One Month Later

A one Month update of my Desktop Crash

A review of things since Solstice 2021.

The Desktop Crash

December 21^st 2021, my desktop crashed. I still have not looked to see what the issue is. My first interim system to use was the Raspberry Pi I obtained in November of 2020.

If you can afford it, the Raspberry Pi made an excellent backup for me. It worked pretty good to keep me in touch and on line. The whole thing will fit easily in a drawer the tiny keyboard and the fat mouse with short tail.

My Raspberry Pi sitting on top of my laptop that i really did not like:

^{(source, my own picture being re-used)}

My Raspberry Pi became my primary on-line connection and computer until the start of the New Year.

Putting the Laptop to Work

After a bit, (to start the New Year off semi right), I got use to using my Raspberry Pi and decided to give Linux a try on my pretty much unused and unliked laptop computer.

I needed something with more power than the Raspberry Pi for offloading and manipulating images from my camera. The Raspberry Pi was good for a lot of things, but offloading a lot of pictures was not easy on it, let alone trying to manipulate images. It worked, but was slow and sluggish.

So the cheap laptop I did not like needed to be updated, and put to use. With a little bit of Linux learning courtesy of my Raspberry PI, I decided to install Linux Mint on my laptop.

The install and set-up of Linux Mint Cinnamon on the laptop did take some work, but I did manage to get it up and running. About the only thing I really miss from my Windows 7 computer is the analog clock widget I had in the upper right hand corner of my desktop so I could see what the time was.

Using Linux has not been a bowl of cherries, there have been a few issues, a few hard seeds in the works. It is difficult for me to get use to the file system, and on windows it was pretty easy to tell programs where you wanted them installed. Not so easy a task on Linux, so for now I just let them install where they want. Of course one problem with this is I have no clue quite often where the programs went.

I did try a different desktop program, (I think they call them wrappers, but I am not sure of the terminology yet). That experience did not go well, but with a bootable thumb drive, and my files I needed backed up, boot from disk then run the restore system. Fortunately I did set a restore point a couple days before the event. (It is called "Time Shift" I think). It worked the gnu desktop was gone and things looked normal.

Learning Python3

This is going to be a long slow process for me. Currently I am still in the Turtle phase of learning. My current learning tools are the How to think like a computer scientist book, and Thonny IDE.

I have learned how to use the Import function, how to make DEF statements, and how to use **for i in range() and a few other things. Right now having fun with the Turtle as a doodle pad. Making odd and different shapes from just changing a few numbers and parameters.

I have not seen any post or web pages on people making the turtle clock a workable clock, but somewhere along my Python journey I hope to be able to do that. Here is one of my doodles:

Kind of like playing with a Spirograph but on line and with code manipulation. I'm having some fun with it, it is time consuming I can get lost for hours, but the repetition is helping with remembering and learning how small bits and pieces of code work together.

The Driveway Saga, and Weather

it has been a pretty light snow season so far. We still have the remainder of Jan, and then Feb. and March for snowfalls.This season so far we have only had to be plowed twice. We still have a lot of snow, but not like the last few years.

Weather has also been on again off again. We got our cold snap beginning in Nov, and it lasted well into Dec. Things started to warm up around Solstice and we had one day it got up-to 41F/5C. We had a few days maybe 5 in total that the temperatures were above freezing and the snow melted off the roof.

We are currently back in the teens above freezing, but I am not looking forward to FEB, since it can be as bitterly cold as late Nov. early Dec. For this week a mix of weather in store for us. We had a small snow about 2 inches yesterday, and some more being expected, with another storm moving up from Kodiak, so we could be in for a mix of rain and snow.

So that is pretty much it for an update on what has happened and maybe a glimpse into what is to come especially weather wise.

_{Tiny Picture links back to my blog:}