Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

Last week my mom and I determined that I should find something other than Skype to use for us to talk because we're both finding it clunky and unsatisyfing lately. The last few weeks my video hasn't shown up for them (which I consider a blessing but which my mom always complains and sulks about) and there are regularly problems on their end which I think are more about their resistance to learning anything about how to use their iPad than they are about Skype itself, but Skype probably isn't helping.

I promptly forgot about this, asked some people on the internet a couple days ago and got unsuitable answers (no I will not be using Facebook Messenger or Signal for this!), forgot about it again until this afternoon, and of course D mentioned an easy, familiar and obvious (or should have been obvious) solution to me.

But then my camera was still misbehaving. And even trying the built-in webcam on my laptop rather than the one plugged into my external monitor/USB dock made no difference.

D got involved and found out several mysterious things, and ended up concluding that external webcam was not only hecked up, which he'd suspected for a while, but was also so cursed that once it had been plugged in it didn't even allow the built-in webcam to work.

This is bizarre but consistent with work buying me the most random IT peripherals -- to be fair they don't need to care about what the webcam is like on Linux because I use Windows for work. But since I just replaced a keyboard that was losing its space bar functionality, and a new mouse is being ordered at the same time as the webcam because the scroll wheel is intermittently failing, I am seeing a pattern here.

After all this work and fretting, of course I didn't hear from my parents at all. I could have spent my evening doing something fun!

But it is nice to feel like my computer has a chance of being less haunted soon.

Here's a fun game I got from jesse_the_k

1. Comment on this entry saying Rhubarb!, and I'll pick three things from your profile interests or tags.
2. Write about the words/phrases I picked in your journal and link back here. Spread the love

The three I got were

• linux
• narrativium
• extelligence

This shows that I haven't looked much at or changed my list of interests in quite some time, probably a decade or so? The three I've been asked to talk about are all things I was keen on in my twenties.

Linux will probably have been on this list since I first started having a LiveJournal back in 2002. That was around the time I started using it, my boyfriend having made it sound so appealing. It was Slackware in those days, mostly maintained by him too but I did learn a lot (including how many problems could be fixed by googling error messages and copying stuff I didn't always understand into the terminal.

I went to precisely one local LUG (Linux user group) meeting in college, where I met someone from a nearby town who was amazed to find a girl who used Linux. I still tend to get along pretty well with Linux people (technically currybeer is part of manlug, Manchester's Linux users group) but I am not really one. Partly I drifted away from knowing even as much as I did (which was never a ton) when Linux got a little easier to use (I switched to Ubuntu pretty early on) and when I started living with Andrew who finds this all a lot easier than I do so it seems most efficient to outsource that.

I'm back to using Linux again after years of Windows for uni, and it's nice to see the inbuilt accessibility options like magnification and screenreading have improved a lot since the last time I bothered to look, some years ago.

I wouldn't put Linux on a list of things I'm interested in today, to some extent because it gives an inaccurate impression of what I actually know or talk about, but partly because it also attracts "fossbros" -- FOSS as in an acronym for free and open-source software, a thing not limited to Linux but overlapping with it, and bro as in the most pejorative sense of the word. To the point where several people I know in Mastodon see someone mentioning Linux in their profile as a reason not to accept a follow request or engage in conversation with someone. Fossbro culture thinks all problems can be solved with their preferred software and doesn't value things it doesn't know as much about, such as any kind of social or cultural problem which it will inevitably overlook by failing to appreciate that there are aspects of life that are not best understood by a white, male, abled, cishet subgroup.

Narrativium and extelligence both reference the Science of Discworld series of books, which I loved so much when I first read them.

Narrativium was such an important idea to me that the first time we dated (and occasionally even afterward) Stuart would call me "narrativium girl." They articulated a power of storytelling that has enchanted me ever since. Narrativium is the element that permeates everything else and makes stories work.

Dragons breathe fire not because they have asbestos lungs, but because that is what dragons do. Heroes only win when outnumbered, and things which have a one-in-a-million chance of succeeding often do so.

People will often believe a good story rather than anything else, which I thought was exciting and endearing in my twenties and am finding increasingly infuriating and terrifying in my thirties.

