Things People Said

Chin up

2009-08-16T23:52:00.000+08:00

Wow I never knew there was so much negativity and misery involved. I can be cranky and depressed, but these things come and go. There's always nice food and nice things and fun stuff to do. Or books!

-- Squit

Call Me Like Music

2009-08-09T11:09:00.001+08:00

"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat ..."

The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

(First collected ages ago on Malabar Hill, Bombay)

Erm, what?

2009-06-30T18:31:00.002+08:00

Unrelenting indecision, isolation, confusion and anxiety about working, relationships and direction is reported by people in their mid-twenties to early thirties who are usually urban, middle class and well-educated; those who should be able to capitalize on their youth, unparalleled freedom and free-for-all individuation.

-- Kate Carraway, Welcome to Your Quarterlife Crisis

A large part of my life

2009-03-26T21:11:00.004+08:00

As soon as we started programming, we found out to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.

-- attributed to Maurice Wilkes, 1949

(Here's a lovely description of how debugging works.)

Inclusion

2009-02-16T01:35:00.003+08:00

We [Muslims] need to start having a more inclusive attitude. We need to be the change we would like to see in the world.

We are a piece of the greater puzzle of this world. We share it with other peoples, and other nations, with hopes and aspirations of their own. The Muslim today, as a pan-ethnic, pan-national identity, has much to be proud of. Our contributions to the world are many and lasting. We are intrinsically and inextricably part of the family of humanity, and though people like Mr. Wilders and others like him seek to dehumanize us as “the other,” belittle our grievances, and seek to exclude us from pursuing happiness like everyone else, we should know better.

-- Iftekharul Haque, Geert Wilders' Fitna: Much Ado About Nothing

Looking back on today

2009-02-09T01:29:00.004+08:00

I don't think [Slashdot] will exist in 5-10 years. We can see that it is being torn asunder even now, as the weight of its users grows apace and the number of users exceeds 300k, 400k , 500k where will it stop? Also, there is a migration of the most intelligent users away to kuro5hin, which is a much more innovative weblog than /., and is a community rather than a mob.

Ultimately, I don't think Slashdot will exist in 5 years time for technological reasons. Eventually everyone will have huge bandwidth and something else will spring up to take /.'s place. I consider Slashdot to be a hiatus between Usenet and the next big thing.

Regarding Karma, I agree. It really doesn't matter a hoot, and 'Karma Whores' appear to be a thing of the past with the advent of the Karma Cap. However, it really would be better for /. if Karma were invisisble to the user, that way the pointless competitive aspect would not occur.

I just wish the people that harass me would get the message and go away. They really are annoying, and appear to have the wrong end of the stick.

-- "Heidi Wall", Slashdot in 5-10 years?, in February, 2001

All in this ... together.

2009-01-21T00:03:00.002+08:00

Wally Greenslade: [...] Neddie Seagoon arrived at the port of Guatemala, where he was accorded the typical Latin welcome to an Englishman.
Moriarty: Hands up, you pig swine pbbt.
Seagoon: Have a care, Latin devil. I'm an Englishman. Remember, this rolled umbrella has more uses than one.
Moriarty: Oooh!
Seagoon: Sorry ...
Moriarty: Sapristi bombit.
Seagoon: Now, now what's all this about?
Moriarty: It is the revolution, Señor — everywhere there is an armed rising.
Seagoon: Are you in it?
Moriarty: Right in it — you see, you see Señor, the united anti-socialist neo-democratic pro-fascist communist party is fighting to overthrow the unilateral democratic united partisan bellicose pacifist cobelligerent Tory labour liberal party.
Seagoon: Whose side are you on?
Moriarty: (Grandly) There are no sides ... we are all in this ... together.

-- Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan, The Goon Show: The Affair of the Lone Banana (first broadcast: October 26, 1954)

Optimism

2008-12-01T18:00:00.002+08:00

All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, and the young are always optimists. But however the selection process works, the result is indisputable: "This time it will surely run," or "I just found the last bug.".

