Category: Activities

Just Answer the Question, Dammit!

I have a bunch of mailing lists that I maintain, and which operate using Mailman software.

I also have a person on a bunch of my lists whose ISP routinely will stop accepting email for several hours a day. The ISP that this ISP gets its email from sends these “your mail hasn’t been delivered for four hours, I’ll keep trying for 5 days” messages which were common back in the days of UUCP email, but pretty stupid now a days. Unfortunately Mailman treats these messages as bounces, even though they’re not. And if Mailman sees enough bounces, you get bounced off the mailing list.

The person in question doesn’t want to change to an ISP that is more reliable, for reasons that are really none of my business. The ISP that sends the warning adamantly refuses to stop sending them, saying they’re important. And I don’t want this person to drop off the lists – she’s a very positive contributor. So thus my dillemma.
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New look for my laptop

Ok, I stole the whole idea (as well as the faux Art Deco logo) from Andy, but I really like how this came out

paulart/DSCN1232 The only problem is that the Apple logo didn’t turn out very well. The one Andy sent me didn’t print all that well so I had to resize it, and that gave it some jaggies. I’d do my own, but I don’t feel like paying $25 for the Anna font for one job. Fortunately or unfortunately, I didn’t get it stuck down too well, so if I need to change it later it probably won’t be hard to do.

BFCs

On the drive home from Ottawa, there is a field that you suddenly come across that has these gigantic crow sculptures in them. The first time you see them there is sort of a “oh crows…OH MY GOD HUGE FUCKING CROWS…oh they’re fake” moment. Yesterday, in spite of the pouring rain and fading light, I got out to take some pictures of them.

I need to sort though these pictures a bit more and maybe do some cleanup in Photoshop, but I was hoping the overcast and rain would make a more eeeerie effect, and it did. I need to come back with a manual focus camera, though, because a couple of times I wanted one crow framed by another, and the camera I was using tended to focus on the near one (or the grass growing under it) instead.