Dead Programmer's Cafe

Author: deadprogrammer

  • Looking Up, Part 1a

    I’d like to start a series of articles about looking up. This is the first one.

    Truly cool New Yorkers do not look up. I on the other hand, look up not much less than a tourist fresh off the bus. Unlike most tourists though, I own a really expensive long lens.

    In the beginning of the skyscraper era, architects were confused about how to design the look of these super tall buildings. One of the decisions facing them was – what to put on the top. There were many choices. A very popular one was to use a little temple/colonnade on top, based on the ancient minaret that was later converted into a bell tower – the fabled Giralda Tower. Then you could use a giant torch or lantern, a mini ziggurat, statue, a spire or a combination of several of these. In following posts of this series I’ll give you examples of those buildings. But today my theme is crowns.

    The Crown Building on 5th Ave.


    You can’t really see that without magnification – the crown features what seem to be colored glass jewels.

    New York Life Insurance Building.

    They have an awesome series of ads featuring the building. My favorite one is where they do a time-lapse walk through, with changing eras, people and New York Skyline, ending in the future where a girl with a futuristic haircut steps out of the building, into a hovertaxy and zooms away. Please let me know if you find a video of that.

    Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower. “The Light That Never Fails”, the old symbol of the company (now it’s Snoopy) is set inside a crown-looking lantern top.

    The American Radiator Building : A crown fit for the king of the Radiator Planet.

    The Old RCA Victor Building has such an expensive and complicated top, that one might question it’s usefulness – it’s almost impossible to see any details from the ground.

    Wireless Maiden, close up.

    later, architects decided that it wasn’t worth it to decorate tops of the buildings – they are hard to see. The era of International Style did not allow for interesting skyscraper tops. You’d be lucky to see a neon sign. Fortunately the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill brough back the practice of decorated tops, as can be seen on the Bear Stearns Building. Another example of an SOM topper is the World Wide Plaza Building.

  • Web 1.0

    I am not suffering from writer’s block. Oh no. I have many, many, many things I want to write about. There’s a couple of dozen back-burnered posts in my Writely account, many with photos already uploaded. It’s just that I’ve been busy…

    I was chatting with Joe Grossberg recently, an he said that my excuses are so Web 1.0. What do I have to say to that?

    In other news: the steady supply of links, which it seems to mostly be an aftershock of the BoingBoing link to my Starbucks Mermaid post, has lifted deadprogrammer.com pagerank to 6. I wonder if all of my hotlinked and uncredited images going to myspace.com count towards pagerank.

    I’d like to thank you all for your past and future links, as well as submissions to digg, BoingBoing and other fine MLP sites.

    I am probably going to disclose my secret (well, not so _particularly_ secret) identity on “about me” page. I am still hesitant, but I’ll probably do it anyway.

    Also, my posting frequency will go up. I’ll try for at least 4 posts a week, maybe as many as 7. I’m workin’ on it.

  • The Microsoft Movie Conspiracy

    Robert Scoble is the most powerful Microsoft blogger. One word from him and hordes of bloggers start typing gibberish, hoping to make it into the A-list. Must there be anything he can’t do? Yep. Apparently there is a building at the Microsoft campus where his badge does not work.

    That top secret facility produces the best Microsofts products I’ve ever seen. They make (amongst other things) short movies shown to attendees at shows like PDC and CES. Sadly, once shown, those movies do not make it onto Microsoft’s website or into the bundles of MSDN subscription cds (I’ve checked). They get suppressed for some reason.

    I believe there’s a conspiracy to hide the fact that Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer left the company a long time ago. I mean think about it, would you continue to work if you had that kind of money? My theory is that they were replaced by two top notch actors. The actors must get bored from time to time, so they are given a high quality production crew and a possibility to create short movies from time to time.

    I can’t find the link now, but IMDB listed Steve Ballmer cast as a possible villain in Batman: Year One movie that never got filmed.

    In any case, the convention shown movies sometimes leak out. Matrix spoof, the latest one, for instance is partially available at this website (if you scroll down there are screenshots from the full version). In it Linux agents are interrogating hacker known as Steve-O.

    In previous years there was the Volkswagen commercial spoof, where Gates and Ballmer are cruising around the neighbourhood in a Jetta, pick up a discarded Sun server from the curb, but then, after a few blocks and a few whiffs of something stinky inside the server, they deposit it back on the side of the road. I saw that one at a PDC event, and it was preceded by a never aired IBM commercial in which Mike the Lawyer and friends are cramming a huge server in a small elevator.

    There were also the Napoleon Dynamite spoof and the Austin Powers spoof which I can’t find anywhere for some reason. Are there any others that I’m missing?

    By the way, impersonating Austin Powers seems to be a favorite pastime of gazillionairs.

  • 100 Views of the Empire State Building # 31

  • Subway Love

  • More Subway Music

    I am considering buying a minidisc recorder or one of those iPod add-ons in order to be able to post little snippets of unusual sounds that I encounter, especially snippets of subway performer music.

    From what I can tell, this guy is a pretty good didgeridoo player. Also, it’s one of the few instruments that allows the performer to say “thank you” through the instrument. Well, that must have been the funniest “thank you” that I ever got from a subway performer for my buck.

