Corona-Maßnahmen: Sind sie gerechtfertigt?

Die einen sagen nein, die anderen ja. Ich bin im zweiten Camp. Meine Perspektive: Niemand weiß es genau, und man wird es vielleicht nie genau wissen. Somit wird diese Ja/Nein Frage eine Glaubensfrage, und damit eine Frage, wem oder was man glaubt. Manche glauben den Zahlen und bestimmten Medien, andere glauben anderen Zahlen, anderen Medien, oder ihrem Bauchgefühl, vulgo Intuition. Wie kommen ich und die meisten Menschen, die ich kenne, sich zum Glauben zu bekennen anstatt zum Nicht-Wissen? OK, der Mensch glaubt gerne an etwas, birgt der Glauben doch ein gewisses Gefühl von Sicherheit. Das Hirn ist ein fuzzy future predictor, und sich selbst zu einer bestimmten Perspektive als Grundlage der Vorhersage zu überreden, wirkt vielleicht entspannend. Noch entspannender ist vielleicht, wenn die Perspektive nicht stark von der allgemeinen persönlichen Gemütslage abweicht. Also die Frage: Was will ich glauben? Was bekomme ich davon, mich einer bestimmten Perspektive anzuschließen? Wie bedrohen mich andere Perspektiven? Das könnte vor Diskussionen eine interessante Offenlegung sein, zusätzlich zu finanziellen Interessen: DISCLOSURE: MY BELIEFS ARE BACKED BY INVESTMENT IN SCIENCE :-) Also, Offenlegung für Sven: Zahlen und Wissenschaft geben mir Sicherheit - ich habe eine ganze Armee auf meiner Seite im Kapf gegen das rein Gefühlsgesteuerte, dem ich sonst nichts entgegenzusetzen habe. Und entgegensetzen muss ich unbedingt, sonst werde versinke ich in Gefühl wie in einer riesigen, klebrigen Welle Honig. Ich habe Angst vor Leuten, denen ich unterstelle, letztendlich nur aus ihrem Gefühl, und zwar aus ihren Ängsten heraus, zu entscheiden und zu handeln. Gerade habe ich in meiner Lieblungszeit-ung einen Artikel über Charlottesville gelesen. Ich wurde ganz zittrig. Und lege offen: Das ist die dieselbe Angst, die ich vor den Ku-Kluxern, den Alt-Rights, den Neonazis, den Anti-Vaxxern, den Fake-News-Rufern und den Abendland-Untergänglern, den Ausländerfeinden habe. Meine Angst schmeißt Euch alle in denselben Topf.

Wieder da

Hallo liebe alle, Nach 7 Jahren Pause auf diesem Blog habe ich beschlossen, wieder zu posten. Die Corona-Krise hat auch Krisen - im Sinne von Chancen - im Privaten ausgelöst. Eine davon ist, das mich die zunehmende Polarisierung in den Medien (ich fasse den Begriff superweit hier) zu Themen wie EU, Feminismus, Corona-Maßnahmen, Impfen und Kapitalismus mit Beiträgen und Meinungsäußerungen aus dem ganz engen Freundes- und Familienkreis erreicht. Meine persönliche Erfahrung ist, dass der direkte Austausch mit mir für mich und diese Lieben oft holprig ist und mit Rückzug endet: Multiperspektivität ist nicht immer einfach zu halten. Ich möchte niemandem meine Perspektiven ins Gesicht wedeln, sie aber auch nicht unterdrücken, weil ich mich vor ihrem Konfliktpotential fürchte; dieser Blog soll also nun Medium zur Darstellung *meiner* Perspektiven auf verschiedene Themen sein. Wer mag, kann sie sich zu Gemüte führen. Und wer nicht mag, kann es einfach sein lassen.

Anybody allergic to cats?

