The Cave

Big news for the Mac as a game platform:

If players already own the PC versions of Valve games, they’ll get Mac versions at no extra charge through a feature called Steam Play. […] By using the Steam Cloud feature that the company introduced in 2008, players can save in-progress games online, then call up those saved games no matter which version they’re playing. If you’re playing Half-Life 2 on your home PC but then head out on the road with your MacBook, you can continue your game-in-progress.

Handy, especially for Mac laptops.

Hysterical

Brilliant.

And amusing too. Slides 6 and 63-68 are keepers

Yoda says

begun the book wars have

“If Da Vinci was alive today, he’d be eating microwave sushi, naked, in the back of a Cadillac with the both of us.” – Darwin Mayflower

Interesting:

0MQ (”Zero-Em-Queue”) is a messaging system that tackles these issues by taking a different approach. Instead of inventing new APIs and complex wire protocols, 0MQ extends the socket API, eliminating the learning curve and allowing a network programmer to master it in a couple of hours. The wire protocols are simplistic, even trivial. Performance matches and often exceeds that of raw sockets.

A husband and wife were sitting watching a TV program about psychology and explaining the phenomenon of “mixed emotions”.

The husband turned to his wife and said, “Honey, that’s a bunch of crap. I bet you can’t tell me anything that will make me happy and sad at the same time.”

She said: “Out of all your friends, you have the biggest penis.”

Snicker:

Monster? Ha! A cheap fabrication for those who don’t know better.

Ever since I switched to triple platinum-plated (no cheap gold here!) Pear Anjou cables, the colors on my monitor have been much deeper, richer and more vibrant, truly life-like! That’s because they have a proprietary hybrid geometry, and the platinum plating provides ultra-low electrical reactance and the underlying copper is fully annealed 99.999% pure oxygen free. Not that cheap copper you get everyplace. All this combines to allow for new levels of digital accuracy.

Oh… are people still using platinum? Well, I guess if you’re willing to settle, rather than pay for unicorn horn, then it won’t degrade your signaltoo much. Probably not enough to spoil your enjoyment, but a true videophile can tell.

Not to drag this dry videophile discussion out too long, but I presume you’re not using cheap factory-raised unicorn horn, notorious for its poor standing wave sync-sweetening and shallow inter-bitstream raster resonance?

Only unicorns raised in the Swiss Alps have the protein content in their horns that allows a digital signal to hit such crisp, sparkling 1s and deep, thick 0s.

Unicorn horn!???

No!No!No!

Everybody knows that Unicorn horn introduces subtle color leakage and timing delays.

A real videophile would know that true video nirvana can only be achieved by using Fossilized T-Rex Turd connectors: only posers go with Platinum and Unicorn Horn.

Pretty much my read too.

Genius!

I’ve long since upgraded from this unique Buffalo 300gb USB 2.0 external hard disk, and now my loss can possibly be yours, too. I bought this disk around 2005, and it was amazingly massive at the time. What wonderful times we had! Happily storing and retrieving everything I sent over her 480mbit/sec high-speed USB 2.0 link, and me happily accessing it at later dates. But as time went on, my eye turned outwards. There were so many newer, prettier hard drives out there.

I admit it, I dallied. I bought a 250gb portable drive – I rationalized it. It was smaller than this one. I only needed it for when I went out. I’d always come home to my faithful Buffalo. Emboldened by this success, I became quite the rake. First came a pair of identical 500gb Seagate twins, then their younger cousin, a 500gb portable. No matter how much I had, my wanton lust for storage would not be quenched. I became irresponsible, and was known to have immodest flings. I once bought quite a tart of a 1tb disk. I spent the day with her, then returned her to the shop in the morning.

Meanwhile, the Buffalo faithfully put up with it. And then, she started exhibiting some disturbing? inconsistencies. I would plug her in, dutifully waiting for the icon to appear on my desktop. I’d wait, and wait, and wait. I sometimes waited for hours or days, peering at my desktop with slavish attention, groveling for access to my miserable data. She was showing me who was really in control here, and exerting its power. I wanted to leave, but it wouldn’t let me. Every time I thought about it, I’d remember all the good times we had – and more importantly, my data, which it jealously guarded.

The end came unexpectedly for her, though I planned it long in advance. I spent a full two weeks sweet-talking. I put her back in a prominent position on my desk, letting the other disks know who was my favorite. We wined and dined, and I showered her with chocolate and roses. One evening, after a particularly romantic night out at Ruth’s Chris, I politely asked for access to my files. And she complied – opened right up.

I rushed in and plundered every miserable byte, leaving her magnetic surfaces a desolate, empty expanse.

Things haven’t been the same between us. They never can be. Despite all our time together, good and bad, it’s time to set her free. I hope you treat each other better than we did.

Snicker:

From here:

I remember the first time I saw a sign that said $1,000 for littering (I live in California). At first I thought nothing of this until I later saw a sign, in the same town, that said $271 fine for running a red light at a busy intersection. Now, This was years ago so the numbers have probably changed but I remember being shocked at this discrepancy. Running a red, which could cost other drivers significantly (as in multiple thousands of dollars of damage as well as potential death) had a lower fine than throwing my straw wrapper out my window which, at worst, could what…kill a bird that was to stupid to tell paper from food and choked on it?

and here:

Speeding tickets are a gold-mine for municipal budgets.

If you have a cash cow, you milk it gently. Not rip the udders clean off.

Graphical representation of the gravity wells for the various bodies in the solar system.

IOW, neat shite.

“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.”
-DANIEL BURNHAM, CHICAGO ARCHITECT. (1846-1912)

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Sounds good on paper, but:

From here:

As strange as it may seem, there actually is precedence for 8-bit bytes… in Currency of all places.

The Spanish Milled Dollar was often split into eight pieces to make change. Hence the term “Pieces of Eight.”

However, for whatever reason, those were often termed bits in the US. So, there were 8 bits to the Spanish Milled Dollar.

And two bits made up a quarter-dollar, hence the “Shave and a hair cut… two bits!” routine.

“To keep you from abusing a lamp cord when you decide the time has come.”

“Every morning, I get up and look through the ‘Forbes’ list of the richest people in America. If I’m not there, I go to work” — Robert Orben

Heh:

I’m torn. On the one hand, Google’s new URL shortening service isn’t likely to go away any time soon. OTOH, there’s a better solution (which I swore I saw but can’t for the life of me track down right now. Pretty sure I’ve still got an email on the subject, will hunt down shortly).

Great collection of coding, deployment and execution tips for the Java developer.

But of course. I used to work with Fred, and expect nothing less than top quality when he’s involved.

P.S. He’s an independent consultant so if you ever need any work, he should be at the top of your list to contact.

Nice contents too.

Destiny’s Child’s version of 8 Days of Xmas.

Shrug. So I’m male. Sue me.

In my defense, I’ll point out I married her look-a-like. And I really do like the vest santa suit more than the others.

What? One can’t appreciate fine quality when he sees it?

Nice vest too