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I hadn’t looked at this page for awhile; online programming humor/culture like The Tao of Programming and Hacker’s Wisdom are one of the things that got me interested in learning to program in the first place.
The Tao of Programming in particular is pretty funny. When I read it, I found myself wanting to learn to program… just because. Because any group of folks who thought stuff like that was funny must, I reasoned, do interesting work.
I went to see “Batman Begins” last night. I was going to post a detailed review, but instead, I think I will link to the incredibly insightful review over at Zapato Productions Intradimensional. An excerpt follows:
But all this Sturm und Drang is just a façade, cobbled together from well-tread comicbook plots and backstory outlines, for director Christopher Nolan’s real agenda: anti-monorail agitprop.
I admit that I did not, at first, see the film as flagrant anti-monorail propaganda. The review does, however, perfectly capture my feelings about the movie.
The Google Earth app is pretty cool, but as they warn you, it needs a fairly powerful PC to work well; I’m going to withhold judgement until I get a chance to test it on a better PC than the one I’m using right now.
Compare the skyline to that in my page’s header photo; that’s as close as I could come to the same view.
Google Earth is released today. The download is free; check it out!
Oh, and the Lost Dogs were awesome. Everyone in the Twin Cities and environs who was not there should feel silly for about a week, and make a solemn vow to see these guys the next chance they get.
The Lost Dogs describe their music as “traditional American music with a decidedly modern feel.” (I like American music; do you like American music? I like American music, too.) I probably would have said alternative rock, except that that brings to mind Pearl Jam or the Smashing Pumpkins, which is entirely the wrong genre, or alt-Country, except that not all their songs are really “country” — I don’t know. Their “American music” description fits pretty good.
At any rate, they are a good band, and their members hail from some of the all time favorites of my youth; the Choir, Daniel Amos/Swirling Eddies, and the 77s. What, you’ve never heard of these bands? Clearly you were not hovering around the Rock Music shelves in your local Christian bookstore in the eighties and nineties.
All this to say; I’ll be going to see these guys tonight. They are the only band playing, so hopefully it will be a long set. I’m looking forward to it. I’m a little ashamed that I will not know the words to all their latest material by heart; all my favorites are getting a little old and mouldy by now. All the same, it will be a pleasure to finally see all these guys play a live set. I’ll try to take some pictures, if the club allows cameras.
Just for completeness sakes, the current line-up is:
Terry Taylor (Daniel Amos, the Swirling Eddies)
Michael Roe (The Seventy-sevens)
Derry Daugherty (The Choir)
Steve Hindalong (The Choir)
This was published as far back as 1987, as near as I can tell, and seems to have been reposted numerous times on the internet. It was new to me, however, and very funny. What is it? It’s notes about a cookbook by Jean-Paul Sartre.
We have recently been lucky enough to discover several previously lost diaries of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre stuck in between the cushions of our office sofa. These diaries reveal a young Sartre obsessed not with the void, but with food. Apparently Sartre, before discovering philosophy, had hoped to write “a cookbook that will put to rest all notions of flavor forever.” The diaries are excerpted here for your perusal.
* October 3
Spoke with Camus today about my cookbook. Though he has never actually eaten, he gave me much encouragement. I rushed home immediately to begin work. How excited I am! I have begun my formula for a Denver omelet.
* October 4
Still working on the omelet. There have been stumbling blocks. I keep creating omelets one after another, like soldiers marching into the sea, but each one seems empty, hollow, like stone. I want to create an omelet that expresses the meaninglessness of existence, and instead they taste like cheese. I look at them on the plate, but they do not look back. Tried eating them with the lights off. It did not help. Malraux suggested paprika.
* October 6
I have realized that the traditional omelet form (eggs and cheese) is bourgeois. Today I tried making one out of a cigarette, some coffee, and four tiny stones. I fed it to Malraux, who puked. I am encouraged, but my journey is still long.
There are some great resources online; I occasionally wonder why I buy books at all, but the fact is that I like to have a hard copy that I can browse through manually.
That being said, as I’ve been working with Javascript for the last few days I’ve found quite a few useful pages. You can easily find some with Google, but my favorite has been this nicely formatted column of Javascript syntax and functions: javascript-reference.info.
I guess I’m a sucker for great design.
Totally off the topic of Javascript, but it occurs to me that design has a huge influence on the effectiveness of written information; too little may be a distraction, and not the best presentation of information (though some people, I among them, also have admiration for well written text documents) — too much “design” (ie, WIRED magazine) can also be a distraction, to the point where the information itself that you’re trying to read becomes obscured. Speaking of plain text documents (I’m thinking specifically of ASCII documents or plain-vanilla HTML), it could be said that the best examples of these are also well-designed, if in an extrememly minimalist style.
I have a somewhat voracious appetite for learning new things. It’s something that I need to curb, somewhat, because that usually means that you never spend enough time with one thing to learn it completely, before moving on to the Next New Thing.
Over the past year, I’ve blogged about Ruby and Python in particular, and I still sit down from time to time and improve my skills and knowledge in both languages. Lately I’ve been spending more time with C.
Yesterday, however, I saw something that will definitely become my pet programming project for the next little while; what I saw was script.aculo.us.
I’m still not sure how much I like the trend of cute domain names (de.lirio.us, del.icio.us, etc) but I doubt that they’ll be going away; they’re memorable, which is one of the ideal features of a good name. The site name aside, script.aculo.us has some extremely cool examples of javascript; drag and drop and visual effects, for starters.
Another cool site (and another “cute” domain name) is dontclick.it. This is an example, using Macromedia Flash, of a UI with no clicking. Cool!
It’s Friday. A good day to take two or three minutes and enjoy the new Homestarrunner toon, “Biz Cas Fri”.
There’s a link in the top right button on the main page, or you can go straight to the “toons” page and click on the “puppet stuff” button on the remote control. It’s the newest cartoon.
This is a great review.
Michelle links to the NY Times review, but since it’s archived you now need to pay to see the whole thing. The relevant quote follows:
THERE’S nothing wrong with self-pity. As a spur to songwriting, it’s right up there with lust, anger and greed, and probably better than the remaining deadly sins. There’s nothing wrong, either, with striving for musical grandeur, using every bit of skill and studio illusion to create a sound large enough to get lost in. Male sensitivity, a quality that’s under siege in a pop culture full of unrepentant bullying and machismo, shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand, no matter how risible it can be in practice. And building a sound on the lessons of past bands is virtually unavoidable.
But put them all together and they add up to Coldplay, the most insufferable band of the decade.
Continue reading ‘Coldplay: Most Insufferable Band of the Decade’