There's an ongoing interesting clinical trial:
Clinical Trials – Circassia – Cat-SPIRE:

Thought on Jeff Foster's "An extraordinary absence"

All is well for sure. It's not hard to recognize when things are well. Sometimes the dream has you at your balls though! Yesterday in San Rafael at Open Secret Bookstore I browsed a book by Jeff Foster (http://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/). Same, same, of course, packaged in way the message touched me differently. My brain often abuses the "all's well" idea (using the word "idea" on purpose here) to withdraw from difficult emotions, but that is beginning to feel disconnected and cool and not all enlightened :)  I can't quote him accurately, but it was about how life is the greatest movie ever made. What I got was that the whole point of going to the movies is that you _are_ getting sucked into the story, laugh and cry with its twists and turns and get really involved with the characters. We allow ourselves to be so completely immersed, precisely because we know it's a movie, and not real. So at least for me that triggered a huge insight into a misunderstanding. When we - momentarily or permanently - wake up from the dream of believing our life to be real and and seeing it for what it really is - just this what's happening right now - and that we are the actors, directors and the props of this production, we can get really involved with everything, including ourselves. Like, "Dude, I love this Sven character, he plays his role so well!, and man that Nik guy, what's the actor's name, you know the one who they had meet up with Sven in Thailand 11 years ago and then he fell in love there and stayed on? Dude I so hope they'll be doing another season!"

Cross-posted from a Facebook comment

Raspbmc and iTunes revisited

One thing I didn't get to work with iTunes was the Android remote app to switch from local speakers my AirPlay-enabled speakers, so I gave this another go. Meanwhile, a friendly dev named baal had pushed forked-daapd further to support Remote 3.0: see here. So I downloaded his code and followed his description.

BTW, the Hyperfine Remote, the Android app I want to use, appears as "Remote for iTunes" when turned on to look for iTunes and queried on Raspbmc or some other Linux with

avahi-browse -r -k _touch-remote._tcp

After putting the name and the code in the .remote file as described all over the 'net, the Remote app was picked up, and started showing my music library. However, no sound. And no switching. All I got was

[2013-05-29 02:16:31] player: Could not open local audio

[2013-05-29 02:16:31] player: Could not activate local audio output

[2013-05-29 02:16:31] dacp: Speakers de/activation failed!

[2013-05-29 02:17:30] laudio: cannot find card '0'[2013-05-29 02:17:30]   laudio: function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory[2013-05-29 02:17:30]   laudio: error evaluating strings[2013-05-29 02:17:30]   laudio: function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory[2013-05-29 02:17:30]   laudio: error evaluating name[2013-05-29 02:17:30]   laudio: function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory[2013-05-29 02:17:30]   laudio: Evaluate error: No such file or directory[2013-05-29 02:17:30]   laudio: Unknown PCM default[2013-05-29 02:17:30]   laudio: Could not open playback device: No such file or directory

in the forked-daapd log.
Turns out Raspbmc doesn't have local sound support with ALSA and installed. I found and followed the good man Jeff Skinner and his instructions here.  And edited /etc/asound.conf to read

pi@raspbmc:~$ more /etc/asound.conf

pcm.!default {
 type hw
 card 0
}

ctl.!default {
  type hw
  card 0
}

And: Local sound works!! No drops, so that part's great. But even though I see the AirPlay speakers registered with forked-daapd in its log (on debug level), and I do see them in the remote app as a choice in the app's volume settings. Clicking it briefly flashes a "Switching [...]" message, but it reverts back to the local speakers' choice.  I do see this message in the log:

[2013-05-29 09:07:03] dacp: DACP request: /ctrl-int/1/getspeakers?session-id=100

but no other error message, so not probably not too bad (call me a hopeless optimist!). Perhaps I need to add the Airplay speaker to the DB. Suggestions welcome!

