Rick's b.log - entry 2026/01/18

Bugs, bugs, bugs!

Linux audio

It's marginally better than it was. I am currently using kernel 6.8.0-90 and I can manage to use Audacity. A previous kernel release - 6.8.0-85 (maybe?) was so bad that the instant that I loaded Audacity, internal audio would instantly die and that would be followed by the pile of bugs that is Audacity.
Many years ago, I used to use Audacity with XP, I don't remember it being as "quirky" as the current Linux version. What went wrong?

I saw in the changelog the following:

• Audio output fails on internal speakers when using kernel 6.8.0-84 and newer. (LP: #2130212)
  - Revert "ASoC: cs35l56: Prevent races when soft-resetting using SPI control"

This, of course, raises an interesting question as to what the hell is actually in the Linux kernel? Or maybe I should rephrase this and ask why is the sound handler a part of the kernel rather than being some sort of plug-in driver?

Look at it like this - there is a lot of unnecessary crap within the RISC OS kernel due to "heritage" (the VDU subsystem, keyboard driver, stuff like the OS_ConvertBlahBlah SWIs...) but things like the USB system, network stack, audio driver - they are provided as extension modules. Purists might try to claim that they are a part of the kernel due to being within the ROM image, but they can be disabled and replacements soft-loaded. This is exactly what is happening on my machines because they run the RODev stack instead of the default one.

Either way, I find it strange that my weirdo Intel sound chip in an eight year old machine is being upset by a kernel modification today - because, really, why is the audio driver in the kernel?

Then again, I noticed that I had kernel 6.8.0-71 lurking, so I removed it and... Please take a look at the list of changes below. -281725952.0B of disk space will be freed. ☺

Linux WiFi

wlp1s0: deauthenticated from ab:cd:ef (Reason: 12=<unknown>)
wlp1s0: authenticate with ab:cd:ef (local address=fe:dc:ba)
wlp1s0: send auth to ab:cd:ef (try 1/3)
wlp1s0: authenticated
wlp1s0: associate with ab:cd:ef (try 1/3)
wlp1s0: RX AssocResp from ab:cd:ef (capab=0x1011 status=0 aid=11)
wlp1s0: associated
wlp1s0: Limiting TX power to 30 (30 - 0) dBm as advertised by ab:cd:ef
wlp1s0: deauthenticated from ab:cd:ef (Reason: 32=DISASSOC_UNSPECIFIED_QOS)
wlp1s0: authenticate with ab:cd:ef (local address=fe:dc:ba)
wlp1s0: send auth to ab:cd:ef (try 1/3)
wlp1s0: ab:cd:ef denied authentication (status 33)
wlp1s0: authenticate with ab:cd:ef (local address=fe:dc:ba)
wlp1s0: send auth to ab:cd:ef (try 1/3)
wlp1s0: ab:cd:ef denied authentication (status 33)
wlp1s0: authenticate with ab:cd:ef (local address=fe:dc:ba)
wlp1s0: send auth to ab:cd:ef (try 1/3)
wlp1s0: ab:cd:ef denied authentication (status 33)
wlp1s0: authenticate with ab:cd:ef (local address=fe:dc:ba)
wlp1s0: send auth to ab:cd:ef (try 1/3)
wlp1s0: authenticated
wlp1s0: associate with ab:cd:ef (try 1/3)
wlp1s0: RX AssocResp from ab:cd:ef (capab=0x1011 status=0 aid=10)
wlp1s0: associated
wlp1s0: Limiting TX power to 30 (30 - 0) dBm as advertised by ab:cd:ef

The device is kicked off because of reason code 12 - which is an invalid/unused code - and then the Quality Of Service thing keeps refusing the station for a while. I wonder where the QOS is happening, as there doesn't seem to be any option or setting for this in the Livebox 6.

The access point (Livebox 6) is about two metres away. There isn't direct line-of-sight because I'm in the kitchen, but there is a big hole in the stone wall with a closed door, so it's not as if the signal is blocked. The laptop has ~73% signal strength, or in nerdy terms:

wlp1s0  IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"Livebox-xxxx"  
        Mode:Managed  Frequency:5.5 GHz  Access Point: AB:CD:EF   
        Tx-Power=26 dBm   
        Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
        Power Management:on
        Link Quality=54/70  Signal level=-56 dBm  
        Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
        Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:106   Missed beacon:0

...which is 5GHz and apparently able to run at something like 130Mbit, but it seems to max out at around 5MiB/sec when downloading which is kind of slow. I'm not sure if this is Linux or the hardware, but I know my phone can download an entire Netflix movie in a matter of seconds, so it's not the network, it's this machine. [aside: Bluetooth is also painfully slow, maxing out at around 20K/sec which is kind of pathetic]

Anyway, the disconnection doesn't happen often, but it does happen from time to time and it's a bit odd.

LibreOffice Writer

So I set up my pages as A5 size with two columns. The idea is to have the English lyrics on the left, and a French translation on the right.
I then create a frame over the top of that for content that should span the page, like titles and commentary.

That is where the fun starts. It seems like the frames, when dragged out interactively, don't snap to any of the guides (maybe this is an option somewhere?), and it seems like they are anchored into the text rather than fixed in position on the page (maybe this is also an option?).
But, okay, I can place the frame and then drag it into position, and then copy-paste them when a new one is wanted.

Frames in LibreOffice Writer.

This seems to work, except there are plenty of quirks regarding how the text flows. I learned quickly to use ^Enter to force a page break at the end of each lyric, otherwise if the flow messed up, this would go and mess up subsequent pages.

