Re: Searching and organizing emails (Re: If not "newbie" then ????)

[Richard Owlett]

On 08/23/2018 09:29 AM, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:

On Monday, August 06, 2018 10:41:48 AM Richard Owlett wrote:

I don't remember what he wrote, but, at one point, I got the idea he had a lot
of posts (emails, I presume)  that he wanted to be able to search.  And maybe
organize / index.


Yes and Yes.



I have used recol for purposes like that--it can index and do full text
searches on, among other things, mbox files.


Just took a quick look at website. Worth a closer look.



(And, for my (attempt at) an askSam workalike, I organize other data into mbox
files for easy manipulation by various tools: editors with syntax highlighting
and folding capabilities, email clients, sorting utilities, ...)


The Wikipedia entry hints at interesting.



My attempt at an askSam workalike works reasonably well for me, but is not
ready for distribution.



Someone pointed me to CherryTree. It will do nicely for a loosely 
related task. I'm working on extracting what I'm interested in from 
SeaMonkey bookmarks. Email will be a while.

Searching and organizing emails (Re: If not "newbie" then ????)

[rhkramer]

On Monday, August 06, 2018 10:41:48 AM Richard Owlett wrote:

I don't remember what he wrote, but, at one point, I got the idea he had a lot 
of posts (emails, I presume)  that he wanted to be able to search.  And maybe 
organize / index.

I have used recol for purposes like that--it can index and do full text 
searches on, among other things, mbox files.  

(And, for my (attempt at) an askSam workalike, I organize other data into mbox 
files for easy manipulation by various tools: editors with syntax highlighting 
and folding capabilities, email clients, sorting utilities, ...)

My attempt at an askSam workalike works reasonably well for me, but is not 
ready for distribution.

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[Richard Owlett]

On 08/06/2018 08:19 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 08/05/2018 10:28 PM, songbird wrote:

Richard Owlett wrote:

On 07/21/2018 04:46 PM, cyaiplexys wrote:


Try CherryTree. I use that program for everything. It's cross-platform.
I download it from the web site instead of using the version in the
Debian Repo as the latest version fixes some annoying bugs (of which I
kinda forgot what but would quickly be reminded if I used the repo
version).

I think that would be useful for categorizing questions and you can 
even

search through them. If you want to save to PDF or HTML, it can export
to those formats as well.

I've used CherryTree for everything from keeping code snippets to
installation instructions to writing up tutorials (and exporting to 
HTML).




I've installed CherryTree 0.38.5 from their site.
It can do everything I need *IF* I manually enter all the data.

I'm trying to import a large set of SeaMonkey bookmarks (a SQLite file).
When using SQLite commands I can create a CSV file with only the
information of interest.

The CherryTree 0.38.5 manual explicitly states that CSV can be imported.
But there is no menu item in the actual program.

The CSV has the required information to describe the node/sub-node
structure in explicit detail.

Suggestions?


   learn how to search?

   i found this within a few seconds:

   
http://giuspen.com/cherrytreemanual/Inserting_Objects--From_the_Toolbar--Tables.html 



   seems simple enough...



In this case my search skills were adequate.
My reading skills however?   ;{

I wasn't interested in a "table" per se.
The CSV file has all the information required for a CherryTree 
hierarchical file. So I had assumed (wrongly) that there was a CSV to 
ctb format conversion. Also a closer look demonstrated misunderstanding 
of how SeaMonkey handles it's data internally and why the JSON file has 
some features I found annoying. But, along with a hint from an unrelated 
thread, *MY* problem may be tractable.


My cage has been beneficently rattled ;}
The JSON file exported by SeaMonkey has too much of no interest.
I had given up on working with JSON data directly.
I did a web search for the combination of "sql" and "json".
That led to jq [https://stedolan.github.io/jq/] which led to a slightly 
different search with Synaptic. That led to "SQLite ODBC Driver" 
[http://www.ch-werner.de/sqliteodbc/].


I've not laid out the intermediate steps in detail.
However something like this seems possible:
 1. Export SeaMonkey bookmarks in JSON format.
 2. Clean it with jq.
 3. Use some tool/script to emit CSV.
 4. Edit with spreadsheet of choice, emitting CSV.
 5. Create JSON file acceptable to SeaMonkey.
[That may require creating dummy data for items disposed of in #2.]

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[Richard Owlett]

On 08/05/2018 10:28 PM, songbird wrote:

Richard Owlett wrote:

On 07/21/2018 04:46 PM, cyaiplexys wrote:


Try CherryTree. I use that program for everything. It's cross-platform.
I download it from the web site instead of using the version in the
Debian Repo as the latest version fixes some annoying bugs (of which I
kinda forgot what but would quickly be reminded if I used the repo
version).

I think that would be useful for categorizing questions and you can even
search through them. If you want to save to PDF or HTML, it can export
to those formats as well.

I've used CherryTree for everything from keeping code snippets to
installation instructions to writing up tutorials (and exporting to HTML).



I've installed CherryTree 0.38.5 from their site.
It can do everything I need *IF* I manually enter all the data.

I'm trying to import a large set of SeaMonkey bookmarks (a SQLite file).
When using SQLite commands I can create a CSV file with only the
information of interest.

The CherryTree 0.38.5 manual explicitly states that CSV can be imported.
But there is no menu item in the actual program.

The CSV has the required information to describe the node/sub-node
structure in explicit detail.

Suggestions?


   learn how to search?

   i found this within a few seconds:

   
http://giuspen.com/cherrytreemanual/Inserting_Objects--From_the_Toolbar--Tables.html

   seems simple enough...



In this case my search skills were adequate.
My reading skills however?   ;{

I wasn't interested in a "table" per se.
The CSV file has all the information required for a CherryTree 
hierarchical file. So I had assumed (wrongly) that there was a CSV to 
ctb format conversion. Also a closer look demonstrated misunderstanding 
of how SeaMonkey handles it's data internally and why the JSON file has 
some features I found annoying. But, along with a hint from an unrelated 
thread, *MY* problem may be tractable.

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[songbird]

Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 07/21/2018 04:46 PM, cyaiplexys wrote:
>> 
>> Try CherryTree. I use that program for everything. It's cross-platform. 
>> I download it from the web site instead of using the version in the 
>> Debian Repo as the latest version fixes some annoying bugs (of which I 
>> kinda forgot what but would quickly be reminded if I used the repo 
>> version).
>> 
>> I think that would be useful for categorizing questions and you can even 
>> search through them. If you want to save to PDF or HTML, it can export 
>> to those formats as well.
>> 
>> I've used CherryTree for everything from keeping code snippets to 
>> installation instructions to writing up tutorials (and exporting to HTML).
>>
>
> I've installed CherryTree 0.38.5 from their site.
> It can do everything I need *IF* I manually enter all the data.
>
> I'm trying to import a large set of SeaMonkey bookmarks (a SQLite file).
> When using SQLite commands I can create a CSV file with only the 
> information of interest.
>
> The CherryTree 0.38.5 manual explicitly states that CSV can be imported. 
> But there is no menu item in the actual program.
>
> The CSV has the required information to describe the node/sub-node 
> structure in explicit detail.
>
> Suggestions?

  learn how to search?

  i found this within a few seconds:

  
http://giuspen.com/cherrytreemanual/Inserting_Objects--From_the_Toolbar--Tables.html

  seems simple enough...


  songbird

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[Richard Owlett]

On 07/21/2018 04:46 PM, cyaiplexys wrote:


Try CherryTree. I use that program for everything. It's cross-platform. 
I download it from the web site instead of using the version in the 
Debian Repo as the latest version fixes some annoying bugs (of which I 
kinda forgot what but would quickly be reminded if I used the repo 
version).


I think that would be useful for categorizing questions and you can even 
search through them. If you want to save to PDF or HTML, it can export 
to those formats as well.


