The original code was from 1990, with 1993 edits.

The patch file was from 2005.

I did need to need to fiddle with the code, but now it works

Needed to build a new copy of a tool today. The page with the code:

«Building From Source

Too often today people forget that farms are the source of their food. So, too, Unix newcomers forget that code is the source of their programs. This program is not available as an RPM or in a ports directory. You must deal with the code.

The steps, roughly:

* Untar the tarball.
* Apply the patch.
* Change to the new directory.
* Make the program.

If something goes wrong, you fiddle with the source.»

When I was a kid, it seemed like every other pizza place had boxes that proclaimed "You've tried the rest, now try the best!"

Been a while since I have seen one of those. But now I've seen "You've tried them ali, now try ... Pasquale's"

Not the first time I have seen this: crappy cardboard box by the sidewalk with a "Free" sign that also says "but not the box." Why do people value their cardboard so highly?

The bash manpage says of several files, /dev/tcp/* among them, that it will emulate those if the system does not support them.

What systems have a general /dev/tcp/?

Another day, another huge Fuck You to political groups sending me text messages

I have never given my cellphone number to a politician or political group. Every single one sending these is a spammer and every single one goes on the blocklist.

But Fuck You all the same

About eight to twelve years ago I read an article, probably online but possibly Ina magazine, about resurgence of small scale hydroelectric along streams in the mountainous areas on the northeast United States.

Does anyone else remember that? Or know newer articles about it?

Gotta love a website that when you search for "cr2016" shows you a "cr2032" as a top result.

Sorry, the 3.2 mm thick cell will not fit in this super thin device. I need the 1.6mm thick one.

Tired of seeing X-Face headers and not using a GUI news or mail tool that can view them? I was. So I tracked down the original `compface` source and made it work for me.

It may work for you, too, I haven't tested my changes off of my laptop.

https://codeberg.org/elithebearded/compface

Radioactive wasps, just what we needed

https://apnews.com/article/radioactive-wasp-nest-savannah-river-site-701e791404f73f1ba7720ac3637977d6

Just a quick question, does anyone outside of legacy Usenet readers know what "(plonk)" means? I just saw it used here, but I am sure that person is an old Usenet hand.

"(PLONK)" and similar stylizations is meant as the "sound" someone makes falling into your personal filters (killfile, blocklist, what not)

So these good times roll how, exactly? Do they have wheels? Are they like marbles? Or just some round shape, like a coin?

I've had to reinstall linux on my laptop this week after I finally got my framework 12 (sigh) working again. After reinstall, my home directory remains unchanged.

But X11 is feeling different. I was on late Debian 12, now I'm on Debian 13.2

My window manager came up with a background image, instead of solid blue. xsetroot fixed that.

My .xinputrc file was ignored (possibly debian12 did that too, and I didn't notice)

Weirdest: I'm seeing old-school X11 X cursors on root window now

Five days later I'm up to 99.72%. Maybe another week and it will finish

Ivory Pure.

I've got a torrent download from archive.org that got to 98% in a day, but a week later I'm stuck at 99.44% for more than 24 hours.

"Mac Paint from the 80s" blog post with a collection of old black-and-white computer art. (found via Usenet comp.sys.mac.vintage)

https://blog.decryption.net.au/posts/macpaint.html

Four pieces I liked

I just had an urge to read someone's plan, but lacking finger(1), I used "telnet hostname 79" and entered the name.

Showhow I just have the port and method memorized despite this being somewhat of an obsolete relic of a protocol even back when when I got my first Unix box in 1991.

Source unknown.

Move over Captain, new what a week contender.

Getting the source ppm files left as an exercise for the reader.