2009-08-18

alexpgp: (Interpreter's life)
2009-08-18 10:23 am

Still learning...

One thing I learned yesterday was that tar files are not for editing. :)

I thought I had stumbled upon a slick way of concatenating a group of text files (which is what HTML files are, essentially) into one large file (which is what tar does, essentially), but was disabused of that notion when I tried to "untar" the result, which threw a bunch of errors at me. The content had somehow, "inexplicably" changed (because I had changed it using a text editor), and that was enough to throw everything off.

All was not lost, however, as I was able to open the edited tar file and manually extract all forty-odd files, one by one, and save them as required. Something of a lesson for me, I guess.

My eyeballs are ready to stage a coup d'etat, so I think I'll quit the house for a few hours and go look at trees, or something.

Cheers...
alexpgp: (St Jerome a)
2009-08-18 01:16 pm

Pardon my acronyms...

I am mildly amused at encountering the following:
производственный отдел по хранению и учету ядерных материалов
(which means, roughly, "nuclear material storage and accountability production department") if only because the given Russian acronym - which does not take account of the one- or two-letter words - carries with it about the same eyebrow-raising qualities as might be derived from reading the acronym for, say, an "all-weather special headquarters insertion team."

Cheers...
alexpgp: (MCC)
2009-08-18 03:40 pm

Data point...

Samarkand "No. 95" green tea, which I bought some time ago at the market in Baikonur, can stand being left to steep for just about ever without turning bitter. This, in contrast to fairly expensive stuff I've bought from the folks at Teavana.

It may be that this lack of bitterness is an indication of poor quality tea, but I can drink it without wincing if it's steeped for a while, which makes it a winner as far as my (potentially taste-challenged) tongue is concerned.

Cheers...