Ever since I moved in, I’ve had it in mind to put down laminate or wooden flooring in half the lounge, turning it into a diner/dance studio and turning the front part of the lounge into a designated sitting area, wot with it still being carpeted and all. This was based on my Dream House, which I saw before I bought this one. It had exactly the same floor layout as this one, and the owners had done just that, but with lino or something. Anyway, I dithered for a week or two for that house and someone beat me to it. It actually backs onto my place and still stands empty to this day.
My local B&Q is having a re-fit, so every time you go in there the departments are all in new places, and there’s a different bargain bin or sale on. Recently they had “engineered oak” flooring. This is a lot like laminate really, just with a slightly more natural feel to it. It looked perfect and was only 20 quid a pack. I went home and measured the floor. 2.6m x 3.4m… fitted longitudinally that’s 4.8 packs, fitted across then it’s 4.5 packs… so five packs, plus underlay plus edging… all done for less than 200 quid. Nice!
So I stewed on it for a few days to make sure I was sure, and then I thought, why not also install hard flooring at the entrance and down the side of the sitting area…? Thought about that for a few days… yep that would be perfect. Today I thought, I’ll not bother measuring up the new area or I’ll never get round to buying the blooming flooring, so I guessed that 7 packs would do the job and went to B&Q. Where they had sold out.
:-(
They have the same flooring in nicer packets, not on sale, which are 37 quid per pack.
:-(
On the positive side, I spent all that frustration-energy on clearing the purple room and I think we’ll be making a start on painting it at the weekend! Not purple!
(Edited in the light of Barnesy’s helpful comment)
How do you start a finder window in the current directory from Terminal?
In windows: start .
In cygwin: cygstart .
In linux: it varies, but you can hack it together with scripts.
In MacOSX: open .
How do you perform the equivalent in Terminal of double-clicking on a document file?
In windows: start filename
In cygwin: cygstart filename
In linux: God Knows
In MacOSX: open filename
How do you get a command prompt open with the current directory set to the directory you are looking at in the GUI?
In windows: install Command Prompt Here registry hack
In cygwin: install context menu with chere -i. But not sure how to make it use a better terminal than command prompt.
In linux: Depends on the chosen gui and file browser, and the answer in any case is “I don’t know”.
In MacOSX: Try this.
Finally, most MacOSX GUI programs, like bad windows programs, utterly fail to maintain a notion of the ‘current directory’.
Maybe it was el10t who showed me how to Remap the Keyboard in Windows XP in the first place. It’s very useful, and I think everyone should know how to do it.
nEVER ACCIDENTALLY TYPE IN caps AGAIN!
For some reason this reminded me of my Bro.
We were discussing the railways and TC mentioned the branch lines having shut down many years ago. I recall how it used to be that it was cheaper to go by car if there were two of you. Now it’s cheaper to go by car any way you look at it, and if your origin or destination is much more than a 15 minute walk from the station, it’s probably more convenient too. I was about to jokingly say “still, fossil fuels will run out soon, then the train will have its day again” but I realized that lack of fossil fuels won’t stop the car. You’ll have electric cars that are charged or re-fill their fuel cells at services and at home. The energy will ultimately come from the electricity grid, I guess mostly nuclear, some wind and some hydroelectric.
Last weekend was my birthweekend. It was characterized by setting low goals and failing to achieve them. We decided to go to Manchester to Salsology where there was a bachata class. Rachael and I still haven’t got the hang of getting to things on time. Suffice it to say, at 9:00 (the class was scheduled for 9:15) we were on the A64 leaving York, a good 75 minutes’ drive away and low on fuel. After stopping for fuel it was clear we would need to exceed the speed limit and possibly the land speed record to make it for the class so we headed instead to Wetherby where an excellent night was had by both.
Gutted really, Salsology featured a show with my teacher and friend Gareth in it, and Rohan Brown who took the bachata class is a great guy and a good influence on anyone who thinks dancing should be serious.
Saturday night was drinks and stuff with non-salsa people. We got conflicting invites and Rach got the casting vote so we ended up in City screen playing pictionary, which was great fun, and I getting to know some people on a non-dancing level, which was unusual. Rach and her best mate were on different teams, which I always think is a mistake as they are both so competitive. It feels like a Raymond Carver short story when they share the room with a board game. But then, since I’m reading Raymond Carver, and his writing is so powerful, everything feels like a Raymond Carver story right now.
Sunday I had intended to go to Leeds to have a Latin Jam. Was too tired and discouraged.
Monday was my actual birthday. Woke and opened pressies, which included Les Vis and Les Vacances de M. Hulot, two of my fave films, both from Rachael. Hooray!
A fairly hassle-free day in the office was followed by a wander up and down Bistrogate for a nice meal. We ended up at Loch Fyne which was very pleasant, very tasty, though slightly corporate and slightly overpriced. I had king prawns in garlic butter and provencale sauce. I used to peel prawns when I worked as a waiter, but they weren’t king prawns and they weren’t covered in butter. I tucked my napkin in my collar and set about making the biggest mess I have made in public since the fire safety guy let me try a powder extinguisher in the car park. We’d set out really early in order to be back in time to watch Les Vacances but by the time we were back we were too knackered and Rach was stressing about work the next day.
Now I can get spam like this:　
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Seems to be some kind of application form for a skillful household laundry in a university. They promise to send me a real letter though.
I finally put some boxes in the loft last night. I’m going systematically around the junk room and have done probably about 1/3 of it. Of that 1/3 I’ve thrown away, ebayed or freecycled probably about half.
The tricky part is not to play with everything before I sort it. For crying out loud, I have most of the necessary bits for a home-made radio controlled hovercraft! How can you not spend half an hour lining up the bits and judging how best to proceed? I have a 486 single board computer with flat screen monitor! How can I not at least try to get as far as the BIOS screen? I have a 15-way all-purpose infra-red remote transmitter and receiver that I made from a kit in 1993! How can I not try to get it working again and have a quick think about projects around the house that could use it…. hmm, maybe I can put it together with the “universal fit” Electric Window Kit I bought in 1993 that didn’t fit a mini, and automate all the blinds in the house… You get the picture.
Anyway. I’m being about 50% strict and some progress is happening.
If you want your bash script to record a logfile, but also to give you stdout and stderr separately so you can redirect as normal, here’s a starting point:
#!/usr/bin/bash
LOGFILE=teeself.log
# temp file names use computer's nodename and script's own PID
PIPE_OUT=.tmp_out_`uname -n`_$$
PIPE_ERR=.tmp_err_`uname -n`_$$
# create a couple of buffers for stdout and stderr
mkfifo $PIPE_OUT
mkfifo $PIPE_ERR
# tee each stream to the logfile. By keeping them separate we end up with
# stdout and stderr behaving themselves when we call the script.
rm -v $LOGFILE
tee -a $LOGFILE < $PIPE_OUT &
tee -a $LOGFILE <$PIPE_ERR 1>&2 &
# redirect the rest of output to the two streams
exec 1>$PIPE_OUT
exec 2>$PIPE_ERR
# Here's the (trivial test) script
echo stdout
echo stderr 1>&2
# Tidy up.
rm -v $PIPE_OUT $PIPE_ERR