I'm reading a novel about international shipping and although the content is occasionally interesting, its very badly written. I can tell that much of it is based on the author's experiences but its all very clunky. It made me think though that writing about topic that doesn't usually attract a lot of attention could possibly be easier to be successful in. Perhaps I should start a career as an edgy young railway industry writer.I should have drank some coffee today, I don't feel like doing much of anything. November, I suppose.

Oh Hi

Obviously I'm giving this blog another go. I went and got myself lost in the woods for another year approximately. Without sadly ever getting to the woods short of the Hart House farm (this is not going to be the 'what I did on my summer vacation' post, which would be pretty hefty). It certainly been a travelling year, spent time in a dozen states or so. Moved into a new house too one neighbourhood over. I'm also enrolled part time at York in Computer Science (doesn't seem likely that's the program I'll stick too). I'm constantly reading these days, but realizing how little sticks if you don't reflect on it- so partially that's what I'm trying to do here. I'd also like to try to work my through all the backed up anecdotes I have in my head from my most recent trip to New York, New Orleans and the length of the Mississippi river (heck I can even spell it now). We're vaguely considering publishing a zine for the house but it will require I strap myself down and do some real writing. On the plus side this new interface for blogger is quite pleasing and swift. That will hopefully vaguely stimulate some activity. I'm struggling for reflections from today but I did have a couple ideas. I'm still unhappy with the wiki solution I strapped together last year- although it was educational .. its really sloooow to use. I'd likely need to start paying more than I am to host my own server or will have to invest more time in tweaking. It seems unreasonably sluggish (perhaps Apache is configured improperly for how many virtual hosts are enabled). What I noted that does not exist as far as I can tell shallow-ly is a website that'll stick a NDP or mustache or FREEBYRON, etc. on your twitter icon. So I could make that. I'd also like to make a Grease Monkey plugin that'll scrobble my CBC Radio 3 tunes to last.fm. I'd also like to make something similar that would let me tweet and scrobble from the CBC Radio 2 playlists page. Because of how the HTML is structured its certainly possible. I'm going to go to sleep now so that I feel good about being at work tomorrow. Rather than having another Brandy Fizz which is pretty rocking drinky-drink.

Fwd: Fort York Cycle Bridge

Huh?

---
From: Councillor Mammoliti <councillor_mammoliti@toronto.ca>
Date: Mon, May 16, 2011 at 11:23 PM
Subject: Re: Fort York Cycle Bridge
To: Chad M <chadmounteny@gmail.com>

Thank you for your email.

Please note that I am currently experiencing a higher than normal
incoming email volume and am unable to receive your message at this
time. Kindly redirect your email to my staff and it will brought to my
attention:

Melissa Palladino, Executive Assistant: mpallad@toronto.ca

Tamara Macgregor, Executive Assistant: tmacgre@toronto.ca

Lucy Arnone, Constituent Assistant: larnone@toronto.ca

Kind Regards,

Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti
York West, Ward 7

--
We Love Power and Hate Authority.

On the Menu this Week (or why you want to come over for dinner)

My fridge is loaded down heavily now, through three successive shopping trips I've built up my cache of staples to the point where I'll again be in a good position to be coming home and cooking with only minimal vegetable accompaniments needing to be retrieved periodically. I've felt like I've came down with recipe(rocal) reverse-amnesia, in that whatever notion I have I'll short circuit my thought into the loop of I can't cook that again! eventhough the last instance might have been months ago. I'm going to attempt a solution through better documentation, and making sure what I like is implemented at regular frequency.

Anyways this week I want to make some sort of white bean, asparagus, cabbage and potato stew, or possibly a potato curry-like dish like I often get from Empire. Else maybe some sort of potato and bean wrap. I'll have a to check the date on the lonely packet of tempeh in the fridge or get another one- it would be great to have another go at the tempeh-yam wraps that I enjoy so much. This may also require a reacquisition of barbecue sauce- or a ketchup, hot sauce replacement. 

Grilled polenta and vegetables with cheese perhaps wrapped I think is also something I'd like to put into regular rotation. What else I could make with yams isn't coming to my right now besides the red lentil and yam soup I've made a number of times, but I think am a little tired of right now. I had to throw out a large tub of it after it lingered in my freezer too long- it had become a less appealing specimen though because of overcooked mushy yams in the initial compilation.

Filled either with polenta, yams! (a notion), or potatoes and refried beans with julienned carrots and onions, red peppers and lemon. and lots of crushed pepper, all wrapped up- I think would be pretty tasty too.

I've got two packets of tofu that'll be expiring in a couple weeks so- a tofu broccoli spaghetti night will have to be in the future. As well I already grabbed what I need for some tofu coconut curry, which is going to be my dinner tomorrow night. That will be with white onion, snow peas and carrot slices over rice.

I've got some bread to butter this week for breakfast. If I'm really grooving getting back on the steel cut oats would be great too. Also, I want to have more evenings of pirogies and cabbage, so I'll probably hold back half a head for that purpose. 

Another thing, I want get some more salmon pieces to steam and put on wraps- for it to be the best, I'll have to get more mexican salsa.

Virtual Appliance Automatter

I just had a notion, to start a VPS service like Slicehost but with the agenda of the activist hosting services (resist, riseup). Providing cheap utility computing for power-spreading projects.

Thats not exactly what I wanted to write about though; I had the thought at work the other day of creating an automated mess that would constantly make an up to date virtual appliance of ubuntu in different flavours available to the web by torrent.

So script virtualbox to nightly bring up a machine, download and install updates, clear its logs - then export a virtual appliance, zip it, and provide a torrent of it. In this way a fresh machine for experimenting on would always be available.

Also I just remembered to look into getting firegpg working well with bsquirrel mail for easy secure webmail.

Immigration Raids at Dufferin Mall

Dear Sir,

Today I received an email from the community group No One is Illegal. They've asserted that last week Immigration Officers visited Dufferin Grove Mall and stopped people while shopping and in their workplaces demanding that they produce documentation regarding their status in Canada based solely on their skin colour, accent and other racial profiling characteristics. Additionally, those that were that unable to produce documentation were arrested and are being detained without access to legal support.

This is quite outrageous to me that my neighbours and fellow citizens
are being harassed by agents of the federal government based on their appearance and culture. Since I can find nothing on the matter in the media- I'd like to ask if you could provide any information to me about any random checks being done by immigration officials in this riding. And if such raids are occurring what you shall be doing to prevent further race-based harassment of your constituents.

Using ISO repositories in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Server

I found an ISO image on HP's support website that has a collection of
utilities to use with Ubuntu Server on HP Proliant Servers (ie DL360,
380). Rather than mess with FSTAB to keep the ISO permanently mounted
and available, I temporarily mounted the image and copied the
directory structure to my home directory like so;
sudo mkdir /media/isoimage
sudo mount /home/readability/HP_ProLiant_Value_Add_Software-8.32-6-2.iso
/media/isoimage/ -t iso9660 -o loop
cp -r /media/isoimage/ hprepo
sudo umount /media/isoimage
sudo rm -rf /media/isoimage

Now open Ubuntu Software Source list;
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

And add the following lines to the end of the file;
deb file:/home/readability/hprepo/ karmic 8.32/non-free

Note that 'karmic' will correspond to whatever distribution you happen
(and the repository is for!) to be using (ie hardy, gutsy, jaunty) and
the term '8.32/non-free' is the path in within the repository below
the distro folder that leads to the folder for whatever version of it
you're using (ie i386).

Now update the source list;
sudo apt-get update