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


2017-06-30-1756Z

I verified today what I had suspected, after one version of the software was updated to be the same as another using git merge alpha, and that version no longer working: specifying exact versions in your package.json doesn't guarantee that those packages, and its dependencies, do the same. so any 2 installations of your software could have different packages, some of which may be broken.

as it turns out, that wasn't the problem. I just had to restart the server using systemctl restart myturn@beta. but I'm planning on switching to Python as backend for the rewrite. nodejs may be an OK technology, but npm opens the door to too many maintenance nightmares. [comment]

2017-06-28-1951Z

just ran the daemon for a while, timeouts on all attempted connections... looks as though Americancoin is dead. sigh. another investment all for nought. [comment]

2017-06-24-0035Z

can't boot into Linux, and haven't run coLinux from Windows for a long time. forgot everything. this is how I think I fixed it; if I can now reboot into Debian and upload this, you'll know it worked.

I had to right-click cmd.exe and run as administrator (not sure this was necessary, but can't hurt). Then cd to \Program Files\coLinux and run colinux-daemon @\Users\jc\Documents\debian.conf. It fails to initiate properly, but gives me a root prompt. From there I:

mount /proc
mount -t cofs cofs0 /media/sda3
dd if=/dev/sda4 bs=512 count=1 of=/media/sda3/debian.bin
[comment]

2017-06-21-0450Z

while working on a program to project NASA DEM data using a "flat earth" model, so that the FE proponents can see how their projection matches with views of the real earth, I had to decipher the azimuthal equidistant projection, which some FE proponents claim to be the actual form of the disk on which we reside. so I had to work out the formulas using pen and paper, because the results I was getting from their mathematical formulas seemed wrong.

while it may be specified by the statement "and the angle θ that line subtends from the vertical is the azimuth angle", I had to go through a lot of trial and error to ascertain that that meant "the prime meridian is shown by the line segment from the center of the circle down towards the bottom of the page". plus I was expecting the x and y results to be those of a unit circle, when in fact the formulae return values from 1 to π, the 180 degrees latitude from the north to the south pole; to get results from 0 to 1, which can then be mapped to screen dimensions, one must first divide x and y by pi. [comment]

2017-06-16-1928Z

so this bountysource.com site looks pretty good in theory, but payouts are supposed to be Friday and I haven't gotten it yet. now I get on their IRC channel on freenode, and find out that one guy has been waiting 2 weeks and another guy 5 weeks! I'm pretty worried right now I may not get the money at all, ever. [comment]

2017-06-12-0342Z

keeping my hand in shaving with my pocketknife, since I haven't done it in like a year and a half; sharpened my knife and stropped it about 60 times yesterday, was able to shave the non-sensitive parts of my face at least.

still really grateful for that black salve that removed the mole preventing me from shaving my chin back in 2011. with a good sharp razor, I just wet my face with cold water and Dr. Bronners and shave. no nicks, no problems. I change the blade every 6 months. it helps that I only shave the full face about once a week, and only shave the "kissing parts" every day.

although I'm not enjoying it as much as at first, I'm still making my cold-brew coffee most days. Tuesdays I usually pop into Redwood Credit Union before or after the food giveaway at the Senior Center across the street, and get a free cup of good, hot coffee. I'm very careful, never spilled it after that one time.

though I still haven't built up to the 20 miles a day I'd like, I'm jogging almost everywhere now instead of walking, and I'm feeling great. it seems to help my programming too. lately I've been solving problems that have stumped me for weeks. [comment]

2017-06-05-1336Z

coding to the DRY standard (Don't Repeat Yourself) can be exceedingly difficult at times. many existing softwares don't accept specification of port by name (from /etc/services) and support for environment variables isn't always there (nginx). so you make templates and create the actual configuration files from the DRY sources. it works, but what a mess. [comment]

2017-06-03-2241Z

this time, back at the cabin, I cracked both the suction and discharge valves, and put a little R22 into the low side, but still it's not equalizing. something still very wrong here.

the valves weren't the standard square stems, they took allen keys. the large one is 5/16 and the small probably 3/16 but I didn't have one, so used a 4.5mm.

on the way up, we stopped at the rest stop on I-5 north of Williams, but then we couldn't start it again. called AAA, but before the tow truck came, about an hour and a half after we stopped, the damned thing started again, so we came all the way up. the "check engine" light is on, and performance is really sluggish, especially on hills, but we started it again today and it started right up, so we have some hope of getting home again Monday. [comment]

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