A real downside to hooking alice up to my monitor, so that I can show a co-worker something on a screen size much more readable than 10.1" @ 1024x600, is remembering to use her keyboard instead of my workstations!

Now of course when you consider that my workstations keyboard is like in front of a 20" @ 1600x1200 monitor, it is rather easy to have a head popping moment!

As boring as gmod can be sometimes, I've got to admit&emdash;dreaming of doing it for real is cool!

So far it's been a mixture of a frustrating, interesting, and hilarious day.  My mother made it a rather good habbit to drag me out of bed several times to be used as free tech support, mostly for simple cases to serve as an excuse for her not having to read what the fuck is on screen on follow the directions. Cool.

After that she managed to extricate sufficient fundulation to go shopping with ahead of having to wait for payday, by pushing for the rob Peter to pay Paul style of of acquisition—just to get her to STFU she is now funded for every penny she can get until two pay cheques into the future, and will get nothing more until then. Other than how much I hate that mentality it doesn't bother me much. I know where her concerns lie.

Now what makes me sigh about business as usual, is how fairly "Nice" my mother was in her build up to get to go shopping. Once the money was spent of course, she shifts into freely attacking someone I care about; rather aggressively if it was from a "Normal" person rather than 'my' mother. Having gotten what my mother wanted, it was weapons free. So yeah, be nice until you get what you want and then let out the knives without restraint - that's .

Really simple git vendor branching

For some types of projects, I like to use an open source tool called Premake to handle the build time stuff. Or should we say, that in my experience using this Lua based tool is more compatible with me than CMake and SCons :-).

Although it has been ages since I've worked on it, I did build up a bit of a framework

VNC over SSH, the idiots guide.

Since I rather like to have options, I've decided to augment my usual SSH /w option of X forwarding to the option of VNC as well.

Objective: connect to my netbooks X session using VNC, tunnelled over SSH.


Implementation:

Since my netbook runs a GNOME centric distribution, I'm using the "Remote Desktop" preferences program on "System -> Preferences". If you're like me and to damn lazy to hunt and peck, this just runs the program 'vino-preferences'. On here it's possible to setup VNC access to your desktop. In essence, it just runs vino when you login. There are loads of good and bad write ups on VNC server setup and 3 or 4 click setup is good enough for me.


My iptables rules pretty much block such things as incoming VNC requests, which is good because I don't want the session exposed across the network interface. Pretty much all there is for accessing my netbook is the SSH port.

Now on another system, it's possible to connect using SSH forwarding. This gains us both encryption for the VNC session and less port exposure; that is good for security.

PuTTY client setup:

1. Load/create your session in PuTTY
2. Go to SSH -> Tunnels
3. Add a port forwards
1. source port: 5900
2. destination: localhost:5900
4. Login to the system using PuTTY.

OpenSSH client setup:

1. ssh -L 5900:localhost:5900 username@host

There are options for both if disabling the shell session and only running the forwarding is preferred (PuTTY: SSH->Don't start a command at all; OpenSSH -> RTFM for -n, -N, and -f). 5900 is the default VNC port running off the server end (my netbook).

Now on the client machine, connecting any VNC client (e.g. TightVNC) to localhost should give the desktop session over at user@host; in this case, my X session on alice!

This is the shortest, sweetest, non-non-sense, you're assumed to know how to RTFM if you want to know the facts, kind of write up that I've seen on doing this. Hmm, maybe it helps that I already know how to use SSH port forwarding with OpenSSH, hehehe.

I finnally figured out how to switch my phone from using swype, to using the standard android keyboard. Which execpt for the lack of configurability, I find much more to my taste than swype on such a small screen.

In my experience, drawing letters works bedt for constructs like "I'd" and "Fuzzy words" than real prose!

This morning, things hit another record low. Or should I say that, my mother trying to convince me that her puppy pissing her bed is a valid reason I can never go 'out of state', is almost as low as when she used her being "Afraid of the dark" as a valid reason that I couldn't get night driving hours towards my license! The only way I'd give up on a vacation, is if my mother was laying in a hospital bed with a coma.

