A Geek Goes Flying

Hmm. Was about to pull the trigger on the well-reviewed Logitech M585 (this “work from home” thing has me wanting a Bluetooth mouse I can easily swap around from computer to computer), until I read this: This mouse requires that your PC be compatible with BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) technology. If your computer doesn’t support this, you will have to use the Unifying receiver with this mouse. BLE is also referred to as “Bluetooth Smart.” If your computer was manufactured in 2016 or later, you can expect it to be compatible. Higher end machines from 2015 support this technology, while it was an uncommon option in 2014. ( https://nerdtechy.com/logitech-m585-wireless-mouse-review ) Probably not a great fit for my circa-2012 MacBook Air or my “Mid-2010” iMac ... Sigh. Back to the drawing board. Probably just pick up another cheap Insignia. They work surprisingly well, and if I have two of ’em, the pain factor of swapping between two computers using Bluetooth becomes a non-issue. Update:

These are checklists I’ve adapted and tweaked for two specific Mooney aircraft (equipment lists provided so some of the modifications will make sense, contextually). Standard disclaimers apply - these are provided with no representations or warranties, use at your own risk, always verify you’re following the procedures set forth in the Mooney Owner’s Manual for your particular aircraft, etc., etc. Hope they’re useful! Credit where due, I started out with a copy of the owner’s manual and the checklist created by DuBois Aviation for N74770, their Mooney M20B  (my adaptation into a ForeFlight checklist ). 1969 Mooney M20F IO-360-A1A, Hartzell Scimitar Top Prop Electric landing gear and flaps Garmin GNS430W  IFR GPS Garmin GPSmap 496  VFR GPS + XM Radio (and weather, unused) Bendix/King KX-155  NAVCOMM with glideslope S-Tec System 30 two axis autopilot (GPSS) PS Engineering PMA450  audio panel JPI EDM-830  engine monitor FreeFlight FDL-978-XVR  ADS-B in/out Garmin GTX-327  t

Using dynamic objects in PHP (7.4), PhpStorm was throwing up warnings whenever a method was called on the resulting object. Hinting in a comment cured that (also, for methods that return objects, specifying the object type in a PHPDoc comment for the method). Eliminates the PhpStorm warning: Method 'methodname' not found in ... Referenced method not found in subject class /** * Inserts new data into database, returns object representing the newly inserted row. If table has a single primary key column and * that column value is not defined in $data[], insert() will generate it using the method specified in newPrimaryKeyCallbackFunction * If has_a is specified, an object of the appropriate type can be passed for that column * * * @param String[] $data Associative array; keys match up to the database table columns, values are initial settings for those fields. * * @see setPrimaryKeyCallback() * @throws Exception If something interesting cannot happen

I need to print-to-PDF often, and often from encrypted or otherwise protected PDF forms, for e-filing. CUPS-PDF for OS X used to work, but no longer. My solution is a bit ham-fisted, but it works: I setup a simple CentOS 7 instance under VMware and simply print to that. Steps: Download the Installer and Setup CentOS I used  CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1908.iso  under VMware Fusion 8, with a virtual machine setup with 1GB RAM and a 20GB virtual hard drive, to setup an instance named: CentOS 64-bit Printing.vmwarevm I have it setup to use “bridged” networking (at least initially?) so I can SSH into it, which of course requires sshd to be running (and the installation of some basic stuff the minimal install leaves out): # vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ens33      ONBOOT= yes # ifup ens33 # yum provides "*/ifconfig" # yum install -y net-tools telnet wget vim Install EPEL and CUPS-PDF Browse to  http://download-ib01.fedoraproject.org/pu