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Saturday 24
- Hugh: Spent some time working on a thing with the Boy. He wants to set up a server using a system called BYOND, which basically acts as a host for computer games. The plan is: install the daemon on a Linux box, either real or virtual, run the daemon with input from a game file downloaded from a github project, and point your domain name in the right direction so people can play. So we worked on that. First, I built him a VMWare virtual machine and showed him how to set everything up. Pointed the DNS to it and it worked fine, despite the sometimes useless instructions. But I wasn’t about to leave VMWare running on that machine when I already need it for other stuff, so I tried setting him up with my old web host, nearlyfreespeech.net. We got it nearly all working before I discovered it uses BSD instead of Linux, and the binaries for the Daemon are Linux-only, so that was no good. So I got him a Linode instead, but I got stuck there because I have no idea how to configure it. Tomorrow I’ll take a look at the quite excellent help files and we’ll be set
Sunday 25
- Dan: has been in musical nerd mode: sent me this video on Westside Story which they have been watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQlgiO29QT4&feature=youtu.be
- Dan: sent me an article on Aaron Burr’s secret family of colour: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/08/24/aaron-burr-villain-hamilton-had-secret-family-color-new-research-shows/?outputType=amp
- Hugh: I set up that Linode with the Boy, and then made him a deal. It’s going to cost about US$5 a month, which is about a week’s pocket money, but if it’s an educational expense then I won’t charge him for it, naturally. So I made him a deal: show me that you’re learning something and I won’t dock your pocket money for your server. I decided to give him some challenges, around the general topic of Linux, and if he figures out how to do them then he’s learning. The first one was simple:1. Log in to the server as yourself.
2. Create a text file called hello.txt, containing a suitable greeting.
3. Use a Windows FTP program to download the file.He went and googled instructions, and came back with a puzzle: he’d produced a file that looks like this, but it wasn’t working. Apparently his tutorial video hadn’t quite explained the difference between the “hello world” script and the command you type afterward to make it run. I showed him that, and he got the hang of it. By the end of a half-hour lesson on basic Linux, he’d learned about a dozen commands and had succeeded at lesson one and then some. I might need to find a beginner tutorial myself so I can figure out what to teach him next!
Monday 26
Tuesday 27
- Hugh: Took the Boy to GeCo today to take part in the making of a Salvadoran dish, pupusas, made with cornmeal so they’re gluten free. The cook ended up roping in half the Stitch & Giggle group, so we ended up with quite a crowd for lunch, and it was all very pleasant. She also brought bread & butter pudding, which the Boy tried some of (cashing in his GF exception for the week) and apparently enjoyed
- Hugh: swimming lesson
Wednesday 28
- Dan: singing lesson
- Hugh: after school activity
- Family: Beth flew home
Thursday 29
- Dan: Silver Words Open Mic – farewell to Tom who has stepped down as convenor/MC
- Hugh: Tonight, the Boy and I were going to watch the next (depressing) episode of Buffy, but he suggested we do some more programming first. He’s getting the hang of using the Python REPL and the Linux shell, and isn’t letting himself get terminally flustered when he does something to produce one of Guido’s excessively verbose error messages. I had to grimace a bit when his googling for a memory jogger about the function definition syntax led him to w3schools — I’ll have to find a slightly less quarter-arsed source of knowledge! But he’s sticking to it, which is good.
Friday 30
- Hugh: milkshake date at the Patisserie