I've used CherryTree for everything from keeping code snippets to 
installation instructions to writing up tutorials (and exporting to HTML).




I've installed CherryTree 0.38.5 from their site.
It can do everything I need *IF* I manually enter all the data.

I'm trying to import a large set of SeaMonkey bookmarks (a SQLite file).
When using SQLite commands I can create a CSV file with only the 
information of interest.


The CherryTree 0.38.5 manual explicitly states that CSV can be imported. 
But there is no menu item in the actual program.


The CSV has the required information to describe the node/sub-node 
structure in explicit detail.


Suggestions?
TIA

Re: CherryTree - was [Re: If not "newbie" then ????]

[Brian]

On Sat 04 Aug 2018 at 05:50:24 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

> On 08/04/2018 05:43 AM, Brian wrote:
> > On Sat 04 Aug 2018 at 05:20:29 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> > 
> > > On 07/22/2018 03:07 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> > > > On 07/21/2018 04:46 PM, cyaiplexys wrote:
> > > [snip]
> > > > > 
> > > > > Try CherryTree. I use that program for everything. It's
> > > > > cross-platform. I download it from the web site instead of using the
> > > > > version in the Debian Repo as the latest version fixes some annoying
> > > > > bugs (of which I kinda forgot what but would quickly be reminded if
> > > > > I used the repo version).
> > > > 
> > > > I browsed its manual then installed the version in the Debian Repo. It
> > > > should address two problems:
> > > >     1. finding relevant posts.
> > > >     2. organizing my bookmarks folder. Like Topsy it just grew.
> > > 
> > > Is there a mailing list or USENET group where discussion of CherryTree 
> > > would
> > > be on-topic?
> > > 
> > > I've found [http://www.giuspen.com/forums/] but have never found web fora
> > > usable.
> > 
> > > From the link you give:
> > 
> >cherrytree
> > 
> >This forum contains 662 topics and 2,280 replies, and was last
> >updated by Klaas Vaak 5 hours, 4 minutes ago.
> > 
> > The forum appears alive and active. Lots to read.
> 
> TRY *READING* before responding!!!

I did; that's why I gave the response I posted.
 
> > Sometimes one has to compromise, adjust and fit into what is available.
> 
> Quantity is NOT everything. NOTE BENE the last word of my post.

Never mind the quality, feel the width.

> Apparently your only possible ON-TOPIC response you could have been to admit
> you didn't know.

I didn't even look. I assume your search skills as at least as good as
mine. You didn't find anything - why should I?

-- 
Brian.

Re: CherryTree - was [Re: If not "newbie" then ????]

[Richard Owlett]

On 08/04/2018 05:43 AM, Brian wrote:

On Sat 04 Aug 2018 at 05:20:29 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:


On 07/22/2018 03:07 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 07/21/2018 04:46 PM, cyaiplexys wrote:

[snip]


Try CherryTree. I use that program for everything. It's
cross-platform. I download it from the web site instead of using the
version in the Debian Repo as the latest version fixes some annoying
bugs (of which I kinda forgot what but would quickly be reminded if
I used the repo version).


I browsed its manual then installed the version in the Debian Repo. It
should address two problems:
    1. finding relevant posts.
    2. organizing my bookmarks folder. Like Topsy it just grew.


Is there a mailing list or USENET group where discussion of CherryTree would
be on-topic?

I've found [http://www.giuspen.com/forums/] but have never found web fora
usable.



From the link you give:


   cherrytree

   This forum contains 662 topics and 2,280 replies, and was last
   updated by Klaas Vaak 5 hours, 4 minutes ago.

The forum appears alive and active. Lots to read.


TRY *READING* before responding!!!



Sometimes one has to compromise, adjust and fit into what is available.


Quantity is NOT everything. NOTE BENE the last word of my post.
Apparently your only possible ON-TOPIC response you could have been to 
admit you didn't know.

Re: CherryTree - was [Re: If not "newbie" then ????]

[Brian]

On Sat 04 Aug 2018 at 05:20:29 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

> On 07/22/2018 03:07 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> > On 07/21/2018 04:46 PM, cyaiplexys wrote:
> [snip]
> > > 
> > > Try CherryTree. I use that program for everything. It's
> > > cross-platform. I download it from the web site instead of using the
> > > version in the Debian Repo as the latest version fixes some annoying
> > > bugs (of which I kinda forgot what but would quickly be reminded if
> > > I used the repo version).
> > 
> > I browsed its manual then installed the version in the Debian Repo. It
> > should address two problems:
> >    1. finding relevant posts.
> >    2. organizing my bookmarks folder. Like Topsy it just grew.
> 
> Is there a mailing list or USENET group where discussion of CherryTree would
> be on-topic?
> 
> I've found [http://www.giuspen.com/forums/] but have never found web fora
> usable.

>From the link you give:

  cherrytree

  This forum contains 662 topics and 2,280 replies, and was last
  updated by Klaas Vaak 5 hours, 4 minutes ago.

The forum appears alive and active. Lots to read.

Sometimes one has to compromise, adjust and fit into what is available.

-- 
Brian.

CherryTree - was [Re: If not "newbie" then ????]

[Richard Owlett]

On 07/22/2018 03:07 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 07/21/2018 04:46 PM, cyaiplexys wrote:

[snip]


Try CherryTree. I use that program for everything. It's 
cross-platform. I download it from the web site instead of using the 
version in the Debian Repo as the latest version fixes some annoying 
bugs (of which I kinda forgot what but would quickly be reminded if I 
used the repo version).


I browsed its manual then installed the version in the Debian Repo. It 
should address two problems:

   1. finding relevant posts.
   2. organizing my bookmarks folder. Like Topsy it just grew.


Is there a mailing list or USENET group where discussion of CherryTree 
would be on-topic?


I've found [http://www.giuspen.com/forums/] but have never found web 
fora usable.

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[cyaiplexys]

This is taking me down a memory lane I don't necessarily have but have 
heard about! Ah, the early days of computers!


On 07/23/2018 05:14 AM, Erik Christiansen wrote:

On 23.07.18 10:28, Eric S Fraga wrote:

On Sunday, 22 Jul 2018 at 05:39, Tom Browder wrote:

Sounds like there are a lot of fellow travelers here.  If you lean
more towards loving programming as I do (started in FORTRAN IV in
1961), you might check out the new world of Perl 6 (https://perl6.org)


Interesting.  I started way back when with FORTRAN 66 and APL but I have
moved on to Julia (julialang.org) these days.


In 1972 we were still submitting FORTRAN IV jobs on Hollerith punched
cards, to run on an ICL1901 24-bit mainframe, which half-filled a room
with its fridge-sized chain printer and big card reader and disk drives.

But the electrical engineering department had its own little HP2100A
16-bit minicomputer, with 16k words of 980 ns ferrite core memory. (Very
spiffy stuff, back then.) If you overwrote the punched tape bootloader
in the first dozen words or so of RAM, then you had to load it by hand
from the frontpanel switch register, word by word, in octal.

The three-chip 8080A CPU had become the single-chip 8085 by the time I
programmed it, before moving to the 8051 microcontroller, but sprinkling
13 of 'em in a system, 12 mask programmed, so no coding errors permitted,

My first home CPU was a TMS9900, which like the COSMAC had 16 x 16 bit
registers, but not on-chip. A pointer register set the location of the
register workspace in RAM, so that on interrupt or subroutine call,
changing one register gave a new set of registers instantly. It also had
a barrel shifter, rotating a register any number of bits in a single
instruction, optionally controlled by the 4 LSBs of R0. (Magic for
computing sine and cos by the CORDIC method.) And it had 16x16 multiply
and 32/16 divide.

But the contemporary COSMAC was well ahead of its time - a CMOS CPU in 1976.

