Author Archives: Donncha

Keep Yourself Alive (Long Lost Re-Take)

I just heard this edit of Queen’s Keep Yourself Alive for the first time and I love it. It’s longer than the original and definitely worth listening to if you know the original.

Apparently it was recorded in 1975 as a possible radio edit according to this post but it was finally released in 1991 by Hollywood Records.

This acetate first was thought to be from circa 1972. But some years ago in an interview Brian confirmed that in 1975 it was re-recorded as new version for a possibly new release. Interestingly, the “long” track is refered to as a “long lost retake” on the hollywood version.

I’d love to know what other material is in the Queen vaults waiting to be heard..

Pi-hole missing SQLite3

Pi-Hole is an ad blocker you run on a Raspberry Pi on your local network to provide ad blocking services to all the devices in your home.

A new install of Pi-Hole

When installed normally it uses Lighttpd but I already had Apache2 on my Raspberry Pi. There are a few threads and this doc about migrating to Apache2 but none of them mention SQLite3.

If you don’t have that module installed the ad blocking part will still work but the web admin will show an almost empty page. Look in /var/log/apache2/error.log and you’ll see an error like this:

PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Class 'SQLite3' not found in /var/www/html/admin/scripts/pi-hole/php/database.php

It’s easy to install the SQLite3 mod for PHP:

sudo apt install php-sqlite3

Then restart Apache2

sudo service apache2 restart

I’ve had Pi-Hole installed for years but I think I ran into the read-only problem mentioned here too. As stated in the doc above, the fix is simple. Add the Apache user to the pihole group. That will allow you to update various settings from the web admin.

sudo usermod -a -G pihole www-data

Dyson Sphere Program

Looking back toward my “home” moon and the gas giant around which both moons orbit. Part of my main bus visible in the foreground.

Build machines to automate building more machines to automate researching new technologies to build more machines and eventually build a Dyson Sphere around the local sun. Rinse and repeat in a new solar system.

There’s so much in this early access game but even at this early stage I can easily recommend Dyson Sphere Program if you are a fan of Factorio or Satisfactory. I got bored of the former and never played the latter. DSP hits the spot for me.

For help check out the related Steam community, the DSP subreddit or any of the numerous Youtube videos on the game.

Battlestar Galactica Explained

It only takes 8 minutes to explain what happened in Battlestar Galactica. I watched every episode and did not know or maybe forgot several key points in the story that are explained here.

This video is obviously full of spoilers but it makes me want to watch the series again! That show was so good, then it got so bad, and the twist at the end was great.

I would have liked to meet Ted Baldwin

The gravestone of Edward (Ted) Baldwin in Durrus, Co Cork.
“I told you I was sick”

This is a gravestone in the graveyard of St. James’s Church in Durrus, Sheep’s Head as pictured in 2014. Ted died well before his time at a young age and I have no idea who he was but to judge by his final message he must have been an interesting character.

I came across this after posting today’s photo of this church in Durrus on my photoblog.

50% of our energy came from renewables

50.42% of Ireland’s electricity came from renewables in the last 24 hours

In the last 24 hours just over 50% of the electricity generated in Ireland came from renewables. We even exported 4% of our electricity.

Of course the wind isn’t blowing this hard every day, or it’s blowing too hard, and over the course of the last month the portion of renewable energy drops to 39%.

All this information is available on the Eirgrid Smart Grid Dashboard. Lots of information there including a log of wind speeds you can download, interconnection graphs showing our imports and exports of electricity from the UK and CO2 intensity & emissions data too. You can compare CO2 intensity against other parameters such as wind generation. The last few days have been very windy.

For more energy statistics take a look at the transport page on the SEAI website.

The amount of petrol consumed in Ireland reduced by more than half between 2007 and 2018 as a result of the shift to diesel cars. The increase in diesel use for private cars was offset by lower diesel use in freight. Diesel use was 12% higher in 2018 than 2007.

Renewable transport fuels have grown from a low base to over 3% of transport final energy use in 2018. This is almost all from biofuels blended with petrol and diesel. Electricity remained at just 0.1% of transport final energy demand in 2018. Most of this was from Luas and DART, but electric vehicles are growing strongly from a low base.

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Ad-blocker not detected

Consider installing a browser extension that blocks ads and other malicious scripts in your browser to protect your privacy and security. Here are a few options.

  • uBlock Origin is a free, open source, ad blocker for your browser.
  • Use pi-hole if you have a spare Raspberry Pi on your network.
  • Set the private DNS settings on your phone to dns.adguard.com to block adverts and trackers.