http://relvokcor.xyz/~brennen

Changes since 2014-12-16T03:25:09

2014-12-16T03:25:09Z

Monday, December 15

Text editors I have known and loved:pfs:Write

pfs:Write for DOS

DOS Edit / QBasic

Notepad¹¹

Pico

BBEdit

Some weird Windows thing that had a bunch of menus of HTML tags built in

The super-90s-Windowsy text controls embedded in mIRC

XEmacs

Vim

Games I really liked:

That one where you were a little smiley face and you went around the dungeon finding artefacts and sometimes typing things like DRINK POTION.DRINK POTION

That one where you were a little smiley face and you went around the dungeon finding artefacts and sometimes typing things like DRINK POTION.

The first super-pixelly Commander Keen, with the little green Vorticons running around.Commander Keen

The first super-pixelly Commander Keen, with the little green Vorticons running around.Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure

That artillery game on the Apple ][ where you had little castles shooting at each other.Scorched Earth

Scorched Earth, where little tanks shot at each other.Worms

Worms, where a bunch of little worms shot at each other.²²Bolo

Bolo, where little tanks shot at each other but it was top-down and real-time and there was a Little Green Man to do your bidding and it was networked multiplayer.networked multiplayer

Bolo, where little tanks shot at each other but it was top-down and real-time and there was a Little Green Man to do your bidding and it was networked multiplayer.Taipan

Taipan, where you had a merchant ship and shot at pirates.Tempest

Tempest, which featured both shooting and abstract colorful shapes.Spy Hunter

Spy Hunter on the NES. Also the version of Spy Hunter at the Pizza Hut in Wayne, NE.Spy Hunter

Spy Hunter on the NES. Also the version of Spy Hunter at the Pizza Hut in Wayne, NE.¹¹ Ok to be fair I never actually loved Notepad.²² I've never really warmed to subsequent entries in this (enormously successful) series. They all struck me as the wrong kind of cartoony. I think this is a lesson in how the constraints on an aesthetic can force it into channels more broadly appealing than the same artists will later find with bigger budgets and greater technological capacity. Either that or a lesson on how weirdos like me often prefer low-res hackery. Either way, there is probably an analogy to country music and George Lucas somewhere in here.

Sunday, December 14

Here's an interesting little thing: Tilde Description Protocol.Tilde Description Protocol

Here's an interesting little thing: Tilde Description Protocol.

I have the following going in relation to this:squiggle.city/tilde.json squiggle.city/tilde.txt squiggle.city/users.json squiggle.city/users.txt squiggle.city repo with listusers.pl

Changes since 2014-12-10T02:42:49

2014-12-10T02:42:49Z

Tuesday, December 9

A few sections in workings:workings

A few sections in workings:on a script to make new users on messing around with single-board computers on namespaces & scope

In more interesting news, a bunch of people have asked for squiggle.city accounts lately. That's pretty cool. I do wish I knew how to encourage more people who aren't demographically within a couple of degrees of me to sign up.

Changes since 2014-12-06T20:23:53

2014-12-06T20:23:53Z

Saturday, December 6

I just started a new project that I'm going to host on squiggle.city: workings is an attempt at an ongoing technical notebook. I plan for it to get huge, and expect it to be really boring, if you're not me. Hopefully it will be useful for remembering stuff I do, and a place for the rough notes on things I'm going to turn into finished writing later.workings

This idea owes something to an experience I had in jr. high and highschool of being required to keep a daily logbook for science classes. (Ed Brogie, if you ever google yourself, here's a little ego bump for you, which I will temper by observing that the Bloom's taxonomy trip you were on was really weird and probably super counterproductive - but hey, at least you tried to get people to write every day.)Bloom's taxonomy

I could put this kind of effort into contributing on Stack Exchange or something, but doing userland showed me that I really like the idea of a book as a container for effort, and anyway I can't stand all that gamified bullshit with roaming packs of vicious procedure jockeys constantly assailing useful questions and answers as incorrectly framed, categorized, or imagined. This kind of thing is also why I no longer invest time in the bureaucratic hell that is the machinery of Wikipedia. Life is just too short and time too precious.userland

Changes since 2014-12-03T15:27:34

2014-12-03T15:27:34Z

Tuesday, December 2

There's a list of updated pages on the squiggle.city home page, generated from a script. For a while, I was updating this by deleting it and running a vim command to pull it back in:squiggle.city home page

There's a list of updated pages on the squiggle.city home page, generated from a script. For a while, I was updating this by deleting it and running a vim command to pull it back in:a script

There's a list of updated pages on the squiggle.city home page, generated from a script. For a while, I was updating this by deleting it and running a vim command to pull it back in::r !perl listusers.pl

