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So, audioguy (one of our sysadminy types) was checking the firewall logs and apparently one of the speedbumps we put in for bots got tripped by an L-3 Communications Holdings address. Not to be confused with Level 3 Communications, L-3 is the sneaky spy corp born of the Lockheed Martin merger. So, yes, we're officially being actively (as opposed to the passive scraping the NSA does to everyone's traffic) electronically surveiled.

Mind you, since they're tripping our firewall, they're not going to be seeing much unless they throttle back how many connections they use at once. They really should make use of the API for bot stuff. It's still firewalled but there are bits in it that can get you much more info at once and save us both the overhead of inefficient scraping.

It should come as no surprise that Runaway might have multiple identities. Among other things, I have a "whistleblower" identity. That personna has been around for awhile, contained within a Virtual Machine. He is rarely turned on, he has very few contacts, doesn't browse randomly around the web. only connects via VPN, uses a very secure browser. Very secure.

Tonight, he did a search online - and was greeted with a popup, suggesting that he check his settings.

Oh-oh. I've obviuosly done something WRONG!!

My secretive self isn't going to share any real details about his mistake(s). Suffice to say that I overlooked something that Edward Snowden addressed in one of his interviews.

If you need to be, or even if you only want to be, secure online, you need to revisit ALL of your security settings now and then. Keep in mind that companies might be bought and sold, that TOS may change, and privacy policies might change. Changing privacy policies contributed to my own little screw up.

I'm not really worried about anyone tying together certain online identities, but I know that I did slip up. Each and every slip up makes it easier for the opposition.

At any rate, it's time to retire that personna. It's probably not a good idea to maintain the same secret personna for more than a few months anyway. Or, even a few weeks, if you're playing high stakes games like Snowden.

Some people object to many of the submissions, which might be labeled "current events". Some of those objections are pretty verbose. Some people don't want to read "the news" when the click on Soylentnews, they want to read "Technology News". Which is fine - that's why I come here. I learn all kinds of things about technology. In fact, some of the tech is over my head, and I fail to learn from it because I lack the proper education.

But, "the news".

First objection to THEIR objections is, "Why do you click on the story if you don't want to read it?" Again and again, we've heard that our computers have an "off" button. If the intartubes get to be to much, you just shut the damned computer off. There are dozens of sites online that spew unfiltered hatred, such as stormfront. You don't click on their links? Well, then, why click on a story here that you don't really want to read? It's pointless to click the link, just to post a "Is this news?" post. I may start moderating those posts as flamebait, or troll. Come on children - grow up.

Second objection. Current events. Real shit, in the real world, that may directly affect any one of us. Stuff is happening, for real. I mean, really, for really real. Lives end, bodies are mangled, buildings fall, city blocks are burnt up, children are scarred for life, mothers bury their babies. Real life happens, and it impinges upon each and every one of us.

Some of our members are travelers. We have members who live in various states and cities that are directly affected by many of these current events. That is, we have members who might be directly impacted by current events. So, you or I feel "safe" from these events - we should feel no concern, anxiety, compassion, or empathy for those members who are living through those events?

Third objection. Elitism. I really don't like elitests. I don't like them in politics, don't like them in the community, and I don't much like them on the interwebs either. What is it that makes one person better than anyone else? At what intellectual level, or financial level, do you become "better" than everyone else? These current events obviously generate a good deal of discussion. Obviously, a lot of members feel the need to sound off, and/or get some intelligent input from other members. (You're not going to find much intelligent discussion on Facebook, FFS)

Elitests, go back to objection 1. If you're to good, or to highly stationed in life to be concerned with current events, just don't click the link. I don't care how elite you are, you really don't have the right to limit when, where, or how the rest of us discuss these current events.

Objection four? That would be the "intelligent discussion". THAT is the PRIMARY reason I come here. People post stuff in response to current events that make me think. Hell, I've got my opinions. I really don't need help forming opinions. But, people actually post things here that make me re-examine my opinions. A lot of people actually post links that support the facts and opinions they post. Soylent is a learning experience, because it consists of mostly intelligent people.

Let the discussions take place. I learn, and maybe I teach. Exchanging information is never a "bad thing".

Stop trying to be censors, alright?

If/when people stop responding to a certain kind of post, then the posters, such as myself, will begin to self-censor. If our submissions generate a lot of discussion, then there is obviously a need for those submissions. Some of us just need to blow off steam. Some of us actually have something to offer. Let it happen, alright?

