The Ubuntu Linux (Lucid Lynx 10.04 on a Compaq Presario 6000 with 900 MB RAM) box in the basement needed new wireless card.
Picked up Sabrent Wireless-G 802.11G PCI from Amazon. Powered up the computer and I was online. No questions asked. Very pleased.
As I wrote at the beginning of the year, one of my resolutions was to write more, viz., posting about Crime & Punishment on this blog.
Well I did finish the book, and enjoyed it considerably. I hope to say more later on the book. But overall I’d have to say I’m in a rut. I’ve always considered myself a reader and a writer, but I don’t honestly read that much anymore and I write even less.
The main reason I got through Crime & Punishment was some extended reading time on a long bus ride and a rare business trip. And even then it took eight months to finish.
One factor that has changed in my life is I no longer read books during the day. Whatever daytime reading I do is online. My “deep reading” or “close reading” is confined to the half-hour or so in bed before I fall asleep. That just ain’t gettin the job done.
NURSE: Jesu, what haste! Can you not stay awhile?
And my writing habits – nonexistent. I can’t even send old friends a birthday greeting or a How-ya-doin’? email.
The frustrating part is, I feel a desire to read. There’s so much out there I don’t even fricking know! Listening to Team of Rivals, I realized I had no idea who Lincoln ran against in the 1860 Republican primary or how he beat them. I didn’t even expect the book to explain that.
It’s mainly fiction that keeps drawing me in. I look for a certain mystery in fiction. That feeling of “I don’t completely understand everything, and I want to go back and try again.” In Crime & Punishment, for instance, there is a connection between Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov, as there is between Sonia and Dounia, and for that matter between Sonia and the pawnbroker’s daughter. I would like to re-examine those relationships, now that I know to look for them.
Then there are the dreams: Svidrigailov’s dream the night before his suicide; Raskolnikov’s dream of a man beating a horse.
I’d like to study all these things. Maybe even re-read The Idiot.
If I only had the time.
What’s worse – to have your code not work and understand why or to have your code work and not understand why?
My initial reaction to “Senator” was somewhat tepid, but it’s growing on me. Tigers is closer to what I expected from a Stephen Malkmus song with Beck at the helm. It even has a steel guitar – first time since Wowee Zowee ?
So I had a bunch of names and for privacy purposes I wanted to abbreviate the last name to show only the first letter. Hours of tedious work, right? Wrong!
I put this in the find what box of Dreamweaver
([A-Z]{1})([a-z]{3,})
And this in the Replace With box
$1
And I was good to go!
Of course, I could also have dumped the names into Excel and done a Left function on them… I guess there are lots of ways to skin that cat.
I just downloaded Analog for analyzing my log files. It’s a pleasure to work with. The configuration file is daunting at first, but I soon figured how to make it understand my log files.
It’s startling to see how many ways there are to try to hack a website. I’ve already tightened up a couple loose ends based on what I learned from my logs.
I finally got around to posting some letters that have been in the family since… well, since the Civil War!
They were written by a relative named Francis Pettibone who lived in Girard, Pennsylvania, and served in the 105th Regiment of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry.
The 105th saw some bloody battles, including Chickamauga. None of the five letters mention that battle, although the siege of Atlanta is described in some detail.
Be sure to check out the Big Read 2011
If you missed last year’s Big Read, N.T. Wright’s discussions on Luke are worth visiting (or revisiting if you didn’t miss it).
The output of iwconfig:
~$ iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"cordelia"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:40:F4:FD:AD:48
Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power=27 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=60/70 Signal level=-50 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
And the content of /etc/network/interfaces:
auto lo iface lo inet loopback
Expect to see more pictures like this decorating the blog from here on out.
The aesthetic I’m going for is kind of a found art look.
The sources of the pictures are scanned mah jong tiles and scans from some old public domain books.
They won’t be relevant to the content, but they’ll be different.