My new OU Public Law module is trying so hard to be as eccentric as the British Constitution. To this end, students are presented with a bookmarks collection to put information about constitutional law in, in the form of a graphical bag. I am of course taking this very seriously.
The code that generates the little diagrams on my station pages like this one is written in PostScript. Well, to be strict, it’s PS generated by a Haskell program and exactly why it’s that way is probably a question for @Ben Harris who wrote the code during one of our station collecting holidays.
Anyway, today I noticed it had stopped working. "Last OS error: Permission denied” says Ghostscript on running the code. And yet, stracing the whole thing, nowhere is an EACCES to be seen. Turns out Ghostscript has made default a “safe mode” which restricts PostScript file operations to only those files you specify in advance. You can get around it by adding -dNOSAFER to the gs command line. Fine, whatever.
But what I definitely object to is Ghostscript sounding like it’s reporting an ordinary OS-level system call error, when in fact it’s reporting its own MADE UP ERROR. They could at least have had the decency not to call it an
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The code that generates the little diagrams on my station pages like this one is written in PostScript. Well, to be strict, it’s PS generated by a Haskell program and exactly why it’s that way is probably a question for @Ben Harris who wrote the code during one of our station collecting holidays.
Anyway, today I noticed it had stopped working. "Last OS error: Permission denied” says Ghostscript on running the code. And yet, stracing the whole thing, nowhere is an EACCES to be seen. Turns out Ghostscript has made default a “safe mode” which restricts PostScript file operations to only those files you specify in advance. You can get around it by adding -dNOSAFER to the gs command line. Fine, whatever.
But what I definitely object to is Ghostscript sounding like it’s reporting an ordinary OS-level system call error, when in fact it’s reporting its own MADE UP ERROR. They could at least have had the decency not to call it an “OS error”. Grr.
railadvent.co.uk/2023/08/polic… This is rather amazing. As in the the 1963 robbery, they interfered with signals to get the train to stop. There was an excerpt from an incident log on the birdsite which I’ve shamelessly lifted here but I have no idea of its provenance. I’d be fascinated to read more.
Normal instruction leaflet. “DEAR MASTER, IT'S MY PLEASURE TO SERVE YOU! In order to serve you better, I wanna share you some secrets about myself and beg your pardon. I'm sorry when I become loud during high-pressure inflation 2 min after starting, as I'm pumping on full throttle!”
