Went running again, and still having trouble lasting any reasonable distance. I might just revert doing a C25K plan again.

My calves were absolutely aching after two days of running, lack of exercise, then suddenly being pushed hard I guess would do that to you.

No running today, just walking, and I made it back just before it started raining.

Went out running again, did only 2.6 km this time, averaged just about 6m59s/km - a far cry from the 6m0s/k I used to be able to do last time.

At least that is now my goal -- to try to get to 5km, then try to get my speed to around the 6-minute mark.

My thighs are aching and my shoes do not feel like they're cushioning my steps as much as they used to. I guess I'll need to look at buying some new running shoes soon.

It's been a long, long time, but I've finally decided to pick up running again.

And BOY, am I out of shape. Could barely get to 2km before having to drop to a walk.

But now at least I have a baseline to improve upon.

And I forgot how good running feels after a good workout.

1st January 2022. A new year, a new start.

What are your plans for the 2022 year? I've picked up Zombies Run again after a few years away due to its memory footprint inflating so much it wouldn't run on my S5 without causing Android to force close other apps. It works fine on my OnePlus 9 Pro though.

Went out for dinner on this misty Boxing Day and ended up being caught out by some festive opening hours.

We ended up in a Korean grill I last went to in 2017. Went for a Bibimbap

Went out for my walk after Christmas lunch and found most places closed (as expected)

However, there were a few convenience shops still open, the Shell petrol station was still open (but the Tesco petrol station was closed). The local pubs were open, presumably for Christmas Dinner.

Speaking of which, here's the final spread for my Christmas Lunch/Dinner

There was talk of it possibly being a White Christmas with it being cold enough that snow could fall.

But Christmas Day and no snow. :-(

Finally found a way to do the install on Wine on Fedora -- and that's using Lutris. Lutris lets you install Windows games onto Linux and allows you to script the setup of the game environment to fit the game itself.

So I used it to download the WeChat binary, setup the environment (which involved downloading fonts via winetricks) and adding a registry hack. That seems to work now. Have added it to my app-installs playbook on Gitlab (https://gitlab.com/blenderfox/pixelbook-fedora-setup)

It's not fully automated, it does still require you to run through the setup manually, and then quit both the WeChat application (so Lutris sees that the setup has exited) and Lutris before the playbook proceeds.

This slightly lengthy article goes through my attempts at installing and setting up Fedora on my Pixelbook.

I previously had Ubuntu on there, modified and hacked using https://github.com/yusefnapora/pixelbook-linux.

However, as Ubuntu progressed on, it was clear this repo was not being maintained and updated and rapidly, stuff starting to fail as it required later versions of packages. Even the kernel was still on 4.4.x even now. I spent a long time trying to compile the kernel while trying to figure out the right options for a working kernel, with not much luck.

Putting in things like the "old-releases" repos helped keep things ticking over, but things were still breaking repeatedly, and the microphone kept breaking during calls due to the way the hacks were implemented.

The final straw came when the office decided to buy Apple M1 Macs for the developers (I refused to use one. My hate-hate relationship with Apple is well documented)

The decision to use M1 macs has now led to a problem whereby the docker images that are used are no longer compatible with the macbooks since they are arm64. The macs can use qemu emulation, but that is not perfect, giving weird errors when running the docker images under emulation. Leaving it to me, who is still using an amd64 machine to try to figure out multiarchtecture builds.

I was (and still am) reluctant to do the multiarch builds. Using multiarch builds would mean the devs are running a docker image that is not the same as that which is running on the test and production clusters and that in itself, means they are not developing on, or testing on an infrastructure that is representative of the test or production environments.

If the infrastructures were arm-based environments, sure, then that would be representative then, but not as it stands.

In fact, right now, if the developers build the docker image locally to test something, then pushed that to production, they would break production, as it runs on amd64 images.

I don't think this was thought through carefully enough, to be honest.

But enough of the rant. We are where we are, and I need to try to bail out the situation.

My hacked Ubuntu would not support multiarch build no matter what I tried, but when I tried to use Fedora in a Qemu VM (virtualbox also wouldn't work, since the virtualbox installer compiles kernel modules and that always failed with the custom kernel used by the hacked Ubuntu installation.)