Erik


This sounds a lot like a friend of mine who is much older than me, who 
used punch cards. Luckily I was a teen in the dawn of the 
microscomputing age. It was mostly cassette tape and for the rich and 
well off, the 5.25" floppy disk drive. I never encountered punch cards. 
I bet it was a PITA compared to today.


This also reminds me of the old days of assembly language programming on 
the CoCo 3 (68B09E CPU) using disk EDASAM+ I actually did a good bit of 
that (pun half intended).


Never learned x86 assembly.

I'm going to start another thread (much more on Debian topic I hope) 
about assemblers, as I'm curious about that too.


I guess I get curious about everything. See what you guys started? :P

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[cyaiplexys]

On 07/22/2018 03:06 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 07/22/2018 10:04 AM, cyaiplexys wrote:

On 07/21/2018 09:43 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:

Best wishes to you as well. I hope that I'm still playing around with 
this stuff at that age. I remember taking an online C++ course years 
ago and there was another student in the class that was 92. He was 
taking the course to help him stave off Alzheimer's! He did really 
good too. As for me, I got a 100% on my final exam. And here I am 
still not great at C or C++. No I didn't cheat. Brain cells up and 
aged on me since then!



The summer between my high school junior and senior years I had the 
opportunity to take a college level physics course. One of my classmates 
was positively elderly, being older than my parents - twas 70+ ;/


More seriously, for benefit of lurking "young whipper-snappers", stay 
physically *AND* mentally active. My mother, who got her RN in the 20's, 
did volunteer work at the Church Home and with social services outreach 
to children into her 90's. That kept her physically/socially active. As 
to mentally acuity, she pursued crossword puzzles, challenging my 
brother-in-law, a tenured full professor of history.


End of lecture.  *THINK*


I will take that advice to heart seriously. To you, I'm still a "young 
whipper-snapper" even at my age. :) I agree that keeping one's mind 
occupied keeps it sharp. Which is another reason I'll always be 
programming *something*. Back in the day I would try to learn everything 
about computers that I could. Even some rather odd and esoteric 
languages (like Liberty Basic and another not at all well known language 
called "euphoria" 
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphoria_(programming_language) way back 
when it first came out. That was a very interesting experience to say 
the least!


Ironically I never even tried Fortran, Cobol or Lisp. There's a good 
many out there I never even tried (yet, still).


Now I seem to be rather stuck to Python like I was with Visual Basic. 
Python is portable as well and with cython, one can compile to a binary 
(though I don't really do that with 99.999% of my Python scripts).

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[Richard Owlett]

On 07/22/2018 10:10 AM, cyaiplexys wrote:

On 07/22/2018 04:07 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
[snip]


I assume you mean for your own computer (since anyone can use Google 
to search the lists).


Yes. Originally I saved them locally as a convenience - was on 
dial-up. Now, using SeaMonkey, I have a choice of tagging a post with 
a choice of  >30 tags (some times with multiple tags).


I use Thunderbird (which has the same feature) so I think I know where 
you're coming from. I do that with things too and then I eventually go 
through my Archives folder (where I place those tagged items) and get 
them moved off to my CherryTree notes or links.


I've ~1300 posts copied to a folder.
How do access their content from cherrytree?
I assume you import it somehow.

Loosely related, any suggestions for accessing SeaMonkey bookmarks (JSON 
format) with cherrytree?


TIA

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[Erik Christiansen]

On 23.07.18 10:28, Eric S Fraga wrote:
> On Sunday, 22 Jul 2018 at 05:39, Tom Browder wrote:
> > Sounds like there are a lot of fellow travelers here.  If you lean
> > more towards loving programming as I do (started in FORTRAN IV in
> > 1961), you might check out the new world of Perl 6 (https://perl6.org)
> 
> Interesting.  I started way back when with FORTRAN 66 and APL but I have
> moved on to Julia (julialang.org) these days.

In 1972 we were still submitting FORTRAN IV jobs on Hollerith punched
cards, to run on an ICL1901 24-bit mainframe, which half-filled a room
with its fridge-sized chain printer and big card reader and disk drives.

But the electrical engineering department had its own little HP2100A
16-bit minicomputer, with 16k words of 980 ns ferrite core memory. (Very
spiffy stuff, back then.) If you overwrote the punched tape bootloader
in the first dozen words or so of RAM, then you had to load it by hand
from the frontpanel switch register, word by word, in octal.

The three-chip 8080A CPU had become the single-chip 8085 by the time I
programmed it, before moving to the 8051 microcontroller, but sprinkling
13 of 'em in a system, 12 mask programmed, so no coding errors permitted,

My first home CPU was a TMS9900, which like the COSMAC had 16 x 16 bit
registers, but not on-chip. A pointer register set the location of the
register workspace in RAM, so that on interrupt or subroutine call,
changing one register gave a new set of registers instantly. It also had
a barrel shifter, rotating a register any number of bits in a single
instruction, optionally controlled by the 4 LSBs of R0. (Magic for
computing sine and cos by the CORDIC method.) And it had 16x16 multiply
and 32/16 divide.

But the contemporary COSMAC was well ahead of its time - a CMOS CPU in 1976.

Erik

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[Eric S Fraga]

On Sunday, 22 Jul 2018 at 05:39, Tom Browder wrote:
> Sounds like there are a lot of fellow travelers here.  If you lean
> more towards loving programming as I do (started in FORTRAN IV in
> 1961), you might check out the new world of Perl 6 (https://perl6.org)

Interesting.  I started way back when with FORTRAN 66 and APL but I have
moved on to Julia (julialang.org) these days.

-- 
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 27.0.50 & org 9.1.13 on Debian buster/sid

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[Richard Owlett]

On 07/22/2018 10:04 AM, cyaiplexys wrote:

On 07/21/2018 09:43 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:

Best wishes to you as well. I hope that I'm still playing around with 
this stuff at that age. I remember taking an online C++ course years ago 
and there was another student in the class that was 92. He was taking 
the course to help him stave off Alzheimer's! He did really good too. As 
for me, I got a 100% on my final exam. And here I am still not great at 
C or C++. No I didn't cheat. Brain cells up and aged on me since then!



The summer between my high school junior and senior years I had the 
opportunity to take a college level physics course. One of my classmates 
was positively elderly, being older than my parents - twas 70+ ;/


More seriously, for benefit of lurking "young whipper-snappers", stay 
physically *AND* mentally active. My mother, who got her RN in the 20's, 
did volunteer work at the Church Home and with social services outreach 
to children into her 90's. That kept her physically/socially active. As 
to mentally acuity, she pursued crossword puzzles, challenging my 
brother-in-law, a tenured full professor of history.


End of lecture.  *THINK*

Re: If not "newbie" then ???

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 22 July 2018 11:04:32 cyaiplexys wrote:

And I finally figured out why this thread is sorted to the spam folder 
here, one of my spam detectors is an excess of  or more question 
marks in the subject line. Spammers do that to make their bs look more 
important. So please don't use more than 3.

