kadunud

see sõna ei ole "dementne".
see sõna on midagi muud.
aga mis.
ei mäleta.

helgeid hetki

viiksin end sinu tagahoovi,
jätaksin kompostihunnikusse kõduma.
leiaksid mu kevadel,
laotaksid lillepeenrasse.

väga vana lugu

Ma kõnnin tänaval.
Mu ümber illusiooni projektsioonid.
Ja mina nende tsentris.
Nartsiss!

at the library

hot sun through roof-window
straight at the top of my head.
my stateless mind burns
and my light skin.

erasures without consequence

Today I got rid of some files that were not intended for removal. Had been long since last such mistake. Lapse happened immediately after user switch:

user@host ~ $ su
Password:
host user # rm -rf tmp
^C^C^C^C

Deletion of '/root/tmp' was intended but 'su' in place of 'su -' did not switch working directory and deletion of '/home/user/tmp'
began instead. Truly trivial. Surely it has happened many times before.

Since this was my own 'tmp' folder that contains both useless and useful crap I desired to know whether anything worth rescuing was really lost¹. Quite unexpectedly user switching proved very useful for identifying lost files:

user@host ~ $ locate --version
Secure Locate 2.7 - Released January 24, 2003

Good.²

user@host ~ $ su -
host ~ # locate /home/user/tmp > /home/user/rootview.txt
host ~ # exit
user@host ~ $ locate /home/user/tmp > userview.txt
user@host ~ $ diff rootview.txt userview.txt | grep "<" > lost.txt
user@host ~ $ wc -l lost.txt
1490 lost.txt

1490 lost files is quite a big number. But those did not contain my life. Just pieces of others' lives. Pictures of weddings I did not attend and vCards of people who I had no intention of contacting. No problem.

----------------------------------------------------
¹—No, I don't do backups. Someday will. Really.
²—Secure Locate is a replacement for GNU Locate. Secure Locate indexes entire filesystem into database, but to non-privileged users it only shows the files that they currently can see.

hectic lecture schedules

Every school's online system should have an (iCal/.../...) export option for the personal course plan.

Thankfully my uni has (much-loathed) online student information system, which among other things allows one to look at generated course schedule plan. My plan is especially hectic this semester—subjects are scattered around without any apparent patterns. I have printed this out but there are chances that I forget to look at it at right time or lose the track of which week of the semester is currently in progress and definitely just forget to attend some classes.

Finally I resorted to manually entering the course plan into Google Calendar and setting SMS notifications for the irregular classes. That took a lot of time because so few things could be marked 'reoccuring every ...'.

Of course I would be even happier when every page that somehow deals with future events would have an easy option to get those events into my calendar. But for schools/conferences this is such a basic feature that should always be present.

message on a park bench

I have tried to quit smoking for almost 6 years. Longest period I have actually managed to be without cigarettes is about three months. It was a beautiful time—I was afraid that I would die soon and had a nice conscious awareness of all my surroundings. Now I have just resorted to smoking my friends' cigarettes and try to avoid buying a pack myself. If I buy a pack I tend to either finish it very fast or throw it away after having smoked three or four cigarettes in a short timeframe.

Today late evening I left one pack on a park bench. I hope some like-minded bypasser picks these up, lights just one, leaves remaining on the same bench and continues on his/her way through the calm and cool autumn night.