#mangelwurzel

[bluntshavingrazor]

Now that is is officially Spooky Season, let's talk about some traditional British Hallowe'en things; the most common symbol of Hallowe'en is, almost certainly, the Jack O'Lantern. Modern lanterns are made of pumpkins, but the traditional British jack o'lantern was usually made of a turnip or mangelwurzel. (This is also true for Ireland, but I'm only really licenced to talk about Britain. It's a union thing.)

Whatever the object is made of, it is carved into the shape of a head, lit up (either internally or externally) and placed outside the residence to frighten off evil spirits or members of the fae who might be mauradering in the area. When the spooky times (Hallowe'en, Samhain, Punkie Night, etc) have passed then the Jack O'Lantern should be brought back inside the house, patted and stroked by all the members of the household and rewarded with a saucer of cream or brandy left in front of its face overnight. It won't drink it, obviously, but it will appreciate the gesture all the same.

In some areas, it may be typical to place the lantern onto a body of straw or cloth and turn the Jack O'Lantern into a scarecrow instead. This is considerable acceptable treatment so long as you take care to regularly talk to the scarecrow and make sure it isn't feeling neglected. Being a scarecrow is a lonely job and it's very easy for a root vegetable to slip into depression. Ethical issues aside, you really do not want a vengeful scarecrow on your property. Remember, a Jack O'Lantern is for life, not just for Hallowe'en. ('Life' in this case being a few months, as the vegetables will eventually rot. They might last the winter, but after that it's not looking good)

More Fun Facts

[90smisaki]

vibrant Halloween pumpkin

vibrant Halloween pumpkin. The design should evoke a feeling of horror and inspire a sense of curiosity about the world. details are crisp a

[beefstrugglenoff]

Everybody’s Friend - MANGELWURZEL

[gilgai]

He gives a little mangold wurtzel to the alderneys / He studies the habits of nobler animals / The bees swarm; / But settle in an inconvenient place / He takes the news by the aviary / He conveys a few peaches to the pigs / He digs, but finds it hot / And refreshes himself with a little water-melon. / He puts on his bell-topper, & rides into town / The dust is troublesome / Till a fortunate change brings up the rain / He prunes his bananas / He thinks he shall have some grapes / He buys a little beef, & decides that he will send it home / The birds attack his cereals / He shoots one, but is indignantly rebuked by the survivor, who points reproachfully to the village spire. / He is made president of the Poultry Society / But is not proud / He goes to see how the bull is, after the voyage / And finds him getting on pretty well / He spends a day by the placid river / And hooks a magnificent cod / He meets a few friends / But declines to partake of their refreshments / Hereabouts he generally treads upon a small snake / But by prompt measures, prevents serious consequences / He tries the sports of the field / But comes to grief, & finds himself the object of derisions.

Edward Wilson, Australia Felix: Cartoons from the daily life of an infectionate uncle, ca. 1842-1878, State Library of Victoria (H97.136/1-28)

[rhythmicwizard]

iv'e got a fat crush on the lead singer

[beefstrugglenoff]

I.O.U. - MANGELWURZEL

[linuxlife]

Linux Life Episode 75

Soapbox Episode 2

Hello and welcome to my ongoing Linux journey. Now I have tried to install Linux on my Dell M6800 i7 laptop (Mangelwurzel) as I said in the previous episode.

Well I did indeed try many different distributions all of them with very little success.

After failing with Endeavour OS I tried running Garuda Linux which was also an Arch based distro.

it installed fine and set itself up all good for a few days I even managed to get it running the Optimus manager correctly to take advantage of the Hybrid graphics card that is in the M6800.

It worked well for two days then it updated and the network driver stopped working. it somehow screwed itself up when updating the DKMS drivers and that was it no internet.

I spent several hours trying various methods such as downgrade. Reinstalling the drivers via usb and such but sadly it would no longer connect.

So although quite a nice looking distro I had to give up with it.

I then proceeded to try many distributions. I thought well it seems the Mangelwurzel keeps breaking using the Arch system. I should try some more stable distributions.

So thats what I did. I downloaded the following distributions and they all had the same issue.

Fedora 33 Mate, Ubuntu Studio 20.04 LTS, Q4OS 3.12 Trinity, Q4OS 4.2 beta KDE, OpenSuSE Leap 15.2, Linux Mint 20.1 Beta and finally BlueStar Linux which is Arch based.

Every single one of them could see the video card, even install fine but they all refused to see the Intel/Broadcom Wifi card of the Mangelwurzel

Which was quite frustrating. Sure i could change the wifi card to a different one but I thought at least one of the stable distributions would include a driver for the Broadcom.

So many frustrating hours of playing with the various Linux distros out there I eventually gave up and decided that the Mangelwurzel is not really good for Linux usage.

Maybe if I changed to wifi card to a differnt one it might make a difference but ultimately it was frustrating.

I do own a wifi bridge but it seems ridiculous to have to connect an external wifi bridge just so I can then get an internal wifi working. Seems kind of counterproductive.

Also its not as if I need another Linux machine running I have two machines that are running Linux quite fine.

My i7 desktop is running Endeavour OS and has no major issues. And my AMD Turion laptop (Mangosteen) is running Xubuntu 20.0.4 LTS without issue. It may not be fast but it does work.

So do I really need another machine running Linux. It would be nice if I could get Mangelwurzel to have a Linux setup that consistantly works but it seems that is not easily achieved.

I could persist but given I have working Linux machines, There is very little impetus to do so.

I think I have an Intel wifi card somewhere I could replace it with but I have no idea where I have put it, so for now it remains a project that is not happening any time soon.

I also tried to Hackintosh the Mangelwurzel but that was even less successful I could not even get past the first boot block. However that's not for this blog.

Should I persist and get the Mangelwurzel running some form of Linux? Should I change the wifi card? or should I just accept that the machine is not the best for Linux and continue to use it with Windows 10 (stop spitting at the back) ?

Well let me know what you think I should do with it... or call me a numpty for being an impatient fool up to you....

So until next episode ... Take care.

[chrisatola]

If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that’s a mangelwurzel, rather than a carrot!