Linux Format magazine asked him about KDE, NAS, LSB, DCs and other acronyms, and now his answers are here for your TLA titillation…"
During 2008 I have found myself captivated by close groupings of the inner planets (Mercury and Venus) with other planets and the Moon. This is a fortunate thing because just about every month there is something to look forward to. The next few days will bring about this happy circumstance as Mercury makes an evening appearance swinging by Jupiter, and Venus grows in brilliance in the sunset sky as it moves through Capricorn. The diagram shows some beautiful configurations that you can see in the coming days. The Moon will be near Venus on the 30th and 31st, closing out 2008 high in the southwest after sunset.
s at the San Francisco Waldorf School talking with the sixth grade class about Circumpolar Stars and many other topics of interest for the young astronomer. The students in this class had been creating a number of illustrations of star patterns including the zodiac and the circumpolar stars. The illustration is taken from the workbook of one of the students (Sophia) and is a fine illustration of the circumpolar stars as seen this time of year shortly after sunset. Polaris is the star at the end of the handle of the Little Dipper and the other constellations show are all within the 38 degree circle around Polaris. As mentioned, over the course of 24 hours these stars will all move in a very large circle in a counter-clockwise direction. Thus in the early evening Cassiopeia is near the top of its path looking like an "M" but over the course of the night it will swing around to the left of Polaris eventually moving down low on the horizon by morning. In contrast to this, the Big Dipper is low on the horizon at nightfall but by early morning will have swept around to the right of Polaris and will be high in the sky at sunrise.
That's it.
| Exit Code Number | Meaning | Example | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Catchall for general errors | let "var1 = 1/0" | Miscellaneous errors, such as "divide by zero" and other impermissible operations |
| 2 | Misuse of shell builtins (according to Bash documentation) | empty_function() {} | Seldom seen, usually defaults to exit code 1 |
| 126 | Command invoked cannot execute | Permission problem or command is not an executable | |
| 127 | "command not found" | illegal_command | Possible problem with $PATH or a typo |
| 128 | Invalid argument to exit | exit 3.14159 | exit takes only integer args in the range 0 - 255 (see first footnote) |
| 128+n | Fatal error signal "n" | kill -9 $PPID of script | $? returns 137 (128 + 9) |
| 130 | Script terminated by Control-C | Control-C is fatal error signal 2, (130 = 128 + 2, see above) | |
| 255* | Exit status out of range | exit -1 | exit takes only integer args in the range 0 - 255 |
