Author: valerauko

Denali ’24

June 2, 2024
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This year I was back on Denali for another try. It’s been 3 years since my previous attempt and while my training routine was a bit haphazard, I felt really strong and my training hikes were going great. It was time to head back to Alaska!

This time I flew in through Minneapolis. Why? Flying in through Seattle would’ve been longer and more expensive. I was a bit traumatized by just how flat the US midwest is, but I can deal with that. This time I didn’t have to deal with any vaccination process at the airport, but I did manage to meet some of my teammates before the next day team gathering.

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Upgrading to Ubuntu 24.04

April 26, 2024
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Didn’t go smoothly. I was on 22.04 I believe and I decided to upgrade without waiting for 24.04.1. It was a mistake. I started the upgrade with do-release-upgrade -d, but way too soon I ran into a very nasty crash screen telling me “Oh no! Something has gone wrong and the system can’t recover”.

Aside. I personally hate these “friendly” additions like “Oh no!” Fuck off? My system just crashed, I’m pissed and the last thing I need now is some linux dev who thinks they know how to be friendly rubbing it in.

The way to fix it for me was: first reboot and choose recovery mode in the Grub menu. Once recovery mode is on, enable network then drop into a root terminal. Run dpkg --configure -a to fix whatever was interrupted. After reboot it should boot all right (at least the GUI would work).

However the network was still broken. I could ping 1.1.1.1 so the connection itself was alive, but nothing could be resolved. Turns out the installation removed the resolve component of systemd. Luckily for me sudo apt-get install systemd-resolved could install it back and that solved the connection issue.

At this point the system seems to be functioning properly (nothing is obviously broken other than Thunderbird for some reason getting removed from my dash), but I don’t know if the interrupted install broke anything nor how to check if anything is broken or in an uexpected state.

An active day

April 11, 2024
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Today was a day that didn’t start so well. I woke up one too early for some reason (weird dreams? too much light? two full workouts the day before?), but I kept going back to sleep until I was 30 minutes before my first meeting, at which point I put on my pants, went jogging on my now-usual route and even had time to shower before the meeting started. There was a lot to do. The “year” starts in April in Japan, so there’s a lot of setting goals and meeting managers, but there’s also a lot of ripe fruit to pluck (even if not necessary low-hanging) that I’ve set my eyes on.

I had to realize that I probably overworked myself (physically in the gym) yesterday, because even after a whole day of almost-rest I was still feeling sore, so instead I opted to chill today, have some beer while I can and catch up on last season’s anime. This weekend I’ll be going alcohol-free in preparation for the Denali expedition in May. It’s gonna be (haha) fun to pull off another Arabaki dry, but I’ll manage for sure. Caffeine at least is not among the forbidden substances (only alcohol is at this point, though I figure tobacco should be on the “list” too).

15

April 2, 2024
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15 év az nem kevés. Akkor se, ha nyolcvan vagy, de így harminc után félúton jó súlya van. Úgy tűnik, hogy pont tizenöt éve szálltam le először Naritán (bár nem utoljára) (bár ahányszor arra járok mindig úgy vagyok vele, hogy bár utoljára). Dokumentálva itt olvasható a történet a blogon is, már amennyit volt erőm és energiám megírni belőle (ami sajnos nem sok, de legalább nem nulla).

Megérkeztem Japánba, tanultam japánul, megjártam egy bizonyos nattós tállal (vicces, hogy azt a traumát még mindig nem lépte túl a testem, pedig néha megpróbálkozok a nattóval, de mindig az a vége hogy csak legalább az asztalt ne hányjam le), zenéltem is, aztán rajzfilmes is lettem, majd azt otthagyva “unalmas” programozóként tolom már jópár éve.

Egy stresszes nyár után elkezdtem komolyabban hegyeket is mászni (akik naprakészek akarnak maradni ilyen célból van Yamap), és a kézműves söröket se vetem meg (bár egy ideje ilyen jellegű élményeimről inkább nem írok—tekintve hogy egy TIPA lazán 10%-os, tessék kitalálni inkább miért nem). A hegymászás azóta identitásom fontos része lett, ami így belegondolva lassan öt év után már nem annyira meglepő (bár bizonyos körökben sokkal kevesebb időbe tellett, mire “a hegymászó” lettem).

Kíváncsi leszek, öt év múlva hol leszek az életemben.

Hiking gear nowadays

March 26, 2024
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Trekking poles

Black Diamond Alpine Carbon Cork. Not as compact as the aluminum Alpine Carbon FLZ, but it feels much lighter and more durable.

Gloves

The new discovery is the Norrona Fjora mesh gloves. I’ve used Norrona gloves before and I wasn’t blown away: those were uncomfortable and fell apart quick. The Fjora mesh gloves on the other hand are ridiculously light and unlike similar offerings from Montbell, these didn’t get shredded on the first rocky scramble. Of course they’re not warm, but unless it’s well below freezing, for me it’s enough.

Backpacks

Since 2020 I’ve been using a Mammut Ducan Spine 28-35 for training both in the gym and on the trail. Its rock solid back support system means that I can load it up with 20+kg and (while it does creak from that much weight) it still carries just fine. However, over the years I wasn’t going easy on it, so it’s now pretty much falling apart.

