jc blog - tales of a modern-day nomadic hunter-gatherer

Follow jcomeau_ictx on Twitter This is the weblog of Intrepid Wanderer. You never know what you might find here; graphic descriptions of bodily functions, computer programming secrets, proselytizing for the antichrist, miscellaneous ranting and kvetching, valuable information on living off the land... if you don't share my rather weird interests you may want to try slashdot instead.

You can consider my Del.icio.us links an extension to my blog, as are my LifeTango goals and my other to-do items. My to-buy list is also public, but only for sharing any useful ideas that might be there; I'm not requesting charity, neither do I offer it.

You can find me easily in google searches, as jcomeau, jcomeau_ictx, or jcomeauictx. There are lots of other jcomeaus, but AFAIK I'm the only jcomeau_ictx out there so far.

If you want to comment on anything you see here, try the new Facebook comments, reachable by clicking the "[comment]" link at the end of each post. If for some reason that isn't working, go ahead and email me, jc.unternet.net. You know what to do with the first dot. Make the 'subject' line something reasonably intelligent-looking or it goes plunk! into the spambasket unread.

This RSS feed may or may not work. Haven't fiddled with it in forever. RSS Feed


2021-04-24-0308Z

I was getting a selenium.ElementNotInteractableException: "Element such-and-such is not reachable by keyboard" error on a scraper script that I had to update for site changes. Checking the manpage for xvfb-run, I found that it did no logging unless a filespec was passed with the -e option. So I edited the Makefile and tried again. Of course it worked that time. I swear, computers will do all kinds of kinky shit when you know you're not looking. As soon as they know they'll get caught, they act like one would expect.

I wonder if this VPS has become self-aware, like Mike in TMIAHM. [comment]

2021-04-23-0403Z

My cherry tomatoes are almost done drying after only 3 or 4 days (4 I think, but Facebook shows I posted it on the 19th, so I'm not sure). I don't think one more day will hurt.

Tonight I heard a song coming from the Mariachis at Nim Restaurante that sounded a lot like Magic is the Moonlight, an old jazz standby that I learned either in high school band or in Archie Russakoff's jazz band. So I looked it up, and it was in fact adapted from a Mexican song, "Te Quiero Dijiste", written by Maria Grever. It reminded me of another song, I've mentioned before here and/or on Facebook, "Good Morning Mr. Sunshine", a Herb Alpert arrangement of a Mexican song "La Bikina".

Just about recovered, I hope, from a bout with food poisoning. Probably from some bacteria or parasites in leftovers from my birthday party left unrefrigerated for two days. Gotta watch that stuff. Had horrible diarrhea starting early Tuesday morning and lasting until Wednesday night. Still not feeling 100% but was able to go kayaking today. [comment]

2021-04-21-0108Z

Food poisoning, I think, from eating unrefrigerated 2-day-old leftovers from the party. That plus the additional insult of drinking 4 small Pacificos yesterday. Woke up with horrible diarrhea that lasted most of the day.

Felt bloated too, complete loss of appetite. All I've consumed today is a little coffee and a lot of water. [comment]

2021-04-16-1641Z

Somehow got my Mobistar phone soaked with salt water on that last paddle. But I let it dry out for the last few days and it's now working again. [comment]

2021-04-13-1634Z

This morning I didn't get up early to go get coffee at Cafe Batalla. So I made it myself as I used to do, since I've got plenty of cheap alcohol now for fuel. The difference in taste between drip coffee and camp coffee is amazing. Mine is so much sweeter, with complex flavors, compared to drip coffee which has more of a caffeine buzz but very little in the way of flavor. And I drink both black, with nothing added.

Crypto still heading skyward. Bitcoin shot up $3200 overnight, and Dogecoin is approaching 9 cents, both new all-time-highs against the dollar. I'm going to be solidly $10k in the black on my 65th birthday, the richest I've ever been in my life dollar-wise. In terms of actual spending power, technically I was richer when I left Skowhegan in the fall of 1976 with a couple thousand in travelers' checks in my pocket. But you couldn't buy a super powerful computer, that fit in your pocket, for $50 back then. [comment]

2021-04-11-0136Z

On our morning walk, I passed another Mandalorian going the other way. I smiled and nodded, he did the same. Neither of us was, of course, armored or armed; here and now is not the place and time. Still, we recognize one another.

And later this afternoon, a roadrunner crossed my path in the concrete arroyo. This, while still magical, was more commonplace back in New Mexico. Here, it was a rare honor. [comment]

2021-04-09-2316Z

Just ate about 10 more of those passion fruits, right off the vine. Some were ripe, with black seeds and sweet white pulp, most were not. But they were all tasty, refreshing, free, and local. [comment]

2021-04-08-0142Z

Still setting up my new old computer the way I want it. Being Debian, of course, and not having a full desktop environment like Gnome or KDE, it has no PrtSc action mapped. Took me probably an hour Googling until I settled on xbindkeys. My $HOME/.xbindkeysrc file now has:

"$HOME/bin/screenshot.sh"
Shift + Print

The script at $HOME/bin/screenshot.sh is the old standby, ImageMagick import:

#!/bin/bash
TIMESTAMP=$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S)
import -window root $HOME/tmp/$TIMESTAMP.png

And in my $HOME/.fluxbox/startup, I have

xbindkeys &

For the compose key, I also put, into my fluxbox startup file, xmodmap -e "keysym Super_L = Multi_key".

Hope this saves me some time and aggravation next time. If I can find it. [comment]

2021-04-07-1548Z

Finally canceled both FreedomPop accounts. Figures they hid the option in Settings, way down on the bottom left of the page, "Account status". So, 707-878-3443 and 707-750-2101 are no longer mine.

They were going to start charging for the same crappy service. It was bad enough when it was free. Paying $4 a month would just add insult to injury. [comment]

2021-04-07-1108Z

Got my $1400, finally, this morning, but having second thoughts about blowing a few hundred on a 65th birthday party. Maybe I'll wait until I'm 70. And/or rich. [comment]

2021-04-06-2308Z

Waiting for a bus back to Centro today, I saw a passionfruit vine along the top of a nearby hurricane fence. Tried one, and, though it was still green, the fruit was full of pulp and seeds and tasted good. Slightly acidic with a hint of sweetness. Though a greenish white inside, if I had closed my eyes I would have believed someone who said I was eating pomegranate.

There are so many amazing foods here in the desert, things one cannot buy in stores. [comment]

2021-04-05-2023Z

Went out this morning for coffee, as usual, and also as usual, was digging change out of my pocket on the way, so I could just plunk it down, pour my coffee, and get out. But, I dropped some coins and stopped to pick them up. I found two, but was pretty sure I heard 3 drop. Anyway, went on and got my coffee. Then, I thought of something: my USB stick. I hadn't felt it in my pocket when digging around. It must be back there in the dark, on the side of the road. So went and retraced my steps. Took me a few times back and forth, but now that I was looking for the right shape—rectangular, not round—it jumped right out at me. Didn't have anything confidential on it, but it was pricey, around USD25 if I recall correctly. And I had just gotten it to where it could boot the UBCD rescue disk, using the syslinux.cfg stanza:

KERNEL memdisk
INITRD ubcd539.iso
APPEND iso

It was necessary because I had updated the file C:\extlinux.boot.dat but the Windows bootloader was looking at C:\extlinux.mbr.dat, which no longer pointed to the LILO second-stage loader. So I got the dreaded L 99 99 99..., the Linux equivalent of the Windows BSOD.

Had I known that's what the problem was, I could have fixed it from coLinux under Windows. But I didn't realize it until I had booted Parted Magic and was putzing around. [comment]

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