The State of Things

Every reasonable person knows that there’s nothing about the first of January that makes this day mark a “new year”. Yet here I am thinking it might be nice to write something before the year runs out. Ayo. Well, I guess my excuse is that we always perceive reality as construction of our mind, a controlled hallucination, so we can make it what we want it to be. You know that’s not how it works, but it sure sounds smart, and in today’s world appearance is everything, not evidence-based truth. :)

The House

In September, I have moved into a new house. Or another house, it’s not actually new, construction-wise. It’s 15 years old. Which only matters since I will be able to purchase the house if, or when, I finally get the required permit. In general, non-citizens here are not allowed to purchase real estate. There are “developments”, combined with some tax schemes, where foreigners can buy, not but any odd house in any neighbourhood. But last year, the parliament passed a law that allows non-citizens to purchase one single property not in a “development”, but you need a permit by the prime minister. Well, the prime minister’s office, I doubt he (yes it’s a guy) concerns himself with this kind of things personally. Or at least I hope so, for the benefit of the island.

About a year ago, I had sold my flat in Switzerland, and had started to look around here. Naturally, with restricted possibilities as foreigner, you need to keep an open mind for all variants, but I prefer not to live in such “development”, which usually are arrays of cookie-cutter type houses and villas, and will be inhabited by expats. I call them expat ghettos, not least as they are usually encircled by walls, with a guard and barrier at the entrance. And of course you’re surrounded by foreigners. Which I am sure many of them actually like, so South Africans can be neighbours with South Africans, also in Mauritius. It’s like on vacation, when Swiss are seeking out Swiss, French are seeking out French, and in particular Italians are seeking out Italians to hang out with while abroad, in the hotel and on the beach. I could never understand this, and actually try not to be recognised and tagged by any such group. Run for the hills. Sauve qui peut.

So my new house is in a Mauritian neighbourhood. And I am waiting for the permit to purchase it. Unfortunately we had a government change in the past two months – yes, a guy prime minister again –, and I guess my permit is now stuck somewhere there in the administration dungeons. Fingers crossed that this will be resolved soon.

It’s a big house, built by its current owners for their own purpose and use, so you can imagine that there are a lot of nice little and practical details, apart from a generally gorgeous layout on two floors. I’ll post some pictures after the formal purchase. Don’t want to jinx it now. Yes, I know – reasonable person, right?!

The Project

In my I-really-must-challenge-my-brain project I had been caught a bit off-guard when Raspberry Pi released a new RP-series microcontroller right when I was in the process of moving household. All computing machinery packed up, desks disassembled. The new RP2350 is quite a beast, compared to the RP2040: ARMv8-M architecture, compared to the ARMv6-M of the RP2040. So when I finally found some time, with the new house only partly organised yet, I started to re-structure the Oberon RTK module library, and ported the software to run on both MCUs. The framework is now done, and a good part of the example code as well. Including the web-site, even though there are still some rough edges. I have only just started to scratch the surface of the capabilities of the RP2350, just trying to keep my head above water.

Since Oberon RTK’s original release in mid January 2024, I have implemented 30 updates and extensions to the framework and the example code. This project is my go-to refuge if I need a place where precision of thought is paramount, where good concepts count, organisation is king (or queen). I have realised that I need this more than ever. Maybe it’s an age thing.

Lately, I have even built my little own development environment using Sublime Text as basis. It’s my daily driver now, and works pretty well. In case you wonder why I didn’t use the free VS Code as basis: it’s Electron bloatware,¹ and extensions require JavaScript programming. Sublime’s extensions and customisations are done in Python, which has unexpectedly become my go-to language for all sorts of tools. My “IDE” still has some rough edges, and does not handle edge cases well enough to be a published Sublime plug-in. Being strictly for my personal use, when I encounter a tool problem when programming for Oberon RTK, I just fix the plug-in quickly, and continue.

The Charity Centre

I am still taking care of the English books in our second-hand shop at the Charity Centre, three times a week in the morning. This is a counter-point to precision and organisation. It’s not chaos. OK, yes, sometimes it is. Inside the Book Corner, Katia, who is looking after the French books, and I are pretty well organised, within the boundary conditions of too little space and such, as we have a well-aligned mindset about our work there.

But in general, everyone is fighting with too little space for storing new donations, for sorting and pricing them, storing ready to sell stuff, and for displaying it in the shop for selling, so things can get a bit messy. I have to switch to another coping mode when I am there, and see right through, or past, the mess. If you know me, you’ll realise that this took some time to develop, even a time-out, but I am pretty good at it by now. It’s for sure quite a school for life. There’s always too much to do, so I really need to just leave, and not try to make all problems and pending work mine. The Charity Centre is part of my life, but not my life.

