[r a n d o m h u m a n]

That program I wrote, what a bitch… The rnd (random number generator) command in the language I was using (MetaL, on the Mac. It’s a kind of basic) produces the exact same series of random numbers every time it’s run, and I can’t find a way to change the random seed. Furthermore, I can’t load the random module in python. The cheap and nasty trick I used to solve this problem was to increment rnd by calling it sixty times without doing anything. But it’s hardly an ideal solution.

Finally I figured out how this suid thingummybob works, after looking it over several times in the chmod man page. Duh. Too late though. I needed it the last few weeks so I could give my girlfriend access to shutdown, ipchains and route without giving her my root password, so that she could connect to the internet on my ibook when I was in work. Too late I say, cos she went to England this morning and out of my life forever. Eh…

Also (quite a while ago actually) I wrote a small script (very basic of course) for init to run to sort out my eth0/eth1 problem from a few posts ago because I didn’t have time to look through all the init files to find the proper things to change. It seems to be working fine for the moment.

I’ve been trying to learn python for a while now, but haven’t really found the time for that either.I’m on chapter 8 of “How to think like a computer scientist” by Alan Downey, but I’m not sure I remember the previous 7 chapters. My mom came to me today with a programming problem that an experienced programmer could solve in seconds, and one that is merely an extension of a program that I wrote in basic in macOS. Basically she wants a list of 130 4 digit numbers, not starting with 0, and not repeating from the list I gave her last time. I could do it in basic without any problems, but I’d like to try it in python… Something of a challenge for tomorrow methinks.

I figured out my ethernet problem. Somehow my airport card got mapped (right word?) to eth0. I don’t know why, since I’ve never done anything with it… Anyway, now my airport is on eth0, and my ethernet card is eth1. I’ve deactivated eth0 though. Hopefully they won’t switch next time I reboot.

Over the last few days I’ve been messing around with CD-RW’s and mp3′s. The mp3′s work fine, but when I tried to blank a CD-RW, my computer hung. I’m sure it’s not related, but now my network is busted. The eth0 interface seems to be set up properly on both machines, and the routing tables seem fine, but when I telnet in either direction I get a message saying:

telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: No route to host

It’s somewhat annoying, especially as I don’t have time right now to figure it out.

Looks like I’ll have to recompile the kernel to get the modem to work. I’ve never done it before, and I’m not looking forward to it. I’m sure it’ll work out in the end though.

Since this is a linux.ie blog, I suppose I better highlight my experience of linux (and computers in general).

I don’t remember how I first became curious about the OS, but after I had, and had read a bit about it, I decided to install a basic system on my Mac SE/30, since I wasn’t using it for anything else. Since the machine doesn’t have a CDROM, I had to download all the files off the internet, which was a pain, but I got it to boot without any hassle and then couldn’t do anything with it, never having seen a Unix before, and seldom even a CLI!

Anyway, that got boring after a while, since downloading an entire distribution was unfeasible. So I got a Debian 2 cd set and installed it on my other two macs, an iMac and a 7300. I still wasn’t really able to do much, but I took it one thing at a time and I’m getting there… first was dialup, then the printer, the network… I can do most of the stuff I could do in MacOS, but I have more fun now

Since then I have bought an iBook and Debian 3. Everything is difficult with this computer. On my first boot all I got was a white screen, so I had to boot with the novideo option (later changed to video=ofonly), which meant I couldn’t use Xwindows. It was a good opportunity to get better accquainted with the console, but was frustrating at the same time. I had to install a new kernel to get it working, but I’m still not sure if I have hardware acceleration. Other fun things include trying to get the modem working. I’m connected using ip masquerading right now.

After playing with the template files for a while, I’ve decided to leave it the way it was until I learn more about html and css. It’s clear that this b2++ isn’t for your average blogger (i.e. me), but hey, I’m always up for a challenge…