Dead Programmer's Cafe

Month: July 2003

  • What’s a Good Rhyme for RSS?

    I wonder how many people are reading my livejournal through an RSS aggregator. Apparently paid livejournal users get a full text rss feed (and not just the headings). So here it is :

  • Another Post from cubicle filled corridors of the Newscorp Building.

    We tender this premium coffee for your enjoyment as a tribute to your good taste. It comes from the deadprogrammer’s collection to you 33.

    Recently a commercial Bunn coffeemaker in our office kitchen was replaced with an automatic Keurig B2003 machine that uses K-cups. K-cups are a neat technology, but not suitable to good coffee preparation. Cffee from k-cups tastes like coffee prepared in athletic cups (because it gets very stale). On the other hand, conventional Bunn machine was actually very good, but we had the most foul prepackaged coffee. To this day I have one package of that coffee hanging on the wall of one cubicle. Check it out:

    I new there was something weird in that coffee. “Milds”! What the hell are “milds”? Judging by taste it is probably tobacco. Or dried dog crap. But then, what else what did I expect from a company called “Mother-Parkers”? Hey, these motherparkers even have a website.

    There is an OU symbol on the package. Milds must be kosher.

  • Up There In the Stratosphere

    Today, when we think about science fiction, we think of rocket ships and outer space. But things were different in the 40s and 50s. Back then the blue sky was almost as exciting a frontier as the black void of space. Hugo Gernsback’s magazine Air-Wonder Stories and TV serial Zombies of the Stratosphere featuring young Leonard Nimoy were all the rage.

    The word “stratosphere” was considered and became a futuristic branding element a bit less common than “o-matic” and “o-rama”. It seems to me that Boeing started this trend : B-52 Stratofortress bomber , KC-135 Stratotanker and 377 Stratocruiser. But then the marketers caught on to the hipness of everything “strato”: Sheaffer Stratowriter pen, Fender Stratocaster guitar, Pontiac StratoChief car and probably many other things that I don’t know about. Prefix “strato” was usually applied to top of the line products.

    And you don’t really get any more “strato” than Zenith Stratosphere 1000Z console.

    Considered by some to be the best vacuum tube radio ever produced, it is also one of the rarest. It was top of the line and cost $750 when it was made in 1930s. Times were tough, and there were not enough customers to purchase these amazing and beautiful radios. Only 350 sets were ever made, 40 are known to survive. Today 1000Z is a wet dream of any vacuum tube radio enthusiast.

    What attracts me to 1000Z? Well, first of all I am a fan of vaccuum tube sound. The absolutely stunning art deco design is just gorgeous, especially the airplane style tuning dial. It looks like it belongs on a starship. This is how I imagine Henry Kuttner’s “twonky” device.

    There is an interesting thing about the ads for 1000Z. As it can be seen in this ad, there is a art deco porcelain cat sitting inside the concave area of the cabinet of the radio. This led some collectors to believe that the cat was sold together with the radio. But apparently it was only used for the photo shoot. Still, people lucky enough to own a Zenith Stratosphere try to buy a cat statue to go with it.

  • WML : How to Good-Bye Obesity: Heart Rate Training. Malarkey? or Effective Way?

    I am a hardened veteran of the battle of the bulge. There are a lot of factors working against me — genetic predisposition, laziness, sedentary lifestyle. Yet still, from time to time I wage a war on fat, and often enough come out victorious. I despise people who say that you should like your body the way it is. Body image hate is A-Ok in my book.

    Generally I spent most of my life in various states of obesity. But three times I managed to bring my weight down to normal. The first time was when my parents signed me up for summer gym classes. Calisthenics and running 5 times a week for a whole summer really slimmed me down. Unfortunately the very charismatic coach we had ended up getting drafted into the Soviet army, and without motivation I stopped exercising and started gaining weight again. Then my dad got me into a tennis class. I got in only because he was a chief engineer in charge of building the stadium which housed the tennis courts where we played. I sucked at playing tennis, but by the time I left the Soviet Union my weight was back to normal.

    American food, stress and more stress took it’s toll during my high school years. Still, one summer I took a gym class during summer school and took to running 10-12 laps around the stadium every day. My weight was back to normal again. But then I’ve got a job at Nathan’s Famous and gained a lot of weight eating free hot dogs and fries.

    I never had any luck with diets up until now. Surprisingly enough Atkins diet really works. But of course it’s not enough. In fact, I lost 30 pounds and stalled. But then suggested that I try heart rate training.

    There’s this company called Polar. They make very accurate pulse rate monitors. These monitors consist of two parts: a transmitter strap that goes around your chest and a watch which picks up the wireless signal from the transmitter.

    The device continuously monitors your pulse so that you can adjust your effort level to stay in the fat burning zone. Luckily treadmills in the gym that our corporate overlord and beloved billionaire tyrant built for us already have Polar receivers inside. And as it turned out the gym attendants have transmitters available on request. You just punch in the desired heart rate and the treadmill adjusts to you. It also accurately calculates calories burned. And the overhead monitors are tuned into various Fox channels. Simpsons while working out — what could be better?

    Running with heart rate monitor is just amazing. You don’t get too tired, but you know that you are exerting yourself just enough to burn fat. It’s very motivating. To keep myself further motivated I think I’ll buy myself an iPod when I loose another 10 lb.

    If you were wondering, the subject line is a reference to the title of this book.