Being Thankful

Don't want to get too earnest here, but do I have a lot to be grateful for -- don't worry, there won't be a list! Sometimes though, it's good to just register in your mind how good you have it...

Remembrance Of Skills Past

I didn't really have a reason to do this, but I decided to see if I could get that program to run on my SDF shell account. It shouldn't be too hard, SDF is pretty similar to my home computer, but since my program makes use of the Mini-XML library (non-standard,  and not installed on SDF), I would have to find a way to get that installed -- without administrator rights, and without messing with any part of the SDF system outside my account's little turf. This also shouldn't be difficult, I'd done similar things before, but I just didn't remember how.

Here's how: In my home directory I made my own "bin" and "lib" directories, then I downloaded and unpacked the compressed mini-xml files, and then did the configure/make process with my home directory as target. That got the new libraries installed in my "lib" directory.

The next step was to download my program code and make the file. No problem, though I changed my Makefile to know about my lib directory.

The final step -- the one I forgot, and the one that took a while to find with a Google search, since most instructions assume you have root access and are doing things in the standard way -- is to set the library search path to check my personal lib directory as well as the others:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/my/home/directory/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

(I also put that in my profile and exported it.)

Anyway, it worked like a charm, and now I can play with my program anywhere I can access SDF -- like my phone, thanks to ConnectBot and much to Anne's chagrin while we were out last night...

(Hopefully, if I need to remember how to do something like this again in 10 years or so, or if someone else looks for a solution to the same problem, this will come in handy.)

The Book Of Lists

Here's a list of the books I'm reading:

The World Until Yesterday, by Jared Daimond
The Victory Lab, by Sasha Issenberg
Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson
The Year's Best Science Fiction (30th Edition), ed by Gardner Duzois

On deck:

Thirteen, by Richard K. Morgan (a loan, so I better get it finished)
The Game of Thrones series (also  a loan)

Recent Music:

Lately I've been downloading music I hear on Radio Paradise, so recent acquisitions include Younger Brother, Alt-J, VAST, and Beth Orton.

This is in addition to recent efforts to round out my collection: the B-52's, Radiohead, Negativland, Big Star, Midnight Oil, and the Stereo MC's.

Also: Australia's Triple-J brought me to Seth Sentry and Art vs. Science.

Reviews of all the above to follow, eventually. Maybe.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!