be the problem.

Anyway, if your LibreOffice looks like this:

And you want it to look like this (with File menu and everything):

install the libreoffice-gtk3 module.

Raspberry Pi and i3 window manager

I am really liking the combination of Raspbian and i3. I’ve always liked tiling windows; let the computer do the work for me to maximize the screen size of what I can get done. Me messing with window sizes is a waste of my time. Windows got particularly bad when the “tile” function added an extra blank column for people with touch-screens. I don’t have a touch-screen; so why‽‽‽ But I digress.

Novaspirit Tech has a nice video about how to add i3 to Raspbian.

The short form list of steps is:

  1. cd Downloads
  2. git clone https://github.com/Airblader/i3
    1. So this one turned out to be a little more difficult than it is portrayed in the video, because since then, Git Hub has decided that passwords are bad, and I should have to log in, create a token, and use the token in place of the password. Okay, I jumped through those hoops.
  3. sudo apt install meson
  4. sudo apt install dh-autoreconf libxcb-keysyms1-dev libpango1.0-dev libxcb-util0-dev xcb libxcb1-dev libxcb-icccm4-dev libyajl-dev libev-dev libxcb-xkb-dev libxcb-cursor-dev libxkbcommon-dev libxcb-xinerama0-dev libxkbcommon-x11-dev libstartup-notification0-dev libxcb-randr0-dev libxcb-xrm0 libxcb-xrm-dev libxcb-shape0 libxcb-shape0-dev
  5. cd i3
  6. mkdir build; cd build
  7. meson ..
  8. ninja
  9. sudo ninja install
  10. cd /etc/xdg
  11. cd lxsession
  12. cd LXDE-pi
    1. One quibble I have with this video is that using tab completion is a good thing, and this step was an excellent opportunity to demonstrate it. Essentially, we have done cd /etc/xdg/lxsession and now would be the right time to do ll
      1. Well, I do ll because I have set up an alias for ls -l
      2. There are two directories listed, and both begin with “LXDE”
      3. cd (space) and just hit the tab key is the answer here. The result is the same as typing cd LXDE (without hitting the Enter key). If the plain LXDE directory was the right one (it is not) I could just hit the Enter key. Since it is the other one I want, I type the next character (the dash) and hit the Tab key again. Then I hit Enter. I never had to hit the Shift key to get to that uppercase L for LXDE. The computer did the work for me.
  13. Edit both desktop.conf and autostart
    1. Near the top of desktop.conf, change window_manager=i3 then save and exit.
    2. In autostart, comment out @lxpanel and @pcmanfm, then save and exit.
  14. sudo reboot
  15. On start, you will be prompted to configure i3. Yes, generate a config
  16. Pick your modifier key. I do like the key on the left between Ctrl and Alt. I also like the little stickers that put a proper penguin over the Winders logo. I’m going to write this as $mod although the $ is not typed; it is just an indicator that whichever key is the the modifier key is variable and can change depending on your choice.
  17. sudo apt install i3status
  18. $mod+shift+r for restart i3
    1. This gets us the i3 status line at the bottom.
  19. sudo apt install dmenu
  20. sudo apt install rofi
  21. cd .config/i3
    1. because of the reboot above, we started in our home directory. .config is a hidden directory (because of the leading dot in the file name). i3 is the sub-directory underneath, where the file config exists.
  22. edit the file config
    1. There is some good instruction in the video here about checking out which keys do what. For example, seeing that $mod+Enter launches a terminal is important; ditto $mod+d launches drun (which is apparently desktop run ?)
      1. $mod+arrow keys switch the focus between active windows.
    2. Find your way to bindsym $mod+d exec --no-startup-id and replace the end dmenu_run with rofi -show drun -width 400 -lines 5
    3. Save and exit config
    4. $mod+shift+r to restart i3
      1. Now $mod+d brings up a searchable list of things to run (like Firefox).

And now I have a beautiful set up to install WordPress on my Raspberry Pi. I’ve got a terminal side-by-side with the web browser instructions, and I didn’t have to mess with screen sizing at all. The windows are as useful as possible, and the computer did that work for me.

I may have enjoyed this somewhat more than normal because of also listening to Noisestorm on YouTube. 😀