-- Frederick Phillips Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month

Srsly

2008-11-11T20:15:00.002+08:00

Neon Genesis Evangelion superficially resembles a mecha show, but this is intentionally misleading; the show is in fact a post-modern Deconstruction of the giant robot genre, thoroughly shot through with dysfunctional characters caught on a depressing apocalyptic downslide.

-- From Television Tropes & Idioms

GLaDOS

2008-10-04T11:33:00.002+08:00

Aperture Science
We do what we must because we can
For the good of all of us
Except the ones who are dead

But there’s no sense crying over every mistake
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake
And the science gets done and you make a neat gun
For the people who are still alive

-- Jonathan Coulton, Still Alive, from the video game Portal

Only human

2008-09-10T20:03:00.002+08:00

I sometimes think I want you
Only because it would break my heart not to.
Because wanting you is what I do.
And it would break my heart
To break routine.
Occasionally, I allow myself a peep
At the idea that I might not want you
And that my worship of you
Is like your worship of cats
And other domestic things
That cannot harm.

Other times I think I want you
Because I am only human,
And will die a human death;
And you, and wanting you,
Means I’m alive.

Then something will happen.
I might catch a peep of a smile
Cracking in the corner of your mouth,
And something supercharges me and kills me
A million times over,
Each time better than the last.
But that something,
That smile,
That reason,
That hasn’t occurred in a while.

-- Ed Harris, Porshia (PDF)

History, our story

2008-09-09T00:27:00.002+08:00

No one changes what happens to them.
History is the story of one unhappy family
and a family is a group of strangers who live together.

-- from My Wife, by Philip Schultz

Casually

2008-09-09T00:13:00.003+08:00

I would manage by some trick
To switch the talk to eels
Or lore of the horse and cart
Or the Provisionals.

But my tentative art
His turned back watches too:
He was blown to bits
Out drinking in a curfew

-- From Casualty, by Seamus Heaney

Who?

2008-09-08T23:56:00.002+08:00

A contradiction inside a paradox, wrapped up in an enigma.

-- "Pavlov", The Pretender P. T. B.

History of computing in one paragraph

2007-12-02T00:27:00.000+08:00

Moore begat Intel. Intel begat Mostech, Zilog and Atari. Mostech begat 6502, and Zilog begat Z80. Intel also begat 8800, who begat Altair; and 8086, mother of all PCs. 6502 begat Commodore, who begat PET and 64; and Apple, who begat 2. (Apple is the great Mystery, the Fruit that was devoured, yet bloomed again.) Atari begat 800 and 1200, masters of the game, who were destroyed by Sega and Nintendo. Xerox begat PARC. Commodore and PARC begat Amiga, creator of fine arts; Apple and PARC begat Lisa, who begat Macintosh, who begat iMac. Atari and PARC begat ST, the music maker, who died and was no more. Z80 begat Sinclair the dwarf, TRS-80 and CP/M, who begat many machines, but soon passed from this world. Altair, Apple and Commodore together begat Microsoft, the Great Darkness which is called Abomination, Destroyer of the Earth, the Gates of Hell.

-- from the Gospel of Tux, ch 0, ver 9

Achewood/Ray

2007-10-25T02:16:00.000+08:00

"Life is freedom. Try it out.

-- Ray Smuckles, in Achewood by Chris Onstad

The Worst Lines of Verse

2007-10-08T02:14:00.002+08:00

For a start, we can rule out James Grainger's promising line:

"Come, muse, let us sing of rats."

Grainger (1721-67) did not have the courage of his convictions and deleted these words on discovering that his listeners dissolved into spontaneous laughter the instant they were read out.

No such reluctance afflicted Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-70) who was inspired by the subject of war.

"Flash! flash! bang! bang! and we blazed away,
And the grey roof reddened and rang;
Flash! flash! and I felt his bullet flay
The tip of my ear. Flash! bang!"