And, one more time - if you don't think it's "news", just don't click the link. Blow it off. I do that with some stories.

I discovered the SFWA website last year, and it was a treasure trove of useful information. I'd probably have given up trying to sell stories by now were it not for that site.

There's an article by Terry Bison, one of my current favorite SF writers, titled "60 rules for short SF." Another is by a slush reader (someone employed by publishers to read and pass stories they like up to a junior editor) has an article about what you need to get her to pass it to an editor. And a whole lot more, I still haven't read them all.

I discovered that almost all of the advice and rules they pontificated on were things I was already doing. I also discovered how damned hard it was, how nearly impossible to get a good story published, because of the sheer mass of competition. There are only a dozen or two SF magazines, and they get a thousand submissions a month each, and print six each.

That's some damned bad odds.

I also learned from SFWA that if your rejection slip comes from an editor rather than a computer, you came really close to being published. I've had three! I'm not going to stop writing because I love doing it so much, but if I hadn't ran across SFWA I'd have stopped submitting them a long time ago. I am going to cut down on submissions, because I want to finish and publish "Voyage to Earth and Other Stories" by some time next year, and most of the magazines are REALLY slow at getting through their slush piles. I may keep submitting to Asimov's and F&SF since they're quick, but then again if they buy it I'll have to replace it with another story for the book.

Then late last week I was reading an article on SFWA and discovered that Stephen King had written a book about writing, called "On Writing".

King is one of the very best writers of our time, IMO. I don't like his genre so haven't read much of his stuff, but what I did read was brilliant and beautifully written, sucking you into the story and not letting go (and I don't want to be sucked into horror, I hate horror movies and books are even more intense than movies). So I opened a new tab on the browser and checked to see if Lincoln Library had a copy.

It did, even in e-book form so I wouldn't even have to go up there. Then I made another discovery -- my library card expired last month. That was Friday night, so Saturday morning I went to the library. I renewed my card, checked out the hardcover copy of the book, and started reading. I finished it last night; I'd been alternating between reading King's book, SFWA articles, Google News, the Illinois Times, and working on "The Pirate".

Another discovery: this book would be a great read even if I wasn't looking to improve my writing. It gives insights to a reader who isn't a writer on the connection between reader and writer. Kind of why you like to read what you like to read.

The first third of the book is an autobiography of sorts, and it starts with a child's pain (it IS Stephen King, after all). But from the time he reached high school until he gets to the writing part (even though the part before the writing part was about writing, too) it was hilarious. I don't nean it made me grin and maybe chuckle, I mean I was laughing so hard I had to put the book down to wipe the tears off my face. Well, I did have some pretty good pot. Anyway, If you're a reader, do yourself a favor and read it. If you live in Springfield and have a library card and a smartphone you can read it for free without even going to the library. In other cities as well, I checked last night and Belleville residents can access e-books from that library.

So this morning I decided that I wanted a copy of my own sitting on my bookshelf, because this isn't a "read once and throw it away" book. So after two frustrating hours trying to get a hardcover copy I'm flustered and frustrated and annoyed. Damn publishers and bookstores!

First, publishers. The paperback and e-book was released 3 years ago, but the hardcover is out of print. What, did Rority kidnap me last night and take me back to 1970 when books were written on typewriters and printed on presses designed a century earlier? Because now that we have computers and the internet, there should be no such thing as "out of print". Now there's "print on demand", so why should any book ever be out of print?

It's stupid.

Amazon said simply "out of stock" so I tried B&N. Their offline stores are excellent; large, with friendly, helpful staff.

Their website is a total clusterfuck to buy from. They should fire the incompetent webmaster who is enamored of flashy bells and whistles and hire someone who can design a usable interface.

First those stupid mouseover menus that open and cover whet you're trying to read. If you're doing that on your website, STOP IT!! Pissing off a prospective customer is brain-dead stupid. Where do companies find all these educated idiots?

So after navigating their awful interface to actually get to the book, there are three buttons: paperback, $11.95; e-book, $11.95; hardcover, $19.06. So once again there's stupidity, or rather, stupid greed. There is absolutely no reason whatever why an ebook should cost as much as a paperback. No paper to buy, no ink to buy, no pages to bind, nothing to ship, nothing to warehouse. An e-book costs almost NOTHING to produce and deliver once it's written.