One I ran into a bunch of times was that if the French text on the right was lower by one line, I could move the cursor into the line above, but if I tried to delete a line to put the text there, a bunch of lines would suddenly shift over to the left. I'd need to place an empty frame on the lower left to force the text to flow as expected.

Speaking of this, there was one point where the line-spacing was larger than all the rest, and it didn't seem to want to go away. <shrug>

Also, just a small note, it seems there's no way to tweak the width of the text. I could pull the characters closer to each other by reducing the space between each in order to have a URL on one line, but it was not possible to set the font height and width separately for narrow text. Don't tell me that if one wants narrow text, one needs a narrow font...?

You know, this was all stuff that one person (David Pilling) had sorted out and made work nicely in the '90s. I would like to try OvationPro on this machine, but I don't have enough disc space (it is a 32GB SSD soldered to the board) to try installing wine and all the various bits of Windows (or replacements) that would be needed to get it all running.

But the fun doesn't stop there. These were A5 pages intended to be printed side by side to make a booklet. This isn't an unusual request so ought not present any problems. Right? Right?

No, this isn't right.

See it says Landscape for the page orientation? It is greyed out because it was actually set to Automatic, and selecting Brochure printing changes this to be landscape...
...only it doesn't actually change the page orientation. I printed ten pages (one side of two copies of the booklet) like this because I was paying more attention to the printer assuming the software wouldn't cock it up.

The fix?

Choose Pages per sheet (1) to disable brochure mode. This makes the orientation become usable, so select Landscape instead of automatic to force the page orientation. Then switch back to Brochure mode. Facepalming yourself is an optional extra, but highly recommended.

This is how it should print.

The translations were created by copy-pasting the lyrics into Google Translate. It didn't do a bad job, most of the translations made sense, but every once in a while it picked the wrong sense of a word (for example "light" can be bright, something that glows, or not-heavy), and a few times it lost the plot and did stuff like translating "Infinite pain" into "Pain sans fin". This actually means infinite bread!
I really wish that if Google Translate got confused or didn't know a word and simply put the source word into the output, it would put it in [square brackets] so you would know that you had to do something with it and that it wasn't a legitimate translation.

Easy brochure printing

How exactly you set up your software to print this depends upon your software. Generally speaking, you will want to choose Brochure or Pamphlet printing (may also be called something like Leaflet).
Some software will sort this out automatically. Others might need you to specify to print on a Landscape page with the output centred.

If I remember correctly, there is a quirk with RISC OS that not only does the software need to know landscape, so does the printer driver. Thankfully software such as OvationPro and Impression Style can display a shaded area to represent print margins. This can be used to tell if it's all set up correctly.

From then, it is a simple matter choosing how many copies are necessary, selecting only the odd pages, and then specifying Separate jobs or not collated so the pages come out as 1,2,3,1,2,3 (collated means they would be printed as 1,1,2,2,3,3).

Then put the pages into the printer's feed tray the other way up (exactly how depends upon how your printer prints, but you'll be wanting to print on the blank side this time), then select to print only the even pages, also as separate jobs (or not collated), but this time also choose to print in reverse order.

If it's a document consisting of text, best results will be obtained using a laser printer. The printing is sharp, reliable, resistant, and it's really quick. My laser spat out all ten pages in less time that it would have taken the inkjet to do a single page.
It's good to have an inkjet for printing stuff in colour, but sometimes you can't beat a laser.

My CD compilation

Lyrics booklet and CD, times two.

Let me just take a moment to say that the thing that sucks the most about digital downloads, ever more than the drop in quality for places like Amazon that offer only compressed music, is that there are often no lyrics. You don't get embedded lyrics in the file (yet, strangely enough, they're quite capable of embedding a customer ID for tracking if the file gets passed around online), and you don't get any album art/booklet, not even as a "print it yourself" PDF. I can't help but feel that if one cares enough to put words to music, one should care enough that people can read those words.
That's why my MP3s (link on the right hand panel just above the last five entries section marker) all contain the words (unless I forgot or screwed up). And that's why it was important to me to make the little lyrics booklet. It would have taken, literally, half an hour to burn off the two CDs. What took the entire rest of the day was making the booklet and making French translations, plus correcting when that part went screwy. Because it's not about the music, it's about the message. The music and the words.

If you're interested, here's the booklet.

It doesn't cover all songs, just a selection of seventeen (about 50 minutes) which fit onto 20 pages (or five pages of A4 printed both sides). What you get is the result of the brochure layout, so if you're interested in printing this yourself you'll want to do odds then evens on the other side of the page. And if you want to burn your own CD, the AI songs link (near the top of the right-side panel) is where you'll find the songs. Download, burn CDs, give to your friends. I'm cool with that.

Shein is back in France

I popped by this morning - actually I mistyped an 's' and the browser suggested Shein, and since I had nothing better to do...
The random marketplace sellers are back. Which means all the junk chazerai is back. And, as you know, I have a bit of a thing about ghosts.

A glow in the dark ghost!

A little ghost, and a cat, in a garden, and it glows in the dark. It's like it was made for me.
Measuring eight inches square (that's about 20cm), it'll be a nice little thing on the wall. Which reminds me, I ought to go get some pieces of wood to see if I can put together a frame for the ghost currently hanging on the kitchen door.

That, and some other stuff, and an order has been placed. This time it is coming directly to me - I hope it'll fit in the letterbox! I wanted it to go to the habitual pickup point but I didn't see that I was given the option. Maybe the "free delivery coupon" (which sort of appeared out of nowhere) disabled that for some reason?

And, sorry, every time I see that word my brain says "shine". It does not, cannot, and probably never will, say "she-in".

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C Ferris, 19th January 2026, 11:31

A little hobby for Rick - OvnPro for Linux :-)

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