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


2020-05-31-2218Z

Experiments in defecation. Tried the India "squat" method using the shower drain. Too messy. Took almost as much water to clean up as it would have been to flush. So I'm now using a plastic bag lining a bucket. Putting neem leaves on top of each "use". When I leave I'll tie off the bag and dump it in the trash, same as people do with dog poop. Not ideal, but in an ideal world there'd be composting toilets for free everywhere.

That red sauerkraut I made 4 weeks ago is still going strong, unrefrigerated. No sign of mold or even kahm yeast.

Tried cleaning the linings of my leather jackets by sponging them with a washcloth soaked in chorinated and soapy water. It worked OK on the suede jacket, but the heavy black leather is soaked with sweatstink all the way through, it seems. I'll need something stronger for that.

Volaris claims it's going to start flying to Tijuana tomorrow. I plan to be there at the airport every day there's a direct flight scheduled, and try to use my June 2 ticket (of which the flight has already been canceled) to get on one of them. [comment]

2020-05-26-0050Z

Did my laundry yesterday, and didn't bleach-stain anything this time. What I did differently was to mix the bleach and water in a Dromedary bag first, and then pour that into a drybag, add more water and some Dr. Bronner's, and then the clothes. They came out clean-ish and stink-free, good enough for me.

I ate half a leaf of tree tobacco, Nicotania glauca, this evening, with my first pint of beer, which was my last pint of Hiram's Tamarind brew. Ideally, I should be eating it by itself, on an empty stomach, to determine the narcotic effect. I'm hoping to be able to add a few leaves to my daily salad for a mid-day pick-me-up.

Did 24.7 hours of law study this week, my best yet. If I can keep up this pace, I'll be caught up pretty quickly. [comment]

2020-05-23-2306Z

Submitted my definitions assignments for Torts, Contracts, and Criminal Law a few minutes ago. I won't know for 3 to 4 weeks whether or not I passed.

In other news, my pecker is finally healed from that freaky chafing and discoloration. That had me scared for a few days until I realized what it was. [comment]

2020-05-18-1241Z

I tried to install some screen recording software but it crashed. So I came up with a simple way to do what I want:

First, start "recording" one frame a second.

mkdir /tmp/record
while [ -d /tmp/record ]; do import -window root /tmp/record/$(date +%s').jpg; sleep 1; done

Then start doing whatever you want to record. In my case, I wanted to make a video of a run of my covid-19 heatmap.

When done, rename the directory to end recording: mv /tmp/record /tmp/record.done.

Then run the magic ffmpeg command:

cd /tmp/record.done
ffmpeg -framerate 10 -pattern_type glob -i '*.jpg' -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p out.mp4

Then you can play it: cvlc out.mp4 vlc://quit [comment]

2020-05-17-2054Z

Every now and then I try to find out how to set up my CSS the "right way", and today my searching let me to border-box. But even that didn't help fix my chart page so I gave up and went back to the hacky "98%" width setting I had before.

How fucking difficult can it be to interpret "100%" as meaning the entire space available for the element? [comment]

2020-05-14-1239Z

Just found out that openspf.org has gone into that big bitbucket in the sky.. And then realized that my dnsbl queries to spamhaus were not being returned by Google's DNS server 8.8.8.8. I switched to 1.1.1.1:

root@tektonic:~# dig 2.0.0.127.zen.spamhaus.org

; <<>> DiG 9.8.4-rpz2+rl005.12-P1 <<>> 2.0.0.127.zen.spamhaus.org ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 13115 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION: ;2.0.0.127.zen.spamhaus.org. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION: 2.0.0.127.zen.spamhaus.org. 41 IN A 127.0.0.2 2.0.0.127.zen.spamhaus.org. 41 IN A 127.0.0.4 2.0.0.127.zen.spamhaus.org. 41 IN A 127.0.0.10

;; Query time: 7 msec ;; SERVER: 1.1.1.1#53(1.1.1.1) ;; WHEN: Thu May 14 08:37:27 2020 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 118

root@tektonic:~# dig @8.8.8.8 2.0.0.127.zen.spamhaus.org

; <<>> DiG 9.8.4-rpz2+rl005.12-P1 <<>> @8.8.8.8 2.0.0.127.zen.spamhaus.org ; (1 server found) ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 30066 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION: ;2.0.0.127.zen.spamhaus.org. IN A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION: zen.spamhaus.org. 9 IN SOA need.to.know.only. hostmaster.spamhaus.org. 2005141236 3600 600 432000 10

;; Query time: 38 msec ;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8) ;; WHEN: Thu May 14 08:37:42 2020 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 108

[comment]

2020-05-11-0425Z

It wasn't a melanoma. Thank goodness. It was just chafing; the blood has since drained and now it's just raw and occasionally painful. Some spots on the shaft and knob appeared as well, probably due to burning from the 96% alcohol I used on it. Anyway, I think I'll live. [comment]

2020-05-08-1035Z

What I thought was my pants chafing my balls has been feeling more painful lately, so I just took a look with the flashlight. There's a dark spot, roughly rectangular, about 1/4" by 3/4", and maybe raised above the surface of the surrounding skin. All of a sudden I'm not so worried about the Coronavirus any more. [comment]

2020-05-05-1904Z

Some weeks ago I stopped wearing my reflective ankle straps around the bottom of my pants legs, because it looked dorky. Today, while grinding my morning coffee, I got a reminder of one of the reasons I did that: a wasp stung my leg near the ankle, then climbed up the leg and stung me a few more times along the way before I realized what was happening and pulled my pants down and killed it.

Earlier in the morning I had gone to Arámburo and scored some beans, yeast, and other things that I had attempted to buy from Chedraui online but were not delivered. The store was well-stocked! No supply line problems yet, it seems, except for beer. [comment]

2020-05-04-0228Z

Does anyone else see anything wrong with this? The CDC, on one of their webpages, boldly proclaims "TOTAL DEATHS 65,735" due to the coronavirus, and on another page shows a total of 37,308 from covid-19, with a significant portion of the rest of the page giving disclaimers how the info is incomplete and will be filled in over the next few weeks?

If that first page is accurate, why not just use that and not the 2-weeks-late info they provide on the 2nd? And why not give us skeptics the raw data so we can analyze it ourselves? It's this lack of transparency that gives rise to the numerous conspiracies that the whole thing is a hoax, which I highly doubt. But you brought this upon yourselves with your failure to communicate better.

Anyway, my page at /covid19/ is getting more traffic as the days go by. I hope it wakes some people up. [comment]

2020-05-01-1651Z

Fucking CDC took away the CSV data link to their covid-19 data. Now I have to completely rewrite my script. What a bunch of assholes. [comment]

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