The button for the hardcover didn't work. No feedback, it just didn't work, which is how the morons who designed the site set it up to work when an item was out of print.

By now I was annoyed and frustrated. I finally found a used copy there, and went to order it. They wanted to use an old credit card I no longer have, and it was more frustrating trying to get the damned thing to change cards.

I finally managed that, entered all the info, and it told me there was a problem with the card. IT'S A VALID CARD, DAMMIT! So I say "screw it" and call the local store. It's out of print, so they give me the 800 number.

After almost five minutes on hold a rude woman who keeps trying to interrupt me answers. I finally hung up on her, saying "fuck it, maybe one of the used stores in town has a copy."

I'll take it back to the library today. They sell books, maybe they'll have a copy for sale.

But I learned a lot from this book, a whole lot. But what he says you should do I already do, so maybe my stuff... nah.

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So, I went into the bathroom for something. I look into a corner, where a bath towel has been dropped. Peeking out from under the towel, I can see three pairs of sandals, two pairs of sneakers, and a lonely leather flat shoe without a mate. I peer around the corner into the walk-in closet, and there are piles of shoes. Shoes on the shelf, shoes on the floor, shoes peering out from under other items dropped on the floor. The wife comes in, I ask her, "Are you related to Imelda Marcos?" She laughs, "NO! Why?" I ask, "How many shoes do you own? More than a thousand?" "NO! I don't know how many shoes I have."

I just shake my head, close my mouth, and wonder about women.

Guys like me have two or three pairs of shoes. I actually own a pair of slippers. Seldom wear them, but someone bought them for me for Christmas, and they lay around the house collecting dust. There is a pair of sneakers laying somewhere around the house. I have a pair of dress shoes - nice, shiny brown leather shoes, with laces. They are here for weddings, funerals, or whatever. I have one pair of Wolverine half-Wellingtons, with composite toes, steel shank, arch support - protective foot gear that I wear all the time. They are about three years old now - maybe a little more.

Just what is it about shoes, that make people - mostly women - want to collect them?

Do people actually LOOK AT shoes when they are being worn? I never look at mine. I just wear them. I don't look at any other people's shoes. Well - maybe. If I see an attractive female, my eyes may travel over her, admiring her legs and calves, and just maybe, I will notice her shoes.

Most likely, when I notice someone's shoes, I am noticing how silly they look, or how "out of place", or even how ugly they are. A lot of people at work wear huge-looking sneakers, that appear to be three times the size of their foot. Big, puffy things, often made of white canvas or plastic or whatever. Huh? People working in an industrial setting wearing WHITE shoes?

Oh, please, gimme boots. One pair of comfortable boots, that support and protect the feet. They need to breathe, so I want natural materials, like leather. No plastics, thank you very much, except the soles. I want non-skid and heat resistant soles. (Yeah, I bought a new pair of boots years ago, came to work, and stepped on a bit of slag from a welder. POOF! I instantly had a nice round hole melted through the sole, and a blister on the bottom of my foot.)

There's something psychological here. Why DO people collect more shoes than they can ever wear? I think it's gender linked for the most part. Lotsa guys only have one, two, three pairs of foot gear. Few women seem to have less than a couple dozen pair.

I did mention Marcos, earlier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imelda_Marcos

"After she left Malacañang Palace, she was found to have left behind 15 mink coats, 508 gowns, 1,000 handbags, and pairs of shoes.[63] The exact number of her shoes varies with estimates of up to 7,500 pairs.[64] However, Time reported that the final tally was only 1,060."

