Jay McGavren's Journal

I haven't said this about anything in a long time...

…this is so %$#@ing 133t.

Morticious Thrind’s CLI Wordpress Theme

cat and control-d...

My latest way to make Windows play nice with Linux is to paste in files via the terminal. I do:

$ cat > file.txt
[pasted content]
^D
$

That Control-D ends the file and puts me back at a prompt, with [pasted content] saved safely in file.txt.

Well, I just realized the same thing will work with xargs. I had some noisy terminal output that contained some file names I needed to delete. I copied it out, pasted it to my favorite text editor, played around with it until only file names were left, and then did this:

$ cat | xargs rm
[pasted file names]
^D
$

And voila - the files are gone. I haven’t used this (or xargs) extensively, so try at your own risk, but it seems to work nice so far.

Revenge of the Shmups

I discovered that you can’t judge Aegis Wing fairly if you stop with single-player. In multiplayer you can merge your ships at will, and one player steers while the other acts as gunner (they can fire in any direction). It appears all four players can merge into one blob, though I don’t know what the extras do.

Anyway, this is an excellent way of dealing with the confusion that results when two people are playing a shooter at the same time - just let the best bullet-dodger steer for everyone, and the others can cover his ass. I would argue that this is the only shooter I’ve played where multiplayer works well.

Well, wait, that’s not exactly true. Shidoshi alerted me to WarTech: Senko no Ronde, which recently dropped to $10 at GameStop. It’s a weird hybrid of shooter and fighting game, like Psychic Force but with more bullet dodging. It’s a great concept that I’d like to see done again (but maybe a little better next time). Well worth $10, though.

Nostalgia ambush!

select prop, descr_line from dir_descr where dir_type = 'O' OMA999 Walking dist. to Methodist & Childrens Hosp., Major shopping mall, OMA999 and rests. NE Furniture Mart 1 Mi. Walking trail nrby. NEW999 Train 8 Mi. Bus 7 Mi. Phil. Arpt. 20 Mi. Newark Arpt. 45 Mi. Mall

…sigh…

Q: Who do you want to Jott?

A: Myself. Q: Beep. A: Reminder: Donuts with Dad beginning Thursday at 7:15 AM. Must bring 3 donation items, probably consisting of used books. Transcription: “Reminder donuts with dad beginning Thursday at 7:15 a.m. Mustering three Donasha Adams, probably consisting of abuse books.”

Others:

“Remind: Sort content of metal drawer, in white plastic drawers. Also, help organize former content swimming team at center. [Speech too fast]” “Lenny’s field trip Tuesday, they will return at 12:30 p.m. when they are need to be picked up, bring the supposable snack lunch until drink and Kevin wear his Kindergarten shirt also be sure to cement $6 check along with the permission form.”

All that said, their transcription is getting a lot better; I’m actually pretty impressed.