Somehow, I find it rather unlikely that if I'm out of the apartment for like 3 1/2 days, everything will explode. It's just my mother will have to deal without a butler for a longer time than the 11+ hours my work day used to hit, thanks to commuting. Like really - is a plane suddenly going to fall through the roof~!?



\o/ \o/ \o/

Regular visitors on my TeamSpeak server, will be happy that I have finally gotten around to updating the bloody thing ^_^.

It only took  me like two and a half weeks, but it has been rock solid stable for like two months, hehehe.

Nothing like dozing off for the last few hours, to leave you dazed and confused. Oi, so sound completely.

Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?

So far between my family and associations, I really can't help but wonder if Intelligence Quotients have, since I can see people barking up the wrong tree, and churning F.U.D. around in circles. Seriously, it makes me wonder why logic is so hard for most people.


When it comes to my life and my business, there are two authoritative sources right now: GOD and me. Rather than making like a gaggle of gossiping hens playing, people wanting to know should be barking at my tree.


Gossip is a many-to-many form of communication, and like UDP, not reliable enough to bank on. Things get lost in the transmission and there is limited protections against perverse mutations. Much as anyone who has ever survived like grade school, there is a rather big difference between primary sources, secondary sources, and all the way to the other end of the globe. Or maybe I know that because I paid attention in History where as some people probably snored.


Since for anything anyone could possibly be interested in, going by what crap I get routed through to me,  there are three primary sources including GOD, but I'm the only exported asset in their mix. Likewise since I have no interest in repeating myself, if enough people are actually that curious about my affairs (pun intended), a one-to-one medium like an inter-personal-conversation will be quickly overloaded. If enough people are interested, then a one-to-many form of communication is much more appropriate, unless you quite literally want to be told to "Tell it to the hand", or be >/dev/null as we say where I come from!

Being as it is my life and business and not yours, beyond indirectly if at all. That means I am afforded the choice of medium. Or in short, if you want to know something from me, you probably shouldn't be asking someone else, and if you do want it from me, you live with my choice of pipe, or you get kept in the dark. Guess what? A journal is a useful thing—Facebooks, Instant Messages, Phone Calls, Texts, E-Mails, and Personal contact on the subject are all irrelevant when enough people are 'so curious' about things that are none of their business.


Or in very plain English: if anyone gives a damn, read my fucking journal to find out about it. If it isn't on here, well maybe I don't update my journal as frequently when people annoy me during my free time. Except for things expressing my annoyance. The more people route through my parental unit, the more she annoys me, and the much less I will tell anyone beyond the few people I tend to confide things in. Attacking any of my friends for information will just get you >/dev/null'age for the rest of your lifage.




In case people think this journal entry has way to many hyper links, it's because it was targeted for people who are unlikely to understand the analogies that I use, and more than a few of whom are likely to confused to figured them by evaluating the links. For most intents and purposes, this is a way to use many words to explain something everyone should already know about social interactions, if they had only learned it.


Or maybe I'm just an old fashioned person who understands the value of using technology as the forum.

Bad ass zombie slaying

Going mano-a-mano with the patriach in Evil Santa's Lair and winning!

One of the things that I've been working on over the weekend, is expanding my unix profile a bit. Pretty much, I have a universal ~/.sh directory that houses a profile for Bourne style shells, well, modern ones in the sense that functions are supported, which is like everything since 1980 or so.


An extension to this was pulling in my X session setup, since it is already in the same repository. This pretty much resulted in ~/init.sh becoming ~/.sh/rc.xinit. I pretty much use the same setup across machines, so it's not a big problem; but startup programs based on where I am and what I'm doing, rather than normal session management.

So this poses a good question, short of resulting to some kind of "Session Chooser" on login, how to make it smart? Magic kind of smart! It's not hard, so much as it is a bit sticky. The thing that varies the most is the network. Either:

1. I have no network, and thus don't need stuff like instant messaging.
2. I'm at work, and have more use for stuff like monitoring
3. I'm at home, and have more use for stuff like gmail and a broader selection of instant messaging services.
4. I'm using my phone, and need to worry more about data usage than pre-loading applications.

