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

Follow jcomeau_ictx on Twitter 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. RSS Feed


2012-01-30-1006Z

Just heard a coyote "party" over towards the highway, what an amazing sound. Haven't heard that in so long. [comment]

2012-01-27-2239Z

You definitely want to get to Union Square in plenty of time, the information area is a bit of a cf. But I have my seat, a full if slightly upset stomach, and am as ready as I'll be for the groundflight to Deming. [comment]

2012-01-27-2042Z

Seems California is the place for cheap potato meals. Got a $2.50 side of French fries at Rock Bottom Brewery in Long Beach that's filling me up. Got to leave soon to make sure I catch my 3PM train to Deming. [comment]

2012-01-27-1832Z

Yesterday evening I was walking through SF Chinatown to get to my bus. This morning I'm in LA Chinatown having coffee at Hill St. Cafe with my spirit animal. [comment]

2012-01-27-0545Z

On the bayfront, not far from Gordon Biersch, there are public access tables and chairs set up, with free wifi from at least two sources! Empty! Occupy the commons, people! At least I am! [comment]

2012-01-27-0503Z

The potato wedges are a meal. They are a little hard in the middle, but I already sent them back once and they came back the same way so I decided to enjoy them the way they are. For $3, it's a treat. [comment]

2012-01-27-0439Z

Went to Gordon Biersch. Free wifi, better beer selection (having the Schwartzbier), and the manager Randy gave me a $5 gift card for my next visit. This pint is $5.50 and the potato wedges I ordered $2.95. Much better experience, though the peoplewatching at Boulevard was pretty good. [comment]

2012-01-27-0355Z

In contrast, a pint of Trumer Pils at Blvd. is $7.90. I've got 2.5 hours to kill; I've either got to take it real slow or find another pub. [comment]

2012-01-27-0226Z

Bus to SF is $9.25, caught it about 16:30 at the Copeland transit mall. Sun was setting as we passed through San Rafael, and a big boa of fog was squirming to get through the Golden Gate before dark. Got off the express bus after about 3 stops past the bridge, hoping to get to Kennedy's for happy hour, but as usual got lost. At da Vinci Villa there was a sign for $2 Red Hook and, though it was closed for a private party, the guy let me buy one and sit in one of the comfy armchairs out on the street. After I got the beer I noticed it was the IPA not the ESB, but oh well. I'm enjoying it anyway.

[comment]

2012-01-26-2305Z

Finally got my sdram chip formatted properly for the Optio W10:

jcomeau@intrepid:~$ fdisk /dev/sdb

Command (m for help): t Selected partition 1 Hex code (type L to list codes): e Changed system type of partition 1 to e (W95 FAT16 (LBA))

Command (m for help): w The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

WARNING: Re-reading the partition table failed with error 13: Permission denied. The kernel still uses the old table. The new table will be used at the next reboot or after you run partprobe(8) or kpartx(8)

WARNING: If you have created or modified any DOS 6.x partitions, please see the fdisk manual page for additional information. Syncing disks. jcomeau@intrepid:~$ sudo mkfs.vfat -F16 -f2 /dev/sdb1 mkfs.vfat 3.0.12 (29 Oct 2011) jcomeau@intrepid:~$

[comment]

2012-01-21-1930Z

Pulled the sticks out of solution today. They were quite slippery, indicating that my waterglass solution may still be overly alkaline. But they look yellowish all the way through, which indicates they were thoroughly saturated. Now to figure out a cost-effective way to dry them out. [comment]

2012-01-19-0004Z

Jogged my 1.5(?) miler down B street, first time since The Toe Incident. And a week from Thursday I'll be on my way to Columbus, NM to fix the wifi; unpaid, but my travel is being covered. [comment]

2012-01-18-0118Z

Seriously considering getting offline altogether if SOPA/PIPA passes. It will for sure give me a lot more free time, though I'll have to find other ways of making a living.

Started my first petrified-wood experiment today. Made a very unscientific, watered-down waterglass using silica gel (without crushing it first, as the instructions indicated I should) and approximately an equal amount, by volume, of pure lye drain cleaner. And I'm soaking a couple of small pieces of dowel in white vinegar. Chances are it won't work at all, and due to my failure to measure anything means I won't know what in particular went wrong. [comment]

2012-01-16-0116Z

Distracted driving: I was calculating in my mind the number of miles in 7.5km when I almost blew through a stop sign. If someone hadn't warned me, it would have surely happened. It doesn't require a cellphone: anything short of 100% concentration on the job at hand, driving the car, can get someone killed.

