I was a little down today, so I decided to cheer myself up.  At first I watched The Office, but after dinner I was thinking about Computer Science, so I remembered that I had a little stockpile of humorous Programmer jokes!  Well, I suppose it it your lucky day, I’ve decided to post a few (and link to the sources of course).  None of these are mine, but I hope they brighten your day :D.

• We don’t really understand it, so we’ll give it to the programmers.

• Programming is a lot like sex. One mistake and you could have to support it the rest of your life.

• You never finish a program, you just stop working on it.

many more here

• After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done.

• Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable. Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.

• If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

• If you can’t understand it, it is intuitively obvious.

• Any instrument when dropped will roll into the least accessible corner.

• It is never wise to let a piece of electronic equipment know that you are in a hurry.

• Any tool dropped will fall where it can cause the most damage.

full list here!

]]> https://theweeklytech.wordpress.com/2008/10/29/a-humorous-thursday/feed/ 0 pcanella duty_calls https://theweeklytech.wordpress.com/2008/10/27/a-look-at-twitter-friendfeed-and-pownce/ https://theweeklytech.wordpress.com/2008/10/27/a-look-at-twitter-friendfeed-and-pownce/#comments Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:27:58 +0000 http://theweeklytech.wordpress.com/?p=176 For awhile now, I have made an effort to expose my friends and colleagues to Twitter, a popular microblogging tool used by the majority of the “tech/web” community.  Personally, I love using Twitter, its ever so convenient and addictive!  However, whenever I use Twitter, I am questioned “what’s the point?”  I attempt to explain how it works (with too much detail I might add) but to no avail, nobody understands.

popular microblogging tool has more use than initially thought

One of the frustrating parts of this is that I see many opportunities where me and my colleagues COULD and should use Twitter!  One of the most frustrating things I see today occurs when I am having lunch with my friends.  Someone, one time or another, does not get invited and exclaims “you guys had dinner??”  See, this would not happen if everyone used Twitter that I know.  One person could tweet “going to dinner at 5” and everyone could get it on their phone/web browser/desktop twitter app.  Then everyone shows up!

How convenient.

All in all I suppose I can’t argue with these people, as they are college students who are more worried about how much alcohol they are going to buy this weekend than emerging technology!  How could this possibly be (sarcasm)!

Anyways, this article is not what I was going to write when I first started.  Sites like Twitter, FriendFeed and many others have not reached what I would prefer to call “mainstream.”  Then one would ask, what would be considered mainstream?  I’ll sum it up with two websites: Facebook and YouTube.

YouTube

There is not a person I know that doesn’t occasionally go on YouTube to check out the latest cool video, or are eager to show their friend “this video,” that you “gotta watch!”

Simply put, YouTube is built upon something that anyone can do: make a crappy, low quality video that somehow gets 50,000 views.  I’m not going to lie, I’m a fan of YouTube myself (prefer Vimeo), but the quality of the videos on YouTube is much to be desired.  It seems that quality takes a backseat to content when it comes to mainstream video sites, although I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard casual gamers complain that “the graphics aren’t good enough.”  The need for high quality video is lower on the Web than it is “in real life.”  For example, anyone will watch crappy football highlights via YouTube, but who would watch an entire game like that?  Nobody.

On the other hand, let’s look at this:  who would watch football on a 60” hi-def television?

EVERYBODY.

This list of everybody includes people such as myself, who is not a football fan at all!  Even my mom who can’t tell the difference between 5.1 Surround and Mono enjoys a nice HD screen.  Oh, and yes I realize that sound and video are two different things, just making a point.

Anyway, my point is that everyone loves videos that are funny or interesting, regardless of quality.  This is typical “mainstream” internet culture.

Facebook

Going onto the main hub on the web for keeping in touch, Facebook is no doubt something that everyone I know uses.  Its the most used way of communication in college, perhaps only second to cell phones.  Now, I admit that I use Facebook frequently, I check it every morning along with my email and my news websites.  I suppose I should include Myspace and Orkut in this, as these are the three most globally used social networks.  These websites are the easiest way to keep in touch with people about what’s going on.  Everything from pictures to stupid and useless apps are included in this free package deal about what is going on in your entire life (insert older generation outrage about identity theft here).  Not that there is anything at all wrong with using these networks, it just makes life a bit more impersonal than, say in the 1950s.  Times change, so does technology and that old corded phone is pretty much useless.

Summary/Conclusion

It disappoints me greatly that sites like Twitter and FriendFeed aren’t used more.  Although its slowly catching on, and since my first tweet I have gained many followers (some I know, many I don’t), it still isn’t a mainstream tool used by, dare I say “normal” people?  Anyway, my point is that micro-blogging tools are very useful, but have not matured to their fruitation quite yet.  My prediction is that they will in the near future, and we can hope to count on that.