So I decided to try to wipe the Ubuntu installation and start again from scratch, with Fedora.

Fedora 35 was the version I ended up using, and the latest at the time I started this activity.

Out of the box, it had native support for the touchpad, including two and three-finger scrolling via Unity 41. Two-finger scroll scrolls the active window. Three-finger scrolling up gives the window overview, and three-finger scrolling left or right switches workspaces.

Fedora by default uses btrfs. CloneZilla didn't seem to play well with that so had to start again, but perhaps it was due to the MyChromebox BIOS being too old. Upgraded and that seemed to work better.

After CloneZilla'ing the initial install so I could rollback to that if everything fell over, I started setting up the installation.

First thing I did is visudo'ed myself into the sudoers file, with a NOPASSWD param for passwordless sudo

Next I ran dnf update to update packages. There was about 1G of data to update and install.

Then I ran a CloneZilla to backup the laptop state at this point.

From this point, I started setting up the laptop. I found this repo on GitHub where the owner created a setup for Pixelbook https://github.com/jmontleon/pixelbook-fedora -- similar to the one I used for setting up Ubuntu on the Pixelbook. The repo owner also appears to have compiled his own version of the kernel and has his own COPR repository.

After spending a week tinkering with the instructions and getting some bugs ironed out, audio finally worked.

I built an Ansible playbook to help with the instructions running. This was adapted and incorporated into the repo.

With audio now working, I CloneZilla'ed the laptop state again, to have a good state to rollback to.

I then copied my file backup from my external USB into the laptop and then CloneZilla'ed the state again

With the files copied, now it was time to get the apps installed. I built another Ansible playbook to help speed things up and it's located here https://gitlab.com/blenderfox/pixelbook-fedora-setup/

The repo contains two playbooks one for doing the audio (it's essentially the same one in the jmontleon repo) and the second for app installs.

Summary of apps I installed initially:

• ffmpeg https://computingforgeeks.com/how-to-install-ffmpeg-on-fedora/
• scrcpy (is a copr repo) https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy
• Ferdi http://getferdi.com/
• google-cloud-sdk & kubectl: https://cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/install#rpm
  • gcloud threw an error module ‘collections’ has no attribute ‘Mapping’. Followed this: https://gehrcke.de/2021/11/gcloud-on-python-3-10-module-collections-has-no-attribute-mapping/ to fix. Had to make sure to put the export line in ~/.bash_profile
• tfenv https://github.com/tfutils/tfenv, making sure to add the path to ~/.bash_profile
• helm2 (https://get.helm.sh/helm-v2.17.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz), extract, move the helm binary to /usr/local/bin/helm2 and chmod +x it
• helm3 (latest version. At time of writing, it's https://get.helm.sh/helm-v2.16.12-linux-amd64.tar.gz). Call the helm3 binary /usr/local/bin/helm3 instead.
• Spotify https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/installing-spotify/ (I used the flatpak)
• Lens: https://k8slens.dev/
• Steam https://itsfoss.com/install-steam-fedora/
• gnome extensions app (dnf install gnome-extensions-app -- can also use the flatpak instead)
• ProtonVPN (https://protonvpn.com/support/official-linux-vpn-fedora/) -- making sure to enable the system tray support
• Atom https://atom.io/
• youtube-dl http://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html
• qemu static for multiarch builds (https://www.docker.com/blog/getting-started-with-docker-for-arm-on-linux/) sudo dnf install qemu-user-static then docker build ls to check available platforms on the builder. Docker ships with buildx https://github.com/docker/buildx#working-with-builder-instances on later version.
• openconnect (if not already installed) dnf install openconnect
• openconnect saml wrapper https://github.com/dlenski/gp-saml-gui
• quickemu and GUI https://github.com/quickemu-project/quickemu#install-quickemu,
• ZeroTier https://www.zerotier.com/download/
• Authy, BitWarden, Discord, k9s, Postman, Remmina, from Snaps. Had issues installing some snaps, needed to sudo systemctl restart snapd.seeded.service
• Install WeChat https://www.ikkyinchina.com/2020/11/25/how-to-install-wechat-for-pc-on-fedora/

My arm has been sore for way more than the 2-3 days but now, nearly a week after the jab, it finally had eased enough that I think I can sleep on that side.

