The Insomniac Coder

  A little walkthrough of my map after building an actual train central and re-routing some of my spaghetti rail lines into something more usable for day-to-day work across a big map.

The geek grandma responsible for this kickass costume for her granddaughter: Lil’ Jawa

From: Dilbert comic strip for 08/03/1992 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive. I was trying to show this strip to a coworker who is dangerously toying with the harsh mistress that is Insomnia. What shocked me is how quickly I was able to look up the strip, which was published when he was just 11 years old, and two weeks before my just-out-of-college ass shipped out to US Army Basic Training.

Image via Wikipedia From: Slashdot Entertainment Story | BSG Prequel Series Caprica Canceled Aw frak. Remember when only FOX would cancel a cool Sci-Fi show? Maybe FOX was on to something and it’s not a good idea (economically) to keep producing shows that people are not going to watch. Maybe this frees up the funds for a second spin off show to Destination Truth. I would totally watch it. Here’s a little goodbye song to our friends at Caprica.

From: Northrop Arms Its Robot Pack Mule With Big Gun | Danger Room | Wired.com Ahem. I love it how they claim that they put the gun on the bot to bring people into the booth. Obviously nobody in his right mind would mount a gun on a robot and use it to run point for a bunch of foot soldiers, because it would mean less odds of the evildoers actually having a chance at taking a shot at one of our guys. Right. And five seconds after we deploy these, the hippies are going to start screaming about how unfair it is that we figured out yet one more clever way to kill the other guys   evildoers before they kill OUR guys.

I got my preordered Fable 3 last night and managed to put a couple of hours into it before forcing myself to set it aside until I have some actual peace and quiet around here. The preorder got me: The game on release date, shipped to my door, for 3 cents less than retail. Yes, Amazon sent me an email bragging about how I saved the three cents. A code that allows me to create my own villager (also allows you to add it to a wallpaper, see mine above). The first code was wrong, and the second code didn’t work until the launch date. A card in the game box that allowed me to download some freebies. There isn’t much to say after just two hours of playing. I put over 100 hours into Fable 2 and I really liked it, and so far I am not seeing anything that is worse than in Fable 2. The basic constant for Fable 3 is that they dumbed down the living hell out of the game. Almost everything has been simplified one way or another. Stupid, since Fable 2 wasn’t terribly complex, but it is still...

Thanks to @Pytte for showing me this.

Image by florianplag via Flickr From: Further Information/Clarification on the Free BlackBerry PlayBook for Developers making PlayBook apps | CrackBerry.com RIM just did something that I believe is a pure stroke of genius: App developers that get their PlayBook Apps (Adobe AIR) approved before launch are going to get a free Blackberry PlayBook. They would of course have to pass whatever insane requirements RIM imposes , but it is still one hell of a motivator to get developers interested in the PlayBook platform. This will probably offend hippies, freetards and iPhone/iPad programmers used to Apple abusing them, but who cares? I hope they get away with it. Related articles Adobe AIR to Power Tablets & Televisions (shankrila.com) BlackBerry PlayBook gets Adobe AIR video demo (slashgear.com) BlackBerry PlayBook readies for Adobe AIR apps (cnet.com) BlackBerry PlayBook readies for Adobe AIR apps (cnet.com) Adobe AIR SDK 2.5 Launches for BlackBerry PlayBook, Android an...

Found this on Slashdot : THIS IS AN OFFICIAL NOTICE THAT LIMEWIRE IS UNDER A COURT-ORDERED INJUNCTION TO STOP DISTRIBUTING AND SUPPORTING ITS FILE-SHARING SOFTWARE. DOWNLOADING OR SHARING COPYRIGHTED CONTENT WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION IS ILLEGAL Here’s a little goodbye song to our friends at Limewire.

We fount this at the Cox Farms Fall Festival .

This is pretty disturbing: Why? Because it means it can be used as the basis for a Von Newmann Probe.

