Tag archives for geek culture

  1. “But don’t you find it boring to wear only two colors?”

    “Not at all. I find it liberating. I believe my life has value, and I don’t want to waste it thinking about clothing,” Malcolm said. “I don’t want to think about what I will wear in the morning. Truly, can you imagine anything more boring than fashion? Professional sports, perhaps. Grown men swatting little balls, while the rest of the world pays money to applaud. But, on the whole, I find fashion even more tedious than sports.”

    — Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton

  2. Happy Programmer’s Day

    By Leonid Mamchenkov

    My brother reminded me that today is Programmer’s Day, an official holiday and appreciation day for those hundreds of thousands of people who spend their days teaching computers new tricks.  I know that not many people think about it, but I do and I find it totally fascinating, that everything, every tiny little thing that we see on a computer screen is thanks to someone who programmed it in.  Just think about it.

    What are you staring at now?  Probably a web browser.  That’s a large and mighty complicated program that was written over a few years by hundreds, if not thousands of programmers.  Your browser runs on top of an operating system, which again was written by many programmers over lengthy periods of time.  The browser, through operating system, communicates with the server that runs my blog.  All those communications go through a number of networking devices (routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, etc), which run software written by more people.  My server runs Apache web server software.  Which runs PHP software.  Which runs WordPress software.  Which connects to MySQL database.  These are just a few major pieces of software involved in the process.  There are probably thousands of smaller applications that nobody ever thinks of, that still do their job to deliver this content from me to you.  Like TinyMCE editor that I am using inside of WordPress to write this post.  Or like Google search engine that you probably misused to get to this post.

    Do you like any video games?  Those are software applications.  How about YouTube videos?  For you to be able to waste time at work this inefficiently, a lot of software had to be written by a lot of people.  Oh, are you working then?  Doing some calculations in Excel or drafting up Word document?  Maybe you are working through some customer data in the CRM application.  All those are software applications too.  They didn’t just grow on trees.  Someone somewhere had to think them up, design them, implement them, and maintain them.

    Oh, and do you know what’s even crazier?   Programmers are using software applications created by other programmers.  Operating systems, text editors, compilers, linkers, debuggers, and more!

    Software industry is very young.  I’m not sure when was the first program ever written, but, according to Wikipedia, the first theory was proposed by Alan Turing in 1935.  That’s not even 80 years ago.  And if you look around you now, the amount and the complexity of software applications created to date is immense – from operating systems, through games and business applications, to all the things online and mobile.

    But that’s just the job, right? All those people were paid for it, right? Wrong! Very wrong!  While many did indeed get paid, there is plenty of contribution from amateurs and enthusiasts.  Those are the people who push the technology, ask hard questions, and try to make the world a better place not necessarily for their own greater income, but out of pure curiosity and for the love of science.

    Anyways, I’m getting carried away.  All I wanted to say is that it’s important to pause once in a while, look around, and appreciate what we have and people who brought us all that.  Computer software is not the single most important thing around us, but it is one of those things that we rarely notice, until it breaks.  So, have a thought about what software you use, what role does it play in your life, and how did it get there.  And then, find a programmer and buy him a beer.  Because there is someone somewhere not just using his software, but enjoying and/or depending on it, and not thinking about it.

    One last thing I wanted to mention.  Of course, I knew about Programmer’s Day for a while now.  And, of course, I knew that it is an officially recognized holiday in Russia.  But what I didn’t know is that I actually know one of those people who worked to make it an officially recognized holiday.

    This particular day was proposed by Valentin Balt, an employee of Parallel Technologies web design company. As early as 2002, he tried to gather signatures for a petition to the government of Russia to recognize the day as the official programmers’ day.

    Valentine Balt currently works in FxPro, here in Cyprus.  And we had a few drinks together.  Well done, Valentine!

    To all you programmers out there – happy Programmer’s Day.  I wish you faster computers, shorter compile times, fewer bugs, better APIs, clearer specifications, more pull requests and patch submissions, and more appreciative users.  Enjoy!

  3. Octopress – a blogging framework for hackers →

    Being a very happy WordPress user doesn’t stop me from looking around for alternatives.  I recently came across Octopress, which is, in some sort, GitHub pages on steroids.  This is a really neat and geeky approach to tech-savvy bloggers. Recently, version 2.0 has been released.

