Mode headfeed
Nov. 15th, 2004 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hirezI work from the middle outwards because I've probably forgotten a whole pile of things - having a cameraphone is a Good Thing, even if it does only record blue-coloured blob with yellow bit hosing down a rectilinear silver blob that's otherwise emitting smoke in an alarming manner. There's nothing like having a good gawp at a small disaster (disaseroid?) to allow one to end up chatting with threatening looking blokes. Still, urban renewal via the means of arson has a long and illustrious history, so the second order social effects are well documented.
The news-swerver (or more properly the reader server. The spool boxes are as yet unaffected) threw a minor fit during the week. First the /var partition filled up - people ran in circles for a bit and then blamed the usenet subsystem, probably because that was the bit they didn't quite understand, so calling it b0rked made it my problem. I deleted some junk and watched the disk fill up again. Then I shut down the reader server, deleted some more junk and watched the disk fill up again. Not the usenet bits then. Reboot, prolonged fsck, disk usage back to normal...
... And a couple of days later the relevant disk went away properly. A curious sort of failure mode to be sure.
The 'problem' with Diablo (the usenet serving s/w in question) is that once you've set it up, it's largely self-managing. So much so, in fact, that I have the devil's own job recalling how to unbugger it when it does have a shit-fit. At least INN breaks so regularly you never manage to forget which bit to whack with a hammer...
I think I want to go live in the desert. It's where they keep aircraft boneyards, nuke-test sites, ghost towns and all the rest of the curious mil-industrial malarkey that seems to have no business cropping up in the greener and pleasanter bits of land. Apart from ROTOR bunkers, sound mirrors, concrete pagodas... Oh, bugger.
Anyway. Deserts have alien spacecraft in 3D. It came from outer space, you know. Coincidentally at about the same time that it was coming from outer space in King's Cross. Bloody aliens - you wait years and then they pitch up in two places on the same night. Were the other lot wearing 3D spectacles like a theatreful of fifties re-enactors? I think we should be told. You've got nothing to be afraid of, John. What else could you do?
There's more (technically) to this Pokia lark than at first meets the eye. Bother.
I always half-wondered what happened to the sort of people I'd see inhabiting the early incarnations of the Axiom - baggy jumpers and combats all round, but with s/h maths-teacher tweed jackets for the blokes and a chiffon scarf for the women (usually. It doesn't do to generalise). We walk in the place and there they are slurping Polish lager while a chap DJs scrapy-ambient from his iBook and enthuses about Richard H. Kirk. Very fine indeed.
The news-swerver (or more properly the reader server. The spool boxes are as yet unaffected) threw a minor fit during the week. First the /var partition filled up - people ran in circles for a bit and then blamed the usenet subsystem, probably because that was the bit they didn't quite understand, so calling it b0rked made it my problem. I deleted some junk and watched the disk fill up again. Then I shut down the reader server, deleted some more junk and watched the disk fill up again. Not the usenet bits then. Reboot, prolonged fsck, disk usage back to normal...
... And a couple of days later the relevant disk went away properly. A curious sort of failure mode to be sure.
The 'problem' with Diablo (the usenet serving s/w in question) is that once you've set it up, it's largely self-managing. So much so, in fact, that I have the devil's own job recalling how to unbugger it when it does have a shit-fit. At least INN breaks so regularly you never manage to forget which bit to whack with a hammer...
I think I want to go live in the desert. It's where they keep aircraft boneyards, nuke-test sites, ghost towns and all the rest of the curious mil-industrial malarkey that seems to have no business cropping up in the greener and pleasanter bits of land. Apart from ROTOR bunkers, sound mirrors, concrete pagodas... Oh, bugger.
Anyway. Deserts have alien spacecraft in 3D. It came from outer space, you know. Coincidentally at about the same time that it was coming from outer space in King's Cross. Bloody aliens - you wait years and then they pitch up in two places on the same night. Were the other lot wearing 3D spectacles like a theatreful of fifties re-enactors? I think we should be told. You've got nothing to be afraid of, John. What else could you do?
There's more (technically) to this Pokia lark than at first meets the eye. Bother.
I always half-wondered what happened to the sort of people I'd see inhabiting the early incarnations of the Axiom - baggy jumpers and combats all round, but with s/h maths-teacher tweed jackets for the blokes and a chiffon scarf for the women (usually. It doesn't do to generalise). We walk in the place and there they are slurping Polish lager while a chap DJs scrapy-ambient from his iBook and enthuses about Richard H. Kirk. Very fine indeed.
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-15 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-15 09:53 pm (UTC)Oh alright, yes, I'd like to spend some time in a desert. I'm not sure how long.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-15 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-15 11:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-15 11:36 pm (UTC)Though that's not entirely fair, given Ted Simon used one. Have you ever read Jupiter's Travels?
no subject
Date: 2004-11-16 10:15 am (UTC)I think their problem is they're carrying too much kit. Cameras phones and various luxury items. I was thinking you'd probably get across Mongolia quicker on horseback than motorbike :)
no subject
Date: 2004-11-19 02:12 pm (UTC)They're hauntingly beautiful but lonely places...and in NM 70 miles of nothing between small bits of somthing, loosely termed towns.
I'm biased but the best deserts are the ones surrounded by towering mountains...
no subject
Date: 2004-11-19 02:58 pm (UTC)Neither have some of the pictures from here: http://www.nv.doe.gov/news&pubs/photos&films/photolib.htm