Fellow Ramblers
20 most recent entries

User:dglenn
Date:2009-11-07 05:26
Subject:QotD
Security:Public

"My wardrobe is threefold: Things I wear during sex, Things I wear to have more sex and most importantly, 'I don't give a shit.'" -- Twitter user VaginaDrum, 2009-10-26

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User:twistedchickdw
Date:2009-11-06 17:48
Subject:I'd like to see you with your pants off, Mr. Reed.
Security:Public

I had forgotten one of the other great politics-and-news movies ever made (the other one, which I'm not planning on reviewing, is Inherit the Wind, which everyone either sees or reads in school [or should]) in the US.1 The one I want to talk about is one that made a huge splash when it came out, 28 years ago, but is almost never heard about now. And it's one that is still relevant, perhaps more so than when it first was shown: Reds (1981). You dream that if you discuss the revolution with a man before you go to bed with him, it'll be missionary work rather than sex. )

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User:dglenn
Date:2009-11-06 16:26
Subject:What's Up With Me, and User Interface Opinion Questions
Security:Public

Uh, did somebody just buy me a gift subscription to Science News? A copy of the current issue just arrived in today's mail ... and I did recently mentioned (and a little less recently) mention having been a reader of it in the past.

If so, thank you. A lot. I've missed it. It's a bit thicker now than I remember.

I could probably get all the same news from the web nowadays, but someties it's just easier -- feels more relaxed and recreational -- to read stuff like that on paper. And by just turning pages instead of scrolling up and down and then deciding which links to click next. (I love the web, but I'm glad we still have dead-trees publications as well.)


[Note: primary copy of this poll is at Dreamwidth -- that's where the copies of this entry on sites where I can't post polls will link to.]

Poll #4558 Command-Line Interfaces
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

For folks who use command-line tools: if a command has both a "display version number" option and a "more verbose output" option, which of these is more intuitive (and/or less likely to be annoying)?

View Answers

-v = version; -V = verbose
0 (0.0%)

-V = version; -v = verbose
0 (0.0%)

Doesn't matter; either is good
0 (0.0%)

Ew, both suck; use getopt_long() and spell it out
0 (0.0%)

Er, what? Ooh, clicky!
0 (0.0%)

People still bother with command-line interfaces? (warning: I may mock you if you click this)
0 (0.0%)

If some combinations of command-line arguments might produce not-completely-obvious results, but those combinations are potentially useful so they should merely be warned about rather than disallowed, which of these seems more useful?

View Answers

-w to turn on warnings for the least obvious dangers; -W to add warnings just for folks not yet acclimated to the joys of Unixy deliciousness
0 (0.0%)

-w to turn on wanrnings of all possibly confusing combinations detected; -W to warn only about severe gotchas
0 (0.0%)

All warnings on by default, with "did you really mean that?" prompts, unless the user turns them off with an "I know what I'm doing" option
0 (0.0%)

Only warn about data-destroying potential-gaffes, and treat mere potential-inconveniences as "they probably meant to do that
0 (0.0%)

I'm not sure ... but ooh, clicky!
0 (0.0%)

Let's say you have a bunch of files in a directory (say, "arbeau.abc", "machaut.abc", and "frtrad.abc" in a directory named "french") and some or all are hard-links to (not copies of) entries in another directory (perhaps "french/arbeau.abc" also appears as "dance/arbeau.abc" and "french/machaut.abc" is the same file as "songs/machaut.abc") ... and you decide to modify all the files in that directory ("french") in a batch, using a tool that replaces files with edited versions and optionally saves backups (named *.bak or *~). Which of these sounds like the most correct behaviour (most likely to be desired, least likely to induce cursing)?

