Geek Stuff category archive
Droning On 0
Mike Kelly’s buddy has bought a quadcopter and wants to take it out joyriding. Mike is not sanguine. Here’s a bit from his column.
A drone.
My friend, with laughter interrupting his words, went on to point out how much “fun” he was already having, flying his remote-controlled device up to 1,000 feet above ground and hovering over friends’ houses or cruising down various streets. He said he might even drop into someone’s back yard and snap some candid photographs before buzzing off, leaving everyone to wonder what had just taken place.
“Isn’t that illegal?” I asked.
“Not at all,” he said.
And that’s the problem.
Boys and their toys: a combination that unerringly eventually spells s-t-u-p-i-d.
Regular Expressions Make My Brain Hurt 0
If they also make your brain hurt, here’s a good tutorial.
If you are not sure what Regular Expressions (often called “regex”) are, they are a versatile tool for searching text for specific strings. You can search for strings with various permutations and qualifications.
Here’s an example, illustrating a search of the file /usr/doc/HTML/en/common/gpl-license for the any occurrence of a string including two characters followed by the characters “cept” (the -i means “ignore case”). The working directory was /usr/doc/HTML/en/common/, which is where the GNU Public License resides in Slackware –Current.
The text is choppy because the output of the command displays individual lines from the text file, rather than sentences:
$ grep -i "..cept" gpl-license
License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but
special exception, the source code distributed need not include except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt
5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not
prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by
Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and
make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals
FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN
Here’s some more searches I did during the tutorial:
grep "^[A-Z].*\.$" gpl-license <--Searches for all lines starting with capital letters or ending with periods.
egrep "(public license)" gpl-license <--Searches for all lines including the string "public license."
grep "^[A-Z]" gpl-license <--searches for all lines starting with capital letters.
These are very simple regex searches.
Here’s a complex regular expression string that I grabbed from a website. Note that it is just the search string, not prefaced by a search command:
\b[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,}\b
When I understand that, I will consider that I have achieved geekdom.
Yes, this is my idea of fun.
Facebook Frolics, No Place To Hide Dept. 0
The Zuckerborg is watching you, even if you’re not watching it. Also, forget about “Don’t be evil.”
Follow the link and then reconsider some of your computing choices.
Full Geek 0
I consider the coolest thing I did all day was to print a text file from the command line with the lp command.
See man lp for more.
Addendum:
I printed a file with lp over ssh today, Friday.
Use Linux. It just works.
Facebook Frolics 0
No, you cannot frolic in private and all the gobbledygook in the world won’t change that.
iJunker 0
Hear the latest about the Apple car.
Facebook Frolics 0
The resident curmudgeon of my local rag, whose default operating position is that “other people can’t have nice things,” occasionally gets one right.
Attack of the Fembots 0
This should be interesting. A user of the Ashley Madison electronic adultery emporium and canoodling clearing house has filed suit:
The piece goes on to point out that precedent may be on the plaintiff’s side.
Geeking Out 0
Compiled a new kernel from Ubuntu 15.04 for Ubuntu 14.04 running in a virtual machine in VirtualBox. Took three tries before I got it right.
“You’ve Got Mail” 0
Brian Greenspun, owner and publisher of the Las Vegas Sun, thinks that, as regards Hilary Clinton’s email, it’s time to move on. A nugget:
Anyone who has been paying attention knows that this kerfuffle over email is much ado about nothing whatsoever; neither policy nor law was violated. Furthermore, no one who understands how email works, not even the most right-wing geeks I know, thinks that there is any there there.
The answer to Greenspun’s question, though, is simple. Republicans can’t afford to focus on stuff that matters, because the facts lean left. Therefore, they must make stuff up.
Follow the link for the rest of his article.
iJunk 0
“Barney Google, with the Goo-Goo-Googly Brain” 0
Dr. Richard Cytowic argues that smart phones are making us dumb.
“Why” questions, or demands for critical analysis and opinion, leave them flummoxed. Most teachers still believe that critical thinking and self-aware imagination rather than rote memorization should be at the heart of learning. Advocates of more technology offer shiny new toys, but they misunderstand how learning occurs. Or perhaps, cynically, they don’t care.
Much more at the link.