“Hey, Ed! Haven’t seen you in weeks. How are you? You look worried. The usual?”
        “Hi, John. Yeah, and a shot of the strongest stuff on your shelf. I’ve had a really bad day.”
        “So what’s wrong?”
        “Trouble. And bad news for all of us Martians.”
        “Damn it, Ed, what’s going on?”
        “Earth’s going on. I was in a teleconference with the other dome mayors all morning over it. We’re in trouble. Earth is at war!”
        “What? At war with who? Us?” John exclaimed somewhat ungrammatically.
        “Each other.”
        “What? I thought it was a single government?”
        “It was, sort of, although nations had a certain independence, but had to follow U.N. laws. North America, China, and Australia rebelled. The Arab states may be next. It’s civil war!”
        “So what’s that got to do with us?”
        “Trade, John.”
        “Oh, shit. I’d better call Dewey.” Of course, he could only leave a message, since Mars and Earth were on opposite sides of the sun and the relay station was half an astronomical unit north of it, making radio lag even worse. It would be quite a while before the message reached its destination.
        John left his message and got back to the mayor. “Okay, it affects me, but what’s it got to do with Mars? We can get along without Earth, we’re self-sufficient and have been for fifty years. I have a problem, some other Martians probably have the same or similar problems, but why does Mars have a problem?”
        “Because technically we’re under the auspices of different states in the United Nations. We’re North American, the Alba Patera dome is Chinese. Half of the domes are European, so are affiliated with the U.N.”
        “But we’re all Martians. I’m an immigrant, but most of us were born here and have never left the planet.”
        “Half or more of the Euros here share that opinion, but their governments, like China’s and unlike ours and the Australians, are staffed with Earthians imported from Earth, and are appointed by Earthians rather than being elected by Martians.”
        “How about the Africans and South Americans?”
        “They’re neutral, but nobody from those continents have built domes here, anyway.”
        “It it a hot war yet?”
        “No, the diplomats are still talking but blockades are being erected. Give me another beer and another shot, John. This war crap is making me crazy. I just don’t know what to do.”
        “Well, the only advice I have is to be nice to the European domes’ mayors, maybe try to talk up independence.”
        “Independence?”
        “Why not? We need to get untied from Mamma Earth’s apron strings. Why should we be tied to their laws? They’re millions of kilometers away!”
        “You’re talking about revolution!”
        “Yes, I am. Hopefully peaceful. But like I said, we have to follow a lot of laws and regulations that make perfect sense on Earth, but are either meaningless or downright stupid here. I think it’s time!”
        “John, that’s crazy talk. We aren’t even armed!”
        “Yes, we are. You’re forgetting who does half of all space transport, and that’s Green-Osbourne Transportation Systems. Between the two of us, Destiny and I own a quarter of the company, and her dad and Charles control almost two thirds.
        “We have the fastest, most heavily armed and armored ships in the solar system, and Dewey has worried about war for a long time and has been preparing. War’s really bad for the shipping industry and we’ve always refused to engineer warships for Earth’s governments just because of that. Not many people know it, but our transports are warships, and there aren’t any Earthian government warships in deep space.”
        The Mayor sighed and ordered another beer and shot. “Maybe I should hold a Dome Hall meeting, televised and with the public invited so we can get a feel of the public’s attitudes.”
        “Ed, better slow down on the alcohol. It wouldn’t do to have a drunken mayor when war might be imminent.”
        “You’re right, skip the shot but give me another beer.”
        “I agree about Dome Hall, but don’t forget: GOTS is not about to let anything bad happen to Mars’ colonies.
        “Not only are we better armed, but we’re experienced, thanks to the damned pirates. Dewey started the defense fleet eight years ago because of the pirates and we’ve killed or captured most of them. Earth’s armies haven’t any experience at all with real war; there hasn’t been a shooting war for half a century except the war of shippers and pirates.”
        “Well, I don’t know what to say.”
        “Say you’re about drunk and it isn’t even two in the afternoon and you need to go home and sleep it off.”
        “I’m not going to be able to sleep with this over my head!”
        “Here, take these home with you,” John said, pulling out a bottle of white lightning and a twelve pack of beer. “It wouldn’t do to have the mayor staggering around the dome, especially now. Get drunk at home.”
        “You’re right, of course... about getting drunk. But revolution?”
        “Sleep it off and think about it. It’s time Mars was independent. Look how much we’re paying in taxes to Earth, and we’re getting absolutely nothing from it. We could use that to make Mars a better place.”
        “I’ll think about it.”
        “Look, Ed, stay sober tomorrow, okay?”
        “I’ll have to. See you, John.”
        “Later, Ed.”
        John’s phone made a noise; there was a message from Dewey.