View Answers

Copy each file to its backup-name, then overwrite the original with the edited version (so dance/arbeau.abc is still linked to french/arbeau.abc and thus reflects the changes). This is what links are for.
0 (0.0%)

Heck, not only that, but it should try to ensure that symbolic links behave as much like hard links as possible in cases like this.
0 (0.0%)

Rename each file to its backup-name, then create a new file with the original name for the edited version (dance/arbeau.abc is now linked to french/arbeau.bak, and french.abc is a completely new file with no other links to it).
0 (0.0%)

Make it yet another command-line option, to choose between copy/overwrite and rename/create, and/or prompt the user to choose.
0 (0.0%)

It doesn't matter, because the only users likely to be using links that way in the first place are going to try it out with a couple of dummy files first to find out which way you're doing it.
0 (0.0%)

Wait, what's a "hard link"? Is that like an alias?[*]
0 (0.0%)

[*] Not really, but it's related. A symbolic link is like an alias. A hard link is where a single file on disk has two names -- an occasionally useful error in an MS-DOS filesystem, an established, intentional feature in Unix -- and neither filename is any more or less "real" than the other. I don't know whether recent versions of Windows have added this feature or not, but in older versions you could force it to happen, at the risk of CHKDSK "repairing" it later.

I'm not sure whether I'll get back to the project that sparked the questions in that poll (see below), but the responses will pertain to some future project too, I'm sure.


Despite the welcome arrival of a copy of Science News, it's been a discouraging week. The Mac won't boot, and it died just as I was fine-tuning the interface for a program that was nearly ready to share, beautifully comment, with a man-page and everything ... that I had not yet copied elsewhere to try compiling on a different OS, or to post yet. There was a lot else not backed up, but most of that will merely annoy and inconvenience me; this bit is the "somebody kicked over my masterpiece sand castle just before I finished it" kick in the gut. (Hmm. Much of what was backed up was backed up to DVD. I'm not sure yet whether any of my other computers can handle that. Experiments to put on my to-do list.)

Couple that with the main Linux workstation -- the bedroom machine -- which I hadn't been using much since I was given the Mac, no longer talking to its monitor, and I've been getting by with an itty-bitty Windows XP machine with a tiny screen and a so-so X server on it for the past few days, and it's been really putting a dent in my enthusiasm. So, in the immortal word of Charlie Brown: AAAUUUUUUGH!

(The bedroom Linux machine shows the POST messages on the monitor -- which is itself having major problems, but I have an even larger monitor to use ifwhen I ever feel capable of getting it up the stairs -- but at some point the screen goes blank and nothing I do to the keyboard or mouse will light it up again. I can SSH to it, and throw X apps to the itty bitty XP screen (a VAIO that only works when plugged into the wall), but I don't get the benefit of the decent-sized screen or the larger keyboard.)

The small screen is fine for web surfing and email; not so good for editing source in one window, editing docs in another, looking stuff up in a third, and viewing output in a fourth, or comparing two PS/PDF pages side by side. Or maybe I'm just spoiled from having a Mac to use for the past several months.

I haven't had the heart to start reconstructing a week of coding from scratch (get a filter working: a couple hours; add enough comments that I won't be embarrassed if anybody else sees it, usefully robust command-line arguments and options, and somewhat reasonable user documentation: a week) -- and I'm still clinging to the faint hope that the files can be recovered -- so I tried to dive back into composing and arranging, and am finding the tiny screen even more annoying for that than for programming. Or maybe I'm just too acutely frustrated and discouraged to cope with even small inconveniences right now. Maybe I'll feel differently about this in a month. But right now, it sucks.


The plan is to head down to Virginia to see whether [info] justgus37, who has more Mac tools, more Mac experience, and OS install media, has any more success ressurecting the Mac than I've had. Wednesday I wasn't feeling well enough to drive that far; last night I got a late start and then ran into some kind of mess that turned I95 and the Beltway into obstacles instead of arteries, and turned back after it became clear I wouldn't get there at any sane hour. So: trying again tonight, if I'm up to it, which at the moment is iffy but I've still got little under and hour to decide. (By the time I got home again last night, it hurt to steer, and I've got power steering. But on the plus side, I got more sleep this morning than the past couple of days, so let's see what my body decides to do with that.)

