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# 05 Sep 2003 22:10:03 Re: Who's on first... |
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Some further browsing in the J-Walk Blog's archives produced a link to The New Sorting Hat. (Skip this entry if you don't care for Harry Potter stuff.)
Here's what I got: | Quote: | Ravenclaw!
My, my, aren't we a brainy know-it-all? You think being smarter than football-jock Gryffindor, inbred Slytherin, and fall-for-anything Hufflepuff makes you Merlin's gift to the wizarding world. You probably think you're smarter than Dumbledore. An arrogant, stuck-up jerk is what you are, and in your heart of hearts you know it. Admit it. It's prats like you who make school suck for the rest of us. |
Well... what do you know? This thing seems to work!
There's lots of other interesting stuff at John's Freeloading Home Page, such as The Grand List of Overused Science Fiction Cliches, The Evil Henchman's Guide, several reviews and essays about science fiction, politics and raytracing, and last but not least, The Divine Hotline: | Quote: | You have reached the Almighty Creator of the Macrocosmic Universe. Please keep the following in mind when seeking resolution for your problems:
* Applications for assistance may be made at any time. I reserve the right to take no action on problems for which no application is made.
...
* My former policy of issuing credentials to select human agents has served its intended purpose and has been permanently discontinued, and all credentialed human agents have been recalled from field service. Any and all credentials presently observable in the field are of human origin; none have been issued by Me.
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* Rejection of proffered assistance may constitute grounds for non-resolution of the problem for which the assistance was provided.
...
* I reserve the right to do as I please. |
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| # 05 Sep 2003 21:14:29 Re: Plus qu'il n'en faut |
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Life's full of surprises. Yesterday I was surfing the net in preparation for my upcoming trip to Paris for the Apple Expo. Booking the extra legs to and from São Paulo was no problem. I'll leave next Thursday (Sept. 11), stay in Amsterdam for two days, then on Sunday (Sept. 14) it's off to Paris. Steve Job's keynote is on Sept. 16, then we'll have time to see the first two days of the exhibition and conferences, and we fly back on Sept. 18.
It took some searching but I even found a relatively inexpensive hotel not terribly far away from the Expo. At first I had no such luck for Amsterdam, though... everything was either full or demanded a minimum stay of 3, 4 or even 5 days! Site after site reported back that there were practically no rooms available in Amsterdam from Sept. 12 to 14. And there were some obscure references to "during IBC".
Hm. Sounded familiar, somehow...
Of course, IBC is the International Broadcasting Convention, and it turns out that Apple is an exhibitor there too. So I immediately took steps to register for that, too. And again I lucked into one of the last available hotels; somewhat out in the suburbs but next to a train station, and a little more expensive than planned but still bearable. So we'll get two conferences for the price of one...
I can't understand how one could travel in the dark ages before the Internet...  |
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| # 05 Sep 2003 20:43:39 Who's on first... |
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John Walkenbach writes the J-Walk Blog, which is one of my all-time favorite weblogs. Today was a typical day for John, linking to Pencil Ads, Guitars for Girls, Baby Names, Advances in Wine Cork Technology, The WD-40 FAQ, and Satan's Laundromat, to cite just a few. I could go on and on...
Today's favorite is "Who's on first" by Lincoln Spector: | Quote: | Ultimate SuperDuper Computer Store. Can I help you?
Thanks. I'm setting up a home office in the den, and I'm thinking of buying a computer.
Mac?
No, the name is Bud.
Your computer?
I don't own a computer. I want to buy one.
Mac?
I told you, my name is Bud.
What about Windows?
Why? Does it get stuffy?
Do you want a computer with Windows?
I don't know. What do I see when I look out the windows?
Wallpaper.
... {two pages of this snipped}
Hello? Hello? Customers! Why do they always hang up on me? Oh, well. Ultimate SuperDuper Computer Store. Can I help you? |
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| # 05 Sep 2003 10:15:23 Re: Litany Against Meetings |
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| Well, I read Dune again every three years or so. The books are so well written, that every time it feels like I'm reading them again for the first time, finding new meanings in the text. I think the epic is so multifaceted that you can always look at it in a different way each time. I just wish Herbert had completed the seventh book though. |
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| # 04 Sep 2003 20:48:23 Litany Against Meetings |
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I'm so busy, I absolutely had to post this one  .
codepoetry pointed me at 0xDECAFBAD who writes ("courtesy of purl", whatever that means) | Quote: | | I must not attend meetings. Meetings are the mind killer. Meetings are the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my meeting. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the wasted time has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. |
If this is absolute gibberish to you, you haven't read Frank Herbert's Dune, or any of its sequels. I wish I could read it again for the first time... |
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| # 03 Sep 2003 21:46:08 Plus qu'il n'en faut |
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Looks like I'll be attending the Apple Expo in Paris in two weeks, much to my surprise. The nice folks at Macmania magazine are sponsoring part of the trip. I'm going with my "Press" hat, so expect to see some updates from the press room during the expo.
