I have written in glowing terms in the past about Sherwood Forest Faire, and I’m still a big fan now, twelve(!) years from my first visit. But I’d like to tell you about (and show you) a specific event within Sherwood that merits more attention: the Hawk Walk.
Category: Autobiographical
While nobody cares about the boring minutiae of my life, perhaps this can serve some purpose as a writing exercise.
Overheard at Sherwood
All I want to do is wear a costume and get drunk in the woods.
— Unknown Patron, Sherwood Forest Faire, outside Three Stags pub, Saturday 13 February 2016 [personal communication]
Terminology
Apparently it’s called Go Texan Day. I’ve been informed that “Redneck Cosplay Day” is not an acceptable alternative.
Retina Scan
More medical imaging. I present for your consideration the insides of my eyeballs. (Click thumbnails to view original full-size images.) The images shown were taken on Jun 25, 2014 using an Optomap wide-field retina scanner, probably the 200Dx model.
So now I have plausible deniability for anything that I’m alleged to have done on a system using retina scans for biometric authentication…
Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS: Recovering from a Broken libc
Note: Reasonably heavy UNIX-geekery ahead. Mostly Linux-specific, somewhat Debian-specific and a little bit Ubuntu-specific. Skip if that isn’t your cup of ichor.
I recently did something incredibly ill-considered while logged in (as root, natch) to my Ubuntu server box at home. In essence, I told the package manager to uninstall libc.
On a scale from good to bad, this is bad.
Now, I could have booted up from a rescue disk and fixed it. I could have re-installed easily enough (using the trick where you just keep your existing partitions and don’t format them — though this would have inevitably led to some fallout as various config files and customizations got clobbered). Heck, I even had a reasonably recent backup at hand. None of these sounded especially fun, mostly because the machine was in a place where it’s a hassle to stick a head on it. I had three things working in my favor: an open root-privileged shell prompt, Internet connectivity and my native cunning.
Read on after the jump for the full tale.
Dem Bones
The foot-bone’s connected to the… whole lot of other stuff, it turns out. I sprained my ankle recently (at fair, whilst doing something completely stupid reasonable and prudent), and got some nifty digital X-rays to make sure nothing was broken. (Nothing was.) Original-resolution lossless PNG also available (1.5MB download). Original DICOM data files on request.
Gazebo, Part II
Our backyard gazebo, finally nearing completion. Since it’s been so long, I started a new post rather than just updating the old one. Most recent picture to the right, and more below the break. Click pictures for a bigger version.
Peptic Salve and Adrenaline
Now You’re Drinking with Portals.™
(Idea: Greg Erskine at Metafilter.)
Plywood: The Silent Killer
I bought a couple of pieces of plywood today. You know the stuff: Useful, made of wood, pretty boring, kinda flat, deadly. Wait, what? Yep. Says so right on it:
Warning: This product may generate wood dust, a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer.
I Shoot an Arrow at It
Last Update: Saturday, 14 May 2011
Our backyard gazebo: a work in progress. Updates here in a more recent post as they happen (and I remember to take pictures). Most recent picture to the right. More after the jump: