Jamie Thingelstad

Ubuntu is requesting a reboot. 208 days uptime. 😢

Why MediaWiki needs Lua:

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  {{#timel: U|{{#time: Y-m-d }} }}
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Reading Python Essential Reference (4th Ed) by Beazley and love Python’s style.

We joined the Tangen family for a trip to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts today to see the opening of the Sports exhibit. The weather was so gorgeous that a spontaneous game of tag broke out in the MIA courtyard afterward.

Winter Trees on Minnehaha Creek.

My friend Garrick has been working on a really cool project called Typerighter. Typerighter is a notepad for your browser. It has almost no interface and just lets you focus on writing. He’s done some really cool things with it, like making it easy to keep notes for each day and make a document public and share it with the world (by default everything is private).

I suggested to Garrick that I really wanted a way to backup my account. I trust he’s got my data backed up well, but it’s even better if I don’t have to trust at all because I have my data. He added a private RSS feed that dumps all of your documents out and I quickly put a script together so I now have nightly, versioned backups of all my information in Typerighter.

Here is the script:

#!/bin/bash
#
# This script is run by cron and downloads all of my material from [typerighter.com](http://typerighter.com/)
# It uses Git to keep track of changes in the archive

URL=[your-username.typerighter.com/archive/m...](https://your-username.typerighter.com/archive/my-secret-token)
GIT=/usr/local/bin/git
CURL=/usr/bin/curl

# Get my documents
$CURL --silent --output typerighter.rss "$URL"

# Detect if there is an existing repo, if not, make one
if [ ! -d .git ]; then
    echo "Creating the git repo…"
    $GIT init
    $GIT add *
fi

$GIT commit --quiet --all --message='Automatic commit of archive.' > /dev/null

This script does want to be in the right directory when you run it. I put this in my crontab for it.

0 2 * * * (cd /home/thingles/autobackups/typerighter; ./backup-typerighter.sh)

Using Git is the part that I really like. Not only do I have a current backup, but I can use standard Git tools to get old versions of documents at any time.

Last night we had the pleasure of seeing Girlyman play at the 7th Street Entry, part of historic First Avenue! My friend Jim noticed they were coming into town and Jim, Tammy and I got tickets right away. We all know about Girlyman from our dear friend Hadar in New York. In November of last year, Hadar and Lois saw Girlyman for the 21st time. Hadar and Lois are huge fans and sent us a two of their albums, Joyful Sign and Everything’s Easy, to listen to a couple of years ago. We all headed to “the Entry” for the Girlyman experience in person!

The Opener

Edie Carey opened for Girlyman, but I wouldn’t really describe it as an opener since Girlyman backed her the entire set. There was a bit of confusion on the start time of the show. We thought it was 7pm doors with the opener coming on sometime after that. Then Jim got an email saying that the show was starting at 6:30pm sharp. A final check of the 7th Street Entry Web site gave a 6pm start. After getting the babysitter set and driving we didn’t get there until a bit after 6:30pm and Edie’s set was half over. She has a great voice and I enjoyed her music. She did a stellar cover of “Falling Slowly” from the Once soundtrack.

Here is Edie on stage with Girlyman backing her.

I’m not exactly sure why she had her setlist duplicated.

Time for a quick set change and then Girlyman to take the stage.

Girlyman

Before Girlyman came on stage I took a moment to admire the variety of plucked string instruments at the ready.

Girlyman started the set with “See To See” and it was clear that a lot of people in the Entry were in love with their music and them and were so happy they were in town. One odd thing for me was a group of about 12 or so people that sat on the floor for the whole show. After years of seeing hardcore bands at the Entry and imagining the gallons of spilled beer over time it was a little out of place, but it seemed to fit the Girlyman vibe just fine. Hadar said it well in his most recent write-up of one of their shows:

The show last night was magical, as most Girlyman shows are. Everything flowed, musically and comically.

Agreed!

We’ve never seen the band but even reading a sampling of Hadar’s blog posts about Girlyman made me kind of feel like we knew them. They were fun to see and it was nice to hear them live. Their music does resonate better live, even though the recordings are impeccable. Tammy nabbed the set list and we even got it autographed!

The “REQUEST” slot was filled by Jim who hollered out for “St. Peter’s Bones”.

Ty

I don’t know that Girlyman has a “frontman” (or “front woman”). After seeing them I would say no but before seeing them I always figured that Ty was that. Ty, Dorris and Nate all sing and have great voices but Ty’s voice hits me the best. She’s got a range that I love and I could listen to her sing about anything and enjoy it. She also strikes me as kind of a goofy chick.