I want my code back. I want my files back. I want my tools back. This business of knowing I need more backup media and a big disk for a live backup, but not being able to afford either ... well it's starting to wear me down.

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User:twistedchickdw
Date:2009-11-06 16:17
Subject:twistedchick @ 2009-11-06T16:04:00
Security:Public

For next week's movie reviews, I'm thinking about either a few days of pretty boys who are good actors or movies I didn't expect to like. Something lighter than this week. Any thoughts out there? Anyone prefer one or the other?

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User:anysia
Date:2009-11-07 03:00
Subject:From Twitter 11-06-2009
Security:Public


Tweets for today )

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

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User:twistedchickdw
Date:2009-11-06 13:42
Subject:twistedchick @ 2009-11-06T12:43:00
Security:Public

Ninety-five years ago, in an upstairs back bedroom in a gray-shingled house next to a blacksmith's shop on Long Island in the midst of the Rideau River in Manotick, Ontario, my mother was born: Marguerite Aileen Walters Mason.

(1914-1991)

Happy birthday, Mom.

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User:twistedchickdw
Date:2009-11-06 12:02
Subject:stones
Security:Public

In Somalia, Islamists stone an adulterer to death; his pregnant girlfriend will be allowed to live only until she has the child, then she'll face the stones. The last line of this article is the most telling: The country has not had a functioning national government for 18 years.

and this is what I think about ... )

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User:twistedchickdw
Date:2009-11-06 10:30
Subject:follow friday
Security:Public

Some newsfeeds you might like:

[info - syndicated] doonesburyc_lj_feed -- Doonesbury, the one, the only. I've been reading it since the day it first came out, and I still check it every morning.

[info - syndicated] icanhascheezburger_feed -- For your lolcat and cheezburger needs

[info - syndicated] makinglight_feed -- Literature, politics and other intelligent discussion

[info - syndicated] masondixon_knitting_feed -- Knitting, talk and pictures of projects, a la Mason-Dixon Knitting.

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User:dglenn
Date:2009-11-06 05:26
Subject:QotD
Security:Public

Mark Danner:   I call this in the book the Athenian problem. Which is how do you have--
 
Bill Moyers:   Athenian meaning Athens of Greece, right?
 
Mark Danner:  

Exactly. How do you have a democratic empire, how do you have an imperial foreign policy built on a democracy polity. It's like some sort of strange mythical beast that's part lion, part dragon. You know at the bottom is a democracy, and then it's an imperial power around the world.

And the problem is that the things demanded by an empire, which is staying power, ruthlessness, the ability and the willingness to use its power around the world, it's something that democracies tend to be quite skeptical about. And this is a political factor that looms obviously very large in [Obama's] calculations.

-- from the PBS television program, Bill Moyers Journal, 2009-10-16

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User:anysia
Date:2009-11-06 11:07
Subject:Not bad for less than 12 hrs
Security:Public
Mood: pleased

Simba (l) and Lucy (r) enjoy their new digs. We couldn't coax Lucy out of the box last night, so we just made sure there was food, water, sand box and Simba in the enclosure with her. We left the door slightly open so our crew could sniff and be sniffed but no fighting. Made for a noisy night, but not too bad. Gave them each a box of their own, and a scratch post.

Was very pleased to see Lucy out and about this morning.

Simba is watching some wattlebirds, and Lucy is listening to the neighbors chickens.



moar pics! )

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User:yonmei
Date:2009-11-06 00:24
Subject:About to depart Mumbai for Gdansk
Security:Public
Mood: sleepy

And the figurehead has a good question:

So, internets, if you were sailing from Mumbai to Gdansk what would be your route:
Arabian Sea, Suez Canal, Mediterranean, English Channel and then what? Do you go left around the big island between Sweden and Denmark or do you go right around the big island through Denmark? For preferences, I'd like the route to be on the Copenhagen side because seeing the little mermaid statue would be most cool and in keeping with the theme of the virtual journey.


I agree. I think we should navigate by the coolest route. But what does the navigator say?

What we did in Mumbai

Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today!