So obviously, the idea is to react based on what network is in use. That is pretty easy by asking nmcli for the name of the network connection being used, once NetworkManager gets the ball running. Case statements ftw :-).

I have found one problem so far, which is that the instant messaging client that I use, has a command line interface to specify which accounts to sign in, but apparently, pidgins -l option doesn't work as advertised by --help—or NAME != the name in accounts.xml. So perhaps I'll just have to use separate clients for at work and not at work, or modify the XML file.

Note draft'ed yesterday in vim, and I'm to tired/busy to bother editing.



Sitting here with a headache, courtesy of the parental unit but at least I get to journal a bit, in what was meant to be a rest time 8=).

The day started out pretty early compared to what I've been dealing with: just waiting for the alarm to go off at 0615, and aiming to be out by 0700 and otw to the eye doctor for my exam. My mother finally made her decision of whether or not to tag along. Several headaches later anyway.  Checking my systems before going out, I was kind of happy to see a message from someone special; although it made me happy, the time difference is :-S.


Got there about 30 minutes before the place even opened, but the whole eye exam went fairly smooth. My last one was in 2009, when I got my glasses. Pretty normal affair but two things that I found interesting: my across the shorter-range vision has gotten a little bit worse but my longer-range vision has gotten better. The kind of better/worse, as like top row only and like the one above the bottom row, respectively. The prescription is slightly stronger and good for two years.

Since I don't expect my glasses to get busted between now and later in the year, for the cost I would rather save more now and get my glasses later; particularly because I know the difference between good vision and not, thanks to doctor Carr. My main interest really is in the exams, which I would rather like to get done yearly. That way I can have a clue of what state they are in, beyond just visual quality. My mother's always gone zillions of years between exams and sets, so I know waiting months can't hurt. I'd also rather wait until I have more savings available, because it's easier to replace a broken set of glasses in a hurry than it is to save well.

Needless to say, the notion that I would rather save for vacation+savings in general than get new glasses IMMEDIATELY, really bothered my mother, never mind that it is my decision and my money.  One the way out, were taking a bit about the idea of me and vacation. That pretty much lead to the progression of getting out in nature with friends -> the parks in Canada -> there's a girl there I very much want to meet. Pretty much lead to an interesting track with more than a few headaches.


\o/ \o/ \o/

I really do find it funny how my family can have rather limited interest in my life's goings on and a frequent disregard for anything important to me, except when one of them decides they are opposed to something from the get go, want to know everything, yet don't actually give a crap because they are already decided without caring. Where as my friends generally are fair, and respectful, not to mention comfortable to communicate with instead of making my head hurt as a matter of S.O.P.


Well guess what? Since I'm gonna be given headaches from family anyway, I ain't saying much of jack shit lol. Keeping annoying people in the dark is a reward for them being annoying :-).

Proof that my mother is obnoxious and rude

Or this post is just so my brother can have something to talk to my mother about 8=).


In getting home, I was as usual intending to hit zombie land with some friends, when my mother decided it was time to go grocery shopping \o/. In informing on eof my friends about it, the discussion hit the ground of my mother pretty much refusing to drive herself—and my friend stating that she would tell her mother, that "If she doesn't want to  drive then she obviously doesn't want to go very bad", when I noted this sentiment to my mother, ma pretty much told us both to go fuck ourselves.


Later talking to the same friend about arguing with my mother, over how my mother is strongly opposed to me ever taking a vacation: my friend noted that my mother sounded very controlling, which made me burst out laughing, even more so because my mother is a self admitted control freak! To which my mother again told my friend "To go fuck himself".




Later tonight some of us were on my TeamSpeak server talking, and ma came in to badger me, so I asked her if she wanted to, and of course my mother again stated it again, and  my friend pointed out "Herself" instead of "Himself", making my mother even more confused lol. So yeah, at least 3 times today my mother has told one of my friends that 8=). Guess London was smart to log off before he could end up listening to my mother >_>.






Am I the only one in my family that knows how NOT to be hostile and rude to people you don't even know?