> On 07/21/2018 09:43 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Saturday 21 July 2018 18:01:07 cyaiplexys wrote:
> >> On 07/21/2018 12:20 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> >>> On Saturday 21 July 2018 11:42:31 Richard Owlett wrote:
>  When I'm "ignorant" and know it, I refer to myself as a "newbie".
>  My first contact with Linux was when Squeeze was just introduced.
>  I've been around computers for a while [remember 12AX7 based
>  CPU's?].
> >>>
> >>> No, but I recall seeing, in Iowa City in the very early 1950's, a
> >>> bit of a monster that had 12,000 12AU7's in it.  Used at the time
> >>> to grade the Iowa tests, the same one I had taken in school and
> >>> got a quite high score on. They had rigged a Harris Stream fed
> >>> printing press with a photocell at every mark location on the
> >>> paper and were calculating the scores from that.
> >>>
>  As a BSEE student 50+ years ago I took an introductory
>  programming course. Later I programmed in 8080 assembler - at the
>  time we were moving to 8085. As a consumer I ended up in the M$
>  land.
> >>>
> >>> I started with the rca 1802. Still an interesting architecture,
> >>> one that was able to function in several rads a minute of atomic
> >>> radiation. But I tried the z-80, found it wanting, then the 6809
> >>> which put me firmly on a unix like path, and to this day I still
> >>> don't have a winders box on the premises. Quite a few linux
> >>> machines though.
> >>
> >> OS-9 Level II on a CoCo 3 by any chance?
> >
> > Actually level 1.01 on a coco2.
>
> I remember that as well. But I only had it because I snarfed up some
> old stuff when the local Radio Shack was liquidating. I also had a
> couple CoCo 2's. I never really did anything with Level I though since
> the 512K CoCo 3 and OS-9 Level II was my main system at the time.
>
> >> I had one of those systems
> >
> > So  do I but the two 1 Gb hard drives are seized from stiction.
>
> I no longer have the CoCos unfortunatley. 1GB HDs on a CoCo? That
> would have been totally awesome! The most modern thing I had at the
> time was sticking a 3.5" 1.44MB floppy drive as the second drive in
> with the 5.25" floppy drive in the FD-502 disk box. That way I could
> use the Tandy 1100FD laptop I had (which had the 1200 baud modem) to
> go on the BBSs and download CoCo/OS-9 stuff and then easily read it
> off the disk.
>
> >> and then I went to DOS and Windows. That to me was a step down
> >> until Slackware came along. Then Red Hat, then Mandrake ('scuze
> >> me...er... Mandriva), then Mint, Then Solyd, now full on Debian. I
> >> only used Ubuntu as a web server at work and in test VMs. Oh, and
> >> there was a stint in there somewhere where I was dabbling on a
> >> real-life Unix system.
> >
> > We had an AT&T 3b2 in between motherboard fires for a network
> > message system for about 3 years, replaced by a pdp-11/23. It also
> > was a major pita, crashing for no reason and dec's incompetant
> > service techs replaced everything in it except the frame rail with
> > the serial number on it. I finally cajoled the network tech at CBS
> > into trading my machine for his test mule.  Worked fine, but my
> > machine he then had was worthless as a test mule, so we got, as did
> > all the affiliates, at CBS expense, an industrial IBM with an ARTIC
> > card that actually did all the work.  That, once I had edited the
> > sat table, worked well until a newby tech dialed into it one day and
> > helpfully fixed my tables. Took me about 3 days of waving a 7 meter
> > dish around to find all the birds again. That got the phone line
> > unplugged unless they called me ahead of time. Most of its data by
> > then was sent over the teletex path in the ntsc vertical interval. 
> > I was the CE at that tv station for the last 18 years I worked. I
> > had found my nitch.  And it was a good one, getting raises I didn't
> > have to ask for, so I was making about $15k a year more than any
> > other similar market sized station could afford.
>
> Sweet job! I been working for a small mom & pop web hosting company
> for the nearly 15 years. Very easy stuff, actually, as I don't have
> much to do overall (boss is very laid back and also likes to do plenty
> of stuff himself). Before that I worked in electronic assembly jobs.
> Got out of that mostly due to chemicals, and non-OSHA-compliant
> companies getting away with (slow) murder. I think it was then that I
> decided to pursue a career in programming.
>
> >> My ISP back in the day had "shell accounts" and a wizard (RIP)
> >> who worked there took me under his wing and taught me how to use it
> >> and saved my sorry butt when I screwed up. :)
> >>
> >> The VERY 

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[cyaiplexys]

On 07/22/2018 09:06 AM, songbird wrote:

cyaiplexys wrote:
...

That's the one cool thing about this group and groups like it is the
conversations where you learn a little bit about those folks in the
group in between learning other useful things. Reminds me of the old
FidoNet days (and later newsgroup days - do they still even have either
anymore??)


   how do you think i'm reading/writing here?  via usenet
and gmane.  :)

   i'm more often on the gardening group these days.


I am reading these directly in Thunderbird as the posts get emailed to 
me. Since I normally just subscribe to the email lists, I don't even see 
the newsgroups anymore. Haven't been on one in years.



   my history with computers starts about 1978 and then
15yrs of nothing but computers at the university.  my
degree was computer science and i also worked as a
programmer, then i was project lead and then systems
programmer and did all sorts of things during a
conversion from the mainframe to the mini-computer
system.  also worked on a MS degree but never finished
it.

   i semi-retired about when the internet was just
taking off (in the mid-90s).  haven't worked much
since then, but did some months of being a computer
operator for a local business until i realized that
working two jobs was crazy, so i went back to the
part-time library job only until i quit that too.


I am semi-retired since last June (been a year already, time flies). I 
still work from home part time for a mom & pop web hosting company I've 
worked at for almost 15 years. It's a fun job (and sometimes a little 
challenging but not in a bad way). Keeps my brain cells from decaying 
too fast, I guess. :)



   some years later i still like tinkering at times
but it hasn't been until this spring i finally got a
new enough machine to be interesting in working on
a project of my own.  so i can learn python bits at
a time.  after learning so many computer languages
picking up another one is just not that interesting
any longer so i have to have some project which is
also interesting enough to keep me poking along.


I think I can understand at some point. Though I don't have any "new" 
machines. My ThinkPad T61 I got back in 2007 and the main machine (an HP 
g7 2010nr 17" laptop) is at least half that age. Both have been through 
upgrades and repairs. I have the ThinkPad on my work table getting ready 
to replace the fan. I already replaced the CPU in that one to a 2.x GHz 
and upgraded the RAM to the max 4GB. I run Debian Stretch on both (with 
KDE desktop) and for work and other things I use VirtualBox virtual 
machines for testing things. Both work quite well for what I need to do. 
I don't have any need for heavy graphics or video processing and don't 
play games on them. So an old system works good enough.



   with the gardening season being here i only have
time once in a while when it rains or i'm taking a
break from the heat.


   songbird


It's been one hot summer, too! I used to do gardening too but my health 
took more of a nose dive and can't really do that anymore. I do love 
nature though. It's a nice break from computers and tech. Variety is the 
spice of life!

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[cyaiplexys]

On 07/22/2018 09:00 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 07/22/2018 07:14 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 07/21/2018 04:46 PM, cyaiplexys wrote:


Try CherryTree. I use that program for everything. It's 
cross-platform. I download it from the web site instead of using the 
version in the Debian Repo as the latest version fixes some annoying 
bugs (of which I kinda forgot what but would quickly be reminded if I 
used the repo version).


Think I found that bug.
The preferences dialog, which not match the online manual, does not 
have a means to adjust the font size :<


Now to see if I can recall how to install a downloaded.deb . Done it 
once or twice.


"dpkg -i" to the rescue.


I need to start learning to read ALL posts before responding, and I'd 
have sen you already figured it out. :)



I now have readable fonts.
However when doing the install it gives 2 strange lines.
Don't know if significant:
.
.
Processing triggers for shared-mime-info (1.8-1) ...
Unknown media type in type 'all/all'    <---
Unknown media type in type 'all/allfiles'    <---
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.15-1) ...


Those can be safely ignored, no problem. I get that all the time too 
ever since I started using Debian 7 I think it was (I used other distros 
like SolydKX and Ubuntu and those also do the same thing at times.)

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[cyaiplexys]

On 07/22/2018 08:14 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 07/21/2018 04:46 PM, cyaiplexys wrote:


Try CherryTree. I use that program for everything. It's 
cross-platform. I download it from the web site instead of using the 
version in the Debian Repo as the latest version fixes some annoying 
bugs (of which I kinda forgot what but would quickly be reminded if I 
used the repo version).


Think I found that bug.
The preferences dialog, which not match the online manual, does not have 
a means to adjust the font size :<


Now to see if I can recall how to install a downloaded.deb . Done it 
once or twice.


