Quote of the day, c/o Jamie Zawinski:
“These days, almost all of my software is written out of anger. I used to program for fun, and then for convenience. Now, it’s motivated almost exclusively by rage.”
The Euthanasia Coaster would kill its passengers through prolonged cerebral hypoxia, or insufficient supply of oxygen to the brain. The ride’s seven inversions would inflict 10 g on its passengers for 60 seconds – causing g-force related symptoms starting with gray out through tunnel vision to black out and eventually g-LOC, g-force induced loss of consciousness. Depending on the tolerance of an individual passenger to g-forces, the first or second inversion would cause cerebral anoxia, rendering the passengers brain dead. Subsequent inversions would serve as insurance against unintentional survival of passengers.
This is possibly the greatest programming language ever invented; the Shakespeare Programming Language (SPL).
The following program reverses the characters in a given string:
Othello, a stacky man.
Lady Macbeth, who pushes him around till he pops.
Act I: The one and only.
Scene I: In the beginning, there was nothing.
[Enter Othello and Lady Macbeth]
Othello:
You are nothing!
Scene II: Pushing to the very end.
Lady Macbeth:
Open your mind! Remember yourself.
Othello:
You are as hard as the sum of yourself and a stone wall. Am I as horrid as a flirt-gill?
Lady Macbeth:
If not, let us return to scene II. Recall your imminent death!
Othello:
You are as small as the difference between yourself and a hair!
Scene III: Once you pop, you can't stop!
Lady Macbeth:
Recall your unhappy childhood. Speak your mind!
Othello:
You are as vile as the sum of yourself and a toad! Are you better than nothing?
Lady Macbeth:
If so, let us return to scene III.
Scene IV: The end.
[Exeunt]
[Original author unknown – kjj]
THE BIG MOVE TO MASSACHUSETTS
August 15 – Moved to our new home in Massachusetts . It’s so beautiful here. The lake to the north looks so majestic. I can hardly wait to see it snow covered. I’m going to love it here!
October 14 – Massachusetts is definitely the most beautiful place on earth. The leaves have turned all the colors and shades of red and orange. Went for a ride through the park and saw some deer. They are so graceful. Certainly they are the most wonderful animals on earth. This must be paradise, I LOVE IT HERE!!!
October 25 – Deer season will start soon. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to kill such a gorgeous animal. Hope it will snow soon. I love it here. Those red and orange leaves have covered my yard. Looks like a magnificent multi-colored carpet. HOW BEAUTIFUL. Raking and cleaning up the yard will be an opportunity for invigorating exercise in the cool crisp air.
November 1 – Ah, more leaves and more exercise.
November 8 – Jesus, still more leaves. Guess it’s best to wait until they’ve all fallen before I rake again.
November 15 – Finally, all of the trees lost their leaves and with today’s final raking it’s over for this season. Chiropractor suggested I use a lawn maintenance service next year. Only four blisters became infected. Should probably remember to use gloves.
November 30 – What the f–k? Where did all of those leaves come from? Had a little wind last night and the lawn is covered again. Oh well, they’ll just have to wait until spring.
December 12 – It snowed last night, FINALLY. Woke up to find everything blanketed in white. It looks like a postcard. We went outside and cleaned the snow off the steps and shoveled the driveway. Had a snowball fight (I won) and when the snowplow came by we had to shovel the end of the driveway again. What a beautiful place. I Love Massachusetts!
December 14 – More snow last night, I love it. The snow plow did his trick to the driveway again. I love it here.
December 19 – More snow again last night. Can’t get out of the driveway. Can’t get to work. I’m exhausted from shoveling. F–king snowplow.
December 22 – More of that white shit fell again last night. As if dealing with the leaves weren’t bad enough, now I’ve got blisters all over my hands from shoveling, must remember to wear gloves. I think the snowplow hides around the corner and waits until I’m finished shoveling the driveway. The asshole.
