I Survived, So I Must be Crazy

Well, it’s been a long time, and I owe an apology to the folks I so enthusiastically ranted about this blog to (and that includes you, dear reader). It started out as a big, interesting idea, but like most of my big, interesting ideas, it became too interesting first, and then too big (for me). I started running out of time and energy pretty quickly as real-world events started taking over.

I switched jobs in July last year, and the strict Internet policy at my new place of work restricts access to blogs and forums. Between that and driving to and from work, I was left with little T&E and an ever-growing backlog of stuff I wanted to write about.

And then I suffered the effects of acute dehydration at a rally race last October, which ended with a week-long stay at the hospital in December. It’s only last week that I finally caught up with my huge backlog of work.

I’m not sure what to do, there’s a lot I want to write about, but I doubt if I’ll be able to do it in a consistent way. And I don’t like that thought. I have lots of notes, but no time to fill in the gaps to make them complete. I’m trying to think of a workable plan to commit time to my writing, but in the meantime I guess these random spikes in the stats would have to do. Thanks for reading!

I came across this while looking for inspiration 🙂 : Growing Rich by Blogging is a High-Tech Fairy Tale

Also, someone sent me this, a scientifiic explanation of “enlightenment”:

The Tao of Programming

The Tao of Programming surfaced in 1987 as a spoof of Taoist texts by Goeffery James, containing short anecdotes on hacker ideals.

The Jargon File

The Jargon File is a glossary of hacker slang going back as far as 1975 to the MIT AI Lab and Stanford AI Lab (SAIL), amongst others. It describes itself as “a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor”.It is currently maintained by prominent programmer, author and open source software evangelist Eric S. Raymond (aka ESR).

Please note that hacking [which has to do with unrestricted access to knowledge] is unrelated to cracking [which has to do with breaking into computer systems for monetary gain]. When you’re trying to fix your broken TV, you’re hacking: you’re enabling yourself. The next logical step that you would follow as a hacker would be to give others access to the knowledge you gained, so they can fix their own TVs themselves. You might even contact the TV company and let them know they should probably replace that cheap component with something else because it keeps overheating. However, if you were a cracker, you would probably indulge in some underground advertising and offer to fix others’ TVs for $$$.

Hacking is not evil, the media is. But more on all this later.

“Different Algorithms in Java”

Recently ran into this matchless post at the Sun Developer Network (SDN) about the “different algorithms in Java”. Make sure you aren’t drinking anything while reading this 😉

libpr0n

libpr0n is the official Mozilla pr0n image rendering library… I’m not kidding.

All your base are belong to us

This phrase from the Japanese video game Zero Wing turned into an Internet phnomenon somewhere around 2001-02. Read all about it here.

I’m in ur base, killing ur d00dz

This phrase roughly translates to “LOL you got pwned and don’t even know it yet” and originated from surprise attacks in on-line RTS games such StarCraft and Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2. Here’s a list of top 10 “I’m in ur base, killing ur d00dz” pictures.

l33t

W1k1p3d1@ has a comprehensive 3n+ry on what l33t is all about. Its what separates the classes from the masses 😉

Day 103 – To HobbieVille…

_Captain’s Log, StarDate 2007.10.18-17.04_

After yesterday’s meeting hangover, I actually started getting some work done today. In the evening, we went to the grocery store and I discovered HobbieVille… the number of scale models and R/C (radio controlled) models that they have is astounding. Cars, trucks, aircraft, boats, ships, submarines, trains… you name it, they have it. The trains reminded me of my Hornby Railways “OO” guage electric train set, something that I have since my first birthday. And it still works 😀

I’m planning on giving away all my clothes to make space for all the scale models I want to take back with me. W00t!

I discovered something called “scrum” at work today, which could turn out to be a potentially life-changing event. Will write more about it later. I also discovered g00gl3 4 l33t haxx0rs 😀 (incidentally, google uses scrum, too).