Category: Uncategorized

Here are the latest articles posted to my technical/programmer blog, Global Nerdy:

Enumerating Enumerable

Enumerating Enumerable is my series of articles in which I attempt to do a better job of writing up Ruby’s Enumerable module that the folks at Ruby-Doc.org did. Here are the methods I’ve covered so far:

1. all?
2. any?
3. collect / map
4. count
5. cycle
6. detect / find
7. drop
8. drop_while
9. each_cons

Notes from RubyFringe

The weekend before last, I attended the edgy Ruby programming conference RubyFringe, which I may have to declare “the best programming conference I’ve ever attended”. I took copious notes, the links for which are listed below:

• Scenes from RubyFringe, Part 1
• Day 1 Notes, Part 1
• Day 1 Notes, Part 2
• Day 2 Notes, Part 1
• Day 2 Notes, Part 2
• Day 2 Notes, Part 3

Damian Conway’s Presentation

A slide from Damian Conway’s presentation.

I also attended Damian Conway’s presentation, titled Temporally Quaquaversal Virtual Nanomachine Programming in Multiple Topologically Connected Quantum-Relativistic Parallel Timespaces…Made Easy. He managed to connect the space-time continuum, relativistic effects as you approach the speed of light, carbon nanotubes and Perl programming in a lengthy (2 hours!) but interesting lecture. Again, I took notes, and you can see them here.

Tucows (Re)Introduces OpenSRS

And finally, my old employer, Tucows, has rebranded OpenSRS to encompass all their reseller services: domain names, ssl certificates, email and “personal names”. Better yet, they called on local superstar illustrator and designer John “Robot Johnny” Martz to make the lovely retro-graphics for the brand. Well done!

How can a single photo say so much?
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

Gary Spivey, “professional psychic”, wears his trademark afro wig whenever making a public appearance. I’m certain that in his mind, the wig says “take me seriously”.

I really enjoyed this tweet (a message posted on Twitter) from Sean Tiner:

Click the image to see the original tweet.

Bridal botox party! Karen Hohenstein, left, jokes with her attendants-to-be at a Botox party at the Tiffani Kim Institute Medical Wellness Spa in Chicago.
Photo from the New York Times.

I’m with Jason Kottke: the thing that’s really devaluing marriage isn’t gays and lesbians getting married, it’s way that people are turning it into excuses to exercise gross amounts of self-indulgence and self-absorption.

The New York Times has a story on brides who are demanding that members of their bridal parties get all sorts of cosmetic work done, ranging from coordinated tans:

A bride’s request that you whiten your grayish teeth can strain a relationship. Samantha Goldberg, a wedding planner in Chester, N.J., recalled a bride who asked her attendants to get professionally spray-tanned for a Hawaiian-theme reception.

Alas, two women were claustrophobic and couldn’t bear standing in a tanning capsule. “They asked the bride if they could use regular tanning cream from a salon,” Ms. Goldberg said. The bride refused; she wanted everyone to be the same shade. The women ultimately declined to be bridesmaids. “Friendships of 20-plus years gone over a spray tan?” Ms. Goldberg said. “Sad!”

…to botox…

And how does a bride break it to a mother-in-law that she’d love her crow’s feet to be frozen into submission? Very delicately.

“My mother is in her 60s. She’s been talking about it for so long, so I said ‘Let’s do it,’ ” said Stacey Berlin, 29, a marketing consultant, who is having a party at Aquamedica Day Spa in Long Branch, N.J.

It was trickier with her future mother-in-law. “To her,” Ms. Berlin said, “I said it as a joke: ‘You should do Botox for the wedding!’ She giggled, and then I said, ‘I’m serious. It’s exactly what you need to freshen up.’ At first she kind of laughed it off, but the more we talked about it and I told her my mom was going to do it, she said ‘O.K.’ ”

…and in one egregious case, boob jobs:

Becky Lee, 39, a Manhattan photographer, declined when a friend asked her — and five other attendants — to have their breasts enhanced. “We’re all Asian and didn’t have a whole lot of cleavage, and she found a doctor in L.A. who was willing to do four for the price of two,” said Ms. Lee, who wore a push-up bra instead. Not for nothing are some maids known as slaves of honor, but this kind of cajoling is a recent development on the wedding front.

With this type of silliness going on, it’s no wonder that a lot of people are opting out of weddings and going for domestic partnerships instead.

Slate has put together an interactive guide to the Bush administration’s various acts in which they broke the law, a screenshot of which is shown below:

Click the graphic to try out the interactive guide.

As Slate observes: “if all else fails, fall back on this golden rule of wrongdoing in the White House: All roads lead to Gonzales.”

Note that this covers only their illegal activites, as opposed to the larger set of activites that could be classified as wrong, inappropriate or just plain dickish. That one would be considerably larger.

I have got to get one of these!

Click the photo to see the “Accordion Idol” belt buckle eBay page.