koldfront

No Such Thing As A Fish podcast #podcast

A couple of weeks ago the program I use to download podcasts (hpodder) started failing on the No Such Thing As A Fish podcast, going something like this:

Get: 93.478 451: No Such Thing As Deckchair Wrestling                          
 *** 93.478: Message on http://pscrb.fm/rss/p/pdst.fm/e/arttrk.com/p/ABMA5/audioboom.com/posts/8188148.mp3?modified=1667494209&source=rss&stitched=1:
curl: (7) Failed to connect to pscrb.fm port 80 after 340 ms: Couldn't connect to server

After investigating:

$ telnet pscrb.fm http
Trying 52.204.110.145...
Connection failed: Connection refused
Trying 107.20.222.146...
Connection failed: Connection refused
Trying 44.193.51.139...
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused

I looked at what URL I had for the podcast - it was http://audioboom.com/channels/2399216.rss. On a whim I tried changing http to https - and that a) works, and b) the RSS-file contains https-links to the soundfiles, which also work!

Odd that they don't just redirect from http to https, if they insist on it. Anyhow, there you have it.

Emacs and pictures #emacs #rss #nntp

If you - like me - often read Atom/RSS-items with images in Emacs (e.g. via Feedbase or Gwene/Gmane) you have probably been bothered by the default scrolling of large images in Emacs.

This is the hint we need:

(pixel-scroll-precision-mode 1)

It - at least - makes scrolling using the mouse(wheel) much better. Oh, Emacs 29 (not released yet) needed.

I thought I had tried it before, but upon seeing it mentioned again, I tried it again, and it's delightful.

Tony Hawk does a kickflip #skateboard #community #amiga

You wouldn't think that the world's most famous skateboarder doing a kickflip would be a video on Youtube.

But it is, because he broke his thighbone in half and is recovering - the video shows him trying to do a kickflip on his private ramp, approximately where he landed when he broke his leg.

Tony Hawk has been a top skater my entire life (he is 5 years older than me) and I had a dark red Bones Brigade Tony Hawk deck from Powell-Peralta growing up - the small one with the indented nose - I think that was my last skateboard back then. I am not really sure what happened to it, I may have sold it to someone to buy some Amiga-peripheral.

Anyway, the video shows Tony Hawk's fear of trying this famous and (for any good skateboarder) simple trick [no, I never learned it], and him struggling to perform it.

Every time he falls you can see how he tries to take the force of the fall with his arms instead of tumbling and hitting his leg.

I find it moving that he shares how nervous he is and how much of a struggle it is for him to do the trick. That's not the macho culture we're used to. Very touching.

Well done, Mr. Hawk, there is hope for the world still.

Not everything is teary eyed and rosy of course - he keeps trying until he makes it, and then continues to sell skateboards adorned with an x-ray of his broken leg. Commerce still rules in the end.

Shell fashion #commandline #fashion

Dear fashionistas, traditionally the &-sign is at the end of the command.

Kongeloff #baking

This evening I baked my first kongeloff.

I had, and used, unsalted butter, so I added some extra salt. Unfortunately too much salt. It's still edible, but it's close.

40 year anniversary of Moon and Frank Zappa's Valley Girl #music

Boingboing links to a Yahoo! Entertainment (remember Yahoo!?) conversation with Moon Zappa about the hit song Valley Girl that she and her father Frank Zappa created 40 years ago.

It's an interesting interview - she basically wrote a note to her father saying that they should work together, because all he did was work the 4 months of the year he was at home not touring. That was a way for her to spend time with him, the stable parent. He woke her up in the middle of a school night some months later and recorded her talking "Valspeak", trying to make him laugh.

It's kind of hard to imagine that Frank Zappa was the stable parent, but there you go. Moon Zappa seems very down to earth and nice in the interview.

It was kind of fun afterwards to watch the first time she performed the song live - in 2010 at one of her brother Dweezil's "Zappa Plays Zappa" concerts!

I may have named a little robot at work that talks a lot, over XMPP, after her.

Gag me with a spoon!