It is a lot like Digg, where those with the most popular questions/answers are voted up or down, based on the answers and quality of the question.  Another cool feature is that one needs to earn “reputation points” in order to vote questions up/down.  One gets this “rep” by answering someone’s question with a helpful answer (much like the “best answer” option on Yahoo! Answers).  The site is really informative, and can be quite humorous as well.  For example, this question asks “What’s your favorite programming joke?”  Helpful and Humorous, Stack Overflow is a great site for both amatuer and experienced programmers, of any language!

A fresh way to manage money.

This week we focus on: Mint.

To put it simply, Mint is a personal finance tracker that allows you to input your Bank Account information (Checking Account, Savings, PayPal, etc) and organizes it, including setting budgets for various categories.  The categories are user set or preset (i.e. entertainment, dining, business, school).  It also allows you to track all transactions made for each individual account.  Mint is quite a useful tool that allows one to check all finance-related subjects on one website, rather than going to a various amount of bank sites (I personally use it for both my bank and PayPal).  Overall a great, free service.  Just came out of public beta and is open to all, check it out at Mint.com.

I just bought an old Blackberry....Wish I had a G1

Gadget Guide
T-Mobile G1
October 22 was the release of the much anticipated Android platform, which functions on T-Mobile’s G1 (an HTC product, very high quality).  This phone is set to compete with the iPhone as well as many other smartphones.  Though only in its infancy, the G1 boasts many features that will appeal to the Open Source audience.  Based on Java, all of the applications, until next year will be free of charge.  Also, Google and the Open Handset Alliance have made a deal with Amazon to have their mp3 store as an application.  However, one does run into a problem; the G1 does not have a headphone jack!  This indeed poses a slight problem, but I can’t believe the whole administrative team at T-Mobile didn’t catch this.  No doubt an “oops” moment for the development team. The G1 is impressive, including: touch-screen interface, up to 8GB storage, slide out QWERTY keyboard, and multiple application runtime support (simply put, it can run applications in the background, unlike the iPhone or any other smartphone.  Spare the unfortunate headphone problem, overall the G1 is a good start to the first Android OS platform.

It’s been awhile since Apple released a new line of laptops that consisted of major overhaul.  Sure, there was the exciting new MacBook Air that had everyone talking, which included an aluminum case, Multi-touch trackpad and was manilla-folder-thin.  Just released in the month of October, Apple has once again raised the bar with its Macbook and Macbook Pro line – and the price too.

Is the cool look and new video capabilities worth the extra cash?

Previously, the Macbook line started at “just $1,099” now starts at a $1,299.  Not a cheap laptop, right?  Of course it does come with many features that are not on most computers, such as the unibody frame and Multi-touch trackpad.  Yes, these features are very unique when it comes to laptops, but many argue that it is not worth the hefty price tag.  Before October 14th, many believed that Apple would create a “sub-notebook” laptop that was under $999.  As you can see, Apple has not yet done this, and instead decided to raise the prices of both models.  The question remains; is the overall “cool” look of an Apple product worth it?

Video Here

Ay Ay!

And guess what, I’m not clicking it even if it does have the image of an attractive lady on the beach inside the screenshot of RealPlayer.  Now, many of you are probably asking: “Why is there such a hate for this application?  I’ve never had problems with it!”  Well, it goes without saying that I most certainly have had problems with it

Actually, I shouldn’t be so hasty to blame the company of this media player, rather those who use this player exclusively.  I used to watch many anime and other TV shows when I was younger and there were always sites that would stream new episodes via RealPlayer.  As it happens, when I tried to download RealPlayer, it refused to play these and had a series of complicated drivers that I needed to install in order to just watch said anime.  It usually ended up in frustration or anger, and although I know a lot more now about such things, I’m really surprised it has survived the test of time, when so many other (better) media players are out.  Not to mention the rise of independent video sites such as Vimeo and YouTube.  Quicktime has also made many strides in getting Xvid and DivX codecs, enabling users to play almost any format they want.  If this wasn’t enough, freeware application VLC has almost all codecs known to man in their player, which is personally what I use for playing videos.

Anyway, that’s my short rant about RealPlayer, comments and questions welcome!

Minefield: More than just a cool logo

Though in a very preliminary stage, the Alpha build, its built with the quickest javascript that Chrome is built upon.  I’m testing it right now for OS X, and it has only crashed once.  I haven’t tested it thoroughly, but I’m excited to try some benchmarking tests (against Firefox 3.1 and Google Chrome) and see what happens.  The interface looks identical to Firefox 3, minus a lot of add-ons, which is understandable, they are not written in JavaScript, but rather written in XUL, what the Mozilla engine is based upon.  Anyway, you can download it here and pick which build you want, they have nightly builds for Linux, OS X and Windows I believe, so pick which one applies.