    Octopress comes with:

    • A semantic HTML5 template
    • A Mobile first responsive layout (rotate, or resize your browser and see)
    • Built in 3rd party support for Twitter, Google Plus One, Disqus Comments, Pinboard, Delicious, and Google Analytics
    • An easy deployment strategy using Github pages or Rsync
    • Built in support for POW and Rack servers
    • Easy theming with Compass and Sass
    • A Beautiful Solarized syntax highlighting

  4. Corny network engineer jokes

    By Leonid Mamchenkov

    A colleague sent me a link to this list of network engineer humor.  If you are not a networking guy, you should probably skip altogether, cause these are pretty geeky.  I haven’t got all of them, but a few that I did are actually quite good.

    “Knock Knock” “who’s there?” “Denial of Service Attack” “Den…?” “Sn(kRzIhAw]BoKaoOv0liZPhl~FaLoaSa*AgSeaLp|ExleT…” – @MattGordonSmith

    An IPv6 packet walks into a bar. Nobody talks to him. @fsmontenegro

    A tcp packet walks in to a bar and says “I want a beer”, barman says “you want a beer?” and tcp packet says “yes, a beer” @stevie_chambers

    A Network Engineers tell a joke in a full bar. One man laughs. They start talking about NX-OS and have a blast. @icemarkom

  5. Ubuntu naming permutations

    By Leonid Mamchenkov

    Even though I don’t use Ubuntu myself, I think nothing stops me from sharing the fun those guys have these days.  But first, if you are anything like me, you need a little bit of context.  Here is a wiki page that explains Ubuntu code names and lists some of the previous ones:

    The official name of an Ubuntu release is “Ubuntu X.YY” with X representing the year (minus 2000) and YY representing the month of eventual release within in that year. Ubuntu’s first release, made in 2004 October (10th month) was Ubuntu 4.10. Since the actual release date is not known until it’s ready and humans tend to prefer names rather than numbers, a set of codenames are used by developers and testers during the buildup to a release

    [...]

    The development codename of a release takes the form “Adjective Animal”. So for example: Warty Warthog (Ubuntu 4.10), Hoary Hedgehog (Ubuntu 5.04), Breezy Badger (Ubuntu 5.10), are the first three releases of Ubuntu. In general, people refer to the release using the adjective, like “warty” or “breezy”.

    Well, now that we do have a context, here come the naming permutation from Mark Shuttleworth – a leader of the Ubuntu community.  Choosing the release name is not easy, especially with the help of the dictionary and all those enthusiastic contributors.  Read the whole thing to get a better idea.

    The letter P is pretty perfect. It’s also plentiful – my inbox has been rather full of suggestions – and we have options ranging from pacific to purposeful, via puckish and prudent. We’ll steer clear of the posh and the poncey, much as some would revel in the Portentious Palomino or the Principled Paca, those aren’t the winning names. Having spent the last six months elucidating the meaning of “oneiric” I think it might also be worth skipping the parenthetical or paralogical options too; so sadly I had to exclude the Perspicacious Panda and Porangi Packhorse (though being an LTS, that Packhorse was a near thing).

    Being generally of a cheerful nature, I thought we’d avoid the Predatory Panther and Primeval Possum. Neither sounds like great company for a seven year journey, really. Same goes for the Peccable Peccary, Pawky Python and Perfidious Puku. So many bullets to dodge round here!

  6. Ultimate geek respect for Adrian Hands

    By Leonid Mamchenkov

    Here is something that touched and moved every geek out there:

    Adrian Hands was suffering from ALS and had lost motor skills when he used his legs to type in Morse code and fix a 9-year-old bug in Gnome. The patch was submitted three days before he passed away.

    I think the following comment does the best job expressing the feeling:

    There are so many who benefit from the community, and so relatively few who give back. So many people claim some excuse to not contribute anything to anybody without getting paid. Then there’s this guy. I am honored to have shared a planet with him.

