When talking about Internet assets we often confuse “What is it?”, “Is it bad?” and “What should I do about it?”. This write-up intends to show why it is important to keep those questions and answers to them separate.
Figure 1: The Shape of the Elephant
Post 27 of #100DaysToOffload https://100daystooffload.com/
Sometimes you want to see the head of a file. Sometimes you want to see the tail. Sometimes you just want to see some lines from a file.
The bash function below gives you some lines:
gmj@ed bash [master] $ cat <<END > lines.txt
> 1
> 2
> 3
> 4
> 5
> 6
> 7
> 8
> 9
> 10
> 11
> 12
> 13
> 14
> 15
> END
gmj@ed bash [master] $ source some.t
sh
gmj@ed bash [master] $
gmj@ed bash [master] $ some -2 lines.txt
14
15
gmj@ed bash [master] $ some -2 lines.txt
9
10
gmj@ed bash [master] $ some -2 lines.txt
6
7
gmj@ed bash [master] $ cat some.sh
Below I show an editing session that uses basic /bin/ed commands.
/bin/edis the standard Unix Editor
ed was written round 1969. It’s still here. grep comes from
/bin/ed: g/re/p works as an ed command to search *g*lobally for a
*re*gular expression and *p*rint the matching lines. ed commands
will be familiar to users of sed, as sed is the “stream editor”
with a very similar set of commands. ed commands will be familiar to
vi users. If you type “:” in vi, you get, basically, an ed prompt.
You can type ed commands (see below) and they work. “vi” is the
“visual interface” to ed (or one of it’s successors). Though I am a
die hard emacs user, often when I just want to do a quick edit or take
some note I just fire up /bin/ed and go….
/bin/ed session…
When my father was writing letters to faceless, nameless people stuck jobs answering IRS letters, he started with tiles like:
PENALTY OR NO PLENALTY, THAT IS THE QUESTION
Big, bold a the top, and IN CAPS.
Vulgate (Latin): Matthew Chapter 5
1 Videns autem Jesus turbas, ascendit in montem...
or, roughly (my translation):
Jesus, however, seeing the crowd/mob/political disturbance went up on
the mountain...
The word “turba” per my paper dictionary tends towards a crowd that is politically disturbed. It can also mean an eddy (water) or a child’s spinning top. Per https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/turba#Latin it means…
Latin flash cards are not what they were in 1983: https://latinlexicon.org. It’s got a thing where you can pop in a sentence (say, one form Cicro or random #Latin conversations on twitter (yes, they exist)), and you can click on the words (yellow above), it shows you all the possible words that particular inflected word might be and then offers to build flash cards for you…complete with citations/examples from the literature….
I’ve been listening to “The History of Rome” podcast recently. There is nothing new under the sun: Plagues (er, “pandemics”), riots, xenophobia, wars, greed, ambition, and political factions.
It’s filling in a lot of gaps and details for me. I would recommend if you’re interested in history. Today’s basic problems are not new.
Figure 1: Life-Size Lego Roman Soldier, Lego Store, Rome, 2019
Post 22 #100DaysToOffload https://100daystooffload.com/
Here are some developments in late 70s and early 80s where I started to become aware/involved in “Online” things that eventually evolved into today’s Social Media: Modems1, BBS systems, TOPS-20 Bulletin Boards, Usenet News and the birth of CompuServe.
Figure 1: Desktop Dial-up
Post 21 #100DaysToOffload https://100daystooffload.com/
The opinions expressed in this [FOO] are mine, and not those of my employer. In fact, they may not even be mine. I may have changed my mind. I may have grown beyond a particular opinion. I may be trolling you. I may be engaging in Socratic dialog to tear down your beliefs. I may be tearing down my own beliefs. γνῶθι σεαυτόν!
This the first in a series of articles where I do a brain dump pf something like 40 years experience with “social media” of various forms: Dial-up BBSs, Fidonet, Usenet, IRC, CompuServe, AOL, Slashdot, Sourceforge, blogspot, Facebook, Jabber, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Mastadon “…we didn’t start the fire (flame-war?)…” OK, maybe we did.
I hope this is useful, or at least interesting. It may wind up just being a mix of introspection, hubris or narcissism, it may be part of working up the nerve to quit Twitter as I quit Facebook in 2016, maybe I’ll even work up the nerve to go cold turkey as tychi is doing.
Figure 1: RS-232 pin-outs
Post 20 of #100DaysToOffload https://100daystooffload.com/