blog of Intrepid Wanderer

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.

2025-03-28-1137Z

a day or three ago I had dist-upgraded to Trixie, but hadn't rebooted. I did, last night, just before bed. up early this morning, I attempted startx, all I got was a full-screen X window with a Bash prompt at the top, in tiny print, and unresponsive to keyboard or mouse. However, ctrl-alt-backspace did work to get back into terminal mode. an error on the screen showed "xf86EnableIO: failed to enable I/O ports 0000-03ff (Operation not permitted)", so I googled it. a number of people had the same problem after upgrades, starting about 2 years ago, and it had something to do with X configuration; but I installed this computer from a bookworm live CD image just a few weeks ago.

turns out while upgrading, fluxbox got removed. huh. reinstalled, and I'm good to go. [comment]

2025-03-22-1425Z

some of the cheapest carnivore- or keto- diet foods in La Paz, Mexico, this winter: eggs at about a dollar a half-dozen; beef heart a little over a dollar a pound; ground pork, chicken thighs, about a dollar twenty-five a pound. for frying, Porky's or Meza brand lard. I found Meza at Ley for about two twenty (45 pesos) a pound this morning. Mercado Madero for the eggs, Arámburo for heart, Ley for ground pork, Chedraui for chicken. [comment]

2025-03-18-1547Z

Generally speaking, my experiments with beef heart have not come out great. It is usually too tough, even if I slice it thin and just barely sear it each side. And if I boil it into a stew, it rarely softens up even after 2 hours. However, I had some luck with it two days ago: first I covered it with juice from my last batch of kraut, topping it up with water to mostly cover the frozen heart. Left it for 8 hours or so, then cut it up into about 1-inch cubes, throwing away the almost-bone piece of tendon or whatever is somewhere in the middle. Boiled for about an hour and it came out great. Still eating it, on the 3rd day now. Still a little chewy, but not tough. [comment]

2025-03-16-1704Z

Just a note for anyone attempting to use the Mexican payment website, used by their water authority, SAPA, and their DMV at least, there is an annoying bug in the credit card number field. If you simply cut and paste the number in, which I typically do since I don't have it memorized, you will see that as soon as you tab to the next field, the number is gone. This is extremely annoying, as it keeps telling you to enter the number and it keeps deleting it. The secret seems to be, you need to click in that field after pasting, and hit the spacebar once. It won't move the cursor, but it registers that you typed (or maybe just the click alone is sufficient, I'm not sure on that point). Then when you scroll to the next field, the number remains, showing only the last 4 digits, with the rest replaced by dots. [comment]

jc blog - tales of a modern-day nomadic hunter-gatherer

2025-03-28-1137Z

2025-03-22-1425Z

2025-03-18-1547Z

2025-03-16-1704Z