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June 2019 roundup

 

June 27 2019

This blog is various thoughts I have had in June of 2019.

==Installing Node is a pain==

So, I needed to install Node in CentOS 7 at work. No problem, just go over to NodeJS.org, download the 64-bit Linux binary, open up the package, and install.

Nope. First of all, they do not have anything handy like a RPM or what not. No problem, there should be a README in the binary package describing exactly how to download the package.

Except, there wasn't. There was a README, but the README had absolutely no directions on how to install Node.

No problem. Just copy the binaries and libraries over to /usr/local. No, that didn't work either. "Node" worked, but npm did not work.

The problem is that you actually use a different npm binary if you want one that actually works. I kid you not; the working npm binary is lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm-cli.js. It took reading Stackoverflow to do an install of Node and NPM.

Can you say docmentation failure?

==A one-line UNIX calculator==

While Python makes a decent calculator, I prefer this calculator:

while echo -n '] ' ; do read a ; awk 'BEGIN{print '"$a"'}' ; done

This calculator has the advantage of working with Busybox or older MSYS based systems, and it also does not make floating point rounding errors visible to you.

==You Need to Calm Down==

“You Need to Calm Down” is a new song by Taylor Swift which is making news. I like the song a lot; it’s not up tempo, but it’s a good fun mid-tempo song. My daughter doesn’t care for the song as much, but she does like a lot of music on Swift’s album “1989”. The song is currently #2 on the Billboard Hot 100.

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