Dorris

Dorris shared the very scary story of her recent diagnosis of leukemia. She didn’t mention the specific diagnosis she received but just 10 years ago it was not very treatable, and now it’s much more manageable. After chemo and a blood transfusion the leukemia is in full remission. The song “Supernova” was written by Nate and Dorris said this song really took her through the procedure and meant zoo much too her. She also went through a very difficult bout with depression that she has just come through.

Nate

Nate was really cool and Tammy got to talk with Nate after the show when they were signing autographs. We shared that we knew Hadar and Lois and we instantly had a connection! Nate seemed like someone that you would have over for dinner and just keep the wine going and the belly laughs would be nonstop. Super fun guy with a great sense of humor. He lead a “battery song” while Ty was swapping out batteries in something and it was a riot. Dorris interjected “harpoon” halfway through the “battery” song and it just got better. One of those things you have to be there for I expect.

JJ

I dont’ have much of any pictures of JJ and she didn’t say anything in the show, so not much to share. 🙂

The show was finished off with an encore performance of “Stayin’ Alive” (related video) by the Bee Gees that was, well, kick ass.

Supernova

Girlyman was selling their newest album, Supernova at the show. I tend to by nearly all my music in digital format with a notable exception for buying music direct from bands at their shows. It’s an important way to support artists and that’s one of the few venues where the artists get a good chunk of the proceeds. Plus, as a huge bonus they all signed the album.

Here they are signing the albums. Girlyman’s Wikipedia page was behind so I added this album to their Discography there.

We even got a photo with the group to send with Love back to Hadar and Lois!

Thank you Hadar & Lois for introducing us all to Girlyman!

Vegetarian cooking class tonight at Kitchen Window! Instructors name is Anna Dvorak. Wonder if she is related to that Dvorak.

Chimay is so good. Drink good beer.

Very good and informative.

I recently decided to prune some websites that I was hosting, mostly ideas that I set up and then never took anywhere. Tammy had also decided to take her blog, Smaller Than a Redwood, down. I could have just deleted them but I wanted to be a good “net.citizen” and not give people “404 Page not found” errors but instead the more appropriate “410 Gone” message. Here is a simple way to do this with nginx.

First, I catch the websites main configuration which I keep in a file for each site in /opt/etc/nginx/sites-available. I try to keep these configurations really simple, just handling the URLs, ports and then doing the application configuration in an include.

# Redirect to non-www hostname
server {
  listen 80;
  listen [::]:80;
  server_name www.roadsignwordplay.com;
  rewrite ^ [roadsignwordplay.com](http://roadsignwordplay.com)$request_uri? permanent;
}

server {
  listen   80;
  listen   [::]:80;
  server_name roadsignwordplay.com;
  include /opt/etc/nginx/site-gone;
}

The include line then pulls in this configuration. I pointed this at a new directory in /srv/www so that any files that the site used to have could be left wherever they are. I also turn on an access log so I can easily see how many people are still going to the website. I still do a try_files because I have a robots.txt to help search engines know to go away. The important part is returning a 410 status and not a 404. The 410 is then handled by the @site-gone rule.

# this config is loaded into sites that are dead
root /srv/www/site-gone/public_html;
access_log /srv/www/site-gone/logs/$host-access.log;
error_log /srv/www/site-gone/logs/error.log ;

location / {
  try_files $uri =410;
}

error_page 410 @site-gone;
location @site-gone {
  rewrite ^(.*)$ /site-gone.html break;
}

Voila! Site is now “gone”. I whipped up a simple HTML page to serve so people would know that the site was no longer available. And with that I wish Smaller Than a Redwood, Road Sign Wordplay, Road Sign Bingo, MediaWiki Cookbook, Sandbox Wiki and thinglesBot farewell!

Huh, vim was originally written for the Amiga? Had no idea.

This is awesome!

@wikiworks MediaWiki devs choose Lua as the future scripting language for templates

Double event day!

8thBridge team and family ice skating this afternoon at The Depot Minneapolis.

CaringBridge annual event tonight.

We’ve had the Vitamix for about three months now and a morning smoothie has become part of our routine now. We use the Vitamix for many other things as well, but most mornings it will be stacked like this.

We’ve learned that for us we like our smoothies to start with a base. Similar to soups starting with a Mirepoix (onions, carrots and celery), we start every smoothie with a banana, apple and carrot. After that, it’s always a good idea to heap a couple of cups of spinach. It’s great to start the day with a healthy helping of greens. The smoothie above was had a number of frozen berries added on top; blackberries, strawberries, blueberries and raspberries. I also love to put a bunch of peaches with other stuff.

I will typically splash a little almond milk in and pour a teaspoon or so of chia seeds. Sometimes a small dollop of honey as well, but avoid the honey to keep it vegan.

A few seconds later and I’ve got a delicious smoothie!

The only thing not great is that the green spinach and colorful berries tend to make a brown smoothie. But it tastes awesome!