Dropped a release today, earlier than planned. There was a bug that broke the OSX git-annex.dmg, and another problem broke the Homebrew build, and it was worth moving up the release for those.

Now I'm going on a mini vacation to recover from some stuff..

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook.  I couldn’t agree more.  I don’t understand the refusal to deal with reality from the far or alt-right. What will it take?

“Some easily verified FACTS about Donald Trump.

1.Trump has been accused by over 40 women of sexual misconduct. He bragged on record of walking into the dressing rooms of beauty pageants and seeing naked girls. Laughed about it on Howard Stern’s show. Would you be okay with him walking in on your daughters when they were teenagers?

Gotten the sameas remote feature fully working today, except for the small problem that sameas remotes should use different per-remote state from one-another. I know how to approach that, but it's another big change, for another day.

Plenty of stuff going in that has not made the blog. Now I'm working on a sort of major feature. support multiple special remotes with same uuid will fill in a odd little hole in git-annex's capabilities. I think it will turn out to be more useful than it appears. But it's major not so much in what it will allow, but in how many assumptions in the git-annex code base have to be worked around to implement it. After pondering lots of approaches, I have finally gotten stuck in to implementing it, and I've made some good progress today (on the sameas branch). I might finish it tomorrow.

From Target, this brass finish floor lamp evokes 60's modernism, updated for the mid-Anthropocene with a touch plate switch.

The integrated microcontroller consumes a mere 2.2 watts while the lamp is turned off, in order to allow you to turn the lamp on with a stylish flick. With a 5 watt LED bulb (sold separately), the lamp will total a mere 7.2 watts while on, making it extremely energy efficient. While off, the lamp consumes a mere 19 kilowatt-hours per year.

Though the lamp shade at first appears perhaps flimsy, while you are drilling a hole in it to add a physical switch, you will discover metal, though not brass all the way through. Indeed, this lamp should last for generations, should the planet continue to support human life for that long.

As an additional bonus, the small plastic project box that comes free in this lamp will delight any electrical enthusiast. As will the approximately 1 hour conversion process to delete the touch switch phantom load. The 2 cubic foot of syrofoam packaging is less delightful.

Two allen screws attach the pole to the base; one was missing in my lamp. Also, while the base is very heavily weighted, the lamp still rocks a bit when using the aftermarket switch. So I am forced to give it a mere 4 out of 5 stars.

What a summer! We dug up an amazing harvest of spring carrots, then drought came and depressed our other crops by 40%, my gardening enjoyment by 80%, and my impulse to post by 100%.

Meanwhile, various leaks soaking into the trailer's subfloor resulted in a major renovation project. I now have a fancy dual-flush toilet just like Mark saw during his August trip to Amsterdam! (And a very cute shower curtain.)

Speaking of trips, we took a lot of them. We traveled to New York City so I could speak at a writing conference. Then we bought a used Runaway camper and started enjoying overnight jaunts in our metaphorical backyard. There was also a Ren Faire, a Steampunk Spectacle, some flintknapping, weekly Irish dancing, and lots and lots of mushrooms!

That's right, wild fungi, photographed and (occasionally) eaten have been the highlight of my summer despite the drought. And they deserve a post of their own...so more on that sooner than three months from now, I hope.

“Thank You For Being A Friend”

Thank you for being a friend

Traveled down the road and back again

your heart is true you’re a pal and a confidant

I’m not ashamed to say

I hope it always will stay this way

My hat is off, won’t you stand up and take a bow

And if you threw a party

Invited everyone you knew

You would see, the biggest gift would be from me

and the card attached would say,

Thank you for being a friend

Thank you for being a friend

Thank you for being a friend

Thank you for being a friend

Thank you for being a friend

If it’s a car you lack

I’d surely buy you a cadillac

Whatever you need, anytime of the day or night

I’m not ashamed to say

I hope it always will stay this way

My hat is off, won’t you stand up and take a bow

And when we both get older

With walking canes and hair of gray

Have no fear, even though it’s hard to hear

I will stand real close and say,

Thank you for being a friend

(I want to thank you)

Thank you for being a friend

(I want to thank you)

Thank you for being a friend

(I want to thank you)

Thank you for being a friend

(I want to thank you)

Let me tell you bout a friend

(I want to thank you)