    Now, this guy is probably the worst pan (pronounced “pon”, like “man” is pronounced “mon”) player. I don’t usually give money to sub-par players, but this guy was the worst of the worst. He did get my dollar for what must be the most terrible steel drum rendition of “Hava Nagila” I’ve ever heard. And I’ve heard a few.

    As a side now, in the subway “Hava Ngila” is one of the main money makers for hacks. Also you get to hear a lot of Pink Panther Theme, Jeopardy! Theme aka “Think Music” and Katyusha. It’s kind of fun to hear these on exotic instruments like “musical saw”, but more often then not it’s a nuisance.

  • Subwaycat

    When I lived in Odessa, Ukraine, I once encountered a most strange cat. Odessa used to have a huge open air book market, right in the middle of the city. Kind of like a much larger and organized version of the street booksellers in front of NYU. Me and my dad spent a lot of our time and money there. On one of our trips, my dad pointed out a cat sitting in a tree near the book market. On a number of our visits there that stretched over weeks and months, the cat was still there. Water and food dishes appeared there. Somebody told us that the cat apparently went a bit crazy and refused to leave the tree (even though it wasn’t a very high one). Kind hearted booksellers started to feed the cat. I am not sure exactly how long the cat stayed in the tree, or if he or she ever left it.

    New York has strange cats of its own. Subway cats. The most famous one of those, Schatzie the cat that lives in the Fulton Street station, according to Randy Kennedy’s book “Subwayland : Adventures in the World Beneath New York.” The mice and rat population must make living near the deadly third rail and moving trains possible for cats. Sadly, eating those rodents must be pretty dangerous too, because they are frequently poisoned.

    Well, I found a subway cat of my own under the platforms of the Kings Highway station.

    Actually I spotted two, a tabby and a tuxedo, but was able to take a picture only of the tabby. She sat there calmly, not bothered by my flash. I hope she’ll stay safe there.

  • Hit By a Bus

    Higher class of corporate denizens absolutely love metaphors, buzzwords and doublespeak. Corporate conversations are sometimes a bit similar to the way that Mr. Helpmann speaks in the movie Brazil:

    “Bad sportsmanship. A ruthless minority of people seem to have forgotten good old-fashioned virtues. They just can’t stand seeing the other fellow win. If these people would just play the game… ”

    “We’re fielding all their strokes, running a lot of them out, and pretty consistently knocking them for six. I’d say they’re nearly out of the game.”

    “All I can say is don’t fall at the last fence. The finishing post’s in sight. See you in the paddock… keep your eye on the ball. ”

    Although Mr. Helpmann only uses sports metaphors, they usually come in a much wider variety as chronicled at jennypeters.com.

    For some reason, public transportation in a form of a bus became a symbol of “quick corporate death” as in “you need to document this project for the “hit by a bus scenario”” or “what if Joe gets hit by a bus tomorrow?”. There’s even an expression “bus number” – a number of key people in a company.

    Yesterday I’ve encountered the actual “hit by a bus” scenario:

    Apparently some old lady got run over by an MTA bus and lost a leg. My favorite cop quote from the incident – “Hey, you better get onto the sidewalk, especially in light of what happened here.”

  • Hey Hey, Ho Ho. One Zero Zero One, Zero!

    Unions in New York City are masters of psychological warfare. When they set up a giant blow-up rat (seasonally decked in Christmas tree lights) in front of your business and start singing union songs and chanting chants, well, it’s not a pleasant experience.

    The chants are catchy. Here’s my favorite one:

    We are the Union, we are the Union
    Mighty, mighty Union – mighty mighty Union
    Everywhere we go – everywhere we go,
    People want to know – people want to know
    Who we are – who we are
    So we tell them – so we tell them

    I culled this great quote from an article at Fastcompany.com:

    “Twelve years ago, Mike O’Connor, owner of Big Sky Balloons & Searchlights in Plainfield, Illinois, created the first rat at the request of a union member in nearby Chicago. Said the union man of O’Connor’s first sketch: “It’s not mean enough.” O’Connor added bigger fangs and a pink belly with “festering nipples.” “I love it,” the man said. So did other unions. Today, Big Sky sells between 100 and 200 rats a year–even though it is a nonunion shop itself.”

    Bigger fangs. Check.

    “Festering nipples.” Check.

    The rat is all over the city. Sean of Dust and Rust blog caught one in front of a Duane Reade.

    If you decide to organize, I guess you can buy your own over here.

  • The Dimmest Lightbulb

    Reading Joel on Software I’ve learned about “rosh katan” and “rosh gadol” – two expressions common in Israeli Army, but very applicable to IT work.

    “Rosh katan”, literally “little head” is used to describe incompetent and/or passive-aggressive behavior. It usually involves following orders literally, without understanding their goal, or understanding, but actively wanting not to achieve it.

    “Rosh gadol”, “big head” – is a way of working proactively, anticipating problems that might arise from orders that are not overly detailed, and following the spirit or the order. You really need to grok your task in order to act “rosh gadol”.

    I asked a co-worker who happened to be an Israeli paratrooper captain in his previous life. He said that they also had a third expression – “rosh nitz-nitz” (I am not sure of the spelling here). “Nitz-nitz”, he told me, is a nickname for an ingenious little device that paratroopers use for identification at night. It’s a little infrared emitter invisible by unaided eye. But when looked at with infrared goggles at night, it allows helicopter pilots to find paratroopers who are ready for extraction.