About me I've been a computer programmer since I first started typing in program listings on a Commodore Vic 20 when I was about 8. My hobbies include electronics, CNC manufacturing, photography, beer and winemaking.
I live with my wife and lots of left-over parts from unfinished projects in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA.]
Blog
9 March 2009, 23:04 UTCIngredients Fail
Thanks to Chris for noticing this one!
Bottle of organic lemon juce is labeled "contains juice from turkey"
23 January 2008, 16:36 UTCMath is hard (even for google)!
Breaking down 47.000000 degrees into degrees, minutes, and seconds, google
comes up with the bizarre "59 minute and 60 seconds of a degree".
Floating-point round-off somewhere? Probably. Update, March 24, 2008:
The bug is half-fixed. Today, Google displays +47° 0' 0.00", -119° 59'
60.00" as the coordinates of this location.
28 December 2007, 21:24 UTCCollate this!
Turns out that when you don't LC_COLLATE=C; export LC_COLLATE, you'll
eventually get bitten in the ass by the way character ranges in shell globs
are treated:
$ (unset LC_COLLATE; bash)
$ touch A a B b Z z; echo [A-Z]; echo [a-z]
A b B z Z
a A b B z
In this case, my friend discovered the interesting behavior after executing
'rm [a-z]*', apparently hoping to keep files which started with
uppercase letters. Whoops!
21 December 2007, 21:28 UTCAs seen in hell....
At the office, we have a saying: If your function takes more than 5
arguments, you forgot one. You can see the results of that mindset in
this error message:
trade_secret.c: In function 'void f()':
trade_secret.h:187: error: too few arguments to function
'void trade_secret(int, int, int, double, double, int, int, int,
int, double, double, double, double, int, double, double,
double, double, double, double, double, double, double, double,
double, double, double, double, double, int, double, double*,
double*, int*, int*, int*, int*, int*, double*, int*, int*,
double*, double*, double*, int*, double*, double*, double*,
double*, int*, int*, int*, int*, int*, int)'
trade_secret.c:9: error: at this point in file
19 November 2007, 16:38 UTCAs seen on the internet
void URLDecoder::getAsDec(char* hex) {
char tmp = tolower(hex[0]);
if(tmp == 'a') {
strcpy(hex,"10");
}else if(tmp == 'b') {
strcpy(hex,"11");
}else if(tmp == 'c') {
strcpy(hex,"12");
}else if(tmp == 'd') {
strcpy(hex,"13");
}else if(tmp == 'e') {
strcpy(hex,"14");
}else if(tmp == 'f') {
strcpy(hex,"15");
}else if(tmp == 'g') {
strcpy(hex,"16");
}
}
I
am not making this up.
6 December 2006, 16:00 UTCAcronym of the day: STEWD
STEWD: Security Through Endless Warning Dialogs. A phrase that will
apparently become much more common when everyone is forced to buy a copy of
Vista with new PCs, sometime early next year.
26 August 2006, 0:48 UTCThe stupidest thing I saw today....
From http://www.joinfear.com/main, and presented without further comment:
2 May 2006, 23:08 UTCWhine!!!!!!!&exclam;
Having recently tried to write some documentation, I'm a bit struck by how
much all the alternatives I'm aware of suck. All I want is to get a nice HTML
and PDF output of a document with a few tables. Some signs pointed towards
this thing called "openjade", which is a "document style semantics and
specification language" (I guess).
Imagine how unimpressed was when I got a look at the documentation they had
produced—If anybody is going to have good-looking documentation it
should be the people making the "document style" software! At first I thought
of blaming myself because I had a wide screen, but it's even bad on a maximized
window on a 1024x768 monitor, with its black text over a terrible dithered dark
blue background.
I guess I'll go back to writing HTML by hand and using "File > Print" to
produce PDF. Or maybe I'll write LaTeX again and berate people who don't
seem to know how to use xpdf.