Time to brush up on my French... I had 3 years of French in school and actually did quite well, but then English moved in and occupied (it seems) more or less the same neurons. I still can read and pronounce it, and understand about 50% of French movies .
It's been at least 5 or 6 years since my last non-developer Mac-related conference/expo. I must admit I grew disillusioned with the marketeering aspects of the old MacWorld expos. Let's see if the French do it any better. The published list of exhibitors isn't all that inspiring, but hopefully Steve Jobs will announce something interesting at the keynote.
Regarding the keynote, informed guessers say we'll see a new 15" PowerBook (aluminum), a speed boost for the 12" and 17" models, and some music-related stuff: music store for Europe and/or Windows, and possibly some iPod news.
More later... |
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| # 03 Sep 2003 20:59:51 Signs you do not want to see |
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| I wrote this link down some days ago and can't find where I saw it, sorry. But there's some funny stuff here... I particularly like the third one from the top, "Beware of the <chomp>". |
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| # 31 Aug 2003 15:06:39 Interesting Times... |
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The English translation of the first installment of my Interesting Times column is up. I'm starting out with some stories about the early Brazilian computer industry.
The column itself (in Portuguese) is for the new edition of MacMagazine, the premier Brazilian Macintosh news site. New installments will appear somewhat irregularly, but I'll try to write at least a couple every month. You can subscribe to RSS feeds in English or Portuguese. Suggestions or questions are always welcome; post them here or, if you prefer, at this MacMagazine Forum topic. |
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| # 29 Aug 2003 12:51:29 And now for an unsettling message... |
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Here's a very unsettling explanation about files that Windows keeps users from seeing through a variety of undocumented tricks. Copies of browser cache and history, deleted e-mail, and other potentially sensitive stuff..
No comment...  |
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| # 29 Aug 2003 12:33:00 Sterling rulez |
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Bruce Sterling does it again. Here's an excerpt from his recent book, Tomorrow Now. This is on my list of books to buy... | Quote: | ...You're just a normal person in a biotech world. You are not some grand chrome-dome master of biotech--no single mind can ever master such a broad field. Biotech is not even your personal line of work; you just live there. Your lawn is aswarm with living things because of social pressure from your neighbors. A mowed lawn is a scandal; you wouldn't subject the neighborhood to such a sight any more than you'd shave your children's heads to eradicate lice. You don't go out there and garden it, either. The lawn tools know more about plants than you do. And they work by themselves. It's a city lawn, not a wilderness. It's autogardening. The "wild" animals living in it don't know they are under surveillance.
...Your bathroom cabinet is full of unguents, greases, and perfumes. There are some pills in there, but most of them do not contain drugs. Instead, they contain living, domesticated organisms that make drugs while living inside you. Some of the "pills" are cameras, with tiny sensors and onboard processing. Nothing in your medicine cabinet is sterile, not even the bandages. Modern bandages contain living organisms that are good for wounds.
"Sterility" is what people do need when they don't know what's happening on a microbial level. In a biotech world, sterility is a confession of ignorance. It's a tactic of desperation.
...You're into germs because germs are into you. No man ever walks alone. Every human adult carries about two pounds of living bacteria, or about a hundred trillion nonhuman cells. This is entirely normal and good. It's something you understand about the real world that twentieth-century people did not see and could not perceive. They had this crude, desperate insight they called "sanitation," while you possess a genuine insight and a hands-on technical mastery of that situation. Unlike those blind primitives, you walk your seething Earth in an aware, fully engaged, progressive, civilized fashion. You swarm inside and out with microbes, and it's good for you. You recognize and celebrate this. People chat about their germs over coffee - it's like comparing perfumes. In your world, germs are the perfumes. Anyone who smells bad is an utter ignoramus. |
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