Comments for Othalan's Travels

Comment on Anyone interested in Automatic Post Subscriptions? by othalan

othalan — Sun, 20 May 2012 19:38:18 +0000

Peru is a rather large place….no sign of earthquakes where I am up north.

Considered the picture idea, but unless you have a picture of exactly what you want how do you know you got the correct point across? Spanish supplemented by charades was, I thought, doing great. Until I got something random….

Comment on Anyone interested in Automatic Post Subscriptions? by Mom

Mom — Sun, 20 May 2012 19:04:03 +0000

The email on new posts worked great, and I do not need comments notices–part of the fun of reading posts is to review an earlier one to see what changed in your trip. Also, local news mentioned earthquakes in Peru somewhere.

I’ve been wondering about haircut communication. Have you tried using a photo (value=1000 words)?

Comment on Anyone interested in Automatic Post Subscriptions? by othalan

othalan — Sun, 20 May 2012 04:26:26 +0000

FYI, the “Subscriptions” page has been updated with some of the existing options I mention above and will continue to be updated as I make changes to this site.

Comment on Peru: First Impressions by othalan

othalan — Sun, 20 May 2012 04:15:08 +0000

I’ve been looking around for some guinea pig to try out in the past few towns but I haven’t seen any since Banos (where I forgot to give it a try). I’ll let you know when I do give it a try. I hear rumors that it is easier to find further south in Peru.

Comment on Peru: First Impressions by Grant

Grant — Sun, 20 May 2012 04:04:32 +0000

Hey, before you get too far along, be sure to try out guinea pig, which I understand is a local delicacy in Equador and Peru. I’m curious how it tastes from someone less prissy than the travel guide we watched in Spanish class.

Comment on Adventures in Gringoland by othalan

othalan — Sat, 19 May 2012 23:05:00 +0000

You are more correct that you know about Vilcabamba. I didn’t mention it, but the culture here has many echoes of Boulder. Lots of different religions/philosophies, lots of outdoorsy types, lots of people wanting to create their own reality separate from the rest of the world. But biased a LOT more towards new-age beliefs, especially enlightenment type stuff, reiki, chakra work, meditation, etc.

Get that hair down to shoulder length and tie it back in a pony tail….you’d do a perfect Boulder Hippie.

Comment on Adventures in Gringoland by Grant

Grant — Sat, 19 May 2012 21:50:44 +0000

Haven’t had a haircut in over a year, and rather enjoying my long hair. It helps me pretend that it’s not all that thin on top.

What lovely views from Villacabamba! Stick some flatirons on those hills, and I’ll bet that’s what Boulder looked like 100 years ago.

Comment on A Slow Lingering Death by othalan

othalan — Sat, 19 May 2012 17:59:36 +0000

Anyone interested can read more about TRIM support here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM

Comment on A Slow Lingering Death by othalan

othalan — Sat, 19 May 2012 17:12:22 +0000

Update on these problems:

Disk errors have gone away. I suspect they were related to either heat or vibration from my previous hard cases on the motorcycle. I’ve also noticed less heat buildup than previously, though that could be related to climate (cooler ambient temperatures) and use pattern (used now mostly on battery power, not plugged in).

I do still have an occasional odd problem pop up, but it is transient and goes away with a power cycle (and no lingering effects). So for now, I’m trying hard to ignore those transient issues until something can be reliably reproduced…..

I just found out that the slow performance of my SSD is almost certainly because “TRIM” is not being used. Apparently, a common problem with SSDs is that if data is not erased when a file is erased, it takes longer and longer to write a file (haven’t looked into the details of exactly why). The solution is called “TRIM”. On some SSD disks this is not supported, in which case the only way to restore performance is to wipe the disk and reinstall the system (or a backup image). On the best of the newest disks, this is supposedly handled internally by the firmware. But in the middle ground (which I think my 32GB SSD exists), this must be manually handled by the OS. On Linux, this feature is only available using the EXT4 file system….but I am using JFS as it normally provides better performance.

Still doing research, but it looks like I need to back up the disk and reformat the partitions using EXT4 so I can mount them with TRIM support.

Not difficult, but very annoying and time consuming because the only option I have is a 4x (I think) SDHC card, which will take a few hours to backup the disk image, then a few more to restore it.

Comment on Children by Grant

Grant — Sat, 19 May 2012 04:00:14 +0000

Yes, my account may be deleted soon enough, as they continue to make changes that do not please the users. Soon, Mark Zuckerberg will have to find other suckers to make advertising money off of.

Not that he makes money off of me anyway, since I block all of the ads.