Three years after buying The Pocket Guide to TCP/IP Sockets for my networking class, I have realized the title of this book is a little misleading.
No, it’s not the “pocket” part. It will actually fit into the back pocket of my pants. It’s the “TCP” part. Why in the world would you specify that it is about TCP/IP sockets and then brazenly have an entire chapter on “Using UDP Sockets”?? That makes NO SENSE!
I just realized I have no idea why I am writing this.
Story
I just upgraded my lab desktop to Mandriva 2008.1. As usual, my first action was to install Xfce. That all worked well until I hit my usual Alt+F2 to launch a program. Nothing happened. I tried again. Still nothing. So I checked out the keyboard shortcuts, thinking they might be messed up. After actually finding where Alt+F2 gets set (there are a few different places in Xfce where keybindings are created), I saw it was indeed set up to run xfrun4, Xfce’s little run dialog.
I headed to the console (another aggravation: I am used to using gnome-terminal for my console, because I like its tabs and general feel. But it is way too slow for some reason and, even more importantly, I cannot figure out how to make the cursor stop blinking. It drives me nuts) and ran xfrun4 from there. Result: segfault
After poking around to see if there are any other little things like xfrun4 (something I have done before, actually), I gave up and wrote my own.
Requirements
Thrilling Conclusion
I dropped this in a file in /usr/bin/ and changed the keybinding…and that’s it. Works well enough, though it would be nice to have autocomplete/history stuff. But Zerenity does not have that (yet).
Seriously, am I the only one who wonders who decided to put the ‘SEAS Cafe’ (basically a tiny little convenience store in Boelter Hall right next to a bunch of chemistry labs? I’ve been thinking about this for a while, especially those days when the odor coming from those labs is really foul.
So today I paid a little bit closer attention. One of the labs a few doors down from the Cafe has a lovely “radioactive materials” sign on it, but – even better – two labs directly adjacent to the Cafe have “biohazard” signs!
Now, the likelihood of something going wrong is probably pretty low, nothing to worry too much about. However, the likelihood of something going very wrong if something does go wrong…well, I would guess it is quite high.
But…who cares, I guess? It’s convenient :)
The turtles were starting to eat their little dock (a problem I had read about), so it was time to get a new one. I decided to go with a piece of cork bark which I wired up to the side of the aquarium underneath the lamp (otherwise it floats all around). You can see it on the turtlecam. At first the turtles decided to eat it, too, but I figured that just added some fiber to their diet. Eventually they started climbing up on it and now they seem pretty comfortable with it.
I just felt like sharing.
Yes, I am actually still working on this game. Today it received a fancy new URL, a faster loading logo, and set of fancy pantsy forums.
The game itself is still plodding along. Unfortunately, my ISP really limits incoming connections for some reason, so the game is pretty much inaccessible to anyone but myself. This is not really a bad thing, though, because there isn’t much to see anyway.
This is kind of cool. AutoZone has a bunch of repair guides you can read for free.
I’ve been looking all over for something like this for my car…I guess I wasn’t looking hard enough.
girlcott, v.
trans. Of a woman or group of women: to boycott.
1884 Argus (New Philadelphia, Ohio) 3 Apr. 3/7 “The young women..have resolved to girlcott any young man that smokes or goes out of the theatre between acts.”
1943 Kingsport (Tennessee) News (Electronic text) 12 July, “The Cabinet wives girlcotted Peggy and lobbied at Jackson until the Secretary was forced to resign.”
Several months ago, This Diminishing West (with Scott Hunter of Poor Old Lu ) announced they were calling it quits.
But apparently they wanted to leave us with something, so they have released a five song album entitled “Ninety-Seven Weeks” for download (mirror ), along with a PDF of lyrics and credits.
Question: ‘What is the most efficient way to sort a million 32-bit integers?’
Obama: ‘I think the bubble sort would be the wrong way to go.’
Yep, tonight I watched the speeches from Obama, Clinton, and McCain, in that order. You can totally trust my analysis, too, because I once ran a campaign so I know what I’m talking about.
The main thing I caught from them is that Obama and McCain really believe what they say. Clinton sounds like a grade school teacher for some reason…I just can’t feel any sincerity there.
McCain pushed the war and terrorists, as well as getting our allies to fight with us. He also stressed that we can’t undo decisions made already (i.e., war in Iraq and Afghanistan) but definitely was for continuing them. Also, we are all his friends. I got that message loud and clear.