By contrast, Cheshire cheese provoked John Armstrong (1709-79):

"... that which Cestria sends, tenacious paste of solid milk..."

While John Bidlake was guided by a compassion for vegetables:

"The sluggard carrot sleeps his day in bed,
The crippled pea alone that cannot stand."

George Crabbe (1754-1832) wrote:

"And I was ask'd and authorized to go
To seek the firm of Clutterbuck and Co."

William Balmford explored the possibilities of religious verse:

"So 'tis with Christians, Nature being weak
While in this world, are liable to leak."

And William Wordsworth showed that he could do it if he really tried when describing a pond:

"I've measured it from side to side;
Tis three feet long and two feet wide."

-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"

In the beginning

2007-08-30T08:06:00.000+08:00

(He opens a tolm and begins.)

It says: "In the beginning was the Word."
Already I am stopped. It seems absurd.
The Word does not deserve the highest prize,
I must translate it otherwise.
If I am well inspired and not blind.
It says: "In the beginning was the Mind."
Ponder that first line, wait and see,
Lest you should write too hastily.
Is the Mind the all-creating source?
It ought to say: "In the beginning there was Force."
Yet something warns me as I grasp the pen,
That my translation must be changed again.
The spirit helps me. Now it is exact.
I write: "In the beginning was the Act.

-- Goethe's Faust

A human being should

2007-08-29T21:43:00.000+08:00

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-- Robert A. Heinlein

Itself the doing of them

2007-07-28T02:55:00.000+08:00

They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man. These things offer pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams -- and still calls for more.

They are fools that think otherwise. No great effort was ever bought. No painting, no music, no poem, no cathedral in stone, no church, no state was ever raised into being for payment of any kind. No parthenon, no Thermopylae was ever built or fought for pay or glory; no Bukhara sacked, or China ground beneath Mongol heel, for loot or power alone. The payment for doing these things was itself the doing of them.

To wield oneself -- to use oneself as a tool in one's own hand -- and so to make or break that which no one else can build or ruin -- THAT is the greatest pleasure known to man! To one who has felt the chisel in his hand and set free the angel prisoned in the marble block, or to one who has felt sword in hand and set homeless the soul that a moment before lived in the body of his mortal enemy -- to those both come alike the taste of that rare food spread only for demons or for gods."

-- Gordon R. Dickson, Soldier Ask Not

Independence

2007-07-01T16:04:00.001+08:00

And he has become so independent. He didn't want his mother to help him even with his English. He had to read Oscar Wilde, he said. My wife immediately went gaga about Wilde's wit and humour. But he cut her short. "Where's the wit and humour in The Picture of Dorian Gray?" he asked. That was the first time we heard he had read Dorian Gray. They had to do it in class, he said. And we didn't know it until last night.

-- Rana, Shakespeare Mocked

Never, ever

2007-05-11T02:40:00.000+08:00

That's what I want to hear ... Always let your thoughts rise up to heaven, or go down into the ocean, and if all else fails, let them climb a mountain, but never make things hard on yourself.

-- Mother's old Aunt, in Big Breasts and Wide Hips by Mo Yan

But all are worth hard work

2007-04-25T19:13:00.000+08:00

I can't create quality work by myself. I rely on other implementors to help me both with technical wizardry and with overcoming the limitations of the medium. I rely on testers to tell me both how to communicate my vision better and where the rough edges of the work need polishing. I rely on marketers and salespeople to help me share my vision with more readers. I rely on others to handle administrative details so I can concentrate on the vision.

-- Stu Galley, from The Implementor's Creed

Cricket

2007-04-22T09:40:00.000+08:00

You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.

When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game.

-- The tea towel explanation of cricket

The true meaning of blogs

2007-03-28T07:11:00.000+08:00

Indie Pete: Give a man your ear and he complains for a day.
Indie Pete: Teach a man to blog and he kvetches for a lifetime!

-- R. Stevens, Diesel Sweeties #1708