Category: obscure pursuits

John found an installation of these on the web but upon noting that it was broken, suggested I run it here.

Done.

For the history of the cards in all their versions, go here.

Enjoy.
Continue reading “Eno’s Oblique Strategies”

I have a copy of Microsoft Office 2000 Small Business which I legally own but I lack a license key (note to self: write the key on the CD next time, in case the jewel case goes adrift).

When I rebuilt my laptop the other day, I reinstalled Win2K from the recovery disk and discovered I had the Office disk. But alas, it looks to be a coaster. An OS is only as good as the apps it runs: I guess I could try [open|star]office . . . . .

I think my fink installation is now unwedged. The problem stemmed from mixing up the stable and unstable trees, as far as I can tell.

The package tree is subdivided into local, stable, and unstable, and the (un)stable trees are further divided into main and crypto.

[/Users/paul]:: more /sw/etc/fink.conf
# Fink configuration, initially created by bootstrap.pl
Basepath: /sw
RootMethod: sudo
#Trees: local/main stable/main stable/crypto local/bootstrap
Trees: local/main unstable/main unstable/crypto stable/main stable/crypto local/
bootstrap
Mirror-ctan: ftp://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/
Mirror-gimp: ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub
Mirror-gnome: ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/
Mirror-gnu: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu
MirrorContinent: nam
MirrorCountry: nam-us
ProxyPassiveFTP: true
Verbose: true


So I removed xfree86-base, using the suggestion I got from a new user on the fink-users list.

I ran sudo dpkg –remove –force-depends xfree86-base and then switched from using the unstable trees to just the stable and local (see the commented out line above).

I then installed an older version of xfree86-base with dpkg. That made X work again. As a side note, at no time during this ordeal did any of the fink-managed applications fail to work: the only one that failed was fink itself.

Then a test of fink selfupdate-cvs and fink update-all. The xfree86 version I installed was upgraded:

The following 4 packages will be installed or updated:
arts docbook-dtd wget xfree86-base
The following additional package will be installed:
qt3

And here’s what xfree86 looks like now:

[/sw/lib/perl5/darwin/auto]# fink list xfree86
Information about 1401 packages read in 44 seconds.


system-xfree86 4.2-1 Placeholder package for manually installe…
i xfree86-base 4.2.0-11 XFree86 libraries, utilities, clients and…
xfree86-rootles 4.2.0-11 XFree86 libraries, utilities, clients and…
xfree86-server 4.2.0-2 XFree86 display server (stable release)

There may still be some problem in the database in that fink still thinks it has Storable.pm installed and I have deinstalled it as well as removing it from the filesystem.

Hmm, I just told fink to remove it and this time, it shows it as uninstalled. Good.

I’ll have to wait a couple of days and a couple of CVS runs to see if this fixes it. But it looks good so far.

It looks like some way of enforcing database integrity and sane config files could improve fink’s robustness. Curious why fink’s config data isn’t in an XML/plist format: that might lend itself to more rigorous parsing (since xml parsing libs are installable with fink itself). There were some errors in my fink.conf file, as was pointed out, and perhaps that introduced the error.

Making the corrections to the fink.conf file weren’t enough to fix this, nor was removing xfree86-base by itself. Losing the unstable trees and then reinstalling xfree86-base, even an older version, did the trick. At the point I could reinstate the unstable trees and the updates would work as expected.

FOAF-a-matic — Describe yourself in RDF
You can make your own FOAF file here, in a javascript form, and if you have more than three friends to add to it, you’ll want this page so you can spam-proof (SHA1 hash) their email addresses

Mine is here.

This seems interesting . . . . .

FOAFBot: IRC Community Support Agent

A FOAFBot instance is running on the #foaf channel on the OpenProjects IRC network, irc://irc.openprojects.net/foaf

The bot can be interrogated with simple questions about the properties of community members. People can be identified either by their IRC nick, full name, or email address:


<edd> foafbot, edd’s name
<foafbot> edd’s name is ‘Edd Dumbill’, according to Dan Brickley,
Anon35, Niel Bornstein, Jo Walsh, Dave Beckett, Edd Dumbill,
Matt Biddulph, Paul Ford


So I found myself being dragged into a tedious pissing contest (please contain your surprise) on a mailing list (I have since unsubscribed: if people have nothing to contribute, why can’t they just shut up?), and in the course of it I was sent a URL from http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y22052D71. Seems my antagonist thought I could be more pleasant as I pointed out that his project’s manual pages were wrong, the documentation was lacking, and no one seemed to have any answers.

Whatever. I found this ShorterLink stuff somewhat interesting and the FOAF stuff even more so.

Perhaps a non-commercial variant of Amazon’s friends list . . . .

And now I have my own ShorterLink.

LeMond Racing Cycles 2002: Bikes: Reynolds 853 Pro: Zürich

Zürich

Our best selling LeMond- and for good reason.

I rode one of these yesterday: Oh, my goodness. Just a joy to ride. I’m thinking of going back for another test ride, but do I want to torture myself? A mere nine hundred dollars stands between me and it: I could get something nice for the half that, I know, so it’s not that bad.

I also rode a Giant OCR 3 ( a mere $550), and didn’t like it as much.

I keep seeing search queries and browsing patterns that suggest people are coming here for answers: maybe all my answers are wrong, but I’ve not heard anything about that.

Anyway, I replaced the PayPal tip jar with an Amazon Honor System one: it was so garish, I moved it way down the page, possibly hampering its effectiveness, but it looks less crass.

My expectations are low (I try to take that approach to most things). Perhaps I’ll be surprised.

If someone were to learn anything useful here, some feedback, either verbal or financial would be welcome.

Got that out of the way this morning, and worked a 7.5 mile bike ride into it. It’s all downhill there, literally: I was squeezing the brakes to keep myself under 20 mph.

Of course that means it’s uphill coming back, but not too bad. I plodded along at a steady 6-7 mph and returned home drenched with sweat. For some reaoon I couldn’t get into my smallest chain ring. It didn’t matter all that much, I suppose, but it was distracting trying to make it work.

I’m glad I never tried taking up cycling in Georgia. Apart from the dangers of breathing air you can see, the heat would have killed me. I boil at 60º. This is my climate.

Turns out the exam was identical to the last one I took in this class a year ago: if the instructor had written anything but a grade on it, I would have kept it as a study aid, but it was worthless to me. Still, frat houses and the like keep repositories of such assets: a reviewed and corrected exam could be a handy thing to have on an open book/open notes exam.

bradandkathy.com: Software

If I get that iBook, I’d love to play with some of this stuff. I have never found a genealogy program I liked all that much, and I have a raft of old photos to incorporate into a family tree if I ever make one.

16 miles today, from my house to Ballard, mostly along the Burke Gilman Trail. I didn’t realize it went that far, but I was by no means at the end of it. I stopped at the enormous Fred Meyer in Salmon Bay to gulp down an Odwalla and then headed back.

Still working out how to best use the 18 different gear combinations, but I learn a little more every time. I found some other riders out who I used as rabbits: they were cruising along at a steady 16 mph, so I shadowed them as long as I could. I was able to push myself to 20 mph along one straight bit along the Ship Canal, and I’ll probably feel that tomorrow . . .

And the Blue Angels are starting their practice sessions as I sit here . . . . love that sound.