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July 28, 2004

The much-awaited link to my ripoff of Weebl and Bob is finally here (1.1MB Flash movie).

Too busy/lazy to rip all your CDs to MP3 format so that you can put them all onto your new iPod? LoadPod will do it for you.

In case you're wondering how close I, Robot (the movie) is to the book, here's a guide to the book.

I recently had a conversation with some folks from a very very large organization which has a very critical system that one of them said is written in APL. Hmm, I thought, isn't that a really old programming language, from the COBOL and FORTRAN days, when BASIC was an exciting new language? Yes. But hey, if it's a really old system, it may still do what it's supposed to, and it might even still be the best tool for the job. Anyway, I found a pretty funny document called Why APL?". Good parts: compared to the contemporary languages when APL was new, APL is more "expressive", meaning that you have to write (and debug) fewer lines of code to get the same amount of work done. Usually this implies that it makes the computer do more work, so the resulting program is slower in the more expressive language, so people resist the new "slow" language. However Moore's law makes this an argument that is decreasingly effective over time, since developer time is now far more expensive than computer time. Best part: see "APL is too complicated for managers to learn". This paper doesn't fall into the trap of thinking that with this magic new tool or technology, CEOs will become programmers because It's So Darn Simple To Program Now. It never is.

More evangelism for switching from Internet Explorer to Firefox: Switch2Firefox.

Survey reveals that Developers play air guitar to Megadeth. Uh, yeah, we knew that. What I didn't know was how bad MCSEs' taste in music is - Britney and Beyonce? Eww.

Cops Nab Nacho Cheese-Covered Naked Man.

Here's a funny ACLU movie about what ordering a pizza could be like with the new domestic surveillance measures that are being passed lately.

Here's a nerdy but interesting "laundry list of just some of the wireless network attacks and shenanigans that went on at this week's Networld + Interop trade show in Las Vegas".

This "Truth In Advertising" movie is funny if a few years old. There's some naughty language so use headphones for viewing at work.

What happens when white nerds try to make hip hop? Lord of the Rhymes. It's awful. No wait, it's funny. No wait, it's cringe-inspiringly horrible. Hmm. Well, yeah, it's all of that.

Kaleidostrobe is my favorite iTunes visualization plug-in. Pretty lights, ooooooo.

Audioscrobbler looks pretty interesting. "The system automatically matches you to people with a similar music taste, and generates personalised recommendations."

Scared of roller coasters? Now you are.

United Airlines to Quit Paying Into Pension Plans. Welcome to laissez-faire capitalism; anything you can cut out to make yourself more efficient or to save money, you must do in order to compete. For some reason this reminds me of professional athletes and steroids. Anything you can get away with must be done in order to win, or even stay in the game. It doesn't matter what the consequences are down the road - economic volatility, shrunken testicles, etc.

The Apple 2004 World-Wide Developers Conference is over and there's a really long webcast. It's 2 hours long but there are quite a few cool things to see. Kick back and feel Steve's reality distortion field give you a warm fuzzy. Or maybe you'll get a cold prickly, if you're a Windows user.


July 13, 2004

I've never heard of Benny Benassi before, but someone forwarded me a link to this music video. Oh hell no it's not safe for work. It kinda reminds me of Smell the Glove, except with power tools. It's the skanky offspring of a 1980's Penthouse magazine, and a Snap-On or Mac Tools calendar.

I was gonna put a link to yet another Microsoft Internet Explorer security vulnerability here, but then a whole bunch more came out, and I can't even keep up.

When Wikis go wrong, you get a Forest Fire. Wikis are so bizarre.

On Independence Day, Kim and I hiked up to Corona Heights to see the fireworks. Corona Heights is a hill near where we live that is about 350' higher than our apartment, so as you might imagine it's pretty steep. When we got to the top (at about 9:15pm), there were about 100 people already up there. Sadly the fog prevented us from seeing the main fireworks display up north in the Marina area, but there were several other displays. I knew there was an Oakland/Alameda fireworks display, but what I didn't expect was that there were at least a dozen other smaller fireworks displays all over town. I'm not talking about a firecracker - these were either very big bottle rockets, or the same sort of thing that's used in a big display, only with less altitude. I was impressed. I kinda got a bit sentimental about this grass-roots town, being so clearly represented in its Independence Day celebration. On the other hand, it's maybe more of a general American, or even human thing, to want to do your own thing even if there's a centralized authority trying to represent everybody. But it was still nice to see it in action. I tried not to let the sirens from the fire engines ruin my sappy moment.

Fiid, Joe and I took the Alembic factory tour. I have some pictures of super duper high-end basses, if you're into that sort of thing. (Wanna see what a $30,000 bass guitar looks like?)

Similar to the Sucks-Rules-O-Meter is Googlefight. Googlefight's more fun because it's interactive, though.

Wow, did all those stupid names come from just one company?