For some reason, grep, thought that a “HTML document, Non-ISO extended-ASCII text, with very long lines” was a binary, so refused to print contents.
TIL about -a. In grep, -a tells grep to process a binary file as if it were text. This means, if grep incorrectly thinks a file is binary, it’ll still work with it.
That cost me at least 2 hours of scratching my head, wondering why my regex wasn’t working as it should…
Interesting article about how people handle resilience in the New Yorker. Curious to see how research filters into the mainstream. Sounds a little like CBT , though, focusing on how a person perceives and handles thoughts.
Werner also discovered that resilience could change over time. Some resilient children were especially unlucky: they experienced multiple strong stressors at vulnerable points and their resilience evaporated. Resilience, she explained, is like a constant calculation: Which side of the equation weighs more, the resilience or the stressors? The stressors can become so intense that resilience is overwhelmed. Most people, in short, have a breaking point. On the flip side, some people who weren’t resilient when they were little somehow learned the skills of resilience. They were able to overcome adversity later in life and went on to flourish as much as those who’d been resilient the whole way through. This, of course, raises the question of how resilience might be learned.
http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/the-secret-formula-for-resilience
On the nature of sysadmin / ops crunch, exhaustion, and other things like learning programming languages and music.
Work projects have recently started to basically enter a crunch mode, whereby we’ve a tight deadline to complete. I’ve found, some days, I’m ending up being completely exhausted, to my surprise. Mainly I’ve been sitting in a chair and typed all day, working out problems in systems or configuration, nothing too taxing, and certainly not detailed programming, others are working on that.
Still, after 8 hours I find my mind slows, and everything is harder. Getting up and moving around buys a little time, as does caffeine, but I wonder, does anyone else working in IT get this sometimes? Especially when their project seems to require stretching of your mental capacity? Please do provide your thoughts below
Back when I coded for a living, I found when learning new programming language that I’d have to have silence around me, otherwise I couldn’t concentrate. All other times (dealing with support tickets, helping clients, or just actually programming), I need music. Which is a bit weird. I need background noise, else I find it uncomfortable to work.
Worked for a few days in central London last week, which was nice, we got a lot done, and working with one of my colleagues there is great. But whilst working, I noticed not needing music. The street sounds outside were pretty constant low-level, plus the noise of the office upstairs. I’m guessing my normally huge music consumption is related to needing background noise to tune out?
Re, Syria, refugees, crisis, fuckwits, and general shittyness. Minddump. Rant. Sweaing. Unfiltered.
Local facebook group currently discussing why Syrians aren’t forming guerrilla bands and trying to take back their country. Especially all fighting-age men. They seem to think that a country with rapidly being-bombed-to-shit infrastructure can even support guerrilla-style civil-war fightback. They think Assad and his goons would welcome civilians arming up and trying to fight for one of the factions. Isn’t that what started this shitstorm in the first bloody place?
I’m looking on, where at last count 12 fucking countries, including my own, is interfering there, bombing various factions they don’t like, providing weapons to who they do, because apparently no-one learned from what happened with Afghanistan? It’s a religious nightmare over there, and there is no good answers, but berating people running from the absolute mess for not “stopping and fighting” is about as much use as telling a fish it must swim in air.
ARGH. These people are idiots! Do they think weapons grow on trees! Do they think civilians, people like me, would be able to trust one of these factions enough to throw in with them? Do they think, under their “Men should stay and fight!!!!!” rule, that the men maybe want to get their family out of danger?
I don’t know any solution. I don’t know how I can help, bar trying to support those fleeing, so they don’t die of starvation or drowning whilst trying to simply survive. I don’t know what I can do. I’m supposed to just say “Oh, no, the people who sound/look/think a little differently from me, they’re bad, they should go away!”? Fuck that.
… I should probably stay off my local facebook group.