12 January 2006, 17:12 UTCOdd Macro Flash Photo
21 November 2005, 23:03 UTCThe best assertion ever
7 November 2005, 19:12 UTCTwo optical illusions
13 August 2005, 4:51 UTCCanada dinner experience, links to photos
9 June 2005, 12:39 UTCPhil Askey continues to impress us with his crypto savvy
6 June 2005, 23:09 UTCTime for my first rant: Lexar readies "secure" CF card; Phil Askey laps it up
8 April 2005, 1:35 UTCspeaking of busts...
Ingredients Fail
Thanks to Chris for noticing this one!
Bottle of organic lemon juce is labeled "contains juice from turkey"
Math is hard (even for google)!
Breaking down 47.000000 degrees into degrees, minutes, and seconds, google comes up with the bizarre "59 minute and 60 seconds of a degree". Floating-point round-off somewhere? Probably. Update, March 24, 2008: The bug is half-fixed. Today, Google displays +47° 0' 0.00", -119° 59' 60.00" as the coordinates of this location.
Collate this!
Turns out that when you don't LC_COLLATE=C; export LC_COLLATE, you'll eventually get bitten in the ass by the way character ranges in shell globs are treated:
In this case, my friend discovered the interesting behavior after executing 'rm [a-z]*', apparently hoping to keep files which started with uppercase letters. Whoops!$ (unset LC_COLLATE; bash) $ touch A a B b Z z; echo [A-Z]; echo [a-z] A b B z Z a A b B z
As seen in hell....
At the office, we have a saying: If your function takes more than 5 arguments, you forgot one. You can see the results of that mindset in this error message:
trade_secret.c: In function 'void f()':
trade_secret.h:187: error: too few arguments to function
'void trade_secret(int, int, int, double, double, int, int, int,
int, double, double, double, double, int, double, double,
double, double, double, double, double, double, double, double,
double, double, double, double, double, int, double, double*,
double*, int*, int*, int*, int*, int*, double*, int*, int*,
double*, double*, double*, int*, double*, double*, double*,
double*, int*, int*, int*, int*, int*, int)'
trade_secret.c:9: error: at this point in fileAs seen on the internet
void URLDecoder::getAsDec(char* hex) {
char tmp = tolower(hex[0]);
if(tmp == 'a') {
strcpy(hex,"10");
}else if(tmp == 'b') {
strcpy(hex,"11");
}else if(tmp == 'c') {
strcpy(hex,"12");
}else if(tmp == 'd') {
strcpy(hex,"13");
}else if(tmp == 'e') {
strcpy(hex,"14");
}else if(tmp == 'f') {
strcpy(hex,"15");
}else if(tmp == 'g') {
strcpy(hex,"16");
}
}
I
am not making this up.
Acronym of the day: STEWD
STEWD: Security Through Endless Warning Dialogs. A phrase that will apparently become much more common when everyone is forced to buy a copy of Vista with new PCs, sometime early next year.
The stupidest thing I saw today....
From http://www.joinfear.com/main, and presented without further comment:
Whine!!!!!!!&exclam;
Having recently tried to write some documentation, I'm a bit struck by how much all the alternatives I'm aware of suck. All I want is to get a nice HTML and PDF output of a document with a few tables. Some signs pointed towards this thing called "openjade", which is a "document style semantics and specification language" (I guess).
Imagine how unimpressed was when I got a look at the documentation they had produced—If anybody is going to have good-looking documentation it should be the people making the "document style" software! At first I thought of blaming myself because I had a wide screen, but it's even bad on a maximized window on a 1024x768 monitor, with its black text over a terrible dithered dark blue background.
I guess I'll go back to writing HTML by hand and using "File > Print" to produce PDF. Or maybe I'll write LaTeX again and berate people who don't seem to know how to use xpdf.
Odd Macro Flash Photo
The best assertion ever
Two optical illusions
Canada dinner experience, links to photos
Phil Askey continues to impress us with his crypto savvy
Time for my first rant: Lexar readies "secure" CF card; Phil Askey laps it up
speaking of busts...
All older entries
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