Category: Uncategorised

… AKA, beheading raspberries?

I wanted to use a Raspberry Pi 4 as a small server. So, I connected it to my HDMI display to set it up, made sure that it boots, and sent it away to be deployed. To my surprise, they sent it back to me, saying that it didn’t boot. What’s worse; it was supposed to run headless, and they didn’t have a micro-HDMI cable ready on-site, so they couldn’t really debug what was wrong.

I took the little device, connected it to my screen… it boots up just fine. I disconnected it from the display and keyboard… no luck, it doesn’t show up on the network…? A little searching showed me that I had to configure a default display resolution, but that also didn’t seem to do the trick.

I soon realised that I was facing a different issue: If the device boots up without HDMI connected, the Ethernet port doesn’t work, it doesn’t recognise that a cable is plugged in. If I connect HDMI and wait a few seconds, suddenly the LEDs light up and the device goes online.

Okay, that’s weird. Maybe the device doesn’t get enough power from the USB-C power adaptor, and then draws a little more power from the HDMI cable and manages to bring the interface up? I tested three different power adaptors, but had the same problem with all of them. I tried disabling Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, in case they did the trick, but they didn’t. This post suggested that maybe it’s the USB3 hard drive’s fault, but said hard drive had an external power supply. Anyway, I tried applying the netdev and nofail options as suggested, but nothing changed.

Then I looked a bit further up in the same post, and someone suggested it might be the Ethernet cable. Okay, no, that can’t be. Broken Ethernet cables don’t act like that – they either work, or don’t. But I had nothing much to lose after wasting the whole evening, so I quickly unplugged my printer to plug in the Raspberry Pi. And … It Worked… It actually WAS the Ethernet cable!

I still can’t believe it. The device will be deployed again in a few days, and this time I’ll send a micro-HDMI cable with it. I’ll update here.

You know how sometimes children refuse to eat a specific kind of food for no apparent reason? I’ve been “blessed” with this as an adult. Quite often, there’s a very good reason, they’re just not self-aware enough to express it.

At least, I was not, until I was in my late 20’s. One day, I asked my brother “hey, how do peppers taste for you?”. Knowing me well enough, he figured that I must have a good reason to ask, so he answered honestly: “refreshing, and a bit spicy”. My immediate reply was “wait, so they’re not bitter?”. On that day, I realised that the reason I couldn’t eat peppers was that most other people perceive a completely different taste than I do. For me, they’re like distilled bitterness. Yes, red ones too. Yes, even the rice cooked inside of a stuffed pepper. Yes, I’ve tried it several times.

Since then, I started experimenting by re-adding previously banished foods to my diet. Most people dislike okra because it’s hairy and slimy, though this isn’t the case if it’s prepared correctly. The okra I tried in India was neither hairy nor slimy. Just extremely bitter. Okay, back to not eating it, I guess. Aubergines, on the other hand, were a pleasant surprise. They can be non-bitter sometimes, especially the white, green, or stripy ones. It also depends on the way they’re cooked. I still don’t rely on them for a meal, but I take one bite or two.

When I was a child, I used to pick both mushrooms and peppers out of my pizza. Later on, I started tolerating and even liking mushrooms. My body could still sometimes say “okay that’s it, no more mushrooms for this meal”, and in those cases I’d shrug and finish my meal with something else that was on the table. Except that one day where I was strictly fasting and my only office lunch contained mushrooms. I tried force-feeding myself and my body rejected them quite strongly. Right, no lunch for me today, I guess.

Later on, I found a nice shop that was selling delicious mushrooms of their own production. It was both fasting and mushroom season, so I was happily having mushrooms at least a couple of times per week. Until it happened. I couldn’t finish that meal, and the no-mushrooms-please sensation didn’t just go away. I then remembered that friend of mine who always said she couldn’t have mushrooms, and asked her why. “They make me gag”, she said. Yep, sounds familiar!

It’s been a few years since then, and I’ve come to slightly tolerate them after a long abstinence period. I can have mushrooms on my pizza, if they’re sliced thinly enough, though I might still stop halfway and start removing them. If someone tells me “these mushrooms are delicious”, I might take a bite and say “yes, indeed!”, but not a second one. A quick internet search told me about “sensory processing disorder”, though I haven’t researched it further.

As a conclusion, all I have to say is: Give those children a break. If they’re refusing to eat something, try asking them why, you’re helping them. Just no pressure. Would you eat food sprinkled with the most bitter medicine you’ve ever tasted, or food that triggers your gag reflex? In most cases, they can avoid those foods and still have a balanced diet.