This-n-That

Economic collapse: The US is there. You didn’t know that? Perhaps the meaning of the phrase “economic collapse” is what eludes you. There is less disposable income and a significant portion of the population is unemployed when they’d rather be working. Of course, you might have been more aware that certain industries were already in collapse — petroleum, for example. Collapse doesn’t mean everything stops, only that it’s nothing like it used to be. How it will play out is the same as before, with some businesses starting, but less of them. We also have some shutting down or reducing operations and letting workers go, of which we have far more than the opening and hiring.

I’m not the only guy who’s been saying all along that this stuff would simply drift down towards the bottom, and that even a “crash” is relative to the size of the thing crashing — bigger falls slower. The thing that will be shocking is banking closures or “bail-ins” where depositor funds are confiscated. Now that would make sudden and dramatic changes. Keep your eye on the banking news.

Linux on Netbooks: My netbook sports an Intel Atom 1.6 Ghz CPU with dual-threading, which Linux treats as a dual-core CPU in effect. Running 32-bit Mint with XFCE is just about tolerable for most things. It seldom uses much of the 2GB RAM, so the CPU is the bottleneck. I have a little meter on my panel that moves a lot and it’s instructive.

Pale Moon offers a 32-bit browser that is optimized for Atom. I use it for general surfing where a full browser is required. The generic Seamonkey 32-bit for Linux is just about as fast for my secure login stuff (such as this blog). And did you know that if you look around on the Net, you can find instructions for accessing your Outlook.com service via the IMAP protocol? I can read my Outlook account in Seamonkey.

incoming: imap-mail.outlook.com, port 993, SSL/TLS, normal password
outgoing: smtp-mail.outlook.com, port 587, STARTTLS, normal password

I advise you to turn off frequent checking. Have your password ready the first time you login for each incoming and outgoing.

I also have SlimJet installed, but it’s a dog and I only use it on sites where Mozilla browsers just don’t work. You’ll find that, on a small screen, plenty of sites and services don’t display well. You could use the bundled Firefox and Thunderbird that come with Mint, but on a netbook like mine both are slower than you might like.

Indeed, I often use Links2 or Dillo for most regular reading. Some sites still have way too many graphics elements and I use Elinks or Lynx plain-text browsers. You have to feel your way around with these kind of alternative browsers and decide what works best for you. Be aware that some sites will block Lynx for reasons that are long forgotten by most of those who do it.

Plantain: Not the banana-looking thing, but the family of plants most folks thing of as “weeds” — locally it’s ribwort. The leaves are astringent and can help close up wounds in a hurry. Just squish and roll between your fingers and apply to small wounds or insect bites. Eat the green leaves and it can help with allergies, because it’s astringent qualities apply internally to mucus flows. I’d be half-dead without it, and it’s a whole lot healthier for you than any of the allergy medications. I’ve been out on walks hunting for it, and grateful to discover there are patches in good supply rather close to me. They are viable and edible through winter as long as you can see the plants. The taste takes a little getting used to, but after a while your tongue recognizes it as a friend.