Not Pat Garret but Chilly (a bit)

Just so you know, when I looked at the temperature gadget this morning (at what was not by any means an ungodly hour - 8:30 ish I suppose) it was -6C here in Budapest. That's quite cold - though possibly not quite as cold as the bus stop at Luton Airport in November.

Now it's only -1C, but though I may not be huddled over a candle in a creaky attic, struggling to hold the quill in my benumbed fingers in order to scratch out whatever words of wisdom the Muses may confide, it's not all wine and roses...

OK, there is mulled wine available now that winter's here but, allow me to list for you some of the trials and tribulations I must overcome each day.

Firstly, it gets a tad nippy here in the corner (see pic for precise location within Castro Bisztro). Apparently the wall behind me is a plasterboarded window and it can get a bit draughty through the hole they cut to the electrical socket, though whether its a mere sough or howling arctic gale does depend a bit on the wind direction it seems.

The whole temperature situation is exacerbated by the fact that the place is - as is common here - centrally heated, but not in the English sense of "central" to one's own place, central to the whole building... so it turns off when everyone goes to work, i.e. when I get to work.

And yesterday, someone must have mistaken Oil of Cloves for some couture perfume or aftershave and then over-egged the pudding. Ye gods! It made my eyes water. [Actually, now I think about it, it could have been the foralt bor (mulled wine) coming to the boil... whatever it was it was mighty powerful.]

And I have to periodically reset the cable modem and linux system that runs Castro's wifi . Yes Linux may be very attractive and easy to understand if you have the personality of Linoleum with Asperger's but trying to work out what it's up to actually makes me appreciate Windows. Sometimes I just sit in front of the screen, rocking and banging my head on the keyboard - but to be fair Windows has that effect too sometimes.

And my coffee gets too cold too quickly.

But, I keep at IT... it wouldn't be art without a bit of suffering, would it?

Always Scribble, Scribble, Scribble, eh?

Maybe I could ask for another lump of coal?

Why You Don't Want to be a Geek II

Because Geeks do things like this

(I'm not going to spoil it for you just yet...)

I am now fiddling with Chris Barker's PERL program Syllabify.pl, attempting to turn it into Visual Basic for Applications so that I can run it under Word and then do my own Flesch-Kincaid scores etc.. Unfortunately, I don't know PERL, but what the hell, I DO STUFF - shouldn't be too hard... ooh, er... grep... that's Unix stuff, a kind of Stuff I Do Not Do...

Hmmm... I feel a Dr Seuss moment coming on...

*************

There is Stuff I love to do.
Do you like the Stuff I do?
Do you like my Kinds of Stuff?
Is my Stuff your Kind of Stuff?

I do Stuff that's odd and queer.
I do Words like There and Here,
And Hither, Whither, Whence and Hence,
And Protoplasmic, Turbulence.

Words are Stuff I like to do!
Do you do Words the way I do?

Do you make them twist and shout?
Do you turn them inside out?
Do you like to tweak their noses?
Do they feed your odd neuroses?

I do Stuff! It's Stuff I do!
Does doing Stuff appeal to you?
What Kinds of Stuff do you find nice?
Would you like finding rhymes for "nice"?

I would! I do! It's Stuff you see!
And Stuff is very good for me.
Stuff is endless; Stuff is great!
Except the Kinds of Stuff I hate.

Unix Stuff I Do Not Do.
Unix Stuff should be Taboo!
Access too is Stuff I don't!
Sociology I won't!

Apart from that, I'm cool with Stuff:
There never seems to be enough!
And Stuff is everywhere you look –
In every picture, every book!

Stuff is Why, and How, and When
And If perhaps, then maybe Then.
Doing Stuff is What I Do
I'm Mr Stuff - and who are you?

*************

So what Kind of Stuff did I stumble upon in that very first link?

Haiku "discovered" in Linux documentation. My personal favourite was:

I suppose you have
to fiddle around a bit
to get this working
-- Werner Hauser, Linux Laptop HOWTO

It's a wonderful world!

PS According to Microsoft Word, The Flesch Reading Ease score for the above pseudo-Seuss is 100, and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade level is 0.7

Stuff is Easy!