Thank you for being a friend

(I want to thank you)

Thank you for being a friend

(I want to thank you)

Thank you for being a friend

And when we die and float away

Into the night, the Milky Way

You’ll hear me call, as we ascend

I’ll see you there, then once again

Thank you for being a …

Ba ba ba bs ba ba…

Thank you for being a friend

(I want to thank you)

Thank you for being a friend

(I want to thank you)

Thank you for being a friend

(I want to thank you)

Thank you for being a friend

People let me tell you about a friend

(I want to thank you)

Thank you for being a friend

(I wanna tell you right now, and tell you again)

Thank you for being a friend

(I wanna thank you, thank you,thank you for being a friend)

Thank you for being a friend

I’M AMAZING BY KEB MO

Brother

I need to talk to you

This might sound strange

And you’ll probably think I’m crazy and I’ve lost my mind

Well, okay

I’m amazing; I’m incredible

I’m a miracle, a dream come true

I’m marvelous; I’m beautiful

Guess what?

So are you

People

It’s becoming clear

I can feel it down in my soul

I know that I am you and you are me

Uh-oh

And I’m grateful for the simple things

That we take for granted every day

Listen

I can walk I can talk, I can use my mind

Okay

I’m amazing; I’m incredible

I’m a miracle, a dream come true

I’m marvelous; I’m beautiful

Guess what?

So are you

That don’t mean we’re better than anyone or anything

It’s a call to come together and accept responsibility

And be amazing, incredible

You’re a miracle, a dream come true

And I’m marvelous; I’m beautiful

Guess what?

So are you

You’ve got a friend in me by Randy Newman

You’ve got a friend in me

You’ve got a friend in me

When the road looks rough ahead

And you’re miles and miles from your nice warm bed

Just remember what your old pal said

You’ve got a friend in me

Yeah, You’ve got a friend in me

2. You’ve got a friend in me

You’ve got a friend in me

You got troubles pal I got ’em too

There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you

We stick together, we see it through

You’ve got a friend in me

You’ve got a friend in me

3. Some other folks might be a little bit smarter than I am

Bigger and stronger too

But none of them

Will ever love you the way I do

It’s me and you

And as the years go by

Our friendship will never die

You’re gonna see it’s our destiny

You’ve got a friend in me

You’ve got a friend in me

You’ve got a friend in me

Songwriters: Randy Newman

A quick standard for when you want to embed an arbitrary program in the version number of your program.

2   increment the data pointer (to point to the next cell to the right).
3   decrement the data pointer (to point to the next cell to the left).
+   increment (increase by one) the byte at the data pointer.
-   decrement (decrease by one) the byte at the data pointer.
.   output the byte at the data pointer.
4   accept one byte of input, storing its value in the byte at the data pointer.
6   if the byte at the data pointer is zero, then instead of moving the instruction pointer forward to the next command, jump it forward to the command after the matching 9 command.
9   if the byte at the data pointer is nonzero, then instead of moving the instruction pointer forward to the next command, jump it back to the command after the matching 6 command. 

This is simply Brainfuck with operators that are legal in (Debian) version numbers kept as-is, and some numbers replacing the rest.

Note that all other operators are ignored as usual. In particular, 1 and 8 are ignored, which make it easy to build version number programs that compare properly with past versions. And in some cases, adding 1 or 8 will be needed to make a particular program be a properly formatted version number.

For example, an infinite loop version number is:

1+69

A nice short hello world is:

1+6-6336+6-8-1-29-6333999222-92-1.1-1-1-8.2.8.2.3333-1.3+1.22222.2.33.3-1.1

Licensing: Yes, there should also be a way to embed a license in a version ... Oh, I mean to say, the Wikipedia excerpt above is CC-BY-SA, and the hello world is based on https://esolangs.org/wiki/Hello_world_program_in_esoteric_languages

Previously: a brainfuck monad

If you want your program to detect when it's being run by chef, here's one way to do that.

sleep 1 while $ENV{PATH} =~ m#chef[^:]+/bin#;

This works because Chef's shell_out adds Gem.bindir to PATH, which is something like /opt/chefdk/embedded/bin.

You may want to delete the "sleep", which will make it run faster.

Would I or anyone ever really do this? Chef Inc's management seems determined to test the question, don't they.