Day 2: 11th July

   Didn't spend that much time on screens today. I did email and some Web
   surfing this morning. Right now I'm compiling GNU Octave on the T42 using
   the semi-official slackbuild. Actually, I'm part way through compiling
   OpenBLAS which is a dependency.  Below is the first few lines from top

 bash-5.1$ top -b -n 1
 top - 20:09:41 up  2:25,  3 users,  load average: 1.14, 1.30, 1.32
 Tasks: 141 total,   2 running, 139 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
 %Cpu(s): 80.8 us, 19.2 sy,  0.0 ni,  0.0 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
 MiB Mem :    480.9 total,     66.0 free,    221.2 used,    193.7 buff/cache
 MiB Swap:   1024.0 total,    967.2 free,     56.8 used.    237.8 avail Mem

   PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
  4547 root      20   0   47628  22664  15844 R  69.6   4.6   0:00.34 cc1
  4545 keith     20   0    5128   2964   2428 R   4.3   0.6   0:00.05 top
     1 root      20   0    2400   1408   1376 S   0.0   0.3   0:00.79 init

   As you can see progress is sedate and there is some use of swap. I have a
   couple of UXTerm windows going, the various compilers and build tools that
   the slackbuild script runs, and Seamonkey's Web browser component and
   Composer (page editor) component. One advantage of using the powersave CPU
   governor is that the laptop stays nice and cool... but compilations
   proceed in a sedate manner. The interface remains responsive and Seamonkey
   is useable.

 bash-5.1$ sensors
 acpitz-acpi-0
 Adapter: ACPI interface
 temp1:        +44.0°C  (crit = +93.0°C)

 thinkpad-isa-0000
 Adapter: ISA adapter
 fan1:        2991 RPM
 CPU:          +44.0°C 
 GPU:          +46.0°C 
 temp3:        +29.0°C

   Why am I compiling GNU Octave? Well I thought that I had already compiled
   Octave packages for Slackware 15.0 but found that they were all 64 bit.
   Compiling is the usual way of adding software additional to default
   Slackware install. There are some repositories that provide pre-built
   binary packages but I could not find a 32 bit Octave build in any of them.
   SlackOnly is 64 bit only for Slackware 15.0.

   Why do I need GNU Octave? I'm teaching myself some linear algebra from
   Gilbert Strang's Linear Algebra for Everyone which I bought a copy of and
   collected today. The exercises suggest devising simple Matlab commands to
   explore some of the concepts in a concrete way with actual numerical
   matrices. Octave uses a similar syntax to Matlab, at least for the basics.

   Real Life: I bought Strang's book from hive.co.uk which is an alternative
   to Amazon. Hive can deliver books to an independent bookshop that you
   choose near where you live, and the bookshop that you nominate gets a
   small cut of the markup on the book. The only problem is that Birmingham
   does not have a large number of independent bookshops, so I had to go
   across the city to pick the book up. Exploring the unfamiliar
   neighbourhood lead to an old-school greasy spoon cafe. Plenty of space,
   not many people in, no flat screen television, radio on in the background
   at an almost subliminal volume level. So I stayed there for some time
   writing (in a notebook with a pen). I'll be typing up some of the stuff
   tomorrow in Lyx.

   Reflection: I've been reading the pages that some of the other
   participants are putting up. Quite a range! I think the most minimal must
   be the Amiga CDTV with 9Mb of RAM (not a misprint!) which Steve Lord uses
   to process pictures from an old digital camera. I'm thinking along the
   lines of trying a Linux distribution that is roughly contemporary with
   this T42 laptop and seeing how far I can get. The limiting factor will
   always be the Web browser.