You purchased <3> ticket(s) to:
   * PRIMUS DAR CONSTITUTION HALL (SECTION ORCH , ROW T ) *********************************

Row T is about the 20th row? I’m excited.

If you already have a working bash shell and are just looking to extend bash’s tab completion capabilities, do not pass go, proceed directly to Ian MacDonald’s programable bash completion project. Then read the rest of his advice, it is excellent.

To skip bash completely and try an entirely new shell, give fish or less crazy, zsh a shot.

If you are looking for bash in Windows and Cygwin help, continue reading.

cmd.exe is really terrible.

There are hackish Unix workarounds but none that really come through. Cygwin’s default install leaves us with the Cygwin Bash Shell, which is just bash running in (drumroll please) cmd.exe. It also comes with rxvt.exe which is fast and actually a terminal and instead of just a process running within cmd.exe, but it isn’t easily configurable and has a nasty looking scrollbar.

Mark Edgar’s PuTTYcyg to the rescue!

It’s easy.

Install Cygwin. This should give you a working unix environment, home directory, shell, and Cygwin bash shell. Launch the included Cygwin Bash Shell shortcut to remind yourself how lame it is. It uses cmd.exe! Gross! It should dump you in your home directory.

Download the latest release of Mark Edgar’s patched PuTTY executables. I like to keep all that stuff in ~/bin, which is in c:\home\bin on my laptop. You probably want to add c:\home\bin to your PATH environment variables in windows. Yours might be different. If you aren’t sure, type “set | grep -i home” in the default Cygwin shell to find out.

Launch the putty.exe you just extracted. It looks like the normal Putty GUI but there is a new connection type radio button labeled Cygterm. Select that. Label it whatever you like, I call mine ‘local’ and hit save. Then click the Open button and you are off!

You should probably go back and tweak your shell settings now that you have a working shell in windows. From the top-left corner context menu, select “Change Settings…”

I like to enable logging, use a lighter gray background, turn on the visual-bell and blinking cursor, and modify all of the colors assignments. Once you are happy, go back to the top “Session” menu and save your session over your ‘local’ bookmark.

NB: Not all dos commands work well within PuTTYcyg. Some of the sysinternal tools (pstools for example) that request passwords misbehave and are useless. Keep in mind that the shell is interpreted like a unix shell, so you’ll need to escape backslashes and so on.

Now go back to the cygwin setup and grab bash and bash completion. You will need to add the bash completion files to your startup by sourcing it in a bash dotfile like .bash_profile or .bashrc

if [ "$PS1" ] && [ $bmajor -eq 2 ] && [ $bminor '>' 04 ] \
  && [ -f /etc/bash_completion ];
  then
  # interactive shell
  # Source completion code
  . /etc/bash_completion fi

To jump right to your shell and have a shortcut in your quicklaunch or on your desktop, use Putty’s -launch flag.

I’m always looking for something better, let me know if it’s out there!

ITunes 7 looks nice but behaves very poorly. Any time I play a song from my NAS where about 4/5 of my music is stored would grind it to a halt. Any other attempt to access the NAS while this is happening is extremely slow, if the finder manages to not crash. This is all over 802.11g which iTunes 6 handled with no problem. I tried letting it sit all day to ‘catch up’ for the past week hoping that it’d work gapless playback through the ~65BG of music I have; no luck.

I have removed all plugins, I have disabled anything in the preferences that might cause it. I think it’s gapless playback and a half baked, rushed to market app that only exists to keep everyone’s eyes on Apple as Microsoft announces Zune.

This step by step guide worked for me to revert to iTunes 6.

Stavely site:en.wikipedia.org reveals this from the article on the Mean Center of US Population:

In the first census, 1790, the mean population center was located a little under 8 miles (13 km) west, and slightly north, of Chestertown, Maryland, a few feet from a small branch of the Chesapeake Bay called Stavely Pond. Oddly enough, the spot is on the “Great Oak Mannour” property patented to Josiah Fendall in the mid-1600s, one of Kent County’s oldest and largest land grants. The patent was for 2000 acres (8 km²). Fendall was an early governor of the colony.

Very interesting. The branch of the Stavely family from which I am descended was in PA by then I think but had cousins in Baltimore and I assume the eastern shore near there. Hooray worthless trivia.

I am just curious enough to hear what this 70’s brittish glam-rock band sounds like that has my last name in the band name (found by testing live.com searching for myself without quotes) that it was worth buying it used w/ amazon one-click.

I can only find this blurb from the label re-releaseing them and don’t know if I should expect Bowie, early Floyd, Captain Beefheart, or utter shit.

I also can’t find any mention of why they have Stavely (or Makepeace) in the band name.

Http://www.grantandamanda.com/

(Blatantly stolen flash placeholder. A textpattern blog and wedding news to follow now live. Married life blogging excitement to follow that. Parent-hood blogging to follow that. Midlife crisis blogging to follow that. Pants-shitting retirement home blogging to follow that. Damn kids. Blogs rite?)

Aziz: we might actually start having a democracy Aziz: :) Aziz: read away Aziz: http://ideas.4brad.com/node/433 Grant: ¡viva la republic! Aziz: si senior Aziz: have you heard about that Grant:  Aziz: well, getting an interesting conversation with you this morning is like pulling teeth. do i need to come out there and open a can of Moroccan whoop ass on you? Grant: lol Aziz: BTW, here is a good subject to start on your blog Grant: I know almost nothing about the electoral college other than absolute basics Grant: I’m not bothered that a popular winner could lose in the electoral college, convince me that that is a problem and I’ll worry about tricks to get out from under it Aziz: oh, its how democracy gets put down and basically by paying off 2 reps of each state you can swing the vote Aziz: that was funny Grant: it’s whack-a-mole Grant: i don’t see that corruption any easier stopped than general corruption of the populace – all you are doing is taking the number of people to keep an eye on for corruption from a few hundred to a few hundred thousand Grant: to play devil’s advocate Aziz: indeed but its harder to pay a few hundred of thousands so there is a chance of a qualified win :). also note that i guess its just my opinion that if Wyoming throws a vote with hundred thousand people in the entire state how is that fair to CA, NY, IL….. which are the states that run the economy Aziz: come you fuckin liberal, lets open the discussion on the blog and see what kind of bites we get Aziz: :) Grant: lol it’ll be my assclown friends that dont’ know anything siding with you Grant: but sure I’ll post it Aziz: hey, i don’t mind if they are siding with me

Amanda asked me what this was all about. Aziz likes to argue that the electoral college system should be replaced with a direct popular vote. Thoughts? Btw, I didn’t really call all of you assclowns, I was mis-quoted. I swear.

Well, Parkville, I guess.

Amanda and I will save more in monthly rent by getting out of DC than Ben and I paid per month for our last apartment together in Maryland.

That is a show.

I move in about two weeks. I will miss the Nova + beltway Maryland density of decent Pho and Thai places. 😦

Amanda and I are planning a May '07 wedding. FYI.

(Amanda is planning)

(omg she just asked me if I am going to surprise her w/ a ring. HOW?!?)

We must all be protected from the vicious guitar strings.