Meh

Summary: Meh.

Detail: Feeling crap, like death warmed up.

I was going to write a long piece about how my recent blog posts weren't necessarily a true reflection of self. The only stuff I've mentioned recently is negative, judgmental or at least ambivalent towards 'things.'

I lead a charmed life though, I'm lucky I'm in a position to be able to moan about first-world problems.

Anyone reading will tire of me mentioning the Raspberry Pi computer. Yesterday's enforced break from playing with it brought with it a welcome pause; the first day since I bought the thing that I haven't felt the need to reset it due to my misplaced enthusiasm for moving forward.

We'll see.

Sideways seems a fair direction to head in, for now.

I had a bit of a play this afteroon, between sitting on [redacted] and made progress; as can build and serve to my computer, can FTP to my web server and have it served from there.

I found a bug in the Jekyll static site generator though; or at least the one on my system. The most recent post 'No' fails to display its title when rendered locally. Renaming it to 'Nope' works but I'd like to Zzzz…

Uniform

What idiot would design a nursea uniform to make it more stylish, form-fitting, and ignore the fact that 2 separate machine temperature cycles are required to wash it effectively‽

Honestly, the rank stupidity of those in charge of big organisations never fails to surprise me.

How difficult can it be to choose one material that's hard-wearing, washes in one load? Like the scrubs my wife used to get.

Maybe there's a metaphor screaming to be let out here.

Nope

Another summary post, this of a wasted day:

Personal

The lady who was supposed to visit my oldest daughter today didn't show up on time. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I rang 1-1/4 hours after the scheduled start time.

"Oh, she's been off sick for a week-and-a-half, can you give me your daughter's name please?"

I did so.

"I'm just looking at her diary, it seems we missed you."

I then launched into a rant: 'I took the day off, my wife's stayed awake after her night shift, you've got a disappointed little girl here; tell the manager we're yet again dissatisfied by your lack of organisation…'

Home

A local tradesman tasked with a simple home visit 'around teatime', to fit his schedule, to quote us for 2 new radiators failed to show or call or text.

Ruby

(The dog this time!)

She's chewed her second pair of my Gore-Tex walking shoes. The girls leave the shoe cupboard door open, have no concept of…

My wife seems to think the total destruction of one side of the heel padding is fixable. I'll hover a finger over the Amazon 'buy again' button.

Ruby

(Yeah, computer stuff.)

Another day, another Raspberry Pi reset; the fourth in 4 days. Rather than do what I wanted to with the computer, it's perhaps a good time to re-evaluate my single purpose; blogging support.

It would gave been sustainable, there's enough scope in setting up a web site to fiddle with, fine-tune, break and fix. But problems with Ruby (computer program dependencies) are getting tiresome. Next step though: check out @mlv's 'strings (1)' comment.

Luckily the Raspberry Pi community has a huge amount of imagination and skill, for example Jonathan Duerig's (@duerig's) book scanner.

Stuff

I went shopping on my own while my wife slept and the girls watched streaming films. I didn't miss much either. The best thing to happen all day.

Ruby

Ruby, I could tear my hair out!!

It's probably not what you think; Ruby dog's fine, it's the computer Ruby I'm just about to rant about.

When I last used Linux the main stumbling block was Ruby – or the version manager incompatibilities with what I needed to do. It's no different this time around with the Raspberry Pi.

The credit-card-sized computer comes with Ruby 1.8. The stuff I want to use requires at least 1.9.3 (I think), so I opted to install 2.0.0. No matter what I did, when I've set it all up and it reports 2.0.0 and I try to install Jekyll, Jekyll reports that listen requires at least 1.9.3.

But, but…

So I reset the bloody thing for a second consecutive night and I'm off to bed!

Maybe the Raspbian Debian thing isn't up to the task and I need something with a little more 'oomph!'

At this point I'll take suggestions from anyone!

Next steps:

  1. Get rid of Ruby 1.8 completely,
  2. Reinstall RVM and Ruby 2.0.0.
  3. Install Jekyll!!
  4. Install sqlite3 prior to
  5. Gogs – a Git repo manager.

Not a big list is it.

Raspberry Pi!

Raspberry Pi update. Firstly, and finally, I bought one! The day before Valentine's Day; the trembling anticipation of using 'Amazon Prime Now' proved too strong to resist. The delivery arrived 1-1/2 hours after my finger left the 'Buy Now' button!

Dont worry, my wife got the card and a single red rose!

Back to techy stuff:

Yesterday I:

  • Installed the GitLab* software. Badly.
  • Installed Ruby & support for Ruby gems.
  • Installed the Jekyll static website & blog generator.
  • Installed Glynn, a Ruby gem that copies the site to a remote ftp location.

I say I installed GitLab badly; I failed to setup the program's ability to email activation links to new users. The next step was going to be fix that and progress to setting up the authorisation keys necessary to clone my online git repositories…

I let enthusiasm cloud my judgment.

I, again badly, uninstalled GitLab, and tried every other GUI git program installer.

