Aerial Firefighters

Middle Fork Snoqualmie

Disabling Windows 10 automatic upgrade

If you are wondering how to disable it, there is a KB article:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351

To block the upgrade to Windows 10 through Windows Update, specify the following registry value:

Subkey: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate
DWORD value: DisableOSUpgrade = 1

Also there is a "Never10" app with some technical details.

I haven't tried myself any of it (as I only use server version of Windows), but colleagues claim that it works.

bnr.js

As I mentioned already, I use node.js for scripting. The same scripts work on OsX, Linux and Windows. Also, its fast, stable enough and somehow interesting. Microsoft is investing into it too: new VS Code editor is written on node.js.

So, besides many build scripts, sync scripts and other scripts my home computing relies on, I wrote this simple one, which someone may find useful. It generates comment headers like that:

//# Comment ---------------------------------------
//                                             #
//   ###                                       #
//  #   #   ###   ## #   ## #    ###   ####   #####
//  #      #   #  # # #  # # #  #   #  #   #   #
//  #      #   #  # # #  # # #  #####  #   #   #
//  #      #   #  # # #  # # #  #      #   #   #
//  #   #  #   #  # # #  # # #  #      #   #   #
//   ###    ###   # # #  # # #   ####  #   #    ###

The script detects a special line, starting with "//#" and extends (or replaces) the following comment section with the same "banner"-style text. You can process source files, it will update all the comments in them. Original text will be saved under ".sav" extension.

Why would you need that? If you are using an editor which shows small preview of entire file, like Sublime or recent Visual Studio, you can actually read that banner in that small preview. So, if you work with long files, its easier to navigate between code sections just scrolling the preview up to the readable marker.

Also, you can make a different form of banner, like on screenshot, which only works when you have Unicode fonts with block characters, like on Mac computers. Windows fonts do not have this range, usually, but, there is a free font "DejaVu Sans Mono", which displays that Unicode range correctly. In this case you have 2x2 block pixels per character, so the text is twice more compact.

The script can be downloaded here. Obviously you would need node.js to run it.

Usage:

• node bnr.js [ -a | -u | -n ] [-0 | -1 | -2 | -3 | -4 ] -f file.c file.h -- replace comments in two files
• node bnr.js [ -a | -u | -n ] [-0 | -1 | -2 | -3 | -4 ] text -- print text
  
• node bnr.js [ -a | -u | -n ] [-0 | -1 | -2 | -3 | -4 ] -- print character set
  

Options:

• -a -- Ascii mode, '#' per pixel
• -u -- Unicode block mode
• -n -- remove banners from comments
• -0 -- default font (my old "Forecast")
  
• -1..4 -- other fonts
  

Chehalis-Western Trail

Chehalis-Western Trail is a result of yet another relatively recent rail-to-trail conversion, where its used to be "Chehalis Western Railroad". The trail name is misleading a little, it is not close to Chehalis town, but rather to Lacey, north of Olympia.

The trail is 22 miles, but it is connected to 15 mile Yelm-Tenino Trail. On west side it ends at Woodard Bay, a quiet and peaceful place.

In Lacey we couldn't miss a bakery and a cup of tea.



"Scotch broom" is non-native and considered invasive here, but I like it, its so colorful. Without it the place would be occupied by blackberry anyway.



What I like about that trail is it goes on nice green areas, not along a highway, as often. We rode 52 miles that day.

~~~

I need to improve my English writing skills and start actually thinking in English. It appears, that like computer, our mind has two indexes: from a word to a meaning and from a meaning to a word. Like SQL relations or hash-tables are unidirectional, so is our mind. If you are reading text understanding all the words, it doesn't mean that you will be able to find all these words when speaking. You will need to fill reverse indexes by exercise.

I've installed Text Customizer Chrome extension and added the following rule:

• replace regular expression "[А-Яа-я]+" by "~".

It replaces all Russian words by "~". I can see that the text is in Russian, but I don't see the text itself. Good. I'll use it for a while to avoid distraction by Cyrillic on screen. It immediately returns thinking back to a bitten path.

Also I'm not going to write in Russian in that blog for a while. Sorry for that. Maybe I'll try writing in English.