Samba configuration on Raspbmc 1.0

Now that I installed version 1.0 of Raspbmc, a donation-based Debian Wheezy / XBMC OS for the Raspberry Pi. I needed to set up my services again, i.e. Samba, Zero Configuration, iTunes server, Apple networking and time machine. Samba took me a little bit mainly because there is so much confusing information on the 'net. So here is my brain dump on how to get Samba 3.6.6 configured:

/etc/samba/smb.conf:

----------------------- Network Related Options -------------------------
[global]
workgroup = SVENHOME
server string = %h Samba Server Version %v
netbios name = PI
usershare allow guests = yes

# --------------------------- Logging Options -----------------------------
log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
max log size = 50
syslog = 0

# ----------------------- Standalone Server Options ------------------------
security = user
passdb backend = tdbsam
username map = /etc/samba/smbusers
encrypt passwords = yes
obey pam restrictions = yes
unix password sync = yes
passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u
passwd chat = *Enter\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *Retype\snew\s*\spassword:* %n$
map to guest = bad user
follow symlinks = yes
wide links = yes
unix extensions = no
lock directory = /var/cache/samba

# This will prevent nmbd to search for NetBIOS names through DNS.
   dns proxy = no

# What naming service and in what order should we use to resolve host names
# to IP addresses
   name resolve order = hosts wins bcast

[devices]
    browsable = yes
    read only = yes
    guest ok = yes
    path = /media
    force user = root

[homes]
   comment = Home Directories
   browseable = no
   writable = yes
   create mask = 0700
   directory mask = 0700

[music]
   path = /media/Iomega_HDD/music
   force user = pi
   comment = Music
   browseable = yes
   writeable = yes
   create mask = 0777
   directory mask = 0777
   fstype=NTFS
   public=yes

[pictures]
   path = /media/Iomega_HDD/pictures
   force user = pi
   comment = Pictures
   browseable = yes
   writeable = yes
   create mask = 0777
   directory mask = 0777
   fstype=NTFS
   public=yes
 

Add pi to the samba users:

sudo smbpasswd -a pi
sudo smbpasswd -e pi
sudo smbpasswd -e pi

And log on from Windows 8 as SVENHOME\pi and ditto from my laptop running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS without a hitch.

Arduino Laser Show: I

So, this popular German computer magazine called C't now also publishes "C't hacks", and I got a copy. Anton and I were immediately drawn to the Arduino-controlled low-cost laser light show. The main ingredient - besides the Arduino and the laser - are the read/write mechanics of two old hard disks. So I got some junk 2.5" HDs from work and we opened them up. After removing the platters we found that the galvos (the electromagnetic drivers of the read/write head unit) were pinned out over  ribbon cable to a little connector, and we didn't know which pins were data and which galvo power. First useful job for the new lab power source! After trying all possible combinations we found them, but they  were different for the two little drives. What was also interesting and useful for later was that 0.1 V would already drive them to center, so I am not sure we'll even need a motor driver for that. A simple Mosfet would probably do. Since Arduino Analog Write is PWM at 900Hz, we might need a Low-pass RC element as well, we'll see. For this first stage, we needed to solder wire to the tiny pins - glad we had that giant magnifying lamp from the San Jose lab! We put plumber's putty over the pins to keep everything protected.  The green laser was ordered tonight as well, and we cut little mirrors from the HD platters. Intense excitement!

Remote access to the Raspberry Pi

Goal: Log in to the Pi from WAN.
Problem: Pi is on the LAN without 192.. address, and my Cable provider changes my WAN IP address from time to time.
Solution: Sign up with a dynamic DNS service, and set up a little program on the Pi that frequently posts its WAN address to the service.

It's dead simple with No-IP.com, and described neatly here on their support page.
Dynamic DNS Help and Support - No-IP

Of course, something needs to be listening on a port. So that port needs to be forwarded from the router to the Pi. I have a AVN Fritz!Box, which has a config page for such things. So for instance, to allow ssh access, you'd forward port 22 to port 22 on your Pi.

Works flawlessly on my setup!