jcuervo's Journal: Slashdot metakarma. 'n stuff.

[ Incoherent rambling follows. I've been sober too long. ]

Why is it that I only get modded up when I post anonymously? Eh. On the other hand, my karma went from "positive" to "good".

My next paycheck is all mine. I get to spend it however I see fit. I'm almost definitely going to buy the Harley I rode a couple months back -- assuming the guy I was working with who wanted to sell it to me isn't pissed that we dropped his project. (Sorry, Andy.) Also thinking about replacing Skull, my Sharp PC-MM10 (and yes, that's my name there, I used to run the other LL link for that model); I saw an MM20 at Fry's the other week.

The MM10 was a good machine. Onboard ethernet and 802.11b, one PCMCIA slot for the 56k PCMCIA fax modem it came with, Transmeta Crusoe 2GHz (IIRC), and Windows XP. Dual booted Slackware happily, and all hardware was supported with then-testing branch drivers. The case was misleadingly solid-feeling, though, and it wasn't nearly as sturdy as it felt. Trust me.

I still have a hardon for Thinkpads, though. They're tough little motherfuckers; I use Crossbone (TP 760ed) as my mp3 player. Goes everywhere with me, poor thing. When I crash skateboarding, it usually takes a hit, too. So far, no serious injuries. The case is a bit cracked on one side, but no big deal. One hard drive did die, but it happened while the machine was stationary. Premature aging, maybe.

I've found a neat little bug in zkfingerd that makes it segfault on Debian; it goes away when I turn on the memory debug code. Fuck! So it's going to take me a bit longer to track down the problem than I originally thought.

I've recently been introduced to Mozart (mostly from recommendations by the author of "Everything I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" -- Amazon link left as an exercise to the reader). Good stuff to program to, when you're not in the mood for Spineshank and Static-X.

Just so this journal entry isn't a total loss: quick hack to give you a realtime line count of whatever. Especially fun when you just want basic stats on tail -f /var/log/maillog | grep status=delivered or similar. Lives in my ~/bin.

<++> lc

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

$| = 1;

print "\r$." while (<>);
print "\n";

<-->

If...

[Alioth]

If you skateboard with your lappy, think of getting a PowerBook. Made of metal. One of the reasons I got one (apart from it being friggin' gorgeous) is that if I crash my bike with it in my backpack it's a bit more likely to survive than the usual HP/Compaq stuff. It also won't get scratched to bits (I wish they made mobile phones out of metal and put a replaceable toughened glass screen on them, especially the more expensive models).

Oh...

[Alioth]

and as for the hack, I've always used:

wc -l

Re:Oh...

[jcuervo]

*nod* That gives you a line count after EOF. That little chunk of Perl gives you a running count.