BlaBlubbBlog - Lustiges

Senseless numbers

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:33:00 +0200

That actually hurts: longest road networks (via Spiegel Online). The US (~6.4 Gm) has longest road network, the only European countries in the Top Ten (that's where you want to be, right?) are France and Spain. Germany is somewhere between place 11 and 20 (they don't say) with pitiful 0.23 Gm. But hey, we own countries like Tuvalu (8 km) or the Cocos Islands (22 km). Normalizing anyone? Tomorrow, the Top Ten of trees per country with shocking results.

Bildsche obbe

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:35:50 +0200

Ehm? Jetzt nicht ernsthaft? So ein seltsames Keyboard (und mit Detailbild). Gibt es natÃ¼rlich auch mit den anderen Dialekten. Ob die Ã„mter jetