Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

Doing that cross checking, with the latest hardware and software updates most of the batches are checking out well, but the instrument seems to be biased toward producing a darker measurement. There's a suspicious operation in the code on the instrument that I think could be responsible for this, but I'd like to add some additional debug capabilities to look specifically at how the values in one array change during real batches and see if my intuition on that problem pans out.

This doesn't check that the readings are in any way accurate (that's what cross actual roasted coffees against something that's not a prototype is for), just that the sending and receiving systems agree on what the signal represents.

My software displays the measurements at a higher precision while the instrument generating the signal rounds its display to the nearest integer while still outputting the full precision measurement, but everything was within rounding distance so I'm going to just call that good.

Yesterday I was out buying more cleaning supplies so I also picked up a bunch of those cards that you can take to see how different paint colors might look under your lighting in assorted shades of brown. These were used to check that my software is producing the same readings as what the roaster cam is generating (hold color in front of camera, wait for reading to stabilize, compare the readings on the two displays).

Call the FCC on C-SPAN for the obscenity that is the U.S. Senate.

Sadly, Linux support for one of the data acquisition devices in use is only for one particularly ancient version of RedHat and another device has no official Linux support (but it does have technically incorrect protocol documentation) and I'd rather not rip out well tuned data acquisition hardware just to get rid of Windows.

Windows 10: Hey, I know you're trying to roast coffee right now, which I think makes this the perfect time to make you stop working so I can install my updates.
Me: Remind me tomorrow.
*20 minutes later*
Windows 10: So, about that update...
Me: Tomorrow was your idea. What part of that don't you understand?
*20 minutes later*
Windows 10: But, my update.
Me: My work is more important than your update.

Since the device generating those readings is already doing a conversion to L*a*b* and I have the ability to modify its source code, I'm tempted to add another label to the display to see if the a* reading reliably tracks the transition from green to yellow on coffees that haven't been decaffeinated (or if I can do something to make it track).

One of the limitations of the new device I've been using is that it constrains its output to a range ~25-95 Agtron gourmet scale, but one of the first significant events in coffee roasting involves that measurement going off the scale (my benchtop analyzer would put it around 130). Decaf coffees, however, often start out brown so they reach their brightest at a reading that's still in range. That inflection from coffee getting brighter to coffee getting darker is where tasteable chemistry starts

This game has the worst text based overworld map I've ever seen. #tootctl

Since @ryanprior and @yomimono were the only ones who answered, I've tried installing @elementary on Dad's old laptop. The installer left a system that showed logo, briefly flashed a login on tty1, and then black screened, but I could go back to tty1 and fix things so I can do a graphical login now. Not a great first impression, but I'll let it have its updates, install the stuff my sister wants to use, and see how things go.

Removing locally cached copies of media attachments from other servers has resulted in a terminal window completely filled with ............................................................... and it's taking a long time, but disk usage has dropped from 100% to 41% so far, so I should probably run that more often.

#admin social.typica.us was briefly down because the server ran out of disk space. I'm finally getting around to learning what I can do with tootctl to free up disk instead of just buying the server more storage.

It always feels a little strange fixing a bug in a program written in a language where I rate my proficiency as "I know of this language", but having a REPL helps. Anyway, this is how my current graphs looked today. Much better. I'm still not doing anything on the receiving end to clean up that signal.

One of my employees could show me where in settings to wipe my father's old phone now that we've backed up all his personal stuff. That's all reset now and acting as a secondary credit card terminal for the phone order pickup area and I can take my iPad back.

Sent my fix back to the original author, he suggested some further constant tweaks. I haven't checked with a live batch yet, but I can hold a sheet of paper in front of the camera to confirm that the signal no longer drops out when the coffee gets too bright, so I'll see how that goes. I still haven't done any proper calibration on the receiving end.

Took a look at the code generating the new current signal I'm reading and it's got some constants that look suspicious. It looks like I can remove 7 lines of code and replace them with a one liner that should exhibit the expected behavior. I'll try it out when I get into the shop.

Dad's old laptop is only giving me the option to Update and shut down instead of just shutting down, but the next thing that's happening to this is wiping the drive and installing a Linux so I'm tempted to just long press the power button instead.

Nearly everything had been backed up onto the laptop already, but he took a few selfies in the hospital that otherwise would have been lost.

This is with Pop!_OS on a System76 laptop, but using KDE.