Speaking of which: one of our kayaking friends disappeared today. Nobody had seen him for about 2 hours. I decided to call in an SOS on marine band channel 16; the Coast Guard sent a chopper and a Park Ranger boat, located our man, and brought him home. Another kayaker went back to get his boat and tow it in. Happy ending.

Alan Korwin, with whom I strongly disagree on some things, got one thing majorly right today: Diplomatic Carry. Any thug from an oppressive regime has full right to pack heat in this country, any local laws notwithstanding. But US Citizens are, in most places, restricted in that right. This is wrong. We should all have Diplomatic Carry status. [comment]

2012-01-15-0424Z

From The Ohlone Way p. 50:

Buckeyes have to be roasted, peeled, mashed, and leached in cold water for 18 hours to remove the poisonous Prussic acid.
May be too late to gather any this year, but can try next year. Acorns were a staple of the Ohlone diet, and they required much less leaching (especially what the book calls "valley oaks"), but in times of scarcity the tribes would gather buckeye nuts. [comment]

2012-01-15-0421Z

Heard today second-hand of someone who was cured of poison oak dermatitis by cupping therapy. Something to try next time I get it. [comment]

2012-01-14-0457Z

It seems I'm cured of whatever hit my throat. Now just the usual phlegm production I've had since that bout with pneumonia or whatever it was back in Rosarito 5 or 6 or 7 years ago.

That red pumice-looking stone that's used all over Tehama County for roads and landscaping is great for grinding dead skin off the soles of the feet. Picked up a piece at the Pilot station on the way home the other day and used it tonight after my shower. [comment]

2012-01-14-0431Z

About Christmas I bought a pack of two bimetal switches from a website called SourcingMap.com. Total: $2.99. Free shipping. From China. When I got the parts, I was asked to rate my transaction and get a free $5 coupon, which I did; bought two 100-packs of 1/4W resistors for $5.54. Again, free shipping from China. Total cash outlay: $3.53. How the hell do they do it? Even with slave labor, it seems impossible to make any money that way. But I can certainly see how Radio Shack makes money... in the neighborhood of 1000% markup. [comment]

2012-01-12-1755Z

Ate 3 biscotti Tuesday evening. Felt a sore throat last night. Cause and effect? Certain "bad" microorganisms, including mycoplasma, feed on sugars. If I eat healthy foods today I will hopefully recover quickly. This isn't the first time this has happened to me. [comment]

2012-01-12-0128Z

I wonder if Ted Butler has ever mentioned the possibility of the Fed itself being behind the huge short position in silver. I believe it would explain why so much money is being thrown away to keep the price of silver depressed: it could be part of a master plan to hold runaway inflation in check. But then there's this. [comment]

2012-01-07-2218Z

There's something weird that just started shimmering in my left eye a few minutes ago. It's shaped like a 'C' and made up of colored, pulsing geometric shapes. It was making it hard to see the computer screen at first, but at the moment the shape is larger than the screen so it's like a moving frame around it. And it seems to be continuously growing, so hopefully it will be gone out of my field of view in a few minutes. It is pretty though, whatever it is. And it's there whether my eyes are closed or open, but somehow I "know" it's only in my left eye. [comment]

2012-01-07-1806Z

After driving the 2nd leg of the trip yesterday, I lay back in the seat and covered my eyes; I could still see the road going under me, as if I were flying a foot or so, face down, above it. But only flying about 3 to 5 MPH. Makes me wonder if William Gibson's theory of jet lag is really true. I've experienced this many times before; sometimes instead of road I see what looks like vegetation.

Picked up an old Linksys WRT54G at the thrift store in Red Bluff yesterday, $10. This can be the first core router of the Petaluma unternet.

I'm thinking static routes for the 1:: ipv6 addresses, sending packets north, east, west or south according to Tony Hain's draft spec; say a packet destined north would have the lowest-cost route to the north, higher metric to the west, even higher to the east, and highest to the south. What happens though if the only route available, is to the same direction that the packet came from? I can't remember how the IP layer deals with that stuff. [comment]

2012-01-07-0219Z

The sun-dried plums I collected last time we came up to the cabin are all covered with a thick white fuzzy mold. Next time, keep them uncovered or refrigerated. [comment]

2012-01-03-0653Z

Hacked on my earlier pysplitfs program, which turned out to be less than useful, and made the simpler pytest.py script, which just mounts a virtual filesystem to enable command-line testing of subroutines in your Python scripts. [comment]

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