I’ve section-hiked over 1000 miles on the Appalachian Trail.
Through-hikes have been shut down this year, upsetting plans
people have made for years. I’m headed out today to do maintenance
today. Not sure what I’ll find. I will be good to be out.
not even non-technical users need a “public DNS” to shield themselves
from a lot of known-evil internet sites. check out @The_Pi_Hole or
have your 12yo child or cousin install it.
..but I always make things harder.
Figure 1: pi-hole console after a few hours on my system
Steve Wilhite is the most prolific programmer I’ve ever known. He’s
mostly remembered for creating GIF but he spent 30 years writing piles
of amazing software which helped set the stage for the Web.
A few years ago, my mother went through the effects of her cousin
after she died. It turns out Thelma Jane wrote poetry. Nobody knew.
It wound up in the trash.
Thelma lived alone. Her husband had died in his 40s. They had no
children. Her mother, my great-aunt Bess, lived to 102 and took her
first motorcycle ride at 100. My mom had to go through Thelma’s stuff
and Aunt Bess’ stuff, most of which Thelma still had. I now have some
of the leftovers. But nobody wanted the poetry. So it’s gone.
This brings me to the question this article explores: why write?
I find that when I stay glued to twitter (pick your
social-media-of-doom-amplifier) I tend to get a rather gloomy view of
life. There is indeed a lot one can be gloomy about these days. But
if you just go for a walk and look around you may be
surprised:
I found this art sidewalk art at just about the exact place where last
fall I had purchased a cup of lemonade from 4 eager young
entrepreneurs. I suspect the ring leader of that optimistic young
bunch.
And on a happy note…my son Bryan has finished his Masters of
Piano Performance at Duquesne University and will be headed to
Penn State to pursue a Doctor of Musical Arts. You can watch
listen to Bryan Jones’ masters degree piano recitle at Duquesne on
Youtube.
Bash uses linear search to insert values in to associative arrays.
This is all well and good for small numbers of keys. I was adding
millions1. I went poking around the bash source code today
(2020-04-18) to confirm my suspicion and gauge the difficulty of
adding an option to do something more sensible.
I spend a good amount of time hiking in Shenandoah National Park and
surrounding areas. I’ve seen quite a few #bears and I’ve followed one
down the trail. I’ve been growled at by a mother bear when I
unknowingly came between her and her cubs. This is going somewhere
related to #cybersecurity. I promise.
You can’t outrun a bear. Climbing a tree won’t help. If a bear
actually decides to attack you, the odds are not in your favor, but
fortunately they almost never attack. The old joke goes “I don’t have
to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you” because, presumably the
bear will catch your slower partner, stop, and not bother you when you
both decide to run for it in violation of bear encounter best
practices.