Hmm, I started typing this with something like 'Now, before my battery goes dead', and right then it died. Now about 40 minutes later I finally found a table that has a power outlet nearby. Hopefully the cops won't have time to harrass me today, I've got something hanging on my back they might think is suspicous: it's a piece of metal shaped in the form of a half-parabola, which I intend to use for making the form on which I will build my sun helmet(s). Lowe's wouldn't sell me 5/8" soft copper tubing, so I went with that flat metal stock with holes in it, and a short piece of threaded rod. Looks like it might work out OK, if the idiot police don't think it's some kind of weapon and destroy it.
Finally got some pictures of that ice plant I mentioned, but it turns out it
wasn't Carpobrotus Acinaciformis, but rather C. Edulis, with the bright yellow
flower seen in the picture only as a blob. C. Acinaciformis and C. Deliciosus
both have a purple colored flower. 
. The
triangular-cross-section leaf is, to me,
identical with that of C. Acinaciformis though. I tried the dried fruit today,
and it really does look like a fig inside, all gooey with little seeds; but it
tastes kind of salty (perhaps subjective) and in my Edible Wild
Plants book it calls Prickly Pear "Indian fig" and not this.
All I've eaten so far today is that red fruit I mentioned before, which I now think may be a variety of Barberry, as shown on pp. 218-219 of Edible Wild Plants. I can only eat a few at a time, because of the tartness, but they don't really satisfy my hunger. It reminds me of an "apple diet" for cleansing that I tried as a teen, I think after reading about it in an Edgar Cayce book. Your stomach is telling you it's hungry, but when you try to appease it with fruit it says "no thanks, I'd rather starve". I hope I can wait until tomorrow before I have to eat anything else, otherwise I'll have to pay airport prices for something.
Last night I was able to also get my Thawte Freemail cert to authenticate me into a website (running locally on my laptop, apache under Cygwin). This is really cool stuff. I wish I could use this everywhere instead of having to remember 3 or 4 different usernames and a dozen different passwords. If you want your own cert, I can notarize you for 35 trust points if I'm in your area. I know some people do this for free, but I charge $10. The cert is free, you can get it from http://www.thawte.com, but by getting notarized for at least 50 points you can have your own name on the cert. And with 100 WOT (Web of Trust) points you can also be a notary, although as a business venture I'll have to say that I haven't made a penny in the what, 2 years I've been a notary? The idea really isn't taking off. Perhaps most people are as clueless as I was (still am?) as to all the great things you could do with it. Thawte certainly doesn't seem to be much help in letting you know its potential uses, unless there's info buried on their site I'm not finding. I mean, I don't expect them to tell me I can certify websites and software with it, but they could at least mention that it can be used to authenticate to a secure website, couldn't they? And I also found a way to use it with openssl to read, sign, verify and encrypt secure email (man smime). So I can potentially send and receive signed and encrypted email using Yahoo! mail. But I'm going to script it first.
last updated 2013-01-10 20:14:20. served from tektonic.jcomeau.com