The Network

What I finally want here in my new house, in particular after the purchase, is a nice wired and wireless LAN installation. With RJ-45 boxes on, or in, the walls everywhere, each cabled to a central switch in star topology. A 24 port switch, to give you an idea. I am working with a local company here, who will install everything – cables, central rack, etc. –, and provide the network gear.

For the latter, I have decided to go with Ubiquiti, which is a good compromise between quality, performance, and my abilities to configure and maintain such a network. I have looked at (more) professional gear, such as Ruckus, which is really impressive, but I was afraid I would not be capable of configuring everything properly. With Ubiquiti, everything is nicely integrated into one user interface, and thus manageable by a network-noob like me. Since this equipment is pretty widely use for this type and level of network installation, there’s also good amount of help available on-line.

The Power

I had to realise that in this neighbourhood the mains power supply appears to be less stable and clean, and so I really need to add on-line double-conversion uninterruptible power supplies for my equipment. Double-conversion being the keyword here, since the problem are not power outages, which could be handled by a line-interactive UPS, but the quality of the supply in general.

The AC voltage varies greatly at different times, and I have measured as low as 205 VAC, in lieu of the nominal 230 VAC. As I write this, it’s 217 VAC. When lots of people around here are using their air-conditioners on hot days, and, say, my water pump kicks in, I see a dip in the voltage – the lights flicker. The double-conversion supplies provide a stable and clean pure sinusoidal 230 VAC, apart from providing battery backup in case of an outage.

A negative of double-conversion units is that their fans are always on, since the two converter units – AC-to-DC and DC-to-AC – need to be always on, and require some cooling. Line-interactive types are quiet as long as the mains AC is switched through directly, and only get noisy when they supply power from their batteries, and while re-charging.

I will also consider installing a photo-voltaic system, with batteries to bridge the nights and power outages. I don’t know at this point if the inverters used in this kind of system provide high quality sinusoidal mains power, but if yes, all UPSs can basically be uninstalled, since the photo-voltaic system will take over their duties.

The Game

Earlier this year, the first, and probably only, expansion of the game Elden Ring was published, called Shadow of the Erdtree. I had played Elden Ring on and off in the past years, and am now doing the same with the expansion. As of today, I haven’t played for a few months. But all in all, I have invested too many hours, simply because I love this kind of open world game, where my favourite activity is discovery. The world presented is mysterious, and everything is rendered beautifully. You can travel everywhere you like, and don’t have to follow any game story line.

Travel everywhere – if you’re ready and capable of surviving the challenges of sundry dragons and other creatures. It’s by far the hardest game I have ever played in that respect. Every hostile being out there can kill you in a few blows, unless you are prepared and ready. So better be. In any case, fights are hard, and the game has even be criticised for not offering easier modes. But often you can go around confrontations, and it’s actually fun to see how far you get into unknown territory which is way above your player level as regards adversaries by using your brains, in lieu of brute force.

Sure, to progress in the game, at times you need to face very – and I mean very – powerful foes, the bosses. Since I am no good at fighting, it sometimes takes me 10, or 20, or also more attempts. Of course, the more you get beaten, the more you want to win. To rehabilitate my name, I also have won boss fights on the first or second attempt that were described as freakin’ hard in the forums. :)

I guess there are two types of players of games of this sort. First, the ones who want to “win” a game as quickly as possible, and then probably move on to the next. Second, the ones who explore a game to its full extent, see and experience everything that’s to be found in the game world, with “winning” only a secondary goal that comes with exploration anyway. Obviously, the second type, which would be me, will play fewer different games. I find game worlds that are made as beautifully as Elden Ring’s absolutely fascinating, and “being there” is of course playing into my interests in perception and all that – see the intro above.

The Computers

I have decided to upgrade to a new M4 Mac, replacing my M1 Mac mini as daily driver. After weighing pros and cons, I have a 14" MacBook Pro on order, with an M4 Max CPU. The MacBook will allow me to again also work outside, and it will not be impacted by any power outages. Thanks to the very efficient Apple Silicon chips, these MacBooks now run way cooler, and have a much better thermal design in general than the Intel-based models that have haunted me in the past. Or so I hope.

I only wish Apple did finally upgrade their monitor offering, which is long in the tooth by now. I would like to replace my 2010-or-so Thunderbolt Display with a Retina-quality screen. Else I’d need to look elsewhere.

On the Windows side, I still use my “gaming PC” I had built and upgraded myself. It’s far from being the latest and greatest, but works reliably for both gaming and programming work.