        Aimée Beaulieu hated her job. She didn’t want to be in this damné dome on this God-forsaken planet. But she had been exiled here; “exiled” isn’t exactly accurate, but it’s close.
        She had been head of the EU’s diplomatic corps, and had an idea that could give Europe more commercial power. She sent her diplomats to the other continents’ governments with orders to negotiate her plan. Instead of negotiating, three of them, inexperienced but influential people appointed by Europe’s government, presented the idea as an ultimatum.
        They were fired and she was paying a price as well. Stuck on Mars, Mayor of one of the stupid domes.
        Damned dome! She’d only been here a month and hated it with a passion. Now there was that stupid revolution, civil war, whatever back on Earth and they told her she was no longer allowed to trade with the North American, Australian, or Chinese domes.
        And she loved Knolls beer, Damn it! That was the only good thing about this God-forsaken planet. She wondered what could be done about the situation. Probably nothing, she thought. Except by the idiots in charge on Earth, damn them.
        She didn’t much like the Martians, either, but she understood where they were coming from. A lot of the Martian-born Martians in her dome had been talking about independence from Earth. That would suit her... as long as she was off of this damned rock and back in France first. After all, if the dome revolted under her watch her career would be ruined even worse than it already was. She’d probably be forced to resign.
        She sighed, and went back to the meaningless paperwork Earth demanded.

        Chuck Watson, mayor of Ceres, was angry. What were those idiots on Earth thinking? If he followed their directive Cererians would surely starve! Those who had been born on Ceres had already been talking independence.
        And Charlie, who had been a close friend for years and a trading partner for almost as long, he was prohibited from communicating with.
        He had enough, he decided, and called Charlie. To hell with the Earthians!

        Charlie Onehorse, Mayor of Dome Australia Two, was annoyed. DA2’s main export, high quality steel and rare earth ferromagnetics mostly went to the European domes, and half of all the domes on Mars were European. And the ores were from the British mining colony on one of the asteroids. DA2 was going to have trouble both importing and exporting.
        They could probably have ore shipped from China, but Earthian ores were incredibly expensive, thanks to Earth’s gravity well and environmental regulations; mining anything on Earth was effectively outlawed by regulations that made it a hundred times cheaper to import from Martians and asterites.
        He was thankful that a few of the North American domes were farming domes, since none of Australia’s three domes had farms, and they had to import all of their food. He swore to himself that the situation was intolerable and would have to change.
        Born in DA3, his parents were immigrants from Australia. His paternal grandfather had moved to Australia from somewhere in North America.
        But unlike other countries’ domes, the Australians had great autonomy. They could pass their own laws and regulations, and only had to pay tax to the Earthians. Still, paying those taxes rankled; the money would be better spent improving life on Mars. Things were still rough on the Martian frontier, although nowhere near as bad as it had been before the robot factories were built.
        He wondered where the Europeans were going to get new robots, since the three robot factories were all in North American domes. Parts to repair malfunctioning robots, as well. He grinned at that, and thought to himself “bloody dills! Those bludgers are going to have to work now. Bloody hell, it’ll be Rafferty’s rules for sure; things are already becoming a bit chaotic.”
        He decided to call his old friend Ed Waldo. Ed always knew what to do when things got crazy.
        Ed’s secretary said he had taken the afternoon off.
        “With this war stuff going on?”
        “He said he was going to talk to his friend John, said John always knew what to do when things got crazy.”
        He should drop by Ed and John’s dome and bend the elbow with them, he thought. He liked John, who didn’t charge as much for his grog as anybody else charged for theirs, and his beer was the best. Even better than Victoria Bitter, although that brand’s quality had suffered in the last couple of decades.
        He called Ed’s pocket number, but Ed had it shut off. He called the French dome, which was only twenty kilometers from DA2, but was told that there could be no communication with non-UN domes as well as no trade; the diplomats were all in charge. And there were no diplomats on Mars, only Earth.
        Except, well, John, maybe. John wasn’t even a real Martian. Not yet, anyway. You had to be a resident of any dome for ten years to get voting rights, even though those rights were pretty meaningless in some domes, like the Chinese and UN domes. John had two years to go before he was a citizen.
        John had connections. He was the son in law of the founder of the biggest shipping company in the solar system, and between he and his wife owned a quarter of company stock. He also had a small farm, a brewery, and a bar on Mars, all of which his wife said were hobbies even though they all made him a lot of money and even more friends.
        As he was trying to figure out a plan, a message came from his friend and trading partner Chuck Watson. luckily Ceres and Mars were close enough at the time that the radio lag wasn’t too bad.
        “Charlie, what are we going to do? The damned Earthians are killing us!”
        “Come on, Chuck. don’t over react.”
        “Charlie, I’m not. We’re going to need food, where’s it going to come from? Earth? We’ll starve!”
        “No you won’t. Earthians can go to hell, we Martians and you asterites can stick together. You want to trade, we’ll trade. We need rare earths and you need food, and neither of us needs Earth.”
        Of course, it was a very long conversation because of the lightspeed lag.

