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


2017-07-31-0312Z

couldn't get rid of the VPN I had attempted to setup on my 2nd Android phone. holding it for 5, 10, 30 seconds didn't pop up a delete option, and the 3 vertical dots in the upper-right only gave me the "always on" option. I futzed with it for probably an hour.

finally I decided I'd try to remove the PIN, since that was my main reason for wanting to delete the VPN setup anyway. strangely enough, it let me; and when I went back to the settings to look for the VPN it was gone. must be a bug in the operating system. anyway, it's fixed now.

went paddling at Tomales this morning with 6 others. started out almost smooth as glass, and even at its worst on the way back the waves weren't overwhelming. discomfort was tolerable and never approached the pain threshold.

finally started configuring the new server, and registered it as ns004.unternet.net. I still have a long way to go, but I do have the whole month of August and part of September before they shut down ns001.

also, finally got a "hard" pre-approval on a credit card with enough of a line that I can consolidate all my other cards into one lower rate. supposedly no fee for balance transfer either, but I've got to make sure once I get it. this could save me a lot of hassle each month not to mention the lower interest. I might have it all paid off by the time I start collecting Social Security next year.

cooking my dinner outdoors, I got to see mama deer and Bambi walk over to the neighbor's apple tree and start munching.

still have both jobs, though I'm not making progress with the newer one. my boss is so busy working long days he hasn't given me the access I need to the code, and by the time he needs my input I may be too far out of the loop. but we'll see. [comment]

2017-07-27-2219Z

my solar oven, without even a single reflector, just a wood box with a glass cover, got up over 150 degrees today according to the oven thermometer inside. plenty of heat for sous vide cooking. it was too late in the afternoon before I got around to putting my pound of Thomas Farms grass-fed beef I picked up on sale for $3. so I'll have to cook my casserole later.

for a few years now I've been lighting campfires by the "top down" method, ever since I learned it from some kayakers from Sacramento. but it's only recently that I've adapted it for my little Bushbuddy Ultra stick stove. stack the wood in crisscross layers, biggest at the bottom, to the top of the stove proper; then add the potholder and pile on tinder, especially oily human hair if you have some. light the tinder, and the fire should ignite the twigs below, which ignites the larger pieces below that. this morning's coffee was my first failure using this method, because it was a foggy night and there was no dry tinder to be found. [comment]

2017-07-26-0517Z

I was thinking about easy ways to show flat-earthers that the earth is indeed spherical. the only good way I can think of is on the water. every 10 minutes of arc, for example, which would be about 10 nautical miles, anchor a platform with a weather balloon, uniquely identified (preferably with its latitude and longitude, and its main cable marked every meter with its height above sea level. besides showing curvature, the platforms could serve as temporary places of refuge for intercontinenta kayakers...

I also have this not-yet-fleshed-out idea for a gizmo made up of strong rope and ratchets for each hand, which would enable someone with good arm or leg strength to tilt heavy things upwards. unfortunately, the only use I can see for it is flipping over cars, and I don't know how much money the average antifa has to spend... [comment]

2017-07-25-2306Z

I've been putting off cutting the lumber for my solar oven, lacking a square for making straight cuts, not wanting to spend the money for one, and not having any place to put it if I did.

but I finally realized that a broken-down cardboard box works just fine. fold the flaps over the side of the board, and make the mark along the folded box edge. got the parts cut finally, and can screw it together tomorrow.

cleaned the floors and bathroom, she's coming home tomorrow. [comment]

2017-07-24-2256Z

this time the kayak repair went a little better. I sprayed the PVA on liberally after applying the fiber and gelcoat, and it had dried to a hard, glossy finish by the time I checked an hour or two later. however, it wasn't very smooth, a fault of my slipshod application and the fact that I'd forgotten to water down the PVA so it came out closer to a jet than a mist. but it should get us through the next kayak trip.

I still have to finish replacing the silicone seal I ripped up because it was in the way of the repair. but that can wait until tomorrow. house cleanup Wednesday morning and afternoon. [comment]

2017-07-24-0401Z

my cheese was getting moldy, the butter getting rancid, and yesterday's leftovers didn't appeal to me. but I had scored a pound of grass-fed ground beef marked down to $2.50 at Grocery Outlet today, plus a $2.99 bottle of Constelación tempranillo, so I made a casserole, and it turned out great.

lit up the camp stove using my hair as tinder, with some dried leaves and redwood needles below and above it. lit up first try; oily hair makes a great firestarter.

then I broke up the burgers and browned the meat in my pan. it took a few minutes, then I added yesterday's pasta leftovers, the remainder (about 1/4 pound) of the butter, and two large chunks of the smoked cheese. I kept feeding the stick stove for a while longer, then just let the pan sit over the coals.

