There’s a calico cat that’s been hanging around our property, so we started putting food out for her. Turns out there are two calico kitties. Hopefully at least one gets friendly enough to hang around and be a barn cat!
A Cali-Kitty
Super Soft Rolls
Ingredients:
- 4 cups of all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 cups warm water
- 2 Tbsp sugar
- 1 Tbsp yeast
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup butter
Mix yeast and sugar into warm water and allow to set until it is frothy.
In a stand mixer, mix flour and salt. Slowly add in yeasty water & mix. Kneed with a bread hook and slowly add in about 1 tsp pieces of butter at a time until it has all been incorporated. Continue to kneed until the dough is smooth and shiny.
Allow to rise until it has doubled in size. Form and allow to rise again. Then bake.
To make sausage rolls, bake at 375 F for about 18 minutes.
Useful DNF Commands
Beyond basic stuff like “dnf install somepackage” or downloading an rpm and using “dnf install my.package.rpm”, this is a running list of useful dnf commands.
List installed packages (similar to rpm -qa):
dnf list installed
List packages with updates available:
dnf check-update
Update everything but the kernel:
dnf update -x kernel*
Find package that provides something:
[lisa@rhel1 ~/]# dnf whatprovides cdrskin Last metadata expiration check: 2:35:57 ago on Fri 12 Aug 2022 11:37:43 AM EDT. cdrskin-1.5.2-2.fc32.x86_64 : Limited cdrecord compatibility wrapper to ease migration to libburn Repo : fedora Matched from: Provide : cdrskin = 1.5.2-2.fc32 cdrskin-1.5.4-2.fc32.x86_64 : Limited cdrecord compatibility wrapper to ease migration to libburn Repo : updates Matched from: Provide : cdrskin = 1.5.4-2.fc32
Package info, including version
[lisa@rhel1 ~/]# dnf info sendmail Last metadata expiration check: 2:37:19 ago on Fri 12 Aug 2022 11:37:43 AM EDT. Available Packages Name : sendmail Version : 8.15.2 Release : 43.fc32 Architecture : x86_64 Size : 730 k Source : sendmail-8.15.2-43.fc32.src.rpm Repository : fedora Summary : A widely used Mail Transport Agent (MTA) URL : http://www.sendmail.org/ License : Sendmail Description : The Sendmail program is a very widely used Mail Transport Agent (MTA). : MTAs send mail from one machine to another. Sendmail is not a client : program, which you use to read your email. Sendmail is a : behind-the-scenes program which actually moves your email over : networks or the Internet to where you want it to go. : : If you ever need to reconfigure Sendmail, you will also need to have : the sendmail-cf package installed. If you need documentation on : Sendmail, you can install the sendmail-doc package.
Show history:
[lisa@rhel1 ~/]# dnf history
ID | Command line | Date and time | Action(s) | Altered
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
102 | remove liberation-fonts | 2021-11-28 18:44 | Removed | 3
101 | remove chromedriver | 2021-11-28 18:44 | Removed | 2
100 | remove google-chrome-stable | 2021-11-28 18:44 | Removed | 1 < 99 | install liberation-fonts | 2021-11-28 18:42 | Install | 1 >
98 | install chromedriver | 2021-11-28 18:38 | Install | 2
97 | remove mediainfo | 2021-11-16 13:31 | Removed | 4
96 | install mediainfo | 2021-11-16 13:29 | Install | 4
Which brings up an interesting command — you can undo a history step instead of trying to uninstall the list of things you just installed.
dnf history undo 98 -y
Buckwheat
Our buckwheat is starting to form seeds!
Indigo Bunting
I like watching the goldfinches eating the ornamental grass seeds. Today, though, this blue bird showed up too. Looking up small blue birds, we found a rare blue bird native to, like, Venezuela … seemed rather surprising to see one here. And then I scrolled to the next small blue bird — the Indigo Bunting — which is fairly common and native to our area. So … yeah, I’m going to go with Indigo Bunting.
Arguing with the science
A week or so ago, I came across an article referencing a book about how climate impact will be inequitable — and, while reading the article, I rather disagreed with some of their assumptions. I later encountered an online discussion about the article — which included, among a few other dissenters, an admonishment not to “argue with the science”. Problem, there, is arguing with the science is the whole point of the scientific method. The point of peer-review publications. And, really, modeling socio-economic impact of climate change (or even modeling climate change itself) isn’t a science like modeling gravity or radioactive decay. These kind of models usually involve a lot of possible outcomes with associated probabilities. And ‘argue with the science’ I will!