        “You look like hell, Ed.”
        “Hung over, and I even had trouble sleeping after getting stumbling drunk. Got any coffee?”
        “Yeah, coffee’s free. The pot’s over there.”
        “Thanks, John. What the hell am I going to do? We don’t need much from the Europeans that the Chinese and Aussies can’t provide, but if this lasts a long time...”
        “Don’t worry, it’s only going to last a few months and when it’s finished, Mars is going to be independent of Earth.”
        “No way. This is a diplomatic and economic war, it could last for years.”
        The mayor from the neighboring dome came in. “Hey, Charlie,” Ed said. “Hell of a mess.”
        John grinned. “Nope. Where’s Europe going to get any rare earth magnets, or any of the other rare earths?”
        Charlie groaned. “John, ever hear of the asteroid belt?”
        John grinned. “Yep. Ever heard of Green-Osbourne?”
        “So what?”
        “So they shouldn’t have pissed off Dewey and Charles. First the Europeans seized company holdings in Europe, but luckily all the engineering is done in North America and most of the assets are in space. Then we lost a man and a landing craft when the Euros fired on it. It was full of my beer, too, damn it. Anyway, that was the last straw.”
        “I thought your ships were almost impervious to weapons?”
        “Only the interplanetary ships. Landers and boosters have to deal with the gravity well and can’t be that heavy.”
        “So what can Dewey do?”
        “Guys, do any of you know anything about war?”
        “I do,” an elderly female voice piped up from the other end of the bar. “I was only twenty. It was horrible.”
        “Oh,” said Ed, “Hello, Mrs. Ferguson. I didn’t see you down there. Where are you going with this, John?”
        “Earth hasn’t had a shooting war for half a century, and their armies have forgotten how to fight. They’re barely armies.
        “Meanwhile, Mars has been at war almost from the beginning, at war with pirates. Green-Osbourne has an army, a space army, and an experienced one.
        “Dewey convinced all the other shippers to refuse interplanetary shipments until the mess on Earth is over. Some he had to threaten, he made it clear that his army would allow no shipping, and people who tried to trade with Earth would be blown out of the sky. Nobody but Green-Osbourne is doing any shipping, and only to select clients, like us. You Aussies can have all the rare earths you can afford, but the Euros get nothing.
        “China and North America are the only Earthly sources of rare earths, so Europe is screwed; mining is effectively impossible there. Their economies will collapse; they’ll come around.
        “Meanwhile, I expect to see riots in the European domes pretty soon. There will be revolution for sure. Lots of Martians are tired of being tied to Mother Earth’s apron strings. We want to be free!”
        “I don’t know, maytie,” Charlie said. “Australians almost have independence already, I don’t see any revolt coming.”
        “John’s right,” Ed replied. “you folks will be last, except maybe the Chinese, you might revolt before them. But when we’re not paying taxes to Earth and you are, and there’s nothing that can happen to you for not paying the tax, you’ll sign the declaration.”
        “Declaration?”
        “We’ll declare our independence. When the time is right. Mars has an army and Earth doesn’t. They can’t boss us Martians around any more!”

        “Sir, we’ve detected a craft coming in from the belt.”
        “Very well, Captain Phillips. Disable it with an EMP and set it in orbit around Mars. It will be their prison until a treaty is signed, we’ll supply them with the necessities of life.”
        “Yes, sir.”

        A month later, there was indeed rioting in the French dome. The elected, normally powerless city council presented a demand for independence from Earth; after all, Earth was powerless against Green-Osbourne, and that company had protected Mars from pirates – and now was protecting Mars from the Earthians.
        The mayor refused to sign the declaration and was arrested, and an election for a new mayor was scheduled.
        News reached the other domes, of course, and almost all of the Martians became rebels.

        Three months later on June thirteenth, by Earth’s calendar (Mars rotates at a different rate and is on a longer orbit), the UN had no choice but to sign a treaty with the Martians, which recognized the domes as sovereign states. Their economy was crumbling, citizens were doing more than grumbling, elected leaders were in danger of no longer being elected.
        Earth no longer had the illusion of a single government.
        Aimée Beaulieu was released from jail and returned to Earth after the treaty was signed, and retired with honors and a huge pension, seen as a patriotic hero by her French countrymen and the French government.
        The only loss of life in the entire “war” was the Greene-Osbourne landing craft captain that the U.N. had shot down.

