Keep still, you!

I got my first figlet spam today.  The spammer didn't choose a very legible figlet font.  Still, I thought it was clever. Dan Egnor's unfiglet script—merely a funny joke back then—actually needs to be written for real now. I bet the gmail people already have one.

Previously

PreUpgrade

Start out with the PreUpgrade instructions. There may be some problems with package dependencies, e.g. Livna pine-4.64-7.lvn8

% sudo yum update
. . .
Error: Missing Dependency: libc-client2006 >= 2006k is needed by package pine
Error: Missing Dependency: libc-client.so.2006 is needed by package pine

Curious about the Google App Engine, I started playing with it, which meant writing code in Python.

Unicode support in Python seems to be a tangle of confusing function names, source code file encodings, backslash escapes, the letter "u" before strings, and probably other things. Together, this smells to me like the language originally didn't support Unicode, but wanted to keep backward compatibility with pre-unicode-support scripts.

There are two puppies left, out of the litter of five. Tiny #1 and Tiny #2 died the afternoon and evening that Zhuoma left for Weixi, which was the day after Jumbo had suddenly ballooned to about 3x their size. I think they got out-competed for milk.

A typical automobile accident in China, and typical dispute resolution: people stand around and discuss or argue until some agreement is reached.  Crowds gather, bystanders start piping in...

Shangri-La, Yunnan, China

中国云南迪庆州香格里拉

Hada fetching horse race. The goal is to pick up as many of the hadas (Tibetan silk cloth) as you can as fast as you can without falling off your horse.

Shangri-La, Yunnan, China

中国云南省迪庆州香格里拉

Hada fetching horse race. The goal is to pick up as many of the hadas (Tibetan silk cloth) as you can as fast as you can without falling off your horse.

Shangri-La, Yunnan, China

中国云南省迪庆州香格里拉

It's the coverage of the random but useful stuff like this that I really like about the Economist (and non-mainstream-American media in general)

. . . become law by June 16th, any American who wants to surrender his passport has only a few days to do so before facing an enormous penalty.

That penalty is buried in an innocuous piece of legislation with the veto-proof name, Heroes Earnings Assistance and Relief Tax (HEART) act.

A little girl decked out with stickers, headband and flags waiting for the Olympic torch to pass by

Shangri-La, Yunnan, China

中国云南省迪庆州香格里拉