I've been suffering from horrendously slow network speed with Three since August, and all my complaints have not been satisfactorily dealt with.

I took the complaint up to the Ombudsman and eventually was ruled against and so now I can either leave the network by paying the leaving penalty (though reduced) and returning the phone.

But I don't even have my old Samsung anymore so that isn't an option.

So now I'm stuck with the network for 2 years until I go out of contract again and can leave without penalty.

DON'T USE THREE.

A step in the right direction

Australia to require social media to 'unmask trolls' • The Register

24 hours after the booster and I can say I have one pretty painful symptom. Overnight, my arm where I had my jab became really painful to the touch, and when I rolled over in my sleep, the pain immediately jolted me awake.

Checked in case the jab site had become swollen or bruised, and nothing, so it is just the jab causing the pain.

I checked with a few others who had the Pfizer jab (both as the original jab and as booster) and they all said their arm was sore for 1-2 days after the jab so I guess I'm in pain until tomorrow. :-|

Completed by covid booster.

Looks like I got a Pfizer booster when my previous two doses were AstraZeneca. They stuck a time on me afterwards so I knew when I could leave

So far, nothing major symptom-wise, just a few aches already coming in on my right arm

Today, I get my Covid Booster jab. Will see how I feel afterwards.

It's been a long time since I posted on here -- my last post (before today's posts) was July 17 when I had to self isolate. A lot has happened since then, so this post will be a bit of an update list

I had to take my dad into hospital for a prostrate operation (this was planned before I had to self-isolate) -- he already had a PCR test and was cleared. My LFT was also clear, but I still had to self isolate. This was before the self-isolation changes happened. The operation was successful, but he needed to be held a few more days to see an ENT specialist due to them finding lumps in his throat. The concern was that they might be cancerous, but turns out it was just irritation so they gave him some Gaviscon to take after means and soothe the throat. Both my dad and I are prone to post-meal throat irritation so it might mean I might be subject to the same thing later in life.

I got a ticket after driving my dad to the hospital for taking a left turn when I was not supposed do, due to badly signposted roads. My appeal was rejected on the grounds I had paid the ticket. This is how the council screws you over -- if you pay the fine to avoid the 100% charge, they will claim that admits guilt. If you don't, they delay the response until after the 2-week window so you then have to pay the 100% charge.

I finally decided to upgrade my phone and went for a OnePlus 9 Pro. The phone is classed as a "Phablet" and much bigger than the Samsung Galaxy S5 I have been using for years:

The case on the left is for the OnePlus, the case on the right for my S5

I had problems activating the new SIM and eventually Three had to send me a new one, and soon after I got that new one, I got a message saying Three were going to be doing works on the mast in my area and ever since then I have had horrendously bad speeds at home. By bad, I mean speeds of < 1Mbps and even down to 0.2Mbps. Using 3G band sometimes helps, but only marginally.

I've taken my complaint up to the Ombudsman but Three are still refusing to do anything about it -- even charging me to leave contract early.

I've been with Three many years but I will not be recommending them going forward. I will be checking other providers when my contract expires.

We've started to go back to the office. My team is doing three days a week in the office, and you pick which three days as long as there are a max of 8 people in the office (due to some office reorganisation, we only have 8 seats for the entire team).

Surprisingly many people have left jobs during and post lockdown (some might have been nudged due to the lockdown, and not just in my office, but generally.)

I won a Twitter completion by Curve for a swag bag. Just had to tweet them three images of their different adverts -- all of which showed up on the same station, so that wasn't too difficult.

Then we had the annoying as heck "Panic at the Pumps" causing shortages.

This video from my dashcam shows the queue of traffic. This is the queue leading into the Alperton Sainsbury's. I was there at around 5am and it took me 30 minutes to clear the queue even with less people in the queue. This queue will probably take 90 minutes to clear, assuming the fuel was not gone by the time they got to the front of the queue

This video, also from my dashcam shows the queues that built up outside the petrol stations -- this Esso I actually went into at 4:30am that morning and they were not open, even though there were staff in the shop (so maybe they were waiting for delivery?)

