Somebody asked me earlier today why a penis is also called a cock. I assumed that it had something to do with the rooster (the male chicken) being called a cock. While this is true, there's a little bit more to tell. Here's a brief investigation into the matter.
According to Etymonline:
Slang sense of "penis" is attested since 1610s (but cf. pillicock "penis," from c.1300);
Attempting to update flashplugin on Ubuntu Precise resulted in an error. Removing the package and reinstalling it resulted in the following:
I've long heard Brits scoffing at the use of the word buffalo for the the American Buffalo when it is actually a species of Bison. Here's a brief investigation into the matter.
Firstly, the entry from the American Heritage Dictionary has a remarkably informative history of the word, buffalo:
I was trying to describe the lyrics of a song today and stumbled when I reached a section with a bunch of "la la la" bits. I suppose I could have well just termed them as la-la-la bits, but seeing as to how I apparently have all the time in the world (not my words), I decided to see if there was something a bit more definitive that I could use. A wittle googling later, I chanced upon the answer.
After a recent server migration, I found that my MySQL instance was not starting up (on Debian Squeeze). A look in the logs revealed that MySQL was having issues with corrupt InnoDB tables and therefore refusing to start. A number of forums informed me to do the following.
I'm sure that most of y'all have come across a version of the following anecdote:
In Linux, you can simplify some of your SSH commands using an SSH config file. For example, create a file named config in your ~/.ssh directory with something like the following:
I ran into this issue a couple of days ago and cannot recall the exact error message. However, the problem was effectively that aptitude could not install the new kernel update because my partition had apparently run out of space. An interrupted update to Klipper is one thing and the Linux kernel a whole 'nother kettle of fishies. Thinking that I simply needed to free up some space on my partition, I checked the current status via df.
Since I keep forgetting this shortcut, here it is for posterity. Activating GNU Screen's scrollback feature can be done by pressing CTRL + a + [. This is especially handy when you are using Screen from within PuTTY.
While a number of sites provide additional Vim-esque shortcuts to navigate within the buffer, I've been able to get by fine with just the navigational arrow keys on my keyboard.
I got a new 3TB hard disk. While it's being detected in Windows 7, initializing it has proved to be impossible as I keep running into the following error:
The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error
After testing this one a couple of different systems and in Linux, I have arrived at the conclusion that the drive is screwed. Time to get it replaced.
