Archive for the 'geek culture' Category

Naked again

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

That’s right, we’ve dropped our CSS to celebrate CSS Naked Day. Your turn.

Plazes enters the real world

Tuesday, February 27th, 2007

From the plazes photostream.

Why Intel?

Monday, June 6th, 2005

I’ve been doing a little research lately into new laptops and I am finally starting to understand a little more about processors, etc., so I am dumbfounded to hear that Apple is dumping IBM’s PowerPC chips for Intel’s Pentium line. From my experience, Intel chips a) run really hot and b) suffer from a severe processing bottleneck (3.2 Gigahertz with a 533 Megahertz Front-Side Bus? WTF?). It seems to me that it would have made more sense for Apple to go with AMD, they’ve got incredibly powerful chips which I understand do not suffer from these problems. Maybe there’s something I’m missing, after all, I’m not a chip guy (or a Hollywood mogul).

Enough about the switch, I wanted to share some humor. I love this exchange on Slashdot in reaction to the news:

Dispel any remaining doubts; we are now living in the evil mirror universe.

I’ll believe that when the Red Sox win the World Series!

Yeah, right — that’s about as likely as finding out who Deep Throat is.

You can read the whole trail if you like.

Excellent Mail Day

Wednesday, June 1st, 2005

So my order from Jinx arrived today and I finally got a chance to read the back of the “Revolution is not an AOL Keyword” tshirt I bought. For those who are too young to recognize the allusion, “The Revolution will not be Televised” was written and performed by poet/musician Gil Scott-Heron (1 April 1949 -). I have a copy of it on Black Power: Music Of A Revolution, an ablum I highly recommend for anyone interested in the Black Power movement’s speeches and music (both of which are collected on this 2-disc set). Anyway, enough history.

“Revolution is not an AOL Keyword” was penned by Eddan Katz in March of 2003 and uses the same structure as “Televised” to great effect. Here’s a sample:

Revolution will not promise penile enlargement.
Revolution will not get rid of spam.
Revolution will not earn you up to $5000 a month
Working from home, because revolution is not
An AOL Keyword, Brother.

And, while quite humorous, it does pack a few strong political punches:

Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.
Revolution will not be brought to you on Hi-Def TV
Encrypted with a warning from the FBI.
Revolution will not have a jpeg slideshow of Dubya
Calling the cattle and leading the incursion by
Secretary Rumsfeld, General Ashcroft and Dick Cheney
Riding nuclear warheads on their way to Iraq,
Or North Korea, or Iran.

I don’t think any shirt I’ve bought has made me smile quite so much.

Other clothing arrivals include the now infamous “All Your Base…” and “Stop Laughing. Computers are cool now.” tshirts. And soon to debut on my car is the classic “Pirates are way cooler than ninjas” bumper sticker (don’t worry, I only put stickers on glass).

Also in the mail today was yet another addition to my ever-expanding reading list: Pragmatic Version Control Using Subversion. I am currently reading The Pragmatic Programmer and become more impressed with each page turn. It is like a philosophical/spiritual guidebook for geeks. I’m loving it.

And since I am on the topic of books, I wanted to throw out this teaser: I just finished reading the rough draft of a book by a good friend and colleague and I can’t wait until all of you can read it too. It reinforced a lot of my deeply-held beliefs and even taught me a few things. That’s all I am saying for now. I will post more on it later, when the book is nearing delivery, but I thought I’d peek your interest (well, the interest of the three of you reading this).

I found the shirt…

Tuesday, May 24th, 2005

Some of you may have seen my photo of Jim Wardelman’s fantastic “All your base…” shirt:

Jim Wardelman in his fantastic “chown -R us ./base” shirt

I did a little digging and found it on jinx.com. I ordered my own, as well as a few other choice t’s.