For lighter hikes I discovered K’s Ultralight and I’ve been using a KS40 for 1-2 day hikes. It lacks any support, so I definitely wouldn’t load it up, but with an Outdoor Vitals closed cell pad folded into its back side, it’s a super light option with plenty of pockets.

For longer hikes I use Hyperlite, a Southwest during the summer and a Prism during the winter.

Shirts

For a good while now I’ve been using Marmot Ascent shirts, both long and short sleeve. They’re extremely hard to find (I get the impression that the long sleeve version isn’t made anymore at all), but they’re super light, they dry in a flash and they don’t get smelly even after 3-4 days of Japanese summer heat. They perform way better than the Montbell shirts I used before—though I still use Montbell short-sleeved shirts in the gym. The Marmots feel so delicate I’d really rather not wash them every other day.

Some notes on iOS BLE

March 24, 2024
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Dealing with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) through Swift can be pretty tricky. The interfaces and delegation are straightforward, but there is an implicit “right way” of doing things that (as far as I could find) is not documented anywhere.

I don’t know if the way you have to hold on to references to things or they get immediately discarded and cleaned up was surprising only for me with zero Swift background, but it took some time to get used to. For example CBPeripheral and CBL2CAPChannel objects require that you keep a reference to them, or the connection will be terminated, resulting in interesting behaviors.

Another thing is that I couldn’t find any details about error patterns in the documentation, but I figured out the following:

  • the input and output streams that come with a CBL2CAPChannel are not opened when you get your hands on them, and result in a pretty obscure 0x0122 failure if you try to use them without opening them first
  • you have to read/write those streams from the same DispatchQueue where they are scheduled, or the operations will silently just do nothing. Logging Thread.current can help debugging this.
  • error 436 means the local (you) severed the connection. This usually happens when you forget to hold on to the CBPeripheral instance
  • error 431 means the remote peer severed the connection. I’m not entirely sure what triggers this, since usually the disconnect is very graceful with a delegate callback. Maybe sometimes closing the streams doesn’t make it in time and this error gets logged first?
  • error 582 means the PSM used to initiate the CBL2CAPChannel is incorrect.

Az a fránya orr

March 5, 2024
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Tegnap este úgy kifárasztott a műszak, hogy nem volt energiám még egy számjegyű “melegben” és csepergő esőben elindulni kondiba, inkább nekiálltam és összeraktam a polcot a hálószobámba. Közben rendet is raktam, és ekkor történt a baleset: újra hajtogattam a meleg pokrócot, amit amúgy nem használok, és úgy tűnik gyűjtötte a port. Nekem meg van egy szexi poratka-allergiám.

Öt percre rá fullra be volt már állva az orrom, bár nálam szerencsére az allergia kimerül ennyiben. A duguláson segít az orrspré, és reméltem, hogy a brutálisabb gyógyszer majd megnyugtatja az éjszaka alatt. Ehelyett az történt, hogy míg az orrsprének köszönhetően elaludni el tudtam, reggelre belobban teljesen “megfázásosan” az orrom. Gondolom, hogy felgyülemlett valami az éjszaka, amiben beindultak a bacik. És persze így már egész nap folyt az orrom, mintha megnyitottak volna egy csapot.

Amit persze nem győzök fújni, és ha fújom is, folyik hátrafelé a torkomba, úgyhogy persze az is elkezd kaparni, mert valami szaros fertőzés jobban tudja manipulálni a testem folyamatait egy begyulladt orr-nyálkahártyán át, mint én. Így ma kimaradt persze a kondi, és gyanítom, hogy holnap egy rendelő látogatás is be fog kerülni a napirendbe, mert általában ha már itt tartok, akkor rendes gyógyszer nélkül örökké tart.

Azt a kurva pokrócot meg a következő adandó alkalommal kidobom a fenébe.

Barcelona

March 3, 2024
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Nem is tudom, hogy jött elő, de a múltkor ahogy a főnökömmel beszélgettem, szóba jött az MWC, én meg reflexből rávágtam, hogy “de mennék”. Mire nagy meglepetésemre az volt a válasz, hogy “nem gond, még ki menjen?” Nem kevés szervezés és a hitelkártyáim kimaxolása után (természetesen a cég utólag megtéríti) végül most február végén eljutottam Barcelonába majdnem egy egész hétre.

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My new gear

February 21, 2024
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Earlier Reol announced that No title- will get a vinyl release. I love that album, so I ended up preordering it before realizing that I don’t actually have a record player. Well, that changed now.

And while I was at it, I also got a few old Japanese jazz fusion records from Disk Union and Thy Catafalque’s Rengeteg too.

On the boards

February 13, 2024
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Last year I didn’t go snowboarding. Or rather couldn’t: during the season my wallet was dry as something that’s very dry, due to the Karakoram expedition the previous summer (and the insurance company fighting my claim for over half a year). Then the season was over.

This year however a friend kindly invited me along, so I was back in Yuzawa after almost two years. I surprised myself by doing pretty okay by my own standards, not crashing too much and turning okay-ish.

Hopefully I can go snowboarding again a few times before the little snow that this warm winter had disappears.