zen.org Communal Weblog

Today, at 12:41 UTC was the Solstice. I was rolling out of bed at that time, so I faild to observe it.

I have several vacation days I need to use before the end of the year or I loose them. So tomorrow my holiday starts. I hope to make a nice vegetarian Solstice dinner for 余艾蕾 tomorrow, purge the body before the lox, meatballs, ham, herring, and lutfish at my Mom’s Julbord. I know my Mom’s Julbord will be good, hopefully my meal will not be too outré.

I haven’t done full time web development since I worked for Wired magazine in the 1990s, but both at jobs and at home I’ve been doing it here and there since. A little PHP here, a little Perl there. A little MySQL here, a littel PostgreSQL there. A little Apache here, a little Boa there.

The other week I discovered a new arnonym: “LAMP.” I’ve seen references to LAMP developement before but I guess I’m just so out of it I had no idea what it meant. I snuffed it off as some proprietary alternative to, um, well, LAMP. In case you are like me, it means: Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP. I found one place that says the “P” stands for PHP/Perl/Python. I’ve been doing this for years! I must be too engrossed in my work or something.

The current /. poll asks Last book you read? I had to pick “Other non-fiction” as it was a cook book. I’m not mad that cooking was not an option, I a little bumbed that nobody in the comments has talked about cooking books. I guess not too many people read cook books from cover to cover, skipping a recipe here and there.

余艾蕾 and I put together what we like to call Zoe Type, a glut/GL program that I was seeking for my Junior Hacker, Zoë. Well, something like it. I put the source up.

Today is nobel day, so remember to fly the Swedish flag. Also, Wangari Maathai offically becomes a Nobel Laureat today, the Norwegian Nobel Committee says so.

Peace on earth depends on our ability to secure our living environment. Maathai stands at the front of the fight to promote ecologically viable social, economic and cultural development in Kenya and in Africa. She has taken a holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy, human rights and women’s rights in particular. She thinks globally and acts locally.

Said Professor Ole Danbolt Mjøs, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. I love environmentalists.

余艾蕾 and I have never had our own Christmas tree before. This year, because of Zoë, we wish to get one. Being the environmental extremest I am, I did some Internet research. Here are my conclusions.

The worst thing you can do is get an artificial Christmas tree. While they do prevent a tree from being cut down every year you have it, on average they don’t last for more then ten years. While artificial tree companies offer up to a fifty year guarantee, the discarded PVC tree will still be decomposing for hundreds of years after its final holiday use.

The next worst choice is a cut tree. Often these are sprayed with pesticides and other artificial stuff to keep the needles on it, but if one can find an uncoated one these will decompose well.

A permanent potted evergreen tree is a good choice, it seems these are popular in Holland, but in the United States the only pine I could find that was marketed to remain in a pot was the Norfolk Pine. The Norfolk Pine is a beautiful house plant all year around, but it is very delicate. They should be kept away from kids and pets, not a good choice with a cat and a baby. The Japanese Black Pine has been used as a Christmas bonsai tree, but can only be inside in winter for a couple days. Tree growers know what other evergreen trees grow well in pots, but don’t wish to offer them because they want to sell you a freshly cut tree every year, stupid capitalists.

By far, the most ecological choice seems to be called the living Christmas tree. Buy a tree for the yard, use it as a Christmas tree, keep it inside until spring, plant it in the yard. One more oxygen producing tree is a wonderful idea! I have a small yard, no more room for more trees let alone one tree a year. Also, what should a city dweller do?

I think I’m left with a cut tree. I hope to find a potted evergreen that that can take some roughhousing, but that looks bleak for this year.

The tree lighting issue is a no brainer, every environmentalist likes LED lights, less energy, less heat, no broken glass. I’ve looked in three stores and have not found them yet. ☹

Though 余艾蕾 has had Zoë on a music keyboard, yesterday she showed her first interest of being a human at a computer keyboard. So I dug through some Debian Jr. stuff and came up with Tux Typing. I think she liked it, the only problem was that the space bar is pause.

If anybody has any suggestions for a computer program that just does stuff on the screen related to random pounding on the keyboard I would like to hear about it. Apart from an occasional spat of Freeciv and the web I never see any graphics on my screen, so I really have no idea what is out there.

In the beginning we had SATA cards that didn’t have working Linux drivers; I got different cards and all was well. Well, all was not well, to close the case we needed SATA cables with 90° jacks. We ordered eight Belkin cables for testing and again all was well.

So we ordered like twenty-two more cards for the rest of the cluster, and ninty-six more cables with 90° jacks on the end. Some where on back order, but a bunch came in and all was working. The the backorder cables started comming in, it seem Belkin changed the 90° jack, and the new ends are bigger. That extra quarter centimeter suddenly makes it so the cables really don’t fit any more! Well, they probably could squeeze in, but I think it would break something.

This all started in the beginning of June! Computers suck.

Maybe I’ve uninstalled Sarge from systems but I’m slowly getting them back. I’m up to eight systmes with Sarge, twenty-four mixed Debian Woody/Sarge systmes. I can actually do upgrades without worrying about breaking things! Well, Sarge is still testing, so there is a chance of breaking things.

A few weeks ago I was asked to install kgpg on one of these mixed systmes (actually another mixed system apart from the thirty-two systems above, but that’s another story) and all of KDE got upgraded at the same time, so did Samba. A week later I was told to downgrade Samba because the new one was broken. To downgrade Samba I had to remove kgpg and downgrade KDE. I got lucky because the next work day Debian put out a new version of Samba that worked.

At 20:07 UTC on November twenty-sixth the moon was totally full. Now just a few hours on the waning side I went out in the cold with the opera specs Brendan gave me for being in his wedding party. The moon is amazing! If this happens much more I should get a small telescope on a tripod.