I never adjusted the font size, so I guess I never ran into that bug. 
But to install a debian, I use Gdebi GTK version (even though I use KDE) 
but you can do that from the command line as well with dpkg:


$ sudo dpkg -i [package.deb]

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[cyaiplexys]

On 07/22/2018 04:07 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 07/21/2018 04:46 PM, cyaiplexys wrote:

On 07/21/2018 11:42 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

When I'm "ignorant" and know it, I refer to myself as a "newbie".
My first contact with Linux was when Squeeze was just introduced.
I've been around computers for a while [remember 12AX7 based CPU's?]. 
As a BSEE student 50+ years ago I took an introductory programming 
course. Later I programmed in 8080 assembler - at the time we were 
moving to 8085. As a consumer I ended up in the M$ land.


So, how would this group have me to refer to myself without claiming 
competency I just *DO NOT* have?


Wizard. With that many years of experience in computers in general,


Let's say I and computers have crossed paths a number of times. The only 
time I was hired for my computer competency ended in %$$%^&( ! ;/
When I did 8080 assembler, I was hired for my experience with low 
frequency millivolt signals and a project needed someone who wasn't 
awestruck by computers.


I think you earned at least that much. Actually, IMHO the answer 
should be "Whatever the hell you want to call yourself." :) IOW, it's 
entirely up to you.


If you are trying to find a label that everyone can understand you by, 
well, I don't know if labels really work that well since many people 
have many views on what a certain label even means.


It's not so much I'm looking for a label me, rather as a flag that the 
question is one a newbie would ask. I ask it because I'm missing some 
factoid that "everybody knows" but not I.


Well, a simple statement to the effect of "I am good with computers but 
this is one topic I'm not familiar with." type thing should do the 
trick, I would think. Or "I just started learning about this subject..."




What I do is try to briefly mention (if it's even necessary) that I 
have a lot of experience using Linux but am stumped on a certain 
problem as I don't often deal with that situation. No harm in that, I 
think. After all, Linux stuff is so vast that not everyone can know 
every single thing about it. Thus why we have these groups. :)


I've been programming for 35+ years myself. And been there when 
dial-up BBSs were a thing (I am sure you remember those) even before 
there was such a thing as "Internet".


P.S. I've saved ~6 years of useful posts from this group. I've been 
trying to figure out how to organize it in order to create a QWSBFA 
rather than a FAQ. QWSBFA=="Questions Which Should Be Frequently 
Asked" ;/


OWL ducks fer cover ;}


I assume you mean for your own computer (since anyone can use Google 
to search the lists).


Yes. Originally I saved them locally as a convenience - was on dial-up. 
Now, using SeaMonkey, I have a choice of tagging a post with a choice of 
 >30 tags (some times with multiple tags).


I use Thunderbird (which has the same feature) so I think I know where 
you're coming from. I do that with things too and then I eventually go 
through my Archives folder (where I place those tagged items) and get 
them moved off to my CherryTree notes or links.


Try CherryTree. I use that program for everything. It's 
cross-platform. I download it from the web site instead of using the 
version in the Debian Repo as the latest version fixes some annoying 
bugs (of which I kinda forgot what but would quickly be reminded if I 
used the repo version).


I browsed its manual then installed the version in the Debian Repo. It 
should address two problems:

   1. finding relevant posts.
   2. organizing my bookmarks folder. Like Topsy it just grew.


I think as long as you don't need it for code snippets, you should be 
OK. But the newer version may have new useful features. It depends on 
what you need. I think one annoyance was the background color on the 
code snippets. I keep a LOT of code snippets in various languages 
(especially for work).


I think that would be useful for categorizing questions and you can 
even search through them. If you want to save to PDF or HTML, it can 
export to those formats as well.


I've used CherryTree for everything from keeping code snippets to 
installation instructions to writing up tutorials (and exporting to 
HTML).

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[cyaiplexys]

On 07/21/2018 09:43 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:

On Saturday 21 July 2018 18:01:07 cyaiplexys wrote:


On 07/21/2018 12:20 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:

On Saturday 21 July 2018 11:42:31 Richard Owlett wrote:

When I'm "ignorant" and know it, I refer to myself as a "newbie".
My first contact with Linux was when Squeeze was just introduced.
I've been around computers for a while [remember 12AX7 based
CPU's?].


No, but I recall seeing, in Iowa City in the very early 1950's, a
bit of a monster that had 12,000 12AU7's in it.  Used at the time to
grade the Iowa tests, the same one I had taken in school and got a
quite high score on. They had rigged a Harris Stream fed printing
press with a photocell at every mark location on the paper and were
calculating the scores from that.


As a BSEE student 50+ years ago I took an introductory programming
course. Later I programmed in 8080 assembler - at the time we were
moving to 8085. As a consumer I ended up in the M$ land.


I started with the rca 1802. Still an interesting architecture, one
that was able to function in several rads a minute of atomic
radiation. But I tried the z-80, found it wanting, then the 6809
which put me firmly on a unix like path, and to this day I still
don't have a winders box on the premises. Quite a few linux machines
though.


OS-9 Level II on a CoCo 3 by any chance?


Actually level 1.01 on a coco2.


I remember that as well. But I only had it because I snarfed up some old 
stuff when the local Radio Shack was liquidating. I also had a couple 
CoCo 2's. I never really did anything with Level I though since the 512K 
CoCo 3 and OS-9 Level II was my main system at the time.



I had one of those systems

So  do I but the two 1 Gb hard drives are seized from stiction.


I no longer have the CoCos unfortunatley. 1GB HDs on a CoCo? That would 
have been totally awesome! The most modern thing I had at the time was 
sticking a 3.5" 1.44MB floppy drive as the second drive in with the 
5.25" floppy drive in the FD-502 disk box. That way I could use the 
Tandy 1100FD laptop I had (which had the 1200 baud modem) to go on the 
BBSs and download CoCo/OS-9 stuff and then easily read it off the disk.



and then I went to DOS and Windows. That to me was a step down until
Slackware came along. Then Red Hat, then Mandrake ('scuze me...er...
Mandriva), then Mint, Then Solyd, now full on Debian. I only used
Ubuntu as a web server at work and in test VMs. Oh, and there was a
stint in there somewhere where I was dabbling on a real-life Unix
system.


We had an AT&T 3b2 in between motherboard fires for a network message
system for about 3 years, replaced by a pdp-11/23. It also was a major
pita, crashing for no reason and dec's incompetant service techs
replaced everything in it except the frame rail with the serial number
on it. I finally cajoled the network tech at CBS into trading my machine
for his test mule.  Worked fine, but my machine he then had was
worthless as a test mule, so we got, as did all the affiliates, at CBS
expense, an industrial IBM with an ARTIC card that actually did all the
work.  That, once I had edited the sat table, worked well until a newby
tech dialed into it one day and helpfully fixed my tables. Took me about
3 days of waving a 7 meter dish around to find all the birds again. That
got the phone line unplugged unless they called me ahead of time. Most
of its data by then was sent over the teletex path in the ntsc vertical
interval.  I was the CE at that tv station for the last 18 years I
worked. I had found my nitch.  And it was a good one, getting raises I
didn't have to ask for, so I was making about $15k a year more than any
other similar market sized station could afford.


Sweet job! I been working for a small mom & pop web hosting company for 
the nearly 15 years. Very easy stuff, actually, as I don't have much to 
do overall (boss is very laid back and also likes to do plenty of stuff 
himself). Before that I worked in electronic assembly jobs. Got out of 
that mostly due to chemicals, and non-OSHA-compliant companies getting 
away with (slow) murder. I think it was then that I decided to pursue a 
career in programming.