I haven't tried the wine yet -- still drinking coffee -- but dinner was terrific. [comment]

2017-07-23-1718Z

crossgrading Linux: it's on the horizon, and it looks pretty easy in fact. it's too bad there's no plan to have multibin debian, though, that could allow 64-bit applications to reside concurrently with 32 by using /bin64, /usr/sbin64, etc. your PATH variable would determine which has precedence.

of course I don't want it badly enough to do the work myself, so I'm stuck with what they give me. anyway, I have lots more urgent stuff to take care of, such as the planned shutdown of my primary nameserver/webserver and moving its contents to the new VPS the company gave me. I've only got 6 weeks left to take care of that. [comment]

2017-07-23-0206Z

one of the main problems with the "minimal water" method of cooking pasta, especially when all one has available is a small cooking vessel, is that you tend to either have a solidly glued mass of wheat paste or you spill a lot while trying to stir it. and if, as I am, you are cooking it over a small stick stove, you might knock everything over and have a big mess.

well, I had a hypothesis, and tonight I tried it out. the idea was that adding something non-sticky to keep the pasta separate would eliminate the need to stir. and since I had a gifted jar of amaranth seeds, that's what I used. the verdict: success! the amaranth has a very mild flavor so it didn't negatively affect my meal. and the pasta came out very evenly "al dente". I only had to add a little more water; just enough to cover it wasn't quite enough, due to the amaranth also soaking it up.

I'm using up the rest of that pound of butter I salvaged yesterday. it didn't last long! I could have stretched it, but as I said, it goes rancid quickly unrefrigerated so there was no point. [comment]

2017-07-21-2250Z

no word from the boss since Wednesday morning. I'm beginning to think something's wrong.

dumpster diving yielded a pound of Finlandia butter, slightly dirty on the outside but I scraped that off. butter is a rare treat, but it'll go rancid quickly, I'm eating it like there's no tomorrow. also harvested 2.5 pounds of Stella smoked provolone. that might make a decent fusilli with cheese one of these days.

also bought a $5 steak half off from the Safeway manager's specials bin. it'll be the first non-sausage meat I've had in a while.

I've gone from a bottle of wine every two days to a bottle a week, or so, since getting that new work. I'm only having about 4 ounces a day, and late at night, just before bed, rather than with dinner. I don't expect this to last, though. [comment]

2017-07-16-1425Z

rant: the range of sizes of tubing available at local and big-box hardware stores seems to be carefully selected such that nobody can fabricate telescoping items such as chair legs. for example, at the Petaluma Friedman's Lumber, you'll find stainless tubing in 1/4", 1/2", 3/4" and 1", all with about a 1/16" wall, which means that they all fit loosely inside the other. looks like I'll have to buy tubing for my projects online and pay a lot for shipping.

I think I found the perfect director for a movie of Stranger in a Strange Land of which the Master himself might approve: Borja Brun. nothing short of this level of explicit erotism would do justice to the book.

getting back into Linux kernel programming after an almost 2 decade hiatus. a lot has changed, but the underlying concepts are still pretty simple. for example, you don't need Modules.symvers to compile a LKM (loadable kernel module) if your system doesn't use modversions; you only need to match the kernel version number.

there's a whole lot of misinformation about building kernel modules out there too. just installing kernel headers won't do it. you need at least the Makefiles. that stuff about /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build is often wrong, as on the ARTIK 710 development board the symlink points to /home/release/artik710_release/linux-artik7, a nonexistent directory. and the kernel-headers package for that Fedora distribution places the headers under /usr, so what I did was mkdir -p /home/release/artik710_release and symlink /usr to linux-artik7 under it. then I had to mkdir /usr/modules to avoid the make[1]: *** No rule to make target 'modules'. Stop. error. then finally make ran without errors in the directory where Derek Molloy's first sample LKM was located:

[root@artik hello]# make
make -C /lib/modules/4.4.19-0710GC0F-44F-01QA/build/ M=/usr/src/exploringBB/extras/kernel/hello modules
make[1]: Entering directory '/usr'
make[1]: Nothing to be done for 'modules'.
make[1]: Leaving directory '/usr'
[root@artik hello]# 

but no output was actually generated, because the kernel Makefiles were not found at /usr. and those depend on a host of other directories, scripts, and includes. so, you really need a chunk of the actual kernel sources too, not just the headers.

and it seems odd that it took almost 7 years for someone to point out to this guy that there's an export directive in GNU Makefiles.

also, I learned how to compile and install Device Tree files.

today, I'm back to work on my port of David Stodolsky's myturnb software. I hadn't made any progress for him all week due to the new job falling into my lap.

both are interesting challenges, but I have to admit I love bare-metal programming better than almost anything else. it's taking huge amounts of self-discipline to stay away from the ARTIK. [comment]

2017-07-12-1402Z

spent an agonizing last 24 hours or so on debugging why my device tree modification wasn't even being added to the sysfs slots directory, let alone work as intended.

it seems there's a hidden, and arbitrary, length for either the "part-number" or for the labels, and it's less than 21: "bb_gpio_test" works, and "bbb_switched_led_test" does not.

