Ariel Millennium Thornton @arielmt@computerfairi.es

Also, you can control mplayer with or without a terminal window if you do this:

mkdir -p $HOME/.mplayer

mkfifo $HOME/.mplayer/fifo

echo "input=file=/home/you/.mplayer/fifo" >> $HOME/.mplayer/config

Then, while mplayer's running,

Quit mplayer:
echo quit > $HOME/.mplayer/fifo

Pause/resume mplayer:
echo pause > $HOME/.mplayer/fifo

Play next file/stream:
echo pt_step 1 > $HOME/.mplayer/fifo

Play previous file/stream:
echo pt_step -1 > $HOME/.mplayer/fifo

mplayer "http://ice3.somafm.com/spacestation-32-aac" | stdbuf -o L grep "^ICY Info: StreamTitle=" | while read line; do stream=`echo $line | cut -d\' -f2`; len=$((`echo $stream | wc -c`+4)); Xdialog --infobox "$stream" 5 $len 10000; done

A few days ago, I used this shell one-liner to listen to Space Station Soma, and whenever the stream switched to a new tune, pop up a window showing what it was.

Instead of popping up randomly, I wanted to flesh it out so I could call up a pop-up whenever.

I just leveled up my computer fairy skills.

I installed virtualbox on my FreeBSD workstation, & not only did vboxdrv trigger kernel panic (page fault), so did vboxnet. Hello, stuck in reboot loop!

Figuring out `disable-module vboxdrv` in the boot menu was easy enough, but I couldn't boot past the early shell, & I couldn't fix anything bc `mount -o rw /` failed. Turns out, I use ZFS & needed `zfs set readonly=off zroot`.

Then, fix stuff, & success!

Today is the 20th anniversary of Serial Experiments Lain.

"All Gentoo code hosted on github should for the moment be considered compromised."

https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-announce/message/dc23d48d2258e1ed91599a8091167002

Today, I wrote some ruby code, learned a thing or two, and threw all the code away. Sometimes, the joy of programming leaves nothing to show for it.

I just did some quick math for no reason and figured that if Windows 10 was shipped on 3.5" 1.44 MB floppies, like Windows 3.1 was, the box would come with roughly 4,500 disks.

Imagine putting in disk 4,126 & discovering it was defective.

I remember back in about 1988, whenever I needed extra storage, I'd just go to the store & for about $12 pick up a box of floppy disks.

I just had that nostalgic feeling today, about 30 years later, because I need extra storage, & I just went to the store & for about $12 picked up a pair of micro-SD cards.

But the one package I bought today has more total capacity than 2,000 boxes back then.

Head chef Ming the Merciless does not like Flash Gordon Ramsay. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOaNv8Sj0Qw