My ISP back in the day had "shell accounts" and a wizard (RIP)
who worked there took me under his wing and taught me how to use it
and saved my sorry butt when I screwed up. :)

The VERY FIRST computer I ever used was a teletype terminal on a DEC
Rainbow (TeleWriter) at the Jr. High School. I was one year too young
to technically be allowed to use it but they let me anyway. Only a few
whiz kids were allowed on it. Me? I couldn't do a damn thing with it
so gave up. :-/ Then I started tinkering with the Bell & Howell and
Apple Computers at the school. I think that came after I bugged my
parents for a computer and they came home from Radio Shack with a
Trash-80 Model III with 4K RAM, cassette interface (later CGP-115 4"
roll paper 4-color plotter).


I still have one of those someplace in the midden heap of a bas

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[songbird]

cyaiplexys wrote:
...
> That's the one cool thing about this group and groups like it is the 
> conversations where you learn a little bit about those folks in the 
> group in between learning other useful things. Reminds me of the old 
> FidoNet days (and later newsgroup days - do they still even have either 
> anymore??)

  how do you think i'm reading/writing here?  via usenet 
and gmane.  :)

  i'm more often on the gardening group these days.

  my history with computers starts about 1978 and then
15yrs of nothing but computers at the university.  my
degree was computer science and i also worked as a
programmer, then i was project lead and then systems
programmer and did all sorts of things during a
conversion from the mainframe to the mini-computer
system.  also worked on a MS degree but never finished
it.

  i semi-retired about when the internet was just
taking off (in the mid-90s).  haven't worked much
since then, but did some months of being a computer
operator for a local business until i realized that
working two jobs was crazy, so i went back to the
part-time library job only until i quit that too.

  some years later i still like tinkering at times
but it hasn't been until this spring i finally got a
new enough machine to be interesting in working on
a project of my own.  so i can learn python bits at
a time.  after learning so many computer languages
picking up another one is just not that interesting
any longer so i have to have some project which is
also interesting enough to keep me poking along.

  with the gardening season being here i only have
time once in a while when it rains or i'm taking a
break from the heat.


  songbird

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[Richard Owlett]

On 07/22/2018 07:14 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 07/21/2018 04:46 PM, cyaiplexys wrote:


Try CherryTree. I use that program for everything. It's 
cross-platform. I download it from the web site instead of using the 
version in the Debian Repo as the latest version fixes some annoying 
bugs (of which I kinda forgot what but would quickly be reminded if I 
used the repo version).


Think I found that bug.
The preferences dialog, which not match the online manual, does not have 
a means to adjust the font size :<


Now to see if I can recall how to install a downloaded.deb . Done it 
once or twice.


"dpkg -i" to the rescue.
I now have readable fonts.
However when doing the install it gives 2 strange lines.
Don't know if significant:
.
.
Processing triggers for shared-mime-info (1.8-1) ...
Unknown media type in type 'all/all'<---
Unknown media type in type 'all/allfiles'   <---
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.15-1) ...
.
.
.

Re: Survival Notes [Was: Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Sun, Jul 22, 2018 at 10:14:21PM +1000, Erik Christiansen wrote:
> > OWL ducks fer cover ;}
> 
> Hopefully owl ducks make good cover.

:D

Nice. Nothing like dry humour... Love it :)

Have a good one,

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[Richard Owlett]

On 07/21/2018 04:46 PM, cyaiplexys wrote:


Try CherryTree. I use that program for everything. It's cross-platform. 
I download it from the web site instead of using the version in the 
Debian Repo as the latest version fixes some annoying bugs (of which I 
kinda forgot what but would quickly be reminded if I used the repo 
version).


Think I found that bug.
The preferences dialog, which not match the online manual, does not have 
a means to adjust the font size :<


Now to see if I can recall how to install a downloaded.deb . Done it 
once or twice.

Survival Notes [Was: Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[Erik Christiansen]

On 21.07.18 10:42, Richard Owlett wrote:
> P.S. I've saved ~6 years of useful posts from this group. I've been trying
> to figure out how to organize it in order to create a QWSBFA rather than a
> FAQ. QWSBFA=="Questions Which Should Be Frequently Asked" ;/

There are so many paths that people have trodden, and so many levels of
expertise, that survival notes are somewhat individualised, I figure.

How best to manage it probably depends on your vintage. Over three
decades I've accumulated ~ 420 pages of *nix user & sysadmin, embedded
programming, and text munging notes. With folding enabled, Vim presents
the single plain text file as one page - the table of contents. Headings
are capitalised, and a ':' follows keywords (also capitalised). A search
hit automatically unfolds to the fold level required. It's simple, easy
to manage, and fast - but most importantly, my fingers know Vim.

Stuff from technical lists which doesn't make it to the survival notes,
i.e. the few % of posts worth keeping, are sorted on first reading to
topic-specific mailboxes. Tonight there are:

$ ls -1 mail/* | wc -l
1266

and

$ ls -1 mail/cnc* | wc -l
454

are LinuxCNC-related. (Gene's favourite hobby.) Even with automated
search, it's a lot easier to look for one keyword in a hundred posts
from a single context, than try to make keyword combinations which will
fight off out of context hits in a hundred thousand posts.

> OWL ducks fer cover ;}

Hopefully owl ducks make good cover.

Erik

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[Tom Browder]

On Sun, Jul 22, 2018 at 05:26 Eric S Fraga  wrote:

> I'd say "old skool" (affectionately) would do.  ;-)


Sounds like there are a lot of fellow travelers here.  If you lean more
towards
loving programming as I do (started in FORTRAN IV in 1961),
you might check out the new world of Perl 6 (https://perl6.org)
and join a nice group of people who will appreciate your help in fixing
bugs, improving documentation, and leaving a legacy 100-year
programming language for your descendants.

Best regards,

-Tom

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[Eric S Fraga]

I'd say "old skool" (affectionately) would do.  ;-)

eric

PS - my background is of similar vintage: Amdahl 470 (MTS), PDP 11/x
 (various) with various DEC OS I cannot remember & Unix, TRS-80
 Model I, Motorola 68k w/Unix v7, IBM PC, TRS Model 100 (loved this
 one), VAX 11/780 (BSD), Atari ST, Sun 3 (SunOS), SparcStation
 (Solaris), and then a whole host of PCs running Linux since 1992.

-- 
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 27.0.50 & org 9.1.13 on Debian buster/sid

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[Richard Owlett]

On 07/21/2018 04:46 PM, cyaiplexys wrote:

On 07/21/2018 11:42 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

When I'm "ignorant" and know it, I refer to myself as a "newbie".
My first contact with Linux was when Squeeze was just introduced.
I've been around computers for a while [remember 12AX7 based CPU's?]. 
As a BSEE student 50+ years ago I took an introductory programming 
course. Later I programmed in 8080 assembler - at the time we were 
moving to 8085. As a consumer I ended up in the M$ land.


So, how would this group have me to refer to myself without claiming 
competency I just *DO NOT* have?


Wizard. With that many years of experience in computers in general,


Let's say I and computers have crossed paths a number of times. The only 
time I was hired for my computer competency ended in %$$%^&( ! ;/
When I did 8080 assembler, I was hired for my experience with low 
frequency millivolt signals and a project needed someone who wasn't 
awestruck by computers.


I think you earned at least that much. Actually, IMHO the answer should be 
"Whatever the hell you want to call yourself." :) IOW, it's entirely up 
to you.


If you are trying to find a label that everyone can understand you by, 
well, I don't know if labels really work that well since many people 
have many views on what a certain label even means.


It's not so much I'm looking for a label me, rather as a flag that the 
question is one a newbie would ask. I ask it because I'm missing some 
factoid that "everybody knows" but not I.




What I do is try to briefly mention (if it's even necessary) that I have 
a lot of experience using Linux but am stumped on a certain problem as I 
don't often deal with that situation. No harm in that, I think. After 
all, Linux stuff is so vast that not everyone can know every single 
thing about it. Thus why we have these groups. :)


I've been programming for 35+ years myself. And been there when dial-up 
BBSs were a thing (I am sure you remember those) even before there was 
such a thing as "Internet".


