The Bastard Operator From Hell

Those of you who have been around the computer block a few times will remember The Bastard Operator From Hell. It's pretty dated by now but before the advent of the personal computer, users relied on sys ops like the BOFH. The whole archive is available now at http://bofh.ntk.net/Bastard1.html

Here is a teaser, from one of my favorites "episodes":

I'm sitting at the desk, playing x-tank, when some thoughtless bastard rings me on the phone. I pick it up.

"Hello?" I say.

"Who is this?" they say

"It's me I think" I say, having successfully attended a telephone skills course

"Me Who?"

"Is this like a knock knock joke?" I say, trying anything to save myself having to end this game.

Too LATE! I get killed.

Now I'm pissed!

"What can I do for you?" I ask pleasantly - (one of the key warning signs)

"Um, I want to know if we have a particular software package.."

"Which package is that?" "Uh, B-A-S-I-C it's called."

>clickety clickety d-e-l b-a-s-i-c.e-x-e<
"Um no, we don't have that. We used to though.."

"oh. Oh well, the other thing I wanted to know was, could the contents of my account be copied to tape to I have a permanent copy of them to save at home in case the worst happens.."

"The worst?"

"Well, like they get deleted or something..."

"DELETED! Oh, don't worry about that, we have backups!" (I'm such a *shit*) "What was your username?"

He gives me his lusername. (What an idiot)

>clickety clikc<
"But you haven't got any files in your account!" I say, mock surprise leaping from my vocal chords.

"Yes I have, you must be looking in the wrong place!"

So first he spoils my x-tank game, and *now* he's calling me a liar...

>clickety click<
"Oh no, I made a mistake" I say

Did he mutter "typical" under his breath??!? Oh dear, oh dear..

"I MEANT TO SAY: That USERNAME doesn't exist"

Give yourself a laugh break and check out the archive.

Social Computing and Flikr, the Metaverse . . .

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129

Oh brave new world -- I am totally blown away by this demo of photosynth technology, showing, among other things, how pictures culled from a Flikr search for "Notre Dame" have been compiled together to create an infinitely (almost) scalable image of the cathedral.

This is a can't-miss. Prepare to be blown away.

Do we really want to know what our cats are up to?

http://www.mr-lee-catcam.de/index.htm

An enterprising photo-phile has rigged a collar camera for Kitty. As one would expect, the cat spends the vast part of his day hiding under things, and looking at other cats. I think that the vast bulk of cats' outdoor time is spent on these activities, and for some, attacking the occasional bird or squirrel. Two of my cats would be the sit-and-hide types, and my third (Cody aka "Code Orange") would drag home a deer or zebra that he had brought down.

Read or Die: Manga for Bibliophiles

While we're on the subject of getting kids to read, I stumbled on a manga series about how cool and fun it is to read, and specifically, to collect books until your house is full of them in big stacks. The characters' lives revolve around books and reading. What could be cooler than that? This series is totally fun. It's manga. It's juvenile. But, it's book porn of the best kind.

The story revolves around the adventure of three girls (one 12, one is 18 or so, the oldest might be 20), who live together and run the "Three Sisters Detective Agency". Teddy-bear stuff, that, but the cool factor is that they have the ability to manipulate paper in a supernatural way, for instance turning a piece of paper into a sword, or bow and arrow, or if you have enough paper on hand, an airplane you can actually fly around in.

As I said, it's juvenile, but the characters are totally likable and they read and talk about books constantly. Some of their more unfortunate books get turned into things like shields to block bullets, as they defend the helpless and such.

Their passion for books borders on mania. So of course, I couldn't pass these up. There is also a set of DVDs of a japanese television show based on the original manga.

Here's a shot from a trailer for the video:

They have GOT to be kidding!

I can't get over this. A publisher in the UK, Orion Group, is publishing "short versions" of classic novels because they believe that people won't read these books due to their length.

Huh?

Would a museum every chop up famous mural-sized painting because "people only look in the middle"? Would a symphony orchestra only play the "fast" movements from a Beethoven symphony because "people could fall asleep if the music is too slow"?

We're not talking about obscure works here. Look at some of these titles: Anna Karenina. Count of Monte Cristo. David Copperfield. Vanity Fair. Jane Eyre. Yes, these books have a lot of pages, but I would not call any of them "difficult to read". If size was the only issue with these classic titles (and the publisher's list includes some of the best books ever written), why not just publish multi-volume editions? I've often wondered why publishers can't do this for weightier tomes.

So obviously the reason isn't the size of the book. Puh-leeze! If someone isn't going to read Dickens' longer books like David Copperfield, I'll bet they aren't reading his short novels either.

A quote from the publisher:

“We realised that life is too short to read all the books you want to and we never were going to read these ones.”

Ok, so now life is too short, so let's make the books short too.

Here's a question for the Orion Group: would these books still be "Great Books" if they were whittled down to just the fun parts?

This product is obviously for people who think they "should" read the classics. They don't want to, and they probably won't no matter what. But they might be willing to buy the shorter versions to give themselves a leg up.

Publishers have a business to run, they need to sell product to people who will buy things, that's commerce. But, it ain't literature.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/fiction/article1652629.ece

Vintage Aircraft Over Hansom Field

My office is directly under the flight path for planes making an approach to Hanscom Field in Lexington, Massachusetts. This airfield used to be a dedicated air force base and is now operating as a commercial field, although there are plenty of military craft that come and go. (When dignitaries on the president-class level visit the Boston area, they fly in to Hanscom and get helicoptered to wherever.)

This afternoon as I strolled around the parking lot trying to remember what sunshine looks like, I saw several vintage (circa WW II) bi-wings, similar to this picture from wikipedia, except they were red.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Stearman.e75.g-bswc.longshot.arp.jpg

I suspect that someone was having a lesson in one of these craft, because they made several attempts at an approach and from what I could see, the pilot seemed to be still getting the hang of the controls :-)

You never know what you're going to see flying into Hanscom. After the opening day ceremony at Fenway Park in April, we were treated to our own little airshow as the 4 honor guard bombers (I think they were F16s) used up a little fuel circling around and around before they finally (and I think somewhat reluctantly) came in one at a time for their landing. Looking up from the window near my desk, I could practically see the rivets on the underside of these aircraft. Even though I tend not to be in favor of military action (as a solution to conflict) but even I found this fly-over to be very exciting.

Beyond Compare

Hi folks - today's find is a cool utility for comparing and sync-ing directories and files. I have used other file compares but this handy tool does everything. It's called "Beyond Compare" and you can download a free trial here:

http://www.scootersoftware.com/home.php

After 30 days you need to purchase, but it's a well-spent $30. This is a tool I will use constantly and it will save me hours of time and frustration.

In my job, I frequently have to update my source code and create a new build, and then tediously pick out the pieces that are new and copy them into the complex directory structure of the server product that I work on. This is an error-prone process that used to leave me banging my fist on the desk as I'd find yet another mistake and then I'd copy over too much and have to tediously re-apply local changes . . . you get the idea. With Beyond Compare, I can drill down between the two directories, look at files that don't match, examine those and see what changed, and copy over just the ones I want, or actually copy the changed lines. Of course for binaries, that can't be compared, I can just drag from the source to the target.

Other utilities do similar things, but this is the most thorough and easy to use that I've come across.

I highly recommend it! If you move files around a lot, you deserve a good utility to do it for you.