http://gimbo.org.uk/blog 6 years of rambling and mumbling Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:26:19 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Garfield minus Garfield [Thomas Bradley, but not that one]. Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Sparse, quiet, despair. http://gimbo.org.uk/blog/2008/07/10/garfield-minus-garfield/ Surreal... This page, explaining why "Andy" is a better abbreviation of "Andrew" than "Drew" includes this picture (taken by by Markus) of me pulling one weird-ass face — apparently that's some good Andy! If I recall correctly, I was listening to Yoshinao Isobe explain his encoding of one ... http://gimbo.org.uk/blog/2008/07/07/i-am-an-exemplar-of-andyness/ Because it will warp your mind [raganwald]. So I'm here to say that mindwarp #3 is discovering the function as the basic unit of abstraction. Jaw-droppingly beautiful abstractions and generalizations can be created out of just functions. You can rediscover the usefulness of partial functions and currying, which were techniques created ... http://gimbo.org.uk/blog/2008/07/04/why-functional-programming/ Bit of a brain-dump, this one, but maybe of interest to social networking butterflies. I've been on Facebook for a while now, and the things I like best are a) the photos (other peoples' – I use flickr), b) the event organisation, and c) the status updates. It's nice to ... http://gimbo.org.uk/blog/2008/07/03/using-pingfm-for-facebook-twitter-updates-by-email-and-sms/ Here, finally, my photos of Budapest, from the week I spent there with Alexa at the end of March (as mentioned in an earlier post). Yes, it's really taken me three months to get back to tagging and naming them. You can't really blame me: I did it once already ... http://gimbo.org.uk/blog/2008/06/27/2135/ http://gimbo.org.uk/blog/2008/06/27/portrait-of-a-kitteh/ Nice vid, Dan. :-) http://gimbo.org.uk/blog/2008/06/26/swansea-bananaphone-flashmob-video/ Yet people talk about programming as if it were a production process and measure "programmer productivity" in terms of "number of lines of code produced". In so doing they book that number on the wrong side of the ledger: we should always refer to "the number of lines of code ... http://gimbo.org.uk/blog/2008/06/24/loc-is-a-measure-of-cost-not-productivity/ The Door to Hell [longnow]. Other entrances to Hell, originally noted by Gimboland in 2002. http://gimbo.org.uk/blog/2008/06/18/doors-to-hell/ My my, I've had a busy (by which I mean fun and not working at all) and sociable (by which I mean much ale and good food, including bananas, was quaffed with silly people) weekend. It started on Thursday evening, when a whole bunch of us went out to celebrate my ... http://gimbo.org.uk/blog/2008/06/10/a-weekend-of-shenanigans/ Big Ideas (don't get any) — Radiohead on the old-tech; awesome and then some [brunns]. Sinclair ZX Spectrum - Guitars (rhythm & lead) Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer - Drums HP Scanjet 3c - Bass Guitar Hard Drive array - Act as a collection of bad speakers - Vocals & FX On a personal note, ... http://gimbo.org.uk/blog/2008/06/10/big-ideas-dont-get-any/ UK CCTV used to create a music video [risks]. Unable to hire a production crew for a standard 1980's era MTV music video, they performed their music in front of 80 of the 13 million CCTV "security" cameras available in England, including one on a bus. Also good, from the same RISKS digest: ... http://gimbo.org.uk/blog/2008/05/23/uk-cctv-used-to-create-a-music-video/ There are many, many reasons why you should never ever accept a job which involves programming in C++ [via TR]. http://gimbo.org.uk/blog/2008/05/12/other-good-reasons-the-existence-of-python-ruby-haskell-smalltalk/ "People who wear suits to work in Manhattan are the biggest god-damned dicks you'll find anywhere." Good Math, Bad Math http://gimbo.org.uk/blog/2008/05/02/now-why-does-this-not-surprise-me/ Local elections take place in much of England and all of Wales today, so it's time to vote. Interestingly, I've just realised that I've been given two votes this time round, which shouldn't really happen. In other words, I occur on the electoral register twice. Naturally I won't exploit ... http://gimbo.org.uk/blog/2008/05/01/gimbo-gets-to-vote-twice-cos-hes-fab/ Two neato sites/apps spotted recently via fellow moderately-curmudgeonly-beer-drinkers' blogs: gmap pedometer [rhodri] — plot a course on a google map and find out how far you'll walk. For example, on Thursday I was able to use this map to ensure that of the sixty-odd people I invited (via Facebook magic) ... http://gimbo.org.uk/blog/2008/04/28/where-and-how-far-away-is-the-beer/ Ha ha ha, excellent: Type Racer [davea]. Won my first race with a measly 66 wpm; I had to type the following spookily apt quote: Throughout my academic career, I'd given some pretty good talks. But being considered the best speaker in a computer-science department is like being known as ... http://gimbo.org.uk/blog/2008/04/25/typeracer/ My Mum sent me this on a piece of paper ages ago; it's been sitting in my office waiting for me to digitise it so I can recycle the increasingly frayed piece of paper... Each of the following represents a short well-known (or maybe not so well-known) phrase. The puzzle ... http://gimbo.org.uk/blog/2008/04/23/puzzle-time/ Heyup. Lots going on, but blogging sorely neglected. Partially I've been busy with work, partially I've been busy with going away. Three Big News Items: I properly completed and submitted my MPhil thesis; more on this later (including a PDF for anyone masochistic enough to ... http://gimbo.org.uk/blog/2008/04/23/late-april-keepalive-ping/ The joy of hindsight: the sub-prime catastrophe in a few nutshells [smallcool]. http://gimbo.org.uk/blog/2008/03/18/2118/