P.S. I've saved ~6 years of useful posts from this group. I've been 
trying to figure out how to organize it in order to create a QWSBFA 
rather than a FAQ. QWSBFA=="Questions Which Should Be Frequently 
Asked" ;/


OWL ducks fer cover ;}


I assume you mean for your own computer (since anyone can use Google to 
search the lists).


Yes. Originally I saved them locally as a convenience - was on dial-up. 
Now, using SeaMonkey, I have a choice of tagging a post with a choice of 
>30 tags (some times with multiple tags).




Try CherryTree. I use that program for everything. It's cross-platform. 
I download it from the web site instead of using the version in the 
Debian Repo as the latest version fixes some annoying bugs (of which I 
kinda forgot what but would quickly be reminded if I used the repo 
version).


I browsed its manual then installed the version in the Debian Repo. It 
should address two problems:

  1. finding relevant posts.
  2. organizing my bookmarks folder. Like Topsy it just grew.


I think that would be useful for categorizing questions and you can even 
search through them. If you want to save to PDF or HTML, it can export 
to those formats as well.


I've used CherryTree for everything from keeping code snippets to 
installation instructions to writing up tutorials (and exporting to HTML).

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Sat, Jul 21, 2018 at 05:46:25PM -0400, cyaiplexys wrote:
> On 07/21/2018 11:42 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> > When I'm "ignorant" and know it, I refer to myself as a "newbie".
> > My first contact with Linux was when Squeeze was just introduced.
> > I've been around computers for a while [remember 12AX7 based CPU's?]. As a
> > BSEE student 50+ years ago I took an introductory programming course.
> > Later I programmed in 8080 assembler - at the time we were moving to 8085.
> > As a consumer I ended up in the M$ land.
> > 
> > So, how would this group have me to refer to myself without claiming
> > competency I just *DO NOT* have?
> 
> Wizard. With that many years of experience in computers in general, I think
> you earned at least that much. Actually, IMHO the answer should be "Whatever
> the hell you want to call yourself." :) IOW, it's entirely up to you.

As long as it's me deciding, you can call yourself whatever you want
to call yourself.

Of course, "whatever you want to call yourself" is a little bit
cumbersome really, so I don't think I'd even use that one...

Personally I prefer a little subtlety, for example for myself it's
"The Gobsmackingly Humble One", but so as to not over do it, I add a
tagline like "So humble, the Dalai Llama rushes to attend his
humility classes" (since a little self deprecation can go a long
way).

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 21 July 2018 18:01:07 cyaiplexys wrote:

> On 07/21/2018 12:20 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Saturday 21 July 2018 11:42:31 Richard Owlett wrote:
> >> When I'm "ignorant" and know it, I refer to myself as a "newbie".
> >> My first contact with Linux was when Squeeze was just introduced.
> >> I've been around computers for a while [remember 12AX7 based
> >> CPU's?].
> >
> > No, but I recall seeing, in Iowa City in the very early 1950's, a
> > bit of a monster that had 12,000 12AU7's in it.  Used at the time to
> > grade the Iowa tests, the same one I had taken in school and got a
> > quite high score on. They had rigged a Harris Stream fed printing
> > press with a photocell at every mark location on the paper and were
> > calculating the scores from that.
> >
> >> As a BSEE student 50+ years ago I took an introductory programming
> >> course. Later I programmed in 8080 assembler - at the time we were
> >> moving to 8085. As a consumer I ended up in the M$ land.
> >
> > I started with the rca 1802. Still an interesting architecture, one
> > that was able to function in several rads a minute of atomic
> > radiation. But I tried the z-80, found it wanting, then the 6809
> > which put me firmly on a unix like path, and to this day I still
> > don't have a winders box on the premises. Quite a few linux machines
> > though.
>
> OS-9 Level II on a CoCo 3 by any chance? 

Actually level 1.01 on a coco2.

> I had one of those systems 

So  do I but the two 1 Gb hard drives are seized from stiction.

> and then I went to DOS and Windows. That to me was a step down until
> Slackware came along. Then Red Hat, then Mandrake ('scuze me...er...
> Mandriva), then Mint, Then Solyd, now full on Debian. I only used
> Ubuntu as a web server at work and in test VMs. Oh, and there was a
> stint in there somewhere where I was dabbling on a real-life Unix
> system.

We had an AT&T 3b2 in between motherboard fires for a network message 
system for about 3 years, replaced by a pdp-11/23. It also was a major 
pita, crashing for no reason and dec's incompetant service techs 
replaced everything in it except the frame rail with the serial number 
on it. I finally cajoled the network tech at CBS into trading my machine 
for his test mule.  Worked fine, but my machine he then had was 
worthless as a test mule, so we got, as did all the affiliates, at CBS 
expense, an industrial IBM with an ARTIC card that actually did all the 
work.  That, once I had edited the sat table, worked well until a newby 
tech dialed into it one day and helpfully fixed my tables. Took me about 
3 days of waving a 7 meter dish around to find all the birds again. That 
got the phone line unplugged unless they called me ahead of time. Most 
of its data by then was sent over the teletex path in the ntsc vertical 
interval.  I was the CE at that tv station for the last 18 years I 
worked. I had found my nitch.  And it was a good one, getting raises I 
didn't have to ask for, so I was making about $15k a year more than any 
other similar market sized station could afford.

> My ISP back in the day had "shell accounts" and a wizard (RIP) 
> who worked there took me under his wing and taught me how to use it
> and saved my sorry butt when I screwed up. :)
>
> The VERY FIRST computer I ever used was a teletype terminal on a DEC
> Rainbow (TeleWriter) at the Jr. High School. I was one year too young
> to technically be allowed to use it but they let me anyway. Only a few
> whiz kids were allowed on it. Me? I couldn't do a damn thing with it
> so gave up. :-/ Then I started tinkering with the Bell & Howell and
> Apple Computers at the school. I think that came after I bugged my
> parents for a computer and they came home from Radio Shack with a
> Trash-80 Model III with 4K RAM, cassette interface (later CGP-115 4"
> roll paper 4-color plotter).

I still have one of those someplace in the midden heap of a basement.

> They never put disk drives in the thing. 
> I spent HOURS programming stuff and got good enough to do labels for
> my dad's business and title screens for family videos (VHS - my dad
> would record the screen, and tape-splice VHS tapes). From there they
> gave me a Trash-80 (called "Tandy" by then) PC-4 pocket computer. When
> I got a job I got a Tandy CoCo 3 and OS-9 Level II and let's just say
> that was the beginning of everything Unix-like for me. Though it was
> more a VAX/Unix blend I think. And Basic09 was more a Pascal/Basic
> blend.
>
> > And I'm still a new bee...  But a fading one due to the age of the
> > wet ram now.

Which I didn't state, but I'll be 84 this fall.

> I'm also a bee of some kind. Probably a drone or worker bee. I'll
> always be a bee of some kind though. I often find myself getting
> sidetracked and wanting to learn new things, not realizing just how
> old I got already!

Theres an echo in here. :)
>
> >> So, how would this group have me to refer to myself without
> >> claiming competency I just *DO NOT* have?
> >>

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Sat, Jul 21, 2018 at 12:20:25PM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Saturday 21 July 2018 11:42:31 Richard Owlett wrote:
> 
> > When I'm "ignorant" and know it, I refer to myself as a "newbie".
> > My first contact with Linux was when Squeeze was just introduced.
> > I've been around computers for a while [remember 12AX7 based CPU's?].

> I started with the rca 1802. Still an interesting architecture, one that 
> was able to function in several rads a minute of atomic radiation. But I 
> tried the z-80, found it wanting, then the 6809 which put me firmly on a 
> unix like path, and to this day I still don't have a winders box on the 
> premises.

Yesterday, this one time, I was winding some wire on a winder
machine, or rather, contraption. This of course made me a wire
winder.

