Dead Programmer's Cafe

Blog

  • Welcome to Tandy Subway. May I Have Your Name And Address?

    It’s totally news to me that Tandy used to own a subway line.
    I only found out because they are selling one of the subway cars on ebay.

  • Brazil… Where hearts were entertaining June

    It’s not my fault that Buttle’s heart condition didn’t appear on Tuttle’s file!
    NEW YORK (Reuters) — Police kicked down the wrong door at a New York apartment house on Friday and a woman with a heart condition died on the way to the hospital.

    If you search for “Brazil” in google images, this is the first search result.

    But I wanted to illustrate the story with this:

    My favorite scene in the movie.

  • “I’m Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire tyrant. And this is my sky-box.”

    You see, ordinarily I have the most horrible memory for faces and names. Just terrible. It’s because my brain is a bit lazy. So I decided to work on that. I bought a book about remembering faces and names and started paying attention.

    Something slightly surreal happened to me today. Rupert Murdoch said hello to me in an elevator. You see, I was reading Murdoch’s biography a while back and studied the pictures well enough to recognize him. So I guess he noticed the look of dumb recognition on my face and said “Hello”. I said “Hi”. Probably I’ve seen him many times before in the elevator – his office is a few floors above.

    This is approximately how it went down:

    Here’s the soundtrack.

  • My Money and My Sanity Went To Miskatonic University

    Visited good old Miskatonic U (also known as Brooklyn College) today. I needed to beg for a stupid requirement waiver. I hate organized education.

    Some professor at the CS department threw out a bunch of old computer books from the departmental library. I picked up some, among them “System/360-370 Assembler Language (DOS)” by Kevin McQuillen. Among other coolness, every chapter in the book was illuminated by a photograph of a programmer or a group of programmers.

    See, in 1978 programmers always looked cool.

    Even just repairing perforated tape, Tom Jennings’ favorite medium.

    Or sitting at a terminal and not even looking at the blinkenlights.

  • I’d Like Some Shareware For Lunch

    There are 3 pieces of shareware that I’ve been using for a long time and like very much. They are:

    Clipmate by Thornsoft Development – a little app that lives in the system tray and keeps the history of everything that is copied and pasted. It also lets you keep organized collections of “copies” and allows you to paste them in rapid succession. It can also do encryption, spell checking and other things as well.

    Trillian by Cerulean Studios – everybody’s favorite instant messaging client

    Powermarks by Kaylon Technologies – a very, very, very good bookmark manager.

    I am also using Snippets by SoftCircuits, but I am looking to replace it with some other hierarchical database. It has been at version 1.51 for many years, there is no development planned and it doesn’t have many of the features that I need.

    All of these programs a worth the money that I paid many times over. I wish I bought them earlier.

    Right now I am shopping for a hierarchical storage database / outliner (something like Mybase or Treepad, but I can’t decide because there are so many choices). I am also looking for an anti-spam tool (on big requirement is being able to look through my mail client and clean out the stuff that is already there, not only the new stuff that is arriving), a popup and ad killer (something like the now defunct Popup Killer, ) and probably a personal firewall in addition to the one in my router.

    The common problems with shareware products are :
    a) Priced too high (over $30) like Lyris Mailshield
    b) The evaluation version is severely disabled like Axon Idea Processor
    c) Given away for too small a fee or altogether for free, causing the development to stop like the Popup Killer which I mentioned already or even more so, like Semagic Livejournal client.

    Which shareware programs do you like? Any recommendations?

  • Old News


    The storefront of a little magazine retailer in the Village. They have an extensive selection of hard-to-find philosophy poetry and music mags. would get stuck in there for a while.

    I wonder if they ever change the magazines in the window. Probably not.

  • Fish Feel Pain When Hooked, Scientists in Britain Say

    This NYT article presents a good candidate for the Ig® Nobel Prize:

    “By injecting bee venom and acetic acid into the lips of captive rainbow trout, the Royal Society said, Dr. Sneddon and other scientists at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh discovered that the fish displayed “profound behavioral and physiological changes” over a period of time, “comparable to those observed in higher mammals.””

    This reminded me something from “Friends“:
    [Scene: Tattoo parlor. Rachel is showing Phoebe her tattoo.]
    Phoebe: Oh that looks so good, oh I love it.
    Rachel: I know, so do I. Oh Phoebe, I’m so glad you made me do this. OK, lemme se yours.
    Phoebe: Ahh. OK, let’s see yours again.
    Rachel: Phoebe we just saw mine, let me see yours.
    Phoebe: Oh OK. [pulls over her shirt and shows a bare shoulder] Oh no, oh it’s gone, that’s so weird, I don’t know how-where it went.
    Rachel: You didn’t get it?
    Phoebe: No.
    Rachel: Why didn’t you get it?
    Phoebe: I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
    Rachel: Phoebe, how would you do this to me? This was all your idea.
    Phoebe: I know, I know, and I was gonna get it but then he came in with this needle and uh, di-, did you know they do this with needles?
    Rachel: Really? You don’t say, because mine was licked on by kittens.

    Of course game fishes feel pain. And so do smaller fishes and mussels and worms they eat. Game fishes don’t care at all about the pain of the smaller things that they eat. Such is life.

  • Mmmmm, Photo Cakes….


    “Lords” (located at on Flatbush Ave near Brooklyn College).

    This reminded me of that Simpsons episode where Homer falls into the third dimension and stumbles into “The Erotic Cakeshop” . And you know what, the solution to this mystery was just one google search away:

    “There is no real `Erotic Cakes’ storefront; that was made up for the scene. The real storefront is Rose Photography, 13567 Ventura Blvd. The establishment appears to be mostly vacant, save for a few ladders. It’s right between Yoshi’s Japanese Restaurant (red roof) and The Coffee Roaster.”

  • Baikonur On The Hudson


    What always amazed me is that water towers are really just wooden barrels. No futuristic technology there.

  • Penny Black Metrocard

    It looks like some people are pretty serious about collecting metrocards. This one is going for $790.00 and this 7 Days OF 70s one went for $536.00. Huh.