Voder-Vocoder

Let me mention a few books I’ve read this year that I want to recommend whole-heartedly.

Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother (9780765319852) from April 2008. Yes, it’s a YA title, but as far as I can tell that just means that protagonist is an adolescent, not that the story is dumbed down. Themes include hacking, cryptography, civil liberty, terrorism, data mining, linux, sex, and civil disobedience. Doctorow’s best book so far.

Neal Stephenson’s Anathem (9780061474095), to be released 2008-09-09. I can’t stress the awesomeness of this book enough. Themes include Platonic forms, directed acyclic graphs, kung fu, Gödel metrics, monasticism, space travel, long-term timekeeping, a cappella music, conscienceless, the chronology protection conjecture, and the true nature of quantum mechanics. Just reading that list might have given way half the story. The book is a masterpiece.

Charles Stross’s Saturn’s Children (9780441015948) from July. Not his best book, as far as plot go, but worth reading if you care about the extinction of humanity, robots, robot sex, and the slowness and uncomfortableness of space travel.

#!/bin/sh
# ~/bin/nocomments
# Remove all '#' commented lines and
# empty lines.  Use stdin and stdout.
# Written 2007 Hal Canary.
# Dedicated to the Public Domain.
grep -v '^\#\|^$' "$@"

People ask what I eat. Here it is:

The Diet:

Breakfast
• 1 quart of iced tea, prepared the night before and allowed to cool to room temperature before adding ice. (I like to start the day hydrated.)
• 1 cup Uncle Sam Cereal, served with non-fat milk, berries (straw-, black-, rasp-, or blue-), and 1 packet of sucralose.

Lunch
• Salad, prepared before work: Spinach or lettuce, cubed smoked turkey lunch-meat, cheese (reduced-fat feta, cheddar, or blue), nuts (pecans, almond slices, sunflower kernels, or peanuts), sometimes berries, and home-made vinaigrette.
• 1/2 cup unsalted peanuts, mixed with half a box of raisins. (I sometimes make this my mid-morning snack, if I have an opportunity.)
• Two reduced-fat low-moisture Mozzarella string cheese sticks.
• 1 quart of iced tea, left over from breakfast.

Mid-afternoon Snack
• 1/2 cup unsalted peanuts, mixed with the other half of the box of raisins.
• Water.

Dinner
• An identical salad, prepared with lunch that morning.
• Water
• 2 cups of low-cal yogurt (if I’m still hungry).

Because the syntax of the /etc/sudoers file is obscure, I’m noting down here exactly what I’ve done to mine:

root	ALL=(ALL) ALL
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL
%admin ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/wodim
%admin ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/apt-get
%admin ALL=NOPASSWD: /sbin/reboot
%admin ALL=NOPASSWD: /sbin/poweroff

This allows a few commonly used commands to be executed without a password.