December 25 – Merry F–king Christmas. More frigging snow. If I ever get my hands on that son-of-a-bitch who drives the snowplow, I swear I’ll kill the bastard. Don’t know why they don’t use more salt on the roads to melt the f–king ice.
December 27 – More white shit last night. Have been inside for three days except for shoveling out the driveway after that plow goes through every time. F–king gloves got wet and then froze on my hands. Doctor said it was just a mild case of frost bite, disfiguration is probably only temporary. Can’t go anywhere, car is stuck in a mountain of white shit. The weatherman says to expect another 10 inches of the shit tonight. Do you know how many shovels full of snow 10 inches is?
December 28 – The f–king weatherman was wrong. We got 34 inches of that white shit. At this rate it won’t melt ’till summer. The plow got stuck up the road and the bastard came to the door and asked to borrow a shovel. After I told him I’d already broken six of them shoveling all the shit he pushed into the driveway, I broke my last one on his f-king head.
January 4 – Finally got out of the house today. Went to the store to get food and on the way back I hit a damned deer that ran in front of my car. Did about $3000 damage. F–king beasts should be killed. Wish the hunters had killed them all last November.
March 3 – Took the car to the garage in town. The thing is rusting out from all the f–king salt they put all over the roads.
March 10 – Moved to Palm Springs, California. I can’t imagine why anyone in their right mind would ever live in that God forsaken state of Massachusetts .
Very nice terminal emulator that realistically renders the whole terminal – reflection, high phosphor burn in, jitter, and interlacing. Reminds me of the computer lab at Canisius back in 1984.
100 trends to watch in 2011, c/o J. Walter Thompson.
…what would older Redditors like to let the young whipper-snappers know about the past?
Great thread on Reddit – especially amusing for anyone older than 40. It’s amazing how much things have changed since the 70s/80s, and how much we take technology for granted these days.
Interesting items:
If you wanted to see a movie, you went to a theater. If it left the theater, tough shit. Star Wars came out in 1977. It first aired on pay-per-view (if you had that, nobody I knew did) was in 1982, five years later. It also came out on VHS that same year, if you were lucky enough to have a VHS deck. It wasn’t on broadcast TV until 1984, seven years later. But for 5 years after I first saw it, I couldn’t see Star Wars again. If you went to a bar or a club, you would be a walking ashtray, and all your clothes would need washing. I couldn’t go to sleep without showering and washing the smoke and ash out of my hair, or else I’d wake up with a wicked sore throat. People lined up at banks on Fridays, to deposit their paychecks and withdraw cash for the weekend. If you ran out of cash over the weekend, too bad. When credit cards became available, it was usually only men with very solid credit who could get them. Often single women, even successful businesswomen, couldn’t get one. If they were married, they might get them through their husband, with their husband’s name was on the card. There were exceptions of course, but I remember reading a Newsweek article around 1980 about how this was starting to change. By the time I got to college, they were giving away credit cards to anyone with a pulse. If you ran out of film, no more pictures. You would be very selective about what to take a picture of. No cell phone, pagers, texting, voicemail, or answering machines. If you wanted to meet up with someone, you had to call them until they were home and picked up, and then make plans. If you ended up at a party, that was usually it. No “hey I’m over at this address, swing by” or anything like that.
Engineer Guy explains queue theory.
A bit of Apple history. From wikipedia:
The dogcow, also known as Clarus the Dogcow, is a bitmapped image first introduced by Apple. It is the shape of a dog, originally created in 1983 as part of the Cairo font by Susan Kare as the glyph for “z.”
That image was later chosen for the Mac OS Print Setup dialog box, though it needed to be slightly redrawn because the original Cairo dog did not proportionally fit the Print Setup dialog box. This modified version became the image famously known as the dogcow.
The term “dogcow” was first coined by either Scott Zimmerman or Ginger Jernigan. Mark “The Red” Harlan named the dogcow “Clarus” as a joking reference to Apple’s former office-software unit, Claris. The sound she makes is Moof!
