Dead Programmer's Cafe

Blog

  • Dreamblog : Deadprogrammer Takes A Picture Of Respected Leader’s Wife

    Saw this dream yesterday morning :

    I was walking by Kim Jong Il, who looked rather silly. I really wanted to take a candid picture of him, but did not want to be thrown in jail for that. I saw a Japanese reporter photograph him, and decided to ask for permission. Respected Leader did not want to have his picture taken, but said that I could take a picture of his wife. She started walking through the palace. When passing through a dungeon she was overcome by a pain in her leg. I thought that the ghosts of women killed by her husband were causing her that pain. Finally we made it outside. She sat down on a brick parapet. The Sun and the Moon were in the sky at the same time. Also in the background was the spire of the AIG building. I started to take the picture, but the camera lens fell apart in my hands.

    Although, to me the AIG building is the Ace Of Swords, not the Tower.

  • The Programmer’s Font

    Yesterday I spent a good deal of time searching for a good font to use with Ultraedit. There are three well-known requirements for a font to use in programmer’s editor:

    1) It has to be a fixed width font.
    2) Visual distinction between letter “O” and zero. Usually zero is “crossed”.
    3) Visual distinction between Capital lower case letter “l”, capital letter “I” and number “1”.
    In general such a font should be super legible in small point sizes.

    I used to use Courier New, but finally found a font that I like much better, Andale Monotype. Microsoft used to distribute that font with IE 5, but now it’s not available for free download anymore.

    And next day the most famous Joel on the Web wrote a post about another very nice programmer’s font called “ProFont”. I tried it along with another similar font called “Sheldon”. I think I still like Andale better.

    UPDATE: This seems to be a holy war in the making. I especially like the guy who uses “Comic 12 pt “. If it is what I think it is, this dude’s code must read like a comic book. Bam! Pow!

  • TT : Homer Shrugged

    1) The trilogy that I actually care about is complete. The Golden Transcendence : Or, The Last of the Masquerade is here, and it doesn’t dissapoint. I’ll write my review soon.

    Is it just me, or did the book jacket’s designer rip off Zhaan from Farscape?

    (image from http://farscape.bittersweetblue.net)

    2) Ebay auction: The Simpsons Homer as Atlas A La Carte Statue

    Very impressive.

    3) How a google search for video drivers helped ‘s mom grow her vocabulary.
    Isn’t technology wonderfull?

    4) Learned about this in “This Old House Magazine”. There’s a company that makes a table saw that senses the change in capacitance between wood and human (and as this demo shows, pigeon) flesh and stops momentarily.

    Watch the videos here. would probably get a kick out of that.

    5) There was an article in the Bulletin about Atoms for Peace.
    Dammit, where’s my Ford Nucleon?

    (image from conceptcarz.com)

  • But It’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, When the Band Begins to Play

    Article at Salon.com:
    “Geeks who go low-carb see it as more than just taking off pounds — they’re reengineering the human organism, overclocking their own bodies.
    …
    As digital-rights attorney Mike Godwin, who lost more than 80 pounds by cutting carbs, says, “It’s like you’re exploiting a security hole in your own body.””

  • Yeah, I’ll Have Some Recursion For Lunch

    Stepped out for lunch and saw a gigantic tow truck towing a smaller tow truck. Hmm.

  • The Dark Tower III

    One of my ongoing photographic projects is the creation on a full Tarot deck. So far “The Tower” has the most candidate photos.

    This is a smokestack of the Brooklyn College Heating Plant. It’s a very beautiful art deco structure. I’ll take more pictures later.

    A security guard hassled me when I took pictures of the Plaza Building. I need some good impressive looking paper to ward off clueless security guards. Or a copy of rules and regulations.

  • Mr Monk And The Mystery Of The Parrots

    The ubiquitous monk parrots live near the Brooklyn College power plant from the previous post. The grass near the athletic field is teeming with them. I wrote about the parrots before.

  • Yeah, I Know. It’s Lame. But Still…

    Khalid Shaikh Mohammed or Ron Jeremy?

    (left image from CNN.com, right from http://centerstage.net/)

    Senator Joe Lieberman (D-Conn) or Senator Palpatine (S-Naboo) ?

    (left image from http://www.hillnews.com, right from http://www.starwars.com)

  • Untitled

    There was an article in the New York Post today about a kid who attempted to “subway surf” to impress his friends and died. What exactly happened is rather unclear. The police say that he hit a girder with his head and died instantly. His “friends” say that the train hit a bump and he fell off. The morons didn’t even notify the conductor (they waited until the next stop) and the next train ran over the poor dude.

    There is an article about the “sport” at Village Voice with some photos:

    Of course that often leads to horrible heartbreak: a photo from the Post of the boy’s mother being comforted by an NYPD police officer and a captain (the captain has gold insignia on the shoulder) after a collapse.

    I think I know who the captain is (the picture in the paper was a bit clearer). It’s probably Karin Azadian, the commander of the Central Park Precinct precinct. I think she’s the only female captain in Manhattan Borough Command.

  • Soviet Voodoo

    Oooof. Finally fixed a rather nasty bug that was depressing me most of last week. This and a nice little poem by reminded me about a few superstitions of my childhood.

    There was no subway in Odessa, but we had buses, trolley buses and trams. Poorly printed pieces of bad quality paper served as tickets. The system was somewhat interesting: the driver wouldn’t check the tickets. You had to board with your own ticket and perforate it in a weird looking wall mounted press inside. If during a spot check you didn’t have a perforated ticket, you’d theoretically be fined. In reality everybody except the few unlucky loosers would perforate their ticket in the nick of time.

    So, back to superstitions and luck bringing rituals. Every ticket had a serial number. A lucky ticket was considered to be one, in which the sum of the first three numbers of the serial would be equal to the sum of the last there. If you found a lucky ticket, to gain some good luck, germ or no germs, you had to eat it. Here’s what one (actually this is an even more special palindromic lucky ticket.) would like:


    (image from http://iagsoft.nm.ru/ticket/chel2001.jpg)

    Then there was the “Chicken God”. That was a name for a beach pebble with a hole in it. The hole was supposed to be of a natural origin. A chicken god could be worn on a necklace. To wish on it, you would look through the hole at the sun (getting half blind in the process) and speak your wish.

    Update: tells me that they are called “Holey Stones” in the US and the tradition is somewhat similar.


    (picture from http://www.thegodsgrove.com)

    Oh, and the black Volga. In the Soviet Union a black Volga GAZ 24 was a car of choice for various party functionaries and other important people. A kid who’d spot one would usually mutter a little rhyme “black Volga my luck, which nobody can pluck” (“чернаÑ? Волга, моÑ? удача, никому не передача”). Hey, I am no poet.


    (image from http://autonavigator.ru/autocatalog/gaz/24-10.shtml)