I wanted to make this automatic. In the old days, I would have turned on Server Side Includes in Apache and written something kind of like:

Unfortunately, squiggle.city is running nginx, and while nginx is pretty groovy these days, its SSI module only does includes, not execs. What I settled on instead is this include directive:

Coupled with typing su www-data, followed by crontab -e and adding this:su www-data

Coupled with typing su www-data, followed by crontab -e and adding this:crontab -e

Coupled with typing su www-data, followed by crontab -e and adding this:# m h dom mon dow command 0,5,15,25,45 * * * * perl /var/www/listusers.pl > /var/www/listusers.html

Which should refresh the list on minutes 0, 5, 15, 25, and 45 of every hour. (The intervals are arbitrary. I just kind of felt like those were the right minutes.)

There is pretty good documentation on enabling the nginx ssi module and writing directives for it. I just had to do this in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default:documentation

There is pretty good documentation on enabling the nginx ssi module and writing directives for it. I just had to do this in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default:/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

There is pretty good documentation on enabling the nginx ssi module and writing directives for it. I just had to do this in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default:location /index.html { ssi on; }

Monday, December 1

I'm out on the plains for a few days.

It's a strange season in a strange century. The news cycle is still working the kind of groove that feels like it would fit pretty well in the opening infodump of a film about the collapse of civilization. (You can practically hear Godspeed swelling over the measured tones of NPR personalities and the stridencies of ChristoRepubliFascistCatholiFamilyTalk radio alike, complete with little bursts of punctuating static.)

And then on the other hand, things are not so abnormal as all that. My cousins are having babies. My sisters are getting married. The people who were my age when I first knew them are twice my age now.

Changes since 2014-11-26T22:34:16

2014-11-26T22:34:16Z

Wednesday, November 27, 12:27 p.m.

It turns out there's now an IHOP attached to the Flying J Limon, CO. I think this is a relatively new establishment, but truck stops have a way of aging in quickly, so it's hard to tell.

I'm having the quick two-egg breakfast, eggs over medium, bacon, wheat toast. The eggs are pretty much actually over medium, which is a thing you can't always rely on.

Changes since 2014-11-25T12:04:49

2014-11-25T12:04:49Z

Tuesday, November 25, early a.m.

Things I have starred on GitHub

Things I have starred on GitHub.

A thing about lists like this: They're often full of touchstones for personal memory. Here's me getting worried about e-mail. Here's me keeping an eye on the big boss. Here's when Erik Winn died. Here's that detour into weird text editors. Here's that taco thing, when they closed Google Reader, that day with the model train...Erik Winn

Monday, November 24

On not spamming

On not spamming.

Changes since 2014-11-23T00:11:58

2014-11-23T00:11:58Z

~brennen

Saturday, November 22

So as we were drinking beers yesterday, ~stilldavid pointed out that you should be able to mail everyone on the server.~stilldavid

So as we were drinking beers yesterday, ~stilldavid pointed out that you should be able to mail everyone on the server.

I figured this should be pretty easy, but it took more googling and grepping and general head-scratching than I really would have liked to remember that /etc/aliases is a file which exists, and then to determine that the version of exim installed here supports a line like this one:citizens: acg,ahava,ben,berkay,brennen,bri_huang,burnedboard,casey,danlyke,delio,drun,erik,fazol,frencil,hord,ianremsen,jbd,jenleelind,jimblom,joe,kache2k,kirstenrk,leducmills,mike,mshorter,nallen,nick,nightliz,pearcebot,randy,robacarp,sgmustadio,sibicle,skk,stilldavid,thcipriani,todd,tonicorinne,trevor,typexawesome,zinefer

...which means that if you're logged into squiggle.city, you can write to citizens@squiggle.city in your mailer of choice and we should all see your message.

Send some e-mail?

Friday, November 21

Pretty good answer

Pretty good answer.

Changes since 2014-11-20T14:50:50

2014-11-20T14:50:50Z

~brennen: QUESTION FOR ROBACARP

Wednesday, November 19

Hey ~robacarp, long-time listener, first-time caller here. I just have a couple of questions for you and then I'll take my response off the air, thanks:~robacarp

Hey ~robacarp, long-time listener, first-time caller here. I just have a couple of questions for you and then I'll take my response off the air, thanks:

Where the heck do you get lanolin? Is this just a "now we have the internet and you can mail order literally anything" phenomenon, or is there a kind of store you go to and they have lanolin in a jar on the shelf like some kind of normal thing that you would normally buy in a store?

