y.st./source/pages/en/weblog/2015/10-October/29.xhtml

<?php
/**
 * <https://y.st./>
 * Copyright © 2015 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
 * 
 * This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
 * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 * the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
 * (at your option) any later version.
 * 
 * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
 * GNU General Public License for more details.
 * 
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 * along with this program. Sf not, see <https://www.gnu.org./licenses/>.
**/

$xhtml = array(
	'title' => 'chicken is no more',
	'body' => <<<END
<p>
	Last night, when I went to buy a new stamp, I borrowed one of the bicycles at my old house.
	Three of the bicycles had flat tires, so I took the fourth.
	However, this bicycle proved to be both incredibly slow and literally painful to ride.
	I&apos;m not sure what was wrong with it, but I got off of it and walked it until I came to a business&apos;s chain link fence to lock it to.
	I continued the journey without it, then picked it back up on the way back and walked it back to the house.
</p>
<p>
	This morning, I backed up <a href="/en/domains/newdawn.local.xhtml">newdawn</a>&apos;s data and reinstalled the operating system in Esperanto.
	I honestly could not read most of what the installer was saying, but I have installed Debian enough times that I made it through with little difficulty.
	The one issue I had was that I accidentally set the keyboard mapping to Esperanto making it impossible for me to type the computer&apos;s host name when I got to that part of the installation.
	I figured out what had happened though, and going back to fix it was easy.
	After booting into the new system, I found to my delight that most of the base interface is now written in Esperanto, which should help me learn the language.
	One thing that surprised me though was that the default subdirectories of the home directory, excluding those prefixed with a dot, are also in Esperanto.
	I had thought that at least some of these directory names were hard coded into the system.
	In particular, I thought that the desktop directory was hard coded, but my new <code>~/Labortablo</code> directory works perfectly well.
	Another thing I found is that the command line is now Unicode-compatible, while it wasn&apos;t before.
	Previously, if I tried typing or pasting an accented character, it would come through as a question mark, but now both options work like they should have always.
</p>
<p>
	I located the antenna of a broken Wi-Fi card that used to work on my old Frankenbuild before that machine died on me.
	Using pliers, I fixed the card and tried it out in <a href="/en/domains/chicken.local.xhtml">chicken</a>.
	It worked! My initial plan was to set <code>chicken</code> up in the garage, out of the way, and have it run an ownCloud instance in the <code>//local.</code> and <code>//onion.</code> domain spaces.
	I quickly decided not to use the <code>//local.</code> domain, instead deciding to point the subdomain I originally used for an ownCloud instance at the local $a[IP] address.
	However, chicken&apos;s hard drive was still encrypted because I had converted it into a desktop machine, so it could not run headless.
	I pulled out the installation media, but found that while the Debian system liked the Wi-Fi card just fine and did not require any proprietary firmware to use it, the Debian $a[PowerPC] installer did not recognize it at all.
	I moved the machine downstairs to perform the installation over Ethernet, but the machine gave up the ghost on me.
	At first I thought that it was chocking on the dead hard drive that it still contained, the one that took all of my digital life with it when it gave out.
	But after removing this drive, leaving only the main and still functioning drive, the machine still was not working.
	Most of the time, it would not even boot to the pre-$a[OS], $a[BIOS]-like part of the system.
	But on the few occasions that it would get past that, it would lock up quickly after.
	Eventually, the machine would not send any signals to the monitor at all and I gave up.
	Chicken is no more.
</p>
<p>
	Next, I tried pulling out a machine that I bought soon after arriving in Coos Bay.
	This machine was supposedly a high-quality gaming machine, aside from the fact that it had no hard drive.
	The machine was admittedly old enough to have a floppy drive, but I still took the seller at his word that it was a good machine.
	I hadn&apos;t had a chance to try it out until now though.
	Upon trying to boot the thing, it started emitting a loud, repetitive beep.
	It would not even boot the $a[BIOS] so I could tell it to ignore the lack of a hard drive and boot from $a[USB] instead.
	I tried installing a hard drive in case the machine was refusing to boot the $a[BIOS] because of the missing hard drive for some reason, but I found that the machine was too old to accept semi-modern hard drives.
	It simply lacked the connection pieces needed.
	I think I managed to properly install my oldest hard drive into the machine, but that did not help and all the machine will do is beep and light up.
	I think this machine is broken as well and can only be scrapped for parts.
	I will need to obtain another desktop machine to use as a server.
	A simple motherboard/shell combo would probably do the trick; I probably have all the other parts I need already in my stash.
</p>
<p>
	Before installing the missing package needed to play videos, I found that they were already playable.
	Debian 8.2 must have that software by default while my older installation did not.
</p>
<p>
	My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
</p>
END
);