        John’s bar was full of happy people with nothing on their minds except celebrating Martian independence. John downplayed his involvement.
        “I’m not even a real Martian, Charlie. Not for two more years. The real Martians, guys like you who were born here are the real Martians.”
        A voice came from a few stools down. “Hey John, don’t you serve Frenchmen?”
        “Lewis! Good to see you, old man. Lager?”
        “Of course.”
        “So how do you like your new job?”
        “Oh, man, I hate it. I wish I hadn’t run for office, those damned Euros really fouled everything up. But I’ll manage. Mars will, too, now that we’re not wearing Earth’s yoke.”
        “The second French revolution and nobody got guillotined!”
        “The second American revolution, too. And it was a lot more like now than the French revolution.”
        John grinned. “I wouldn’t know, my wife’s the history buff. Excuse me, Lewis, it looks like there’s a lot of empty glasses! PARTY!! Robot, don’t just stand there, you stupid junkpile, get Lewis a lager.”

One of the cruftier parts of Unix is the obtuse format for setting date and time. However, it is a deficiency which be trivially overcome. Rather than refer to the manual *every time* I set date and time, I wrote this:-

echo
echo 'date and time is believed to be' `date -u`
echo
echo 'specify date and time in UTC in format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS'
echo
echo -n '? '
perl -e '$line=<STDIN>;print "\n";if($line=~/([0-9]{4,})[ \t]*[.\-\/:]?[ \t]*([0-9]{1,2})[ \t]*[.\-\/:]?[ \t]*([0-9]{1,2})[ \t]*[.\-\/:]?[ \t]*([0-9]{1,2})[ \t]*[.\-\/:]?[ \t]*([0-9]{1,2})[ \t]*[.\-\/:]?[ \t]*([0-9]{1,2})/){system(sprintf("date -u %02i%02i%02i%02i%04i.%02i",$2,$3,$4,$5,$1,$6));print "\n"}else{print "date and time format not valid.\n\n";exit 2}'

This performs a modicum of validation before invoking the date command. date provides further validation and, rarely for a Unix utility, provides feedback.

I had to set Unix time quite frequently when evaluating a Raspberry Pi. Due to the extreme and counter-productive cost-cutting of this design, it has no clock. Superficially, it seems to have a source of montonic time. However, /etc/init.d/fake-hwclock, /etc/fake-hwclock.data and, most notably, /etc/cron.hourly/fake-hwclock indicate that attempt to maintain monotonic time has been bodged. On Debian derivatives, it is typical for an hourly system cronjob to run at 17 minutes past each hour - or, in this case, what a system *thinks* is 17 minutes past each hour. This is because Raspberry Pis which incur unexpected loss of power generally gain the impression that the time is about 17 minutes past an hour shortly after booting.

I've mentioned this to a few people and the reaction is usually revulsion. Even writing the *next* hour would be preferable to the current configuration because this would ensure no slippage, no time loops and no locally ambiguous timestamps. But, no.

Actually, I've just edited the script /sbin/fake-hwclock and changed one line from:-

date -u '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S' > $FILE

to:-

TZ=UTC-1 date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S' > $FILE

C'mon. You've gotta be cringing now. I'm abusing a locale setting because it is the laziest method to specify one hour ahead of the current time.

Thankfully, more accurate time can be sourced from a variety of places. NTP [Network Time Protocol] is the favorite. However, this assumes that a network exists (and that a secure system can be presented to a network). Time can be sourced via I2C but you'll have hard-code the I2C device ID and poke around two parts of the privileged memory map because the wiring changed between revisions. And it would be fair to assume that any solution which covers current variations will fail to work with future revisions.

It is also possible to obtain time via GPS via USB. In some regards, this reduces the task to a previously solved problem.

Anyhow, if you want something portable, memorize and mentally juggle:-

MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]

or use a Perl one-liner.

I had the HTML and other electronic versions of Random Scribblings done a couple of months ago. I should have uploaded it without an index to test it on my phone, and I should have examined it more closely on the computer. Some of the code was REALLY bad.

One page, the longest, still wobbles in Android Firefox on a phone, but is fine in the phone's built-in browser. I haven't tested it in Opera or Chrome.