Second, and really Rob this is more of a comment, but second, isn't there an "i" in "manifesto"?

Changes since 2014-11-18T12:34:58

2014-11-18T12:34:58Z

Monday, November 17

Here are some drawings.some drawings

Here are some drawings.

Changes since 2014-11-16T20:39:05

2014-11-16T20:39:05Z

In which I install a MUSH engine:

If you have JavaScript turned on, ~~this~~ the background of this page should be a silly p5.js doodle.~~this~~

If you have JavaScript turned on, ~~this~~ the background of this page should be a silly p5.js doodle.

Changes since 2014-11-16T04:26:44

2014-11-16T04:26:44Z

Saturday, November 15, evening



TOPICS

  Help available on the following Topics:

  $-COMMANDS               ARBITRARY COMMANDS       ATTRIBUTE OWNERSHIP
  BEING KILLED             BOGUS COMMANDS           BOOLEAN VALUES
  COMMAND EVALUATION       COMSYS                   CONTROL
  COSTS                    CREDITS                  DROP-TO
  ENACTOR                  EXITS                    FAILURE
  FLAG LIST                FLAGS                    FUNCTION LIST
  FUNCTIONS                GENDER                   GOALS
  HERE                     HOMES                    LINKING
  LISTENING                LISTS                    LOOPING
  ME                       MONEY                    MOVING
  OBJECT TYPES             PARENT OBJECTS           PARENT ROOMS
  PIPING                   POWERS LIST              PUEBLO
  PUPPETS                  REGEXPS                  ROBBERY
  SEARCH CLASSES           SEMAPHORES               SPOOFING
  STACK                    SUBSTITUTIONS            SUCCESS
  SWITCHES                 USER-DEFINED COMMANDS    VERBS
  WIZARDS                  ZONES

help wizards
WIZARDS

  Wizards are the people that help run the game and make sure that everything
  is working properly.  They have special powers to tweak reality in ways
  mortals can only dream of.  Be nice to them, they are going out of their
  way to help keep the game running smoothly. And remember, if you have any
  problems or just want to talk to someone, they will be there for you as
  well.

Yesssssssssssssss.

Saturday, November 15, afternoon

For folks with squiggle.city pages, there are a few resources at squiggle.city/js/ if you'd like to include jQuery, p5.js, or syntax highlighting on your pages without cluttering your ~/public_html or relying on somebody's CDN.

Changes since 2014-11-16T01:16:22

2014-11-16T01:16:22Z

Saturday, November 15

If you have JavaScript turned on, this should be a silly p5.js doodle:p5.js

If you have JavaScript turned on, this should be a silly p5.js doodle:

For folks with squiggle.city pages, there are a now a few resources at squiggle.city/js/ if you'd like to include jQuery, p5.js, or syntax highlighting on your pages without cluttering your ~/public_html or relying on somebody's CDN.squiggle.city/js/


#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use 5.10.0;

# we'll use this to filter out people who haven't logged in.
# pretty silly!
my %whitelist;
my (@lastlog) = split /\n/, `lastlog | grep -v Never | awk '{ print \$1; }'`;
foreach my $user (@lastlog) {
  $whitelist{$user} = 1;
}

opendir(my $dh, '/home/')
  or die "could not open /home/: $!";

my %dirs;
my %titles;
while (my $dir = readdir $dh) {
  next if $dir =~ /^[.]/;
  next unless $whitelist{$dir};

  my $index_html_path = "/home/$dir/public_html/index.html";

  if (-e $index_html_path) {
    $dirs{$dir} = (stat $index_html_path)[9]; # mtime
    $titles{$dir} = get_title_from_file($index_html_path);
  }
}
close $dh;

sub sort_by_time {
   $dirs{$b} <=> $dirs{$a};
}

my $list = "<table>\n";
foreach my $key (sort sort_by_time (keys(%dirs))) {
   $list .= '  <tr>'
          . '<td><a href="/~' . $key . '/">~' . $key . '</a></td>'
          . '<td>' . $titles{$key} . '</td>'
          . '<td class=tiny>' . $dirs{$key} . '</td>'
          . "</tr>\n";
}

$list .= "</table>";

say $list;

sub get_title_from_file {
  my ($filespec) = @_;
  my $html = slurp($filespec);

  if ($html =~ m{<title>(.*?)</title>}is) {
    return $1;
  }
  return '';
}

sub slurp {
  my ($file) = @_;
  my $everything;

  open my $fh, '<', $file
    or die "Couldn't open $file: $!\n";

  # line separator:
  local $/ = undef;
  $everything = <$fh>;

  close $fh
    or die "Couldn't close $file: $!";

  return $everything;
}