Changing MacOS keybindings for Home/End keys to behave the same as Windows

Sometimes muscle memory is hard to unlearn. I can’t get used to the Home and End keys on a Mac jumping to the top and end of a file instead of start and end of a line. Yes, I know Cmd-left and Cmd-right do the same thing on a Mac, but pressing Home and having it jump to the top of a file is too much for me to handle when in the middle of editing something in an IDE like Eclipse.

To remap the Home and End keys to behave the same as on Windows, make a dir here:

mkdir ~/Library/KeyBindings

and create a file called DefaultKeyBinding.dict (NOTE: this file must be named exactly as shown to work) containing this content:

{
"\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:";
"\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLine:";
"$\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:";
"$\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:";
}

Logoff and log back on again, and the Home and End keys should now work the same as on Windows. (source here)

If this still doesn’t work in Eclipse, it maybe because Line Start and Line End and explicitly mapped to Cmd-left and Cmd-right – these can be changed in Preferences under Keys:

Delete the existing mappings for Home and End and change to the Home and End keys:

Updating local versions of Docker images if using the latest tag

I have an ubuntu:latest image pulled locally from a couple of years ago, and it’s obviously not the latest since it’s over 2 years old. ‘docker images’ shows:

ubuntu                                                                           latest                     d5ca7a445605   2 years ago     65.6MB

If I run the image with -it and cat the /etc/lsb-release file, it shows it’s 20.04. Docker Hub is currently showing latest as 22.04.

To update it, if I ‘docker pull ubuntu:latest’ then it shows:

> docker pull ubuntu:latest
latest: Pulling from library/ubuntu
70104cd59e2a: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:1b8d8ff4777f36f19bfe73ee4df61e3a0b789caeff29caa019539ec7c9a57f95
Status: Downloaded newer image for ubuntu:latest
docker.io/library/ubuntu:latest

If I now start it and cat /etc/lsb-release, it shows 22.04. Done!

Moving from msql client to mysqlsh

I posted a while back about running mysql in a Docker container on an Apple Silicon MacBook. It’s been a while since I’ve run mysql locally, and it seems the mysqlsh client is now preferred over the previous mysql client.

With mysqlsh, after connecting, to issue a ‘use’ command to select a db, use ‘\use dbname’

Once a db is selected, to issue other mysql commands enter the sql mode with ‘\sql’ command.

Differences between US and UK Amateur Radio license rules and restrictions – part 4: New Ofcom license conditions for 2024 for UK licensees

In my previous posts comparing US Amateur Radio licence conditions with UK licences I looked at output power differences (part 1), geographic restrictions (part 2) and callsign formats (part 3). One area I have been particularly interested in over the past few years is packet radio (previous posts), packet BBSes (previous posts) and APRS usage, both topics until license changes in 2024 were significantly more restricted in the UK compared to US.

I don’t think there are any similar restrictions for any license level to run a packet radio node unattended in the US (see Part 97.219 Message Forwarding Systems. Beacon station are also permitted upto 100w in the US for any licence level), but in the UK up until 2024 with the recent license changes only a Full license holder was allowed to run an unattended station of any kind, which would include a repeater, a beacon, a packet radio mailbox, a BBS, or a packet radio node.

For 2024 in the UK, Foundation and Intermediate licensees can now run an unattended station as a new category of ‘Data Station’, which includes packet stations, but only upto 5w ERP. For upto 25w then a Full license is required.

Previously in the UK, a Notice of Variation (NoV) needed to be applied for to run an unattended data station, similar to repeaters, which if approved would grant a new callsign for the unattended station. This has also been relaxed in the 2024 changes where for up to 5w ERP you can run the station under your own personal callsign.

Full details of these changes are in Ofcom’s ‘Statement: Updating the amateur radio licensing framework’ doc here.