2021-11-04

Commute

tags: life

Ida ...

For some unbeknownst to me quirk in normality, the train has only one double coach instead of two. That puts me in the neighbourhood of two ladies, chatting away like there is no tomorrow. Plus roughly twice as many folks within the same space. Uneasy. Everyone is wearing a /contemporary/ face mask, even some rather fashionable ones. Such are the times. Many are staring at the small screens of their mobile devices. Oh, how about me? Well, I use a 12 inch subnotebook with a fairly usable keyboard. Mobile, yes, but running shell and emacs text interfaces, rather than finger smear gestures. At the next station, the train is waiting for the oncoming train. Another deviation from normal. Who knows, what the normality or probability levels of today have for us. You just never know.

My last visit at The Midnight has seen some interesting conversation. ~nsilvestri asked the patrons, what projects they are up to these days. And yes, abundant interesting answers. No doubt, other minds are grinding away at their personal itches, hobbies, family demands, environment ... you name it.

46 days until winter solstice my shell claims. That is not bad. I'm freezing easily, but I still do like autumn with its colors, rainy and cool weather. Everyone and everything seems to slow down a little. More time to let ones mind wander and wonder. Some even pick up writing and start on lengthy text. Which reminds me of the article pending on my todo list. Its about some DIY electronics stuff, interesting only to a small group of Forth enthusiasts. But the editor will sure remind me soon, so I better get going.

... y Vuelta

The newsticker has reported the first snow of the season up in the nearby mountains. It is definitely not summer any more. The train on the way back is only a few minutes late, so the probability to be home soon is high enough to feel comfortable. Hot tea and some cinnamon cookies call for a relaxed evening. All of immediate importance is well.

Talking about probabilities this morning: At work I stumbled across a long standing mystery again regarding my tools. In my Windows system I had added WinCompose to create funny utf-8 characters while using a us altgr-intl keyboard layout[a]. However, the Linux guest instance (VMware) did never see them. But this time around I happened to notice the important bit of information. After adding a key translation (xmodmap) into the Linux guest, the Compose key came to life there as well. So I can now enter funny utf-8 characters like ä ß ħ ø æ € ° and the like.

And I found another thingy: __git_ps1 a shell function, which can be embedded into bashs PS1 prompt. So it will show, which branch you are currently on. This might rescue me or you from working on the wrong tree again.

Life is good.

~ew

[a] I learned touch typing on us layout, and being a computer person using lots of [<({})>] and the like, I never bothered to switch to my localized keyboard layout. Of course I need a way to enter umlauts and other funny stuff.

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