What a weekend

Since my research contract has ended I have had to return my Thinkpad T30 and my life has turned upside down!

Almost everything I have is in my repo or pictures .Except say my gnupg secret key.

So I thought I would move .gnupg and write it to CD. I would just simply link the dir when I needed it. Then I would dig up my landlord’s PC and use that to do Debian work. But I forgot:

• CD-R (multisession) can’t be read in old computer CDROM drives
• ALWAYS use tar
• ALWAYS check if it burnt correctly. In fact, make copies.
• CD media SUCK and you’re mad to use them

Anyway after tracking down a CD-R compatible CD-ROM drive I discovered that the gnupg folder was not on the CD. Why? I am not sure. Could be k3b not burning dotfiles. Stress. Panic. ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I learnt how to:
* Fillet fish
* Scale fish
* Sharpen knives

Oh crap, the key I was thinking with a hang over on Sunday morning.Those alcohol testing devices are dangerous at parties. I thankfully made a backup on a piece of paper with had about 20 staples in to protect it from prying eyes.

Found paper. Now I needed to scan it in. I don’t have a scanner. Managed to find a friend-of-a-friend who has a scanner on Sunday morning. Scanned it in. Used gocr but something was wrong. Gnupg wasn’t having it when I tried to import it.

Unfortunately the font I printed my key in fouled up gocr in several ways:
* O and 0
* K and X
* f and r
* 1 and l

Being the most common. I spent more hours with the help of a friend Teemu until I finally succesfully imported my secret key.

• I need to figure out how to print my secret key in a font which gocr can reasonably understand.
• There is a HUGE difference between a thinkpad and pretty much anything else.