I went to the pawn shop and bought a tablet just to see if it was okay on a tablet. It isn't, at least on a Samsung Galaxy 3 tablet; the text is teensy, more so in Firefox than its native browser but hard to read anyway. I guess I need to google a little; in the computer if the text is too small I can hit Ctrl +. The reverse pinch thing on a touchscreen isn't good enough.

Anyway, one page is very long and has quite a bit of code, and looking for clues of where the errors were by examining the page in a browser, how I debugged back in my programming days, wasn't cutting it. So I ran it through the W3C code validator, and egads! Over 1700 errors and warnings! I settled down a little when I realized all but a half dozen or so were simply the lack of an "alt" tag in images where that tag was not only unnecessary but would get in the blind reader's way; the graphic is a one pixel clear PNG I use for tab stops at the beginning of a paragraph (<img src="tab.png" width="25" height="1" align="left" border="0">).

The first error was from a useful habit I got into back in my programming days: re-using code. Re-inventing the wheel for each wagon you invent is just stupid, so I would simply copy everything above the <body> statement. But the twenty year old doctype was no longer recognized. Some other ancient code wasn't recognized, either.

Well, I'd better get back to work on it... It's here.

(There's an illustrated copy of this at mcgrew.info)

The GNU Image Manipulation Program is an excellent free and open source graphics program that will do almost anything you want to a bitmap image.

Almost. When text is needed in an image, GIMP is indeed gimpy. Rather than use fonts installed in the computer’s operating system, it has its own, very limited set of fonts, and no way to exactly position your text.

The workaround is easy: don’t use GIMP for text.

Today’s word processors can all write PDF files, both closed source commercial word processors and open source tools. My favorite is Open Office Write. GIMP can import them as images, and it does an excellent job of it.

Say you wanted to use the above image (a 35 mm slide I took in 1974 and digitized with a cheap plastic slide viewer, a phone, a rubber band, and adhesive tape) and add “your move” in the upper left hand corner of the image. First, open your word processor and choose the font you want. Any font installed on your computer will work, and there are literally thousands of fonts you can download from the internet and install in a few seconds. One I’ve downloaded is Callistroke. We’ll use that one for the example, and I’ll explain why shortly.

Once the font is chosen, type in the text and highlight it, center it, and make the font size large enough that it stretches from border to border.

Next, export it as PDF and open GIMP. Once GIMP’s stuff has all loaded, you can open the PDF as an image. I simply put it on the last page of this document rather than making a new document. Before you tell GIMP to import it, raise the resolution to 600 DPI or higher to prevent pixelation. You can make it smaller later.

When it opens, select Tools --> Selection Tools --> Rectangle Select, and outline your text.

Now select Image --> Crop to Selection.

The reason I like the outline fonts in most illustrations and graphics is that I can have white letters outlined in black, which will show up clearly in any image. If your text is going to be in a landscape with a blue sky, a non-outline font in a contrasting color is as good or better. Don’t use red letters on a green background as it will be invisible to some people.

There are a couple of steps to get there. First, select Tools --> Color Picker. Place your cursor over the white and click. Then choose Tools --> Selection Tools --> Select By Color. Now click anywhere white and press “Del” and everything white will be transparent.

Now, select Select --> None.

Transparent parts will show up as a two shades of gray checkerboard. as in the illustration below.

Now choose Tools --> Paint Tools --> Bucket Fill to fill in the white part of your text.

Now open the image you want to put the text in. There will be a ruler at the top of the screen showing how many pixels in a given area. In our image, where we want the text is about 750 pixels wide. In the text image, select Image --> Scale Image. The following dialog opens:

Place the cursor in the “Width” field, then type in the number. We’re changing 1024 to 750. Now press “Tab” once and the “Height” field will change. Now just click “scale”.

When it finishes scaling, press Ctrl+A to select the whole image, than Ctrl+C to copy it. Tab to the image you’re adding text to, make sure the “Rectangle Select” tool is chosen (see earlier in this article) and press Ctrl+V to paste the text in.

Now put the cursor on a letter and hold the primary mouse button and move the text where you want it.

Now merge the two images by pressing Ctrl+M then Enter. Here is the final image:

You can add all sorts of fancy things to your text with different images.

To make the above image, I got a picture of fire from Google, Wrote the word “FIRE” in open office, exported as PDF, selected black (lettering), deleted, and pasted it over the fire.

So finally, GIMP has everything I need. Well, maybe except the ability to make moving PNGs and vector graphics.