From: FaceYourManga.com | Shake Yourself! About once every two months or so I get asked about the application that I used to make my avatar, and every time I fumble and takes me an hour or so to dig around until I find it. These are called mangatars, here is a big version of mine: This was generated with a free tool at http://faceyourmanga.com/ but in order to have the full size version (much bigger than what I am showing here), I had to pay them a tiny amount of money, I don’t think it was more than a couple dollars. Oh, and it is not a magical conversion that you feed it a photo and out comes the finished avatar. Instead I had to build it by hand, so I am still shocked more than two years later that I was able to hit it so close to reality. I am posting it here so the next time I am asked about it, which sure as hell is going to happen in about two months from now, at least it will come up in the search results. When I tried to search for this in my Tumblr archives, it never c...

Image via Wikipedia I just wrapped up a clerical nightmare that took over four months to sort out. Here’s some background information: People born in the US Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (like myself and my wife) are born United States citizens . We are required to have a Social Security number , we pay taxes, etc. Travel between Puerto Rico and any other US state of possession is no different than travel between say, Virginia and Maryland. The only real issues are things like US Department of Agriculture restrictions on things that can be brought into the Continental US like certain agricultural products. Many states have implemented citizenship checks at the time of issuing IDs and driver licenses . This is no different than the US requiring proof of citizenship before issuing a passport. Now here comes the fun part: The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico was pressured into voiding any birth certificates issued before October of this year. If you hold a birth certificate issued...

Image via Wikipedia From: BBC News - The PDF is dead, long live the PDF 99% of the complaints that you will ever hear about PDF can be traced to the software used to view them, not to the PDF files themselves. Reading PDF in Linux has been trivial for over a decade, even 10 years ago it was impossible to find a default Linux install (with a GUI ) that couldn’t read PDFs natively. Every version of Apple OSX that I have ever used had native PDF reading, and it simply worked. Windows ? That was a different deal. If the Windows machine had Adobe Acrobat Reader , PDFs either worked or they didn’t. Once I discovered Foxit PDF Reader , PDFs in Windows became a non-issue. I still heard weekly complaints about PDF, almost every time from people that only use Adobe Acrobat Reader. Worse, the complaints also came from OSX users. The constant here is that Adobe Acrobat reader sucks, not that PDF sucks. Microsoft even came up with an open standard to compete against PDF, the problem is n...

My employer, who runs the most kickass, greatest little web shop in the DC Metro area, is now looking for one or more programmers to add to our band of misfits. This is a permanent, full-time (not contract) position. The company is based in the DC metro area with locations in Old Town Alexandria , Fairfax, Reston, Baltimore and the Maryland backwoods where the Blair Witch is rumored to still be roaming about. What we want: “ Programmers ” that grok programming, not somebody that is proficient in one language and can’t deal with anything else. Our weapon of choice is ASP.net. This is not a requirement for hire, but you must learn it in a reasonable time. Our last hire walked in with solid programming experience and literally zero knowledge of .net, and he had no trouble whatsoever picking it up (it was actually a bit scary how fast he learned it). We are all proficient in generic ( ANSI ) SQL , not specialized in one given flavor. We want people that understand SQL well enough t...

From: 127 MPG: This Volt Story Must Be Told | Car News Blog at Motor Trend Two guys at Motor Trend magazine took a Chevy Volt and drove it like the hammers of hell. That is, exactly the wrong way to drive a car that is designed for mileage efficiency. Not only did they drive it the wrong way, but they got 127 MPG out of it. They used a little over two gallons of fuel to cover 299 miles. Let’s try this again: the Volt, not driven like a granny, can cover 299 miles with a little over two gallons of fuel. The article points out that many current cars can’t cover that distance ON A FULL TANK OF GAS. Too bad it is so damn expensive and Chevy didn’t think of selling a stripped-down version.