So then I was wondering why having a box containing such a "machine"
used by someone doing something so glorious as wire winderering, and
thus referring to said winders machine box, was so notable.

Then I read your next sentence.

> Quite a few linux machines though.

Re: Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[cyaiplexys]

On 07/21/2018 12:20 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:

On Saturday 21 July 2018 11:42:31 Richard Owlett wrote:


When I'm "ignorant" and know it, I refer to myself as a "newbie".
My first contact with Linux was when Squeeze was just introduced.
I've been around computers for a while [remember 12AX7 based CPU's?].


No, but I recall seeing, in Iowa City in the very early 1950's, a bit of
a monster that had 12,000 12AU7's in it.  Used at the time to grade the
Iowa tests, the same one I had taken in school and got a quite high
score on. They had rigged a Harris Stream fed printing press with a
photocell at every mark location on the paper and were calculating the
scores from that.


As a BSEE student 50+ years ago I took an introductory programming
course. Later I programmed in 8080 assembler - at the time we were
moving to 8085. As a consumer I ended up in the M$ land.


I started with the rca 1802. Still an interesting architecture, one that
was able to function in several rads a minute of atomic radiation. But I
tried the z-80, found it wanting, then the 6809 which put me firmly on a
unix like path, and to this day I still don't have a winders box on the
premises. Quite a few linux machines though.


OS-9 Level II on a CoCo 3 by any chance? I had one of those systems and 
then I went to DOS and Windows. That to me was a step down until 
Slackware came along. Then Red Hat, then Mandrake ('scuze me...er... 
Mandriva), then Mint, Then Solyd, now full on Debian. I only used Ubuntu 
as a web server at work and in test VMs. Oh, and there was a stint in 
there somewhere where I was dabbling on a real-life Unix system. My ISP 
back in the day had "shell accounts" and a wizard (RIP) who worked there 
took me under his wing and taught me how to use it and saved my sorry 
butt when I screwed up. :)


The VERY FIRST computer I ever used was a teletype terminal on a DEC 
Rainbow (TeleWriter) at the Jr. High School. I was one year too young to 
technically be allowed to use it but they let me anyway. Only a few whiz 
kids were allowed on it. Me? I couldn't do a damn thing with it so gave 
up. :-/ Then I started tinkering with the Bell & Howell and Apple 
Computers at the school. I think that came after I bugged my parents for 
a computer and they came home from Radio Shack with a Trash-80 Model III 
with 4K RAM, cassette interface (later CGP-115 4" roll paper 4-color 
plotter). They never put disk drives in the thing. I spent HOURS 
programming stuff and got good enough to do labels for my dad's business 
and title screens for family videos (VHS - my dad would record the 
screen, and tape-splice VHS tapes). From there they gave me a Trash-80 
(called "Tandy" by then) PC-4 pocket computer. When I got a job I got a 
Tandy CoCo 3 and OS-9 Level II and let's just say that was the beginning 
of everything Unix-like for me. Though it was more a VAX/Unix blend I 
think. And Basic09 was more a Pascal/Basic blend.



And I'm still a new bee...  But a fading one due to the age of the wet
ram now.


I'm also a bee of some kind. Probably a drone or worker bee. I'll always 
be a bee of some kind though. I often find myself getting sidetracked 
and wanting to learn new things, not realizing just how old I got already!



So, how would this group have me to refer to myself without claiming
competency I just *DO NOT* have?

P.S. I've saved ~6 years of useful posts from this group. I've been
trying to figure out how to organize it in order to create a QWSBFA
rather than a FAQ. QWSBFA=="Questions Which Should Be Frequently
Asked" ;/



That sounds like a heck of a usefull project.


OWL ducks fer cover ;}

If you find a good cover, see if there's room for me too.


And me too, along with a good flame-retardant suit and a nice, cozy rock 
to hide under. ;->


That's the one cool thing about this group and groups like it is the 
conversations where you learn a little bit about those folks in the 
group in between learning other useful things. Reminds me of the old 
FidoNet days (and later newsgroup days - do they still even have either 
anymore??)


---
TAGLINE: "Wait-a-minit. Almonds don't have legs."

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[cyaiplexys]

On 07/21/2018 11:42 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

When I'm "ignorant" and know it, I refer to myself as a "newbie".
My first contact with Linux was when Squeeze was just introduced.
I've been around computers for a while [remember 12AX7 based CPU's?]. As 
a BSEE student 50+ years ago I took an introductory programming course. 
Later I programmed in 8080 assembler - at the time we were moving to 
8085. As a consumer I ended up in the M$ land.


So, how would this group have me to refer to myself without claiming 
competency I just *DO NOT* have?


Wizard. With that many years of experience in computers in general, I 
think you earned at least that much. Actually, IMHO the answer should be 
"Whatever the hell you want to call yourself." :) IOW, it's entirely up 
to you.


If you are trying to find a label that everyone can understand you by, 
well, I don't know if labels really work that well since many people 
have many views on what a certain label even means.


What I do is try to briefly mention (if it's even necessary) that I have 
a lot of experience using Linux but am stumped on a certain problem as I 
don't often deal with that situation. No harm in that, I think. After 
all, Linux stuff is so vast that not everyone can know every single 
thing about it. Thus why we have these groups. :)


I've been programming for 35+ years myself. And been there when dial-up 
BBSs were a thing (I am sure you remember those) even before there was 
such a thing as "Internet".


P.S. I've saved ~6 years of useful posts from this group. I've been 
trying to figure out how to organize it in order to create a QWSBFA 
rather than a FAQ. QWSBFA=="Questions Which Should Be Frequently Asked" ;/


OWL ducks fer cover ;}


I assume you mean for your own computer (since anyone can use Google to 
search the lists).


Try CherryTree. I use that program for everything. It's cross-platform. 
I download it from the web site instead of using the version in the 
Debian Repo as the latest version fixes some annoying bugs (of which I 
kinda forgot what but would quickly be reminded if I used the repo version).


I think that would be useful for categorizing questions and you can even 
search through them. If you want to save to PDF or HTML, it can export 
to those formats as well.


I've used CherryTree for everything from keeping code snippets to 
installation instructions to writing up tutorials (and exporting to HTML).

Re: If not "newbie" then ????

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 21 July 2018 11:42:31 Richard Owlett wrote:

> When I'm "ignorant" and know it, I refer to myself as a "newbie".
> My first contact with Linux was when Squeeze was just introduced.
> I've been around computers for a while [remember 12AX7 based CPU's?].

No, but I recall seeing, in Iowa City in the very early 1950's, a bit of 
a monster that had 12,000 12AU7's in it.  Used at the time to grade the 
Iowa tests, the same one I had taken in school and got a quite high 
score on. They had rigged a Harris Stream fed printing press with a 
photocell at every mark location on the paper and were calculating the 
scores from that.

> As a BSEE student 50+ years ago I took an introductory programming
> course. Later I programmed in 8080 assembler - at the time we were
> moving to 8085. As a consumer I ended up in the M$ land.

I started with the rca 1802. Still an interesting architecture, one that 
was able to function in several rads a minute of atomic radiation. But I 
tried the z-80, found it wanting, then the 6809 which put me firmly on a 
unix like path, and to this day I still don't have a winders box on the 
premises. Quite a few linux machines though.

And I'm still a new bee...  But a fading one due to the age of the wet 
ram now.

> So, how would this group have me to refer to myself without claiming
> competency I just *DO NOT* have?
>
> P.S. I've saved ~6 years of useful posts from this group. I've been
> trying to figure out how to organize it in order to create a QWSBFA
> rather than a FAQ. QWSBFA=="Questions Which Should Be Frequently
> Asked" ;/


That sounds like a heck of a usefull project.

> OWL ducks fer cover ;}
If you find a good cover, see if there's room for me too.


-- 
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page