... and I checked, I am not legally liable for this because it did not occur within the United States, even if it escalates Twisted to the literal status of a global cult:



His name is Ido Stepniewski, born 30 June 2005

Congratulations, and thank you for honoring the whole Twisted project by decorating your new child thusly.

(I just have to say it: doesn't this remind anyone of a certain comic?)

So I mentioned typing at 140 words per minute in my keyboard post; this is apparently a pretty surprising speed. I am not the fastest typist I know; I do know there are people out there who can do 200+WPM on a good day, with 0 errors.

However, in my case, I'm talking about raw speed, errors and all, and I can't always get 140; if I'm typing at a comfortable pace it's a lot closer to 100. However, I figured I'd hop into gtypist to just provide some documentary evidence that 140(raw) is not such an insane number:



I still practice typing on a regular basis. Mainly I'm focused on reducing my error rate right now.

This is not a tutorial for using wacom devices, just a fix for a particular problem. Maybe somebody else will run with it; the problem is now resolved to my satisfaction. It has only been tested on Ubuntu version 5.04.

I'm not liable for what you do with it. In fact, don't use it. It will harm you.

"Note that if I can get you to 'su and say' something just by asking, you have a very serious security problem on your system and you should look into it."
    - Paul Vixie, in the vixie-cron 3.0.1 installation notes

Any USB Wacom tablet owners out there running Linux? If you are, you're probably frustrated that plugging in any new devices will destabilize your tablet's event device location and make it impossible to reboot without editing your XF86Config-4/xorg.conf upon every boot.

Run this as part of your boot process, before X starts.

#!/usr/bin/python2.4

import os

def findtablet():
    data = file('/proc/bus/input/devices').read().split("\n\n")

    for d in data:
        if 'Wacom' in d:
            lines = d.split("\n")
            for line in lines:
                pdata = line.split('Handlers=')
                if len(pdata) == 2:
                    for pdev in pdata[1].split():
                        if pdev.startswith('event'):
                            return '/dev/input/'+pdev


device = findtablet()
os.symlink(device, '/dev/wacom')
print 'Tablet present at /dev/wacom =>', device

Then, rather than guessing at what event device the gizmo should be every time, just put something like this into your xorg.conf

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier "stylus" # Wacom Graphics Tablet
        Driver "wacom"
        Option "Type" "stylus"
        Option "Device" "/dev/wacom"
EndSection

These were taken mainly to demonstrate that I have a halfway usable macro lens on my "cheap" camera (compared to Ying's, anyway).



but I think they look okay.

I don't get out much.

Still, there are some strange things in my neighborhood. Simply on my way to the mall there are a surprising number of oddities. For example, there is a building next to the Museum of Science that I like to think of as the Dungeon of Science.



From the amount of ivy on that building, I have to guess that "Unauthorized Persons KEEP OUT" sign was placed there a good 6 decades ago; as they were constructing the Museum of Good Science, they had to have a place to trap all the Bad Science so that it wouldn't get out. There could be more mundane explanations, of course; it could just be where they keep the vampire.

If we continue along to the other side of the river, we come to this:



In the game Eternal Darkness, there is a point at which the villain must construct what he terms the "Pillar of Flesh", a grisly monument made of concrete and still-living people, designed to focus the evil energies required to bring his dark god forth to this world. You know, to raze it down to its component atoms and re-make it in its own image, etc. So, imagine my surprise when I discovered I live right next to a miniature; let's call it a "Pillar of Souls", since clearly whole bodies aren't trapped in there. You can see that most of the folks involved are smiling for the camera:



but there are a few who let their true feelings slip through:



Seriously, there is no inscription anywhere on this monument, nor any plaque in the area to explain what it is supposed to represent. Why would you make a sculpture of a group of people's heads smashed together in various states of dismay and/or amusement and then put that on a footpath near a mall? Why, I ask you? I note that it is pointed towards the sky - perhaps some kind of spectral battery for a weapon that shoots ghosts at the sun?

I am not an expert but I do not think that shooting ghosts at the sun would do anything, and if it did, it would not be a thing that is good for anyone.