It's a small world.....
@BarryK :-
As the title says; it's a small world.
I'll just add here - before I go any further - that over my decade with Puppy, I've only really read a handful or so of your blog articles, and most of those were during my early years. I haven't read any of your stuff about EasyOS.
In addition to moderating here, and also over at BleepingComputer, I also belong to the Linux.org forum. I'm a regular visitor & contributor there, too, and earlier on today somebody mentioned something called the Yocto Project in their "DevOps" section. Well, it was such an unusual name that it piqued my interest, so I did a wee bit of DuckDuckGo-fu and had a look at the website.
I took a look at the list of releases in the left pane.....and I immediately thought to myself, "Hang about; I recognise some of these names!" I did, too; Dunfell.....Kirkstone.....Scarthgap, etc. Via a totally roundabout route, I'd quite by accident discovered the source of your inspiration for EasyOS. That and OpenEmbedded, I guess.
But then I got reading further, and recognised more names.......and after a few moments, realised WHY they all sounded so familiar. Honister....Langdale.....Gatesgarth.....and especially Hardknott!
They're all names of mountain peaks and passes in the Cumbrian Lake District, here in the northwest of the UK. I know Hardknott VERY well.....
You'll find most of the names on this map of the various mountain passes in the Lake District National Park:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_h ... ,towns.svg
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As a youngster in the early to mid-80s, I was a biker, before turning to four wheels a few years later. I took a couple of trips up to the Lake District from where I live in East Anglia. It's a beautiful part of the UK, and if I'd had the chance of employment I would have moved up there like a flash.
That first time, it rained non-stop, all week long.....with the exception of the Thursday. I wasn't letting that stop me, though; sight-seeing I'd gone up there for, and by golly, sight-seeing was what I was going to do. So it was on with the Barbours each morning, and off I went.
The Thursday dawned bright, clear & cool. I got up fairly early that morning, as I had a full itinerary planned. From my base in Kendal, I intended to visit Coniston Water first - the sheer-sided lake where Sir Malcolm Campbell broke at least two world water speed records - after which I wanted to visit Eskdale and take in the Stanley Ghyll waterfall on the way. And the most direct route from Coniston to Eskdale means heading up the Eskdale-Duddon road, along the edge of Harter Fell and up over the infamous Hardknott pass.
This road will test out ANY combustion-engined vehicle. It's officially one of the two steepest roads in the UK, with an average gradient of 1 in 3 (along with multiple back-to-back reverse double hairpins!).....sharing that 'title' with the Rosedale Chimney Bank (known by local cyclists as the "Chain Breaker") up on the North Yorkshire moors. The head of the pass is almost 1300 feet above sea-level, and is shrouded in medium to thick cloud for a good part of the year.
Warning signs at the base of Hardknott...!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's a weird experience, traversing Hardknott. It was brilliant sunshine at the bottom, but by the time I was not quite two-thirds of the way up I was entering the base of the cloud layer. So, it was back on with the Barbours again! The next mile and a half was solid, heavy drizzle, along with very limited visibility; rather like riding through a real London "pea-souper". I eventually attained the summit of Hardknott, and headed down into Eskdale. Another mile and a half passed, and before long I could see the "fog" of cloud and drizzle clearing.....and less than two hundred yards further on, I was out of the base of the cloud cover and back into brilliant sunshine once more.....
Rode another mile or two to let the Barbours dry out again, and then they were off. And remained off for the rest of that day, as it happened.
It's the kind of experience that you don't forget in a hurry..!
Like I said, I'd have loved to move up there permanently, although one thing most of the locals agreed upon; permanent residency, allied to heavy winter snowfalls, steep roads and more-or-less year round rain in varying degrees meant a definite reliance on four-wheel drive. Most of the ordinary 2-wheel drive vehicles you saw up there nearly always belonged to tourists; locals predominantly used Land Rovers, Toyota Land Cruisers and RAV 4s along with a smattering of American Jeeps, and big Ford and Chevy 4-wheel drive pickups. Without them, very few would have been able to get around.
Mike.