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User:anysia
Date:2009-11-06 03:00
Subject:From Twitter 11-05-2009
Security:Public


Tweets for today )

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

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User:yonmei
Date:2009-11-05 18:23
Subject:Opening Lines That Just Mouseclick to 'Report Spam' Button
Security:Public
Mood: not really amused

"With the impending release of the new movie, The Men Who Stare at Goats on November 6, 2009, questions about the paranormal will surely be cropping up in popular culture again."

*click!*




Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today! Adopt one today!

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User:twistedchickdw
Date:2009-11-05 13:09
Subject:wonderful thing, a subpoena...
Security:Public

Not so many newspaper movies have been made since All The President's Men. Perhaps Hollywood figured it had done its civic duty once and that was enough. Perhaps no good scripts came along. (There were, of course, the continuing remakes mentioned earlier, of which the less said the better.) But there was one more newspaper movie that I think is worth looking at, and not just because its stars are A-list. Consider Absence of Malice (1981) there's more to truth than facts )

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User:dglenn
Date:2009-11-05 12:42
Subject:QotD
Security:Public

"I do not like this word 'bomb'. It is not a bomb; it is a device which is exploding." -- French ambassador Jacques Le Blanc (sometime in 1995?)

[My ISP where the QotD script runs was installing a new file server last night/this morning ... I'm guessing that has something to do with the script not being executed this morning, since its scheduled run was in the middle of the maintenance window.]

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User:dglenn
Date:2009-11-05 12:35
Subject:Dream Fragment
Security:Public

a short conversation )

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User:anysia
Date:2009-11-05 14:32
Subject:Simba and Lucy will be here tonight
Security:Public
Mood: calm

They have been rescued from the jerk who thought they were decorations, and are being comforted by Alison. She said they are reasonably good shape, but shy, and if anyone knows now Bengals are, that is not normal. I'm sure with enough patience and care, they will return to their usual rambunctious selves.

For your viewing pleasure:

Ziggy turns out to be a bit on the kinky side. It seems she likes having her butt spanked, and her fur roughed up. I zoomed in close, twice, and you can hear her purring so hard, she might rattle her bones apart!

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User:anysia
Date:2009-11-05 13:54
Subject:Holy moly, I won!
Security:Public
Mood: jubilant

When I ordered Season 1 of Sanctuary, I decided to enter the contest that EzyDVD was having. The prize was a signed by Amanda Tapping copy of Season 1. We had to describe in 25 words or less, what creature would you like to see on Sanctuary and why.

I'll be honest, I don't remember what I typed out, but it must have been good, because I won! Just got the confirmation call, and verified my address. This makes up for the 'neutered' version that the studios sold to Aussies!

One to watch, one to have girlish squee time.

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User:anysia
Date:2009-11-05 03:00
Subject:From Twitter 11-04-2009
Security:Public


Tweets for today )

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

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User:twistedchickdw
Date:2009-11-04 11:48
Subject:get it in here -- it's no good to me in Rockville!
Security:Public

True investigative journalism is not a thing of the past but it's increasingly rare now. Seymour Hersh is one of the few current practitioners. It takes dedication, stubbornness, a flexible inquiring mind, the ability to ask the same questions twenty ways, and the ability to get unfriendly officials to do the right thing. Above all, it absolutely requires a newspaper (occasionally a television station) that has enough money to release the reporter from other responsibilities, in order to take the time needed to dig in deep and find what others miss. It is hard, hard work, often with few rewards other than the joy of knowing more, and sometimes with real penalties -- investigative reporters have been killed because of what they are doing, sometimes in the US, more often in politically volatile situations in Latin America, frequently in countries undergoing revolution or other intensifications of political ideology.

Today we have two movies about nosy reporters getting up to their elbows in other people's business for the sake of the public good, and I have some criticisms of both of them.

Call Northside 777 (1948) Pieces never make the wrong picture. Maybe you're looking at them from the wrong angle. )

All the President's Men (1976) think of it as the bicentennial picture )

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