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Table of Contents
The Cellar
Cellars are a bit more atmospheric than basements, and I don't actually have a cellar, so I thought I'd make one - it's an old joke that predates the wibbly wobbly web. I'm a novelist, I have an interest in all things to do with astronomy, astrophysics, exoplanetary science and physics. I've been a programmer for more than 30 years. I like reviewing new and up-and-coming authors.
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Crew in Space
A list of crew (from all countries currently) not on Earth, a list of spacecraft currently docked with the ISS, and a list of global upcoming launches
- (C) denotes Commander
- Mission Time is in days
- Western spacefarers are known as Astronauts
- Russian spacefarers are known as Cosmonauts
- Chinese spacefarers are known as Taikonauts
MPD and NAS
I have Volumio on a Raspberry Pi 4, which I think is fantastic software, but there are two gripes I have with it:
- Despite setting “Allow UI Statics Collection” to off, stats collection is still enabled
- In order to play music on the device I'm controlling it from (e.g. my phone), I have to pay
I can do without paying, I've paid enough and I'm on a tight budget but the stats collection gets up my nose. Whilst they may no longer collect UI stats data and send it to themselves, there are cookies from google analytics, google tag manager, facebook and paddle.com. Making me think my data is not being collected when it still is, is a bad thing, and the fact that these cookies can track a lot more than 'how I use the player' is horrendous.
Time for something new.
Lunar Clock Published
The lunar clock has a new name: rtaps which stands for [R]PC [T]imestamp [A]djustment [P]rogram [S]erver. Yeah, I know, a bit contrived, but aren't all acronyms?
The code has now been published on GitHub at https://github.com/stroggprog/rtap and can be cloned using git or downloaded as a compressed zip archive.
I have decided not to turn the program into an NTP server, since that is non-trivial task. If someone thinks that would be a great idea (I no longer think so), they can take existing NTP code and amend it.
Lunar Clock
NASA have been set the task of creating standard time zones for other worlds, starting with our own moon. This raised the thorny issue that on the moon (as almost everywhere else in the universe), the passage of time is different from what we experience here on Earth. Atomic clocks are the most accurate timekeepers we have, yet they run faster on the moon because time itself is passing at a faster rate. That's relativity for you.
I decided (at the gleeful urging of my father) to write a software clock that counters the effects of general and special relativity, in order to keep clocks on the moon synchronised with clocks on Earth.
Bluemail is Malware
I've been using Thunderbird for one of my email accounts, and whilst I can say it is functional, the UIX was designed by an amateur with no experience in program design. It sucks big-time, consuming a vast amount of real-estate that it doesn't use, forcing you to make the program occupy even more of your screen's valuable real-estate. So I started looking for something else.
Bluemail has arrived for Linux, so I took a look and liked what I saw: a neat and tidy interface, and the free version has all the options I require.