     

  7. Diggnation week

    By Leonid Mamchenkov

    I officially call this week a Diggnation week.  Not that I have anything to do with Diggnation except being a fan, but you’ll get what I mean in just a second.  First, on Monday, while shopping at Carrefour supermarket, I came across Michelob lager bottles.  Michelob is an American brewery which used to sponsor several Diggnatino episodes, and Kevin and Alex even did a tour of the brewery.   Not a particularly great beer (here in Europe we are blessed with a variety of excellent beers), but not a bad one either.

    Secondly, I was waiting for a fresh episode of Diggnation to come out and give me an atmospheric reason to chuck the first bottle and enjoy the second.  And what did Diggnation do?  They came up with probably their best live show episode ever.  Episode #246 in Austin, Texas.  It started off slowly, but it turned epic with Leo Laporte streaming a live TWiT show while crowd surfing (fast forward 40 minutes or so).  And then it went even crazier with Robert Rodrigez himself showing up at the show and doing a brief interview about an upcoming Predators movie.   In the words of Alex Albrecht: “What??!!!”

    P.S.: If you watched a few episodes of Diggnation and haven’t got hooked, don’t worry.  I skipped quite a bit of Diggnation history.  Until I saw them with my own two eyes back in Amsterdam.  The guys are awesome!

  8. Size does matter

    By Leonid Mamchenkov

    There are plenty of excellent t-shirts around, but once in a while a brilliant one comes up, which makes all the differences.  Here is one at ThinkGeek.com – nanotechnology is huge !

    nanotechnology is huge

    The moment I saw that phrase appearing in my Google Reader (here is some info about ThinkGeek feeds), I wanted to buy this t-shirt.  Even before I saw the actual t-shirt.  Even despite my total ignorance of nanotechnology.  It’s just so hilarious and true and makes so much sense at the same time!

  9. The Nerd Handbook – quick guide to the unknown

    By Leonid Mamchenkov

    Via Mark Fletcher’s post came across The Nerd Handbook.  This is a really nice post explaining a few things about nerds.  While details may vary from person to person, the overall picture is pretty accurate of so many people I’ve seen in the IT industry and in some science related areas (mathematics, physics).  Here are a few quotes:

    A nerd has a mental model of the hardware and the software in his head. While the rest of the world sees magic, your nerd knows how the magic works, he knows the magic is a long series of ones and zeros moving across your screen with impressive speed, and he knows how to make those bits move faster.

    Your nerd lives in a monospaced typeface world. Whereas everyone else is traipsing around picking dazzling fonts to describe their world, your nerd has carefully selected a monospace typeface, which he avidly uses to manipulate the world deftly via a command line interface while the rest fumble around with a mouse.
    The reason for this typeface selection is, of course, practicality. Monospace typefaces have a knowable width. Ten letters on one line are same width as ten other letters, which puts the world into a pleasant grid construction where X and Y mean something.

    Your nerd loves toys and puzzles. The joy your nerd finds in his project is one of problem solving and discovery. As each part of the project is completed, your nerd receives an adrenaline rush that we’re going to call The High. Every profession has this — the moment when you’ve moved significantly closer to done. In many jobs, it’s easy to discern when progress is being made: “Look, now we have a door”. But in nerds’ bit-based work, progress is measured mentally and invisibly in code, algorithms, efficiency, and small mental victories that don’t exist in a world of atoms.

    This post is a better written piece, which is also more accurate than most of those endless lists “You are a nerd if …“.  If you know somebody really weird, working in IT or scientific research, I strongly recommend to read the article.

  10. The IT Crowd – geek comedy show

    By Leonid Mamchenkov

    I am starting to fall for television. First there was (and still is, by the way) Comedy Central‘s The Daily Show. And now this – The IT Crowd, new comedy show on Channel 4… Boy, am I waiting for those times when my TV will be able to connect to souces like this, no matter where I live. I’m willing to pay for this today. In three years I’ll be desperate.

    Anyway, I managed to see one of the episodes, thanks to a certain someone. It’s hilarious. It’s as funny as I could imagine, and even a bit more so. By the way, all episodes are online, it’s just they are for UK audience only. If you know how to become a UK audience – there’s all you need.

    And let me tell you something – don’t let the name of the show stop you from watching it. There’s not that much of IT in it anyway. At least not in the episode that I’ve watched. It’s more of an office humor. If you’ve spent more than half an hour in any corporate or startup office recently – you’ll dig all the humor in the show.