Susan Kare is selling limited edition prints of early Mac icons, including Clarus.
Links:
c/o Mark Ohlund
If you are new to Blues music, or like it but never really understood the why/wherefore, here are some very fundamental rules:
1. Most Blues begin with: “Woke up this morning…”
2. “I got a good woman” is a bad way to begin the Blues, unless you stick something nasty in the next line like, “I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town.”
3. The Blues is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes sort of: “Got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Yes, I got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Got teeth like Margaret Thatcher and she weigh 500 pound.”
4. The Blues is not about choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch… Ain’t no way out.
5. Blues cars: Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs and broken-down trucks. Blues don’t travel in Volvos, BMWs, or Sport Utility Vehicles. Most Blues transportation is a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. Jet aircraft and state-sponsored motor pools ain’t even in the running. Walkin’ plays a major part in the Blues lifestyle. So does fixin’ to die.
6. Teenagers can’t sing the Blues. They ain’t fixin’ to die yet. Adults sing the Blues. In Blues, “adulthood” means being old enough to get the electric chair if you shot a man in Memphis.
7. Blues can take place in New York City or New Orleans, but not in Hawaii or anywhere in Canada. Hard times in Minneapolis or Seattle is probably just clinical depression. Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City are still the best places to have the Blues. You cannot have the Blues in any place that doesn’t get rain.
8. A man with male pattern baldness ain’t the Blues. A woman with male pattern baldness is. Breaking your leg ’cause you were skiing is not the Blues. Breaking your leg ’cause a alligator be chomping on it is.
9. You can’t have no Blues in an office or a shopping mall. The lighting is wrong. Go outside to the parking lot and sit by the dumpster.
10. Good places for the Blues:
a. Highway
b. Jailhouse
c. Empty bed
d. Bottom of a whiskey glass
11. Bad places for the Blues:
a. Nordstrom’s
b. Gallery openings
c. Ivy League institutions
d. Golf courses
12. No one will believe it’s the Blues if you wear a suit, ‘less you happen to be an old ethnic person, and you slept in it.
13. Do you have the right to sing the Blues?
Yes, if:
a. You older than dirt
b. You blind
c. You shot a man in Memphis
d. You can’t be satisfied
No, if:
a. You have all your teeth
b. You once were blind but now can see
c. The man in Memphis lived
d. You have a 401K or trust fund
14. Blues is not a matter of color, it’s a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the Blues. Sonny Liston could have. Ugly white people also got a leg up on the Blues.
15. If you ask for water and your darlin’ give you gasoline, it’s the Blues. Other acceptable Blues beverages are:
a. Cheap wine
b. Whiskey or bourbon
c. Muddy water
d. Black coffee
The following are NOT Blues beverages:
a. Perrier
b. Chardonnay
c. Snapple
d. Slim Fast
16. If death occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it’s a Blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is another Blues way to die. So are the electric chair, substance abuse and dying lonely on a broken-down cot. You can’t have a Blues death if you die during a tennis match or while getting liposuction.
17. Some Blues names for women:
a. Sadie
b. Big Mama
c. Bessie
d. Fat River Dumpling
18. Some Blues names for men:
a. Joe
b. Willie
c. Little Willie, Little Joe
d. Big Willie, Big Joe
19. Persons with names like Michelle, Amber, Jennifer, Debbie, and Heather, (or Justin, Joshua, Tyler, Keith) can’t sing the Blues no matter how many men they shot in Memphis.
20. Make your own Blues name starter kit:
a. Name of physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Lame, etc.)
b. First name (see above) plus name of fruit (Lemon, Lime,Kiwi, etc.)
c. Last name of President (Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore, etc.)
For example: Blind Lime Jefferson, Jakeleg Lemon Johnson or Cripple Kiwi Fillmore, etc. (Well, maybe not “Kiwi.”)
21. I don’t care how tragic your life: if you own a computer, you cannot sing the blues – even when it blows up & you lose all that data…
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