You'll get people tooting impatiently and even people cutting the queue and then blocking the lane for the people behind (they must be luxury car drivers)

My house purchase has progressed and we have moved on and are now ready to exchange. However, one of the two sellers is unable to complete his purchase (he's part of a chain and needs to complete his purchase before he can complete the sale on the current house).

Finally, I got a letter from Principia Law who are the ones trying to claim money back from the drunk driver who wrecked my previous car.

They want me to release my bank records for the period of time I had the hire car. But everyone I have discussed this with seems confused as to why this is required since the accident is a "no-fault" claim on my part, so they should not even need my bank details.

I asked them to call me today to discuss this. I may also speak to the office legal team for their thoughts.

Yes, that's right, another place plans to ditch Microsoft and go to Linux and OpenOffice

Barely a week after my covid jab, and I've been notified by the NHS Covid app that I need to self-isolate due to coming in proximity to someone confirmed to have the virus.

My main suspicion is that this was during the one day I was in the office and went to the nearby train station to get lunch.

So now I'm pretty much homebound for 10 days.

I've now had my second Covid jab and got poked at my local pharmacy. They didn't offer me a plaster so I was bleeding out on my tshirt on my walk home.

Will keep updating this post with any symptoms. So far:

• Sweats
• Sore Arm/Aches
• Headaches

Missed logging from yesterday. I did my walk later than normal, as I had to pick up my dad from hospital after an operation.

England were playing in Wembley against Germany last night, though I am not much of a football fan and don't really follow matches.

I didn't even think England would beat Germany, based on their history.

On my way back from my walk, I came across a group of teenagers with England shirts on. They saw me and started singing "It's coming home" to me. I just looked blank and confused (being a chinese person, I guess they thought I couldn't understand them). One of them put their fist out for a fist bump. Now *that* I knew and met the bump before heading off.

England won 2-0 against Germany but you never would have guessed. Normally, when England score a goal or win a match, you hear massive cheering from the neighbours and then celebrations in the streets -- people driving their cars with the windows down screaming "En-ger-land!"

None of that this time.

Just a quick note to remind myself outhow to resize logical and physical LVM volumes

• Activate the Volume group:

lvm vgchange -ay

• Resize the logical volume (sizing down by 100G in this example)

lvm lvresize --size -100G /dev/vg/root -r --verbose

• Resize the physical volume:

pvresize --setphysicalvolumesize {size of pv minus {size toreduce}}G /dev/path/to/pv

• If you get an error about "later extents", it's due to the swap being added to the partition (which does not get moved automatically), so you will need to move the data

lvm pvs -v --segments /dev/sda5 to get position ids:

/dev/sda5 ubuntu lvm2 a-- 698.04g 150g 0 xxx root 0 linear /dev/sda:0-xxx
/dev/sda5 ubuntu lvm2 a-- 698.04g 150g xxx nnn 0 free                          
/dev/sda5 ubuntu lvm2 a-- 698.04g 150g yyy zzz swap 0 linear /dev/sda5:yyy-zzz

• Move the data:

lvm pvmove --alloc anywhere /dev/sda5:yyy-zzz

• Check the positioning again

pvs -v --segments /dev/sda5

/dev/sda5 ubuntu lvm2 a-- 698.04g 150g 0 xxx root 0 linear /dev/sda:0-xxx
/dev/sda5 ubuntu lvm2 a-- 698.04g 150g xxx nnn swap 0 linear /dev/sda5:xxx-yyy(-1)
/dev/sda5 ubuntu lvm2 a-- 698.04g 150g yyy zzz 0 free

• Then retry the resize

pvresize --setphysicalvolumesize {size of pv minus {size toreduce}}G /dev/path/to/pv

I've been slacking a bit with logging my walks because it's been a bit monotonous -- not much happening during those runs, so I need to fix that.

Lots of rain today and heavy rain too. Eased up a bit so I got my walk done. Had to go in jeans and coat with a cap on as the temperature had dropped enough that t-shirt and shorts were not a recommended choice.

Cooler today, cloudy and a spattering of rain, but at 20degC still humid