Extelligence is, as you might guess, contrasted with intelligence. The writers of these books, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, say that if intelligence is the knowledge and cognitive processes in an individual's brain, extelligence is the information available to a culture that can be readily accessed on external media, be that folk songs or nursery rhymes or books or video games or whatever.

One of Cohen and Stewart's contributions is the way they relate the individual to the sum of human knowledge. From the mathematics of complexity and game theory, they use the idea of phase space and talk about extelligence space. There is a total phase space (intelligence space) for the human race, which consists of everything that can be known and represented. Within this there is a smaller set of what is known at any given time. Cohen and Stewart propose the idea that each individual can access the parts of the extelligence space with which their intelligence is complicit.

In other words, there has to be, at some level, an appreciation of what is out there and what it means. Much of this ‘appreciation’ falls into the category of tacit knowledge and social and cultural learning. As an example, a dictionary may contain definitions of many words. But only those definitions that can be understood by the reader.

I liked this idea of connecting people to the collective potential of what their society could offer them, and what they could offer it. I included "intelligence" on my interests list, for basically snobby reasons (I was a horrible snob in my twenties...and before...and no doubt since, though I'm trying to be better about that), so I wanted "extelligence" to be there too.

Today I am finally able to transfer the little life I'd created on my old laptop -- the music and essays and Firefox settings and desktop wallpaper, everything -- to this new laptop I got a whole month ago.

As I type on the new one, i watch the old one out of the corner of my eye, reveling in the rare-for-me pleasure of watching lines of text scroll up and off the screen as stuff happens with quiet efficiency and blessedly little input from me.

Neat little orderly lines listing the items of my home directory, which -- however quirky or haphazard or forgotten or invisible I may find them -- are reassuringly linear and equal here in the terminal window.

Oh man, I can't tell you how happy I am to be here. Oh Semagic and Trillian, how nice to see you again; I was beginning to think we'd be parted for much longer.

I turned the computer on yesterday and so many things went wrong that it took me an absurdly long time just to figure out what they were, much less do anything about them. It didn't help that the first problem involved it shutting itself down as soon as it finished booting up (which gave me nasty flashbacks to the only new computer I ever had, which did that almost right away and at increasingly frequent intervals, and which I finally gave back to my parents because it was just a big paperweight for me; it ended up needing a new motherboard), but that went away on its own (luckily, as persistence is the only real method I have of dealing with that sort of thing).

What had been a fine (well, as much as it ever is when the power supply is making that weird noise and the monitor gets weirdy flickery sometimes and the whole thing takes about eight years to start up, which is coincidentally about how old most of its components probably are), functioning system when I shut it down the day before was suddenly an excuse for Andrew to comment how happy he was that his wife knows what the BIOS is, for me to ask him for sellotape and a safety pin (which he was, bizarrely, able to produce!), for me to have to get out my screwdrivers, and for my traditional computer-fixing flesh wound.

My Nuclear Option didn't even work; when I got this computer (a cast-off from someone else's job, and not like an IT or office job where they update these things frequently) I was already looking at it askance, letting it know that as soon as it tried to get funny with me I was going to put Linux on it. So of course it's been on its very best behavior for the last year and a half, by far the most stable XP setup I've ever had the pleasure to know, and so I never bothered to get around to installing it (though I have been getting a bit wistful about Linux again in recent weeks, and I believe I did make overly-excited noises, checking my e-mail at envoy's, just to see GNOME again).

Speaking of which, I said "Ubuntu" when Andrew asked me what he should be downloading and burning for me. Is that good? Ubuntu was just barely coming into existence when I stopped using Linux; I heard things about it that were good enough to want to try it, but I never had a chance to get around to it. Yeah, that's how long it's been. Is that good, d'you think? I know my friends list mght not be as *nix-geek oriented as it was three years ago (three years ago! can that be right? damn!) but it's worth a shot: let me know whatever you think I might like to know, and I'm quite open to other suggestions too. I can't believe how out of this loop I am.

Anyway, this "ha I can put Linux on you!" was all for nowt, as I'd forgotten this computer has never even believed that it has a CD-ROM drive (it does, though; I can see it, right there), and even trying to swap it for the other one we've got (from the computer that this one eventually replaced after it gave up the ghost) made no difference. I can't even tell if there was something wrong with the old CD-ROM too, if there's something wrong with this computer's ability to recognize such a thing, or if we really didn't plug that cable into the right place (it had been completely missing in this computer before, but seemed to play an important part in the computer I got the old CD-ROM from, so I gave it the old college try.