only by fiddling with it was I able to determine this. there was no error message I could find anywhere which gave any clue why echoing the "part-number" into $SLOTS was returning a nonzero exit code.

now I've still got to figure out how to take the BeagleBone Black's switch S2 and LED USR1 away from whatever driver now "owns" them. that's my next step. [comment]

2017-07-09-0621Z

in case I forget why I added ldconfig to the libsoc README:

root@beaglebone:~/libsoc# test/gpio_test.py 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test/gpio_test.py", line 5, in <module>
    from libsoc import gpio
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/libsoc/__init__.py", line 1, in <module>
    from ._libsoc import *  # NOQA
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/ctypes/__init__.py", line 365, in __init__
    self._handle = _dlopen(self._name, mode)
OSError: libsoc.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
root@beaglebone:~/libsoc# ldconfig
root@beaglebone:~/libsoc# test/gpio_test.py 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test/gpio_test.py", line 86, in <module>
    main(gpio_input_id, gpio_output_id)
  File "test/gpio_test.py", line 60, in main
    assert gpio_in.is_high()
AssertionError
[comment]

2017-07-08-1333Z

sitting here at my computer, and a smallish hawk came right up and hit the window. not too hard, fortunately. he flew to a nearby branch and recovered for a bit before flying off again at the approach of another hawk. what was he doing, anyway? did he want my coffee?

finally got some bits-and-bytes work on firmware for a medical device. so far I'm using Python with libsoc, but may have to switch to C or assembly if I can't get the low-level control I need.

still staying within budget, not paying down my credit cards as much as I'd like, but at least not adding to my debt. I'm way behind on my COS dues, though. I could lose my lots at any time, if someone brings it up on the ballot.

still a lot of good deals to be had for a guy on a $3/day food budget. Safeway sent me an email with a coupon for day-fresh whole wheat French bread, 98 cents off the $1.99 regular price, good until the 11th. bought my 2nd one yesterday, found 2 cans of Amy's organic lentil soup up for grabs at the senior center, and got an 18 ounce pack of organic meatballs with tomato sauce at Grocery Outlet. put the soup and meatballs in my dutch oven, which still had a bunch of bacon grease and burned-on bacon in it, and threw in a 7-ounce pack of pasta shells I'd picked up for 33 cents a while ago. came out pretty good except for the rusty taste due to my abuse of the iron pot's seasoning. one of these days I might finish my solar oven, and season the damned thing properly.

anyway, I could probably get by on even a $1/day food budget if I always used pasta instead of bread, but then I'd spend a lot more time cooking; something I've been avoiding. remember, I mostly make cold-brew camp coffee lately, just pouring water over ground coffee at night, and stirring in the morning until the grounds settle. every now and then I go to the Redwood Credit Union and get a free cup of hot coffee there, or even less often, spend $1.08 at the Tea Room to fill my own cup. both places have excellent coffee. the senior center has coffee for 50 cents, but it's pretty bad. anyway, back to cooking. it's always hard to get my camp stove lit. until recently I'd blow in it to get the flame going, but that always meant the smoke would soak into my clothes and hair. a few days ago, though, I realized I could put the spatter lid over the stove and turn it upside down, the screen holding in the tinder, until it got going good, then right it. after that, just keep lighting little bits of dried redwood sprigs and dropping them in. no more blowing, not nearly as much smoke.

I still haven't experimented much with using 80 proof alcohol, like cheap vodka, in an alcohol stove, with a tea lamp underneath it to drive out the alcohol vapor. I can't see why it wouldn't work, but I couldn't get a very hot flame out of it last year when I tested. I just think it would be really useful when traveling, because cheap booze is almost always easy to find, everywhere, and I hate using toxic alcohols. [comment]

2017-07-06-1956Z

for various reasons I won't go into, I have upstart running on a client's VPS. and whenever I apt-get upgrade, and libc6 gets upgraded, I have these problems:

initctl list, in user mode, gives the error initctl: Name "com.ubuntu.Upstart" does not exist.

initctl list, as root, gives the error initctl: Unable to connect to Upstart: Failed to connect to socket /com/ubuntu/upstart: Connection refused.

the problem is caused by the libc6 upgrade replacing libraries upon which upstart depends. the only fix I know of is reboot -f. but it's scary, because I don't even know how the necessary services, like exim4 and apache2, are being restarted, as I can't find anything in /etc/init that seem to have anything to do with these.

but, last time, according to my email exchanges with the client, it worked fine. it just happened again last night, so we'll see. for now I'm making some backups, just in case of disaster. [comment]

2017-07-05-0500Z

got more work than I can handle, again. funny how these things work out.

fireworks display this year was pretty lame. dying days of the empire. it'd be great if a few select blocks of DC and Sacramento went all V for Vendetta, but highly unlikely.

scored two more bottles of that {five ton} Zinfandel at Grocery Outlet. best $3 Zin they've had since that Santino or whatever it was a few years back. [comment]

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