Certainly, some of the rich will move out first. You can air condition your house and car into being habitable. Companies can set up valet services for everything. But your chosen location is becoming very limiting – no outdoor concerts, no outdoor sports games. You can make it habitable, but you could also spend some money, live elsewhere, and have oh so many more options. Most likely you’d see an increase in second homes – Arizona for the winter and a place up north for summers. Which might not show up as ‘migration’ depending on which they use as their ‘permanent’ address.
People with fewer resources, though, face obstacles to moving. Just changing jobs is challenging. It’s one thing to transfer offices in a large company or be a remote employee who can live anywhere. But can a cashier at Walmart ask their manager to get transferred from Phoenix to Boston? What about employees of smaller businesses that don’t have a more northern location? Going a few weeks without pay on top of moving expense (that rental deposit is a huge one – I’ve known many people stuck in a crappy apartment because they have to save the deposit to move. Sure you get your previous deposit back, but that takes weeks)? Really makes me question the reality of mass migration of poor people.
Adding Sony SNC-DH220T Camera to Zoneminder
We recently picked up a mini dome IP camera — much better resolution than the old IP cams we got when Anya was born — and it took a little trial-and-error to get it set up in Zoneminder. The first thing we did was update the firmware using Sony’s SNCToolbox, configure the camera as we wanted it, and add a “Viewer” user for zoneminder.
With all that done, the trick is to add an FFMPEG source with the right RTSP address. On the ‘General’ tab, select “Ffmpeg” as the source type:
On the ‘Source’ tab, you need to use the right source path. For video stream one, that is rtsp://zmuser:password@mycamera.example.com/media/video1 — change video1 to video2 for the second video stream, if available. And, obviously, use the account you created on your camera for zoneminder and whatever password. Since it’s something that gets stored in clear text, I make a specific zmuser account with a password we don’t use elsewhere. We’ve used both ‘TCP’ and ‘UDP’ successfully, although there was a lot of streaking with UDP.
Save, give it a minute, and voila … you’ve got a Sony SNC-DH220T camera in Zoneminder!
Maple Pecan Pie Filling
- 2 1/2 cups pecan halves
- 5 Tbsp melted butter, cooled
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1 Tbsp all-purpose flour
- 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup maple syrup
This recipe requires the pie crust to be blind baked — do that first and allow the crust to cool! Preheat oven to 350F.
Lay the pecan halves over the bottom of the pie crust.
Whisk together the butter, brown sugar, flour, vanilla, salt, eggs, and maple syrup. Pour over the pecans.
Put a pie crust shield on to protect the edge of the pie from overcooking. Bake for 45 minutes until the top is browned slightly.
Using Screen to Access Console Port
We needed to console into some Cisco access points — RJ45 to USB to plug into the device console port and the laptop’s USB port? Check! OK … now what? Turns out you can use the screen command as a terminal emulator. The basic syntax is screen <port> <baud rate> — since the documentation said to use 9600 baud and the access point showed up on /dev/ttyUSB0, this means running:
screen /dev/ttyUSB0 9600More completely, screen <port> <baud rate>,<7 or 8 bits per byte>,<enable or disable sending flow control>,<enable or disable rcving flow control>,<keep or clear the eight bit in each byte>
screen /dev/ttyUSB0 9600,cs8,ixon,ixoff,istrip- or -screen /dev/ttyUSB0 9600,cs7,-ixon,-ixoff,-istrip
Macrame Project – Hanging Plant Basket
Scott got a hoya earlier this year, and it is about time to transplant it into a larger pot. He wants to be able to hang it in the window to get plenty of light — so I’m making a basket to hold the plant.
The main part of the planter is 16x 18 feet strands that will be folded in half an arranged as four sets of four strands. Additionally, I need a 6.5 foot strand to wrap the hanging loop and another three foot section for gathering at the base of the loop. Wow, it takes a lot of cord to make a plant hanger.
Hanging loop followed by four groups knotted as: 7″ of spiral knot, 4.5″ straight then single knot, and
10″ of square knot. Then the groups will be changed to form a diamond shaped net that will hold our planter.
I got all of the cords cut, taped off the ends so they don’t fray, and am starting to make the hanging loop.
Since this is such a huge pile of strings, I grouped the strings that will be knotted together. Once they were grouped, I coiled each group up and used a bread time to hold the coil. I’ve still got a big pile of strings, but only the four I am actively working on are eight feet of hanging strands.