Clinton stressed that she was the one who would be ready to work and make decisions immediately without having to learn “on the job.” She of course pressed her “health care for everyone” as well. Clinton also kept mentioning that she would work hard and actually do things. Most of which was clearly aimed at Obama. The majority of the speech was thank-yous, however, and she was clearly happy to have finally won something (however little that truly helps, it helps her campaign morale considerably.)
Obama mentioned right off the bat that he has maintained the same lead in delegates and thanked Vermont. Then he led straight into his usual speech about breaking away from the mistakes of the past and having hope for change. He didn’t spend any time on Clinton, but instead talked about the issues that he cares about and the changes he wants to make. He also pointed out how desperate the country is things to change and for the overall direction of the country to change.
Alright, now for some personal observations. McCain is clearly a continuation of the same policies we currently have under Bush. Very, very pro-war and appealed considerably to patriotism and love for America. Which is fine, except we’ve been hearing that for so long I don’t know that it’s going to work this time.
Clinton just sounds so fake to me I can’t get past it. She sounds like a grade school teacher or something. I don’t know. Her reliance on her “experience” is dubious, as it seems more like a reliance on her husband’s experience. If that’s all it took, wouldn’t Bush, Jr. have been able to rely on his father’s experience to help him out? I don’t know. I also felt like Clinton was taking cheap shots at Bush and Obama. Maybe it’s because she knows that the odds are still against her. She is also relying heavily on people’s fond memories of Bill Clinton’s years as president, mentioning, in particular, that she knew how to get a country out of economic trouble. Her mention of “being able to make decisions immediately” actually scares me a little, because I would rather have someone who thinks things over and listens to advisers before making a decision. I know what she probably means is “I have experience! And Obama doesn’t!” but it does not strike me that way. It’s more like she knows what to do and doesn’t need help from anyone.
Obama is just so crazy. He even said some of the same things Clinton did, but he said them with so much more feeling and sincerity that I can’t help but believe him. Also, while Clinton mentioned a congratulations to McCain during her speech, Obama actually called up McCain and congratulated him personally. Classy. Despite McCain and Clinton’s talk of not relying on fancy speeches and talk, Obama was the one who actually focused on the issues that he feels are important, without trying to belittle his opponents. I don’t really care if it’s just speechifying, Obama knows how to move people, and he is really appealing.
Thinking these three speeches over, I’m not sure where people are coming from with the “Hillary is more presidential” thing. McCain and Obama seemed much more like serious candidates. I just can’t help it. I can’t believe her “experience” angle has gotten her so far, either, considering Bill Clinton was the third youngest president. Is she saying her husband was too young, too?
McCain is running on the pro-war thing and I know that is appealing for a lot of people, but for people looking for someone who is going to turn the country around, it sounds too much like Bush.
Obama and his crowd was fairly subdued tonight, but he seems to know that his lead is still comfortable. According to what I’ve read on the Internet, the results tonight were pretty much what his camp expected and the states coming up are very likely to go in his favor.
Anyhow, just thought I would share.
I think the best lyrics are those which make absolutely no sense, but seem like they do.
Helps if sung in a completely convincing manner.
I think it’s pretty obvious what is going on here. The Internet has been growing and growing, everyone knows that. Some people think it’s somewhere around 20-30 billion “indexed” pages. Netcraft says there are something like 155 million “sites” which they have found.
So, alright. The Internet is big and is getting bigger. Fine. But what about longevity? Everyone has known sites which once existed, only to peter out, falter, and eventually disappear into the ether. Many websites, particularly commercial ones, are limited by how long they desire to continue paying for hosting. When the bills are no longer paid, the website vanishes. This is also true for many personal websites. Remember Geocities? It used to be that you had to log in every 90 days in order to keep your “free” website up. In other words, sites demand some kind of “upkeep” or else they will eventually disappear.
But that is changing. I realize “blogs” are no longer a new thing, so this will come as a surprise to no one, but…there are a ton of them out there. Most are free, with no obligation on the part of the user to maintain them or keep them up to date. As far as I know, most of these sites do not have any kind of automatic deletion in place. And don’t forget Gmail – they encourage people to “never delete your email.” So what happens? The Internet takes on dead weight. Whole datacenters, probably running on older hardware, just to host “archived” accounts. Companies paying who-knows-how-much just to keep up blogs and websites that no one cares about or is going to use again.
I guess it’s kind of sad, but I wonder what the implications might be. Wait! Nevermind, forget I mentioned it. I’ll do a study on the rate at which accounts are abandoned, calculate their average size and such, then be able to estimate the point at which the Internet will implode on itself due to all the inactive pages and dead information. Hmmm…