It's a moot point now that we are now in the process of seeing if Dell will let us pay in installments. We were hoping it'd wait until after Christmas, as we have a lot of things to pay for by the end of this year, but my computer throwing a fit certainly got our attention, so now this has scooted up a few notches in our list of priorities. That's my Really Nuclear Option.

I'd be getting a new laptop. I can't wait. I can't yet believe it, actually I've never had a new computer, other than the aforementioned evil one that never worked properly. I still have the unspoken (and unexamined) conviction that space for mp3s on the hard drive, burning CDs, watching DVDs, and wireless internet are only for other people.

I read this nifty diatribe a few days ago and wanted to write about it, but never got around to it, what with my busy weekend and all. Besides, I thought to myself, you don't need any more geeky ranting and raving in your journal. Apparently geeky things are all I write about anyway--a perception that honestly perplexes me, but I've heard it enough times from enough people that I guess it must be true.

Well, too bad! More geekiness! Easily ignored, though.

I use CUPS for my printing, too, and even on one printer that's connected to one computer, it's bad enough. It has done demented things and I don't like it. And in this diatribe I recognized some problems I've had--especially having print jobs disappear into a black hole, without error messages or anything ... or, if you can see them, they're not printing and you have no idea why so you can't do anything about it because there is no evidence of a problem except that nothing is coming out of the printer.

But this isn't just about CUPS. It's about the general suckiness of open-source user interfaces.

I can understand why they suck, because these programs are written by hackers and mostly for hackers, or at least fairly technical people. They know what they're talking about, and if you want to know what's going on you have to learn their language, because they are not going to bother with yours. It's sort of a trial-by-fire. Their language is a good one, it's precise, logical, sometimes even fun ... but, unfortunately, it's also gibberish to a vast majority of people. Also unfortunately, communicating with normals is not something hackers relish, so if something about a project is going to suffer, it'll probably be the user interfaces (or the documentation!).

Some people who acknowledge that Linux is better than Windows still don't care, because they can't be bothered to learn something new. It's not just laziness or lack of intelligence. Far from it, actually--their intelligent, industrious nature is probably what's telling them they don't need or want to learn a ton of techical details just to print stuff. I don't blame them.

I still like Linux better and think it's worth it--the lack of explanation CUPS gives me is actually remarkable (as a few of my real-life friends have heard me complain) becaue I've gotten used to Linux either doing what I ask or telling me why it can't do it, and I really like that. For the most part, everything works great and I never have to think about it at all. When Linux is good, it's very, very good ... but when it is bad, it is horrid.

ps is a cool command. It tells me the status of the processes my computer is running ("process status" = ps). This in itself isn't very interesting, because I don't ask my computer to do much; ps aux is better. It gives me a bigger, more impressive list and I can look at numbers and names and see all the things my computer is doing even when it looks like it's not doing anything. I can even kill things (kill is the command useful if something's misbehaving) if I want to, just by typing kill and the process identification number (which ps aux tells me) of whatever it is that I want to go away.

I sometimes feel like there are a lot of things going on in my brain when it feels like it's not doing anything. Sometimes I'm happy (or sad, or something else) for no reason. It kind of feels like I'm ignoring something I shouldn't be. This happens occasionally; I've learned that I'll either figure it out or the weirdness will go away and I go back to whatever it is that passes for normal. Even so, it's sort of annoying and sometimes troubling, and it makes me wish I had a ps aux so I could see what's going on in my brain. And it'd be especially nice to be able to kill the messed-up things, just like that.

I am reading The Onion and Sarah is reading over my shoulder. (Well, not anymore, because I am writing this, but I am telilng a story!) And I was making fun of her for this reading over my shoulder. And she just said, "You know why I'm doing that."

"Because my computer is cooler?" I said. It's not really a question.

"Well, because it's faster than mine," she said. This is a truth universally acknowledged. But then she said, "It's like those commercials for Swiffer or something where the people with the Swiffer get done really fast and the other people say, 'Oh, we're still cleaning, can we use your Swiffer?' It's like a commercial for Linux!"