Ruby, the key to everything I need, wasn't playing along with the new stuff I wanted to install. I'd started with RVM but got rid of that and threw RBENV on instead (remembering the hardship I faced trying to get ayadn_shell to run.)

(time passed…)

To cut a long story short, it's a good thing I'm running the Raspbian Debian Linux installed by something called NOOBS; it has a quick & easy reset to factory settings option on reboot. So I used it.

Wiped, restarted, re-entered new password and computer name; compy386 – to replace my previous laptop, a machine named lappy486. (It's pointless going with a strict chronology at a time like this!)

Misc

I've not blogged for a couple of days, hence this ragtag collection of unconnected thoughts. Incidentally, I've set a target of a minimum of 5 a week. Easy. Really, it is.

Personal

Valentine's Day tomorrow. My attempt at subterfuge failed utterly; my wife spotted the single red rose as I arrived back home. It's on the fireplace now, but at least she doesn't know what I wrote inside the card.

I must add an X on the envelope, it's been 11 years since her first flower, not 10.

Doh!

Tech

I'm finally on the verge of getting the the Raspberry Pi. My first task after connecting it all up, setting identities and updating and installing whatever I think I need: blogging infrastructure.

Of course I'm not going to be doing it the easy way.

  • Install the GitLab* software and clone my repos locally, bring sure to clone the upstream repo hourly,
  • Install Ruby & support for Ruby gems – if it's not already there,
  • Install the Jekyll static website & blog generator,
  • Install Glynn, a Ruby gem that copies the site to a remote ftp location – my web host's server,
  • Setup a cron job to build & upload my local site every couple of hours,
  • Test it all,
  • Turn it all off, make it headless, turn it on again and wait and see what happens next,
  • Realise I've forgotten to set up SSH on my phone, piss about for a bit longer…

Tip of the iceberg.

*I chose Gitlab in preference to GitHub – where most of my stuff still resides – because of the free private repos which will allow me to test Glynn with ftp passwords in plain text. Until I've figured it all out Gitlab is it, but I'm not averse to paying GitHub and taking advantage of its community and brand-awareness.

Decisions…

Tech

Dash app (Android) for App.net has been misbehaving for a while. I finally decided to uninstall it and use Robin (Drift no longer works at all well.) No notifications support means I've had to setup an IFTTT recipe to alert me via Pushover.

It'd be nice to have Dash's more stable timeline position.

I'll probably go back to Dash quickly, muscle memory and all that…

Family

Tuesday will bring the first home visit by the behavioural specialist assigned to my oldest, autistic, daughter. I can't say I'm looking forward to it, I already feel under the microscope as it is.

Personal

Carlo sausage! You know.

NOW!

It's 8:10pm.*

A couple of days ago I installed an application program on this thing in my hand. A thing, if not of beauty, then a 4.6 inches (diagonal) thing of awesomeness.

I opened the application program and searched across the wired and wire-less networks until… I found what I was searching for.

And then, then it got a little complicated.

'Amazon Prime Now' could deliver a thing I want between 10pm and midnight.

To my home.

Today.

A thing I want at a price I can afford, a price which is reasonable given market forces; but yet a price I simply cannot justify before (or after) payday.

It's a thing I've been waiting for all my adult life: on-demand music, movies, TV, cat litter, towels, chocolates, ski accessories, and something we already have; yes, food.

(sighs)

Got it all and yet I must still find something to complain about.

*It was.

Super

Another Super Bowl (50, not ‘L’) over, the serious business of me choosing a team begins.

I was a fan of the San Francisco 49ers when they won it all a couple of times (plus the talk of a ‘threepeat’), followed the rebirth and ascendancy of the Jones’ Dallas Cowboys, and then, then… went off the boil a bit.

I still watched the games with friends, went to see the Scottish Claymores in the NFL Europe league, even participated in a peripheral manner in helping out an amateur youth team. And helped out with a fanzine.

2004 brought a trip to Ohio, to see the Wauseon high school team, the Bowling Green college team, and the Cleveland Browns play. An amazing weekend. And the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

And then bang; I got married, we had children, and my hobby time evaporated somehow.

So, which team?

Should I:

  • Invent a sophisticated analytical technique to determine which now utterly crap team stands the highest likelihood of rising fastest?
  • Work within the confines of my history?
  • Pick the newest (and at the same time one of the oldest) franchise – the Los Angeles Rams?

Maybe I should throw all the team names into a hat. One that Ruby dog hasn’t chomped yet.

Sweaters

I have 3 sweaters I wear at work; rotated in an unconscious pattern, washed to an irregular schedule.

Since I wore them regularly, last winter, all three have shrunk in the wash. In a drawer.

Next week, socks!

Depleted

Not exactly a perfect storm of events, not by any means; nevertheless, we ran out of:

  • Cat litter,
  • Dog food,
  • Dog treats,
  • Cat treats,
  • Carpet urine absorber powder,
  • Dog toys even vaguely resembling their initial, as-purchased, state.

It's Ruby Dog's first birthday on Wednesday; a visit to the pet superstore is perhaps in order.

This, though I might refer to it in the store, is not a shopping list.