You will notice how weird it all looks, almost as if you are looking at a miniature and not at real live scenes: Coachelletta from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo . Related articles Coachelletta, A Tilt-Shift Video of Coachella (laughingsquid.com) Unique view of Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival (10ison.com) Tilt-Shift Video - Coachella 2010 (theoriginalwinger.com) Video: Tiny Ant People Set Up A City At Coachella (laist.com)

Image by Sam Howzit via Flickr From: There just might be a bunch of flamingos that show up in your yard overnight | Washougal News This is pretty cool: a high school senior class is running a fundraiser by means of extortion. For $5, you buy “insurance” against your yard suddenly getting overrun by plastic pink flamingos. For $20 (suggested “donation”) you can make them appear elsewhere. For example, in morgajel’s yard, if he lived in that county. Too bad the high school seniors here are more interested in texting and in everything being handed to them on a silver platter. Clever thinking like what the kids are doing in Washougal is the kind of thing that motivates the general public to be generous.

From: Slashdot Technology Story | Switzerland's Mega Tunnel Sets Record I would love to know what are the railway tunnels out there that were not drilled by man. Who did it, groundhogs? space aliens? women? Also, how the hell did they manage to dig for 137 kilometers WITHIN Delaware? Related articles Switzerland's Mega Tunnel Sets Record (tech.slashdot.org) Gotthard Base Tunnel Complete in Switzerland (Photos) (nowpublic.com) Swiss Make Headway in Longest Tunnel (foxnews.com) Gotthard Base Tunnel, World's Longest, Drilling Completed In Switzerland (PHOTOS) (huffingtonpost.com)

This is why we straight legs think you have to be certifiably crazy in order to earn your jump wings :   To add insult to injury, Sgt. Adam Sniffen ( 101st Airborne Division ) not only manages to land on the frickin stadium, but he had time to unfurl three flags, activate the smoke bombs AND landed exactly in the middle of the damn cross-airs. Just plain incredible! Related articles Video: 101st Airborne Delivers Game Ball From Above (wired.com) What It's Like to Parachute Into The Big House [Video] (gizmodo.com) Michigan's Parachute Guy Has Raised The Bar On Ball-Delivery Stunts [Video] (deadspin.com)

Here’s Psychedelic Browsing from the first IE 9 beta, this week’s pre-release Firefox 4, and the first Chrome 8 dev version:      

Made with http://memegenerator.net/Courage-Wolf

Very annoying earworm:

From: BBC News - Gap scraps new logo after online outcry Old logo: New logo: Oopsie. What I love about this is the millions that some asshole at GAP spent talking to consultants and PR agencies to come up with a new logo, market research, customer opinion clinics, etc. All that money pretty much goes away. Even better: Gap telling their customers that they are listening to them and giving them what they want. Which is exactly what they had before this mess started. HEY GAP LISTENS TO CUSTOMERS OMG!!111!! Who’s next to rebrand? Target? Related articles Gap scraps new logo after outcry (bbc.co.uk) Gap scraps new logo after online outcry (reuters.com) Gap Scraps New Logo After Just One Week (dailyfinance.com) Gap reverts to classic logo after outcry (money.cnn.com)

Image by Getty Images via @daylife From: Slashdot Technology Story | GM Criticized Over Chevy Volt's Hybrid Similarities Today’s outrage comes courtesy of somebody getting pissed that GM promised us a real extended range hybrid, when all we got is an American -made Prius. I don’t know who should be more worried: Toyota , because one of their competitors managed to convince the US Government to basically pay for developing the Volt, or us the taxpayers , for paying one company to build a competing product against another company. Read that again: we, the taxpayer, paid General Motors , to build a car to compete with Toyota. Then we will be overcharged for a car that we subsidized. We can either keep buying the Toyota Prius , which makes us ungrateful bastards for supporting foreign industry, or we can buy Chevy Volts, which makes us morons for paying too much money for a car simply because General Motors can do whatever the hell it wants. Or, and here comes the crazy part, ...