"They don't have commercials for Linux," I said.

"I know," she said. "But if they did. That's what it could be like. They'd have two college kids who are waiting for e-mail from their boyfriends or something." (I think this setup already says as much about Sarah Jean as it does about Linux.) "And they'd say, 'Oh, let's turn on our computers now,' and the person with Linux has everything open in like ten seconds ... "

"Because they probably don't have to turn their computer off in the first place," I added helpfully. Or maybe it wasn't helpfully, but it's still true. I only turn of my computer when I have to plug something in or take something out. Or once when I left for the weekend and the notion that my computer would still be on and taking up electricity so offended Al that when I teasingly asked her if she'd feel better if I turned it off, she said "Yes!" and then I had to. But anyway.

Sarah went on. "Right, and the person with Windows is still waiting, and--" And around this point she said, to her computer, "Come on, I've clicked OK like twenty times and you're still not doing anything!" I chuckled inwardly.

comradexavier has been telling me this kind of thing for months now (only without the Matrix metaphor--that's not his style--though it may have helped his case ... ). Recently, I have even started to believe it.

( Geeky Philosophy for Non-Geeks )

comradexavier was telling me yesterday, as he was installing Slackware 9.1 for me, that I should figure out all this stuff myself, so he doesn't have to do it all for me. I reminded him that it was his idea for me to be a Linux user in the first place, and I'd told him I was going to hold him responsible. He's usually pretty patient with my questions, but he also wants me to be self-sufficient.

I told him that it's silly of him to not tell me things he has figured out that I could use, and he says why should I? I had to learn them myself, you could too. The documentation is all there, you have to be able to find, decipher, and apply it. I agree, but I wouldn't mind a little help. Still, I see the point he's making, the philosophy that makes people think as he does. They didn't learn the things they know so they could fix other people's computers. They were not born with this knowledge, they had to figure everything out and they think anyone else could do what they did.

It seems a lot of the "anyone else" types don't think that, though. My parents, for instance, think my brother and I and our generation are so "good at computers" because we've been using them since we were in kindergarten. Pointing out that, in kindergarten, we used an Apple IIe to play Word Munchers and that bears almost no resemblance to the computing world of today has no effect, they insist that the details are unimportant and it's all about the familiarity of computers. They have a point, but I think they're exaggerating. Plenty of people my age are totally dumb about computers. Exposure is nice, but it's not the only thing.

What they really want to say is that computers are one of those things that only "other people" are good at, they never will be, and that's just how it is. They'll go along buying decent OEM machines and the newest version of Windows and they'll expect computers to be mysterious and crappy forever.

Some people don't want anything better. I don't understand that at all. Asking everyone to use Linux might be a bit extreme, but no one even wants to hear that there may be a better web browser out there than IE. Even if they admit that such a thing exists, they don't want to go to the trouble of obtaining it, even if you tell them it's almost no trouble at all and will make them happier.

I'm reminded of the GMC commercials that end with "It's not more than you need. Just more than you're used to." I think they're talking about an SUV or something that is in fact more than most people need, but the idea is nonetheless intriguing. People can get used to crappiness, and then not even want good things when they see them, perhaps only because they're not what they're used to. If people who understand their own computers are technocrats, these would be the serfs, bound not to the land they worked as the feudal serfs were, but to the computers they use but don't understand.

What all this has to do with my cluelessness when it comes to Linux, I am not sure.

I'm trying to do my homework, really I am!

I've made myself sit down and actually try to look up things about the history of computers. So I'm looking at this, of coruse, because I wouldn't be me if I didn't think Linux counted as something important in the history of computers. But this is bad, because I'm having too much fun. First, I found this thing about the penguin (a slight variation of said penguin provides this icon of mine), and then came across something kwakhed once mentioned to me: there's a sound clip of Linus Torvalds--the guy nominally responsible for Linux--saying "Hello! I'm Linus Torvalds, and I pronounce 'Linux' as 'Linux.' " Which of course is a ridiculous sentence to read; you have to hear it, it's fun. But what's way funner (my history teacher insists that funner is a word, so I'll go with it) is him saying this in Swedish!

Okay, so I'm easily amused. And I'm sick of my dumb homework. Linux is fun; it's distracting me.