Mobile Post

And now, a final test of pingle, from the iPhone via ping.FM to all my 'blogs'. Now with test photo!

IS this thing still on?

I've been trying to get Ping.FM to post to blogger (here), decided to post manually (using blogger) to make sure this was still working. 

iTerm fires off X11 when using SSH (solved)

I've been trying to figure out why every time I use iTerm to ssh to a machine X11 starts. It slows down the whole login process, and is annoying because then X11 has focus, not iTerm.

I finally found it in my ~/.ssh/config file:

 

ForwardX11 yes

Commented that out and now it's not firing up X11. Not sure when I set that up, might have been as an experiment to see how someone else's setup worked.

I downloaded a php program recently, and tried to run it. It gave me this sort of error:

# ./check_cuda

Error in argument 1, char 3: option not found
Error in argument 1, char 3: option not found
Usage: php [-q] [-h] [-s [-v] [-i] [-f ] | { [args...]}
-q Quiet-mode. Suppress HTTP Header output.
-s Display colour syntax highlighted source.
-w Display source with stripped comments and whitespace.
-f Parse . Implies `-q'
-v Version number
-C Do not chdir to the script's directory
-c Look for php.ini file in this directory
-a Run interactively
-d foo[=bar] Define INI entry foo with value 'bar'
-e Generate extended information for debugger/profiler
-z Load Zend extension .
-l Syntax check only (lint)
-m Show compiled in modules
-i PHP information
-h This help

After a bit of poking around on the Internet, with no luck, I got to thinking that maybe there were extra characters hidden in the file, or that maybe this was a file created with a non-linux newline.

I used cat to investigate:

# cat -e check_cuda | head -1
#!/usr/bin/php -q^M$

Yup! I used the dos2unix utility to fix it .

Nibbles of the Beast

So, I visit my buddy in Oregon and we decide to get some Coke squishies -- that's what we call slurpees, squeebies, mushies, frappes, freezies or what you prefer to call them. We liked how the Simpson's named them -- squishies. We know I will need the sugar and caffeine to keep up with our planned late night conversation – especially with my friend being Captain Graveyard-up-all-Night.

Everything is going fine, the squishy machine dispenses two beautifully textured American super-sized beverages -- I suppose this is when we should have seen The-First-Signs. Traditionally, if you look wrong at a sqishie machine they give you some sloppy watery mess, and getting two perfect squishies from the same machine, within the same hour, on the same day, well, it is truly some sort of miracle.

We get to the counter. We ante up our drinks on the counter, and toss in some snacks to raise the bid. I think I tossed one extra thing into the pile from an impulse-buy rack at the counter -- I'm sure that is what started the chain-reaction. The woman behind the counter rings everything up, and I hold out my Ten-spot. She just looks at me like some sort of cow with a train barreling down on her and won't touch the bill.

"You Sure you don't want Something more?" she says with a chilling tone of doom.

Then it was my turn to look like a soon to be meat on the grill. I'm not sure what my buddy was thinking at this time, I glanced over and his expression pretty much matched my own. My brain clicked a few more times then sent me the answer:

"Look, don't be such a corporate drone, just give me the squishes and the candy, I don't need a damn lottery ticket, or what-ever your sales-addled-brain is thinking I need to buy".

Of course, instead I said, "Uh, no, this is fine, thanks". Smile.

Her eyes just got bigger, "Are you Sure? You could just add in some jerky or something -- it’s only like-a-dollar", she waved some jerky about to demonstrate how cheap it was.

My brain exploded. The characters “WTF?” scrolled blinking across my monitor. Something triggered my fight or flight system, my blood-pressure rose, my heart-rate elevated, blood rushed to my head to feed my brain. Time compressed. My mind suddenly begins the complex math needed to resolve freaky social conditions; it struggled mostly with different reasons why anyone would possibly be pushing jerky tonight. Is this some piss-poor signal that we are standing in the middle of a hold up? Is she making some rude sexual joke by waving around dried meat? Is this some code for buying drugs at 7-11? Is this to make figuring out taxes easier? Are they paying commission on jerky sales at 7-11? Why is jerky only a dollar in Oregon?

It felt like a minute passed with me staring at her, and then I realized she was pointing at the cash register read-out with the jerky treat.

It read: $6.66

“Are you Sure?” she pleaded, "I can't be held responsible... "

After a deep breath, I told her, as nicely as I could, that I didn’t believe in old myths. She complained, but wiped her hands clean of the event and sold me my devil-treats. I could almost feel her making some old curse gesture behind our backs as we left, tossing some salt over her shoulder, and then cleaning the register with the blood of a calf born under a full moon, you know, just to make sure.

My buddy and I later agreed that things might have gone differently if she had said, “I’m going to give you one of the squishies free, to avoid the wrath of the beast”. With the prospect of free a squishy, neither of us would have blinked an eye.


[image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Slurpees.JPG]

Boots n Things

I was out shopping tonight and ran into a couple of cool dudes running the shop I was in. We chatted about how best to take care of a wound. I was doing the regular Eagle Scout routine, explaining changing a bandage a couple of times a day for a few days and how fast you heal. One of the other guys suggested that leaving it out in the rough was good. I think he was implying that would make you tougher. Reminded me of "what doesn't kill you...", not a bad theory either.

Anyways, they admired my UK, boots and super genius business cards, so I made sure there were links for all three in my Suggested Links -- on the right of this page, might have to scroll down a bit.

I'll put them right here too, just for fun.

Utilikilts
Steel-Boots (I was wrong about the price, about $120 shipped for my boots)
Moo Cards

Happy Birthday!

Cooked this up from some fireworks shots I did when in Seattle. It's from two images, the smiles really did look like that -- but were boring by themselves, so more fireworks were added! Woot!

Happy Birthday Mon Chou!

Fungi!

One section of four tables of the mushrooms the classes discovered.

Nom Nom Nom

Rachelle pretends to consume a mushroom at that night's lab session. (Don't do this a home!)

Fungus Hunt!

This weekend I was a guest of Rachelle's Mycology class's Mendocino Mushrom Foray. It was two days of geeky fungi fun! We trompped around digging up all sorts of wonderfully spongy, slimy, sticky, smelly, and spiny mushrooms. Everyone was enthusiastic and friendly - I had a fantastic time.