From: xkcd: Pumpkin Carving We are already on pumpkin #3 for this season, but for some reason PJ hasn’t carved it yet like with the other two . Thanks God there’s no Nitroglycerin in the house.

From: Cosmic Log - SpaceShipTwo flies free for first time That’s what a $200,000 airplane ride looks like, which includes a 65-mile flight ceiling. The cool thing is that they have already collected $45 million in deposits, which means that yes, they were right when they bet that they could turn this into a commercial venture. At least as long as the five planned birds don’t cost more than a couple billion … Still, it’s one pretty plane.

From: Microsoft Buying Adobe Would Solve ‘The Apple Problem’ For Both | Epicenter | Wired.com This is not the craziest thing I have read in the past two weeks or so. It actually makes more sense than all of the Apple-related bullshit that both Wired and Slashdot use pretty much to keep themselves afloat. Many years ago, Apple was dying. Right as it was about to keel over, Steve Jobs was brought back into the company. One of the first things he did was make a pact with the devil: he took a nice chunk of a “loan” from Microsoft. Everyone thought he was crazy, but he didn’t have a choice. As for Microsoft, they didn’t bother being covert about it: keeping Apple afloat would give them a paper “competitor” that could be used as defense the next time that the USDOJ tried to nail them for antitrust issues. It worked pretty damn well for everyone. The technology market is so damn huge that Apple was able to rocket beyond any of our craziest dreams. Microsoft didn’t die. Google came ou...

From: Dilbert comic strip for 10/09/2010 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive. This is one of those dark arts that geeks know about but usually refuse to even acknowledge. There is a lot of stuff that happens in the middle of the software development process that is so far away from the objective that it drives certain personality types absolutely crazy. This is why there are so many programmers that are either really wild alpha types or so completely laid back that it makes you wonder why they bother going to work. We (programmers) like thinks that are absolute because that’s how programming works: I tell the application to do something, and it does it. If it doesn’t do it, it’s a bug. If I tell it to do the wrong thing, it’s MY bug. Office politics are nowhere as black and white as programming, and office politics drive all processes. The alphas will stand their ground until death, until either everyone else sees their way, or the alphas get canned in exchange to s...

I just saw the same news reported twice in a two-minute period. One came from Slashdot , one came from the BBC : The Slashdot version: Facebook Billionaire Gives Money To Legalize Marijuana The BBC version: Facebook founder donates to California marijuana vote The Slashdot version almost hints as if has to be a bad thing because: Facebook sucks All (good) geeks hate Facebook Billionaires suck All (poor) geeks hate billionaires Marijuana is currently illegal, so it must be bad to make it legal The BBC headline, on the other hand, almost doesn’t tell you anything: A guy that founded Facebook gave money to a political campaign in California The campaign is something about Marijuana The slashdot headline is representative of what we are seeing in US news outlets nowadays. This is why the BBC is a better (better being defined as less liable to make my blood boil) as a source for news headlines than say, CNN or The Drudge Fox Report. Many times the US news either make no ...

From: Berkeley Bionics’ newest exoskeleton lets wheelchair users walk   This is pretty damn sweet, but how come 9 years after the introduction of the Segway nobody has tried to make an exoskeleton like this one but taking advantage of the self-balancing wizardry of the Segway vehicles (a similar technology was used in Dean Kamen ’s design for a wheelchair that lifts the user to eye level and rides on just two wheels). I imagine the problem is going to be because this new exoskeleton is very compact, and adding the gyroscopes plus whatever else needed to keep it balanced would make the thing too bulky. Or it could be that the exoskeleton relies on flat feet instead of wheels, and there’s no known way of using the Segway idea for self-balancing on things that stand on legs. Still, it is a pretty badass invention. On a related note, it also looks more than a little bit familiar with some prototypes that the US Army is testing for future load bearing exoskeletons. Related ar...