Category: Computers

Mac OS X and Windows

Choosing an Affordable Mechanical Keyboard

tl;dr: KeyChron are brilliant and cheaper than the alternatives.

My nephew was foolish enough to ask about the keyboard he spotted in a photo of my desktop so, armed with my Keychron K2, I explained what led me to it.

I got out kitchen scales and improvised some 2-10 gramme weights and carefully weighed the actuation force on my MacBook and on my Logitech K480. I found that the MacBook is approx 60grammes and that the K480—which I find too much hard work to type on—is about 70g. To me, the difference feels much more than that, but that's what the scales told me. (And yes, the A-level physicists amongst you will know that by gramme I mean, milliNewton)

I deduced that any switch of 60g or below, I would be happy with.
I then noted that the Gateron Blue is allegedly noisy (fine if you don't share a room with someone, anti-social if you do); and I examined the graphs of the actuation curves. I would have preferred the ‘clicky’ buckling spring feel of the Blue but I've used a noisy keyboard before and feel the noise can be a real downer. I definitely didn't want the linear feel which the Red and Black have (allegedly gamers like it, but I don't) so that left me with the Brown ‘Tactile’ which is in between.

I went for aluminium backlit because boo to plastic (don't kid yourself though; I do not know whether the carbon footprint of producing the aluminium keyboard is any less than that of the plastic). Nightlife without backlighting is grim, it is must-have for me. My other must-haves are Mac keycaps, and either the “tenkeyless” keyset or the full 101 keys, because I hate not having page up/down and home/end on the main keyboard.

I agonised over K1 or K2 and went for K2 because K1 didn't have the Brown switches. But … having become a closet Apple fanboi I am now disappointed that the K2 feels much higher off the desk that the Apple ultra-flat style and I may yet buy a K1 instead. Or a wrist rest.

I assure you however that the K2 is the best keyboard I've had for years. I had an IBM buckling spring keyboard for while in the 1990s, and a noisy Cherry for a while last year. The KeyChron has the same solid feel at the IBM had, but with the Brown switches is lighter and feels slightly less industrial. It is really nice, impressively priced, and I very much like it.

It will make you want to type long letters, or—should you happen to have WhatsApp Web on your computer—really really long messages to your nephew about how good your keyboard is. 🤷

Also 10% off! https://keychronwireless.refr.cc/chriscarroll

I did spend a while looking at other keyboards, mostly mechanical, but wasn't willing to pay the enormous prices. KeyChron is a half or even a third of the price of other good mechanical keyboards. Seemed a no-brainer to me.

Customise Macos XQuartz : xinitrc doesn’t work

If you installed XQuartz and are, for instance, irritated by the small white xterm window you get, you might try customising it in the usual way by editting an .xinitrc file. If only.

Instead, try this:

defaults read org.macosforge.xquartz.X11

to see all the settings; or to permanently change the startup xterm window, something like:

defaults write org.macosforge.xquartz.X11 app_to_run \
 "/opt/X11/bin/xterm -fa Monaco -fs 12 -fg green -bg black -sb -sl 1000"

Or, if you have installed a better bash with homebrew, then e.g. :

defaults write org.macosforge.xquartz.X11 app_to_run \
  "/opt/X11/bin/xterm -fa Monaco -fs 12 -fg green -bg black -sb -sl 1000 -ls /usr/local/bin/bash"

You can check your syntax before writing the default just by running your quoted command in a terminal, and then watch as XQuartz opens and xterm runs your shell:

~/Source/Repos/VMs] /opt/X11/bin/xterm -fa Monaco -fs 12 -fg green \
    -bg black -sb -sl 1000 -ls /usr/local/bin/bash

To set the default for a new xterm window from the XQuartz Application menu, the menu itself lets you edit the command.

In short, read the FAQ : https://www.xquartz.org/FAQs.html.

Dead Nintendo Switch?

“I'm sure this is irrelevant chatter but a few days ago I turned on my Nintendo Switch for the first time in months but the battery had drained, so I went to charge it but noticed after 20 minutes it still wouldn't turn on, I tried using another plug and putting it in the dock, it still wasn't working, I knew from early YouTube videos that some people had this problem and sold their console on eBay as "faulty, not accepting charge" when the console was first on the market, not wishing to sell my console I proceeded to calmly take it appart in an attempt to disconnect the battery and plug it in again in order to wake it up, however I'd forgotten how to remove the battery and wasn't sure the tools I had were best for the job, looking at the connector though made me realise if use 2 electrical screwdrivers, I could short the pins, simulating a temporary disconnect, I allowed the battery to spark for a split second and reassembled the unit. Hey presto, the Nintendo Switch is back in full working order, end of story. Good day to you all.”

James Barnes

HowTo: Linux, Nginx, Mono, Asp.Net Mvc

These are notes I made for getting an application written for Asp.Net Mvc (It was probably Mvc 3-ish) to run on a Centos server.

Note that some of the issues/solutions may vary across Linux variants. The interface Nginx-Mono is FastCGI, which they both support. The Mono webserver is xsp4.

Of course, running cross platform is all much easier these days if you use .Net Core and Kestrel 🙂 And een for Net Framework running on Mono, the work done since Microsoft bought Xamarin has been really helpful for e.g. Mvc compatibility.

The Reading List

The Checklist

Ensure nginx has read execute permissions on your application directory and all parent directories

nginx conf section for webapp

With the Asp.Net website listening on port 9001

#
server {
listen 8080;
server_name your-public-facing-nginx-server-name.com;

# use /smoketest/ to confirm that nginx is reading this config 
# and has read/execute access to the 
# /usr/share/nginx directories and files:

location /smoketest/ {
root /usr/share/nginx/smoketestredir;
index index.html;
}

# pass XSP to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9001
# use a different port for each ASP.NET site you create
# (port 9000 is often taken by PHP on default webserver setups)

location / {

# replace fastcgi with this to confirm nginx read address
# to files in root /usr/share/nginx/mywebapplication;
fastcgi_pass  127.0.0.1:9001;
fastcgi_index index.html;

include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param  PATH_INFO          "";
fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME    $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;

fastcgi_buffers 16 16k;
fastcgi_buffer_size 32k;
}
}

Systemd Startup Script

vim /etc/systemd/system/fastcgi-mono-hdmbreas.service

[Unit]
Description=FastCgi-mono-server4 for Application
After=syslog.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/bin/fastcgi-mono-server4 --applications /:/usr/share/nginx/hdmbreas/hdm-fe-web --socket=tcp:127.0.0.1:9001
Restart=always

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start fastcgi-mono-app.service
systemctl status fastcgi-mono-app.service
systemctl status fastcgi-mono-app.service

Error: [error] 7216#0: *119 upstream sent too big header while reading response header

  • Considering setting the buffer size
  • Considering setting the busy buffer size
  • e.g. nginx config: fastcgi_buffers 16 16k; fastcgi_buffer_size 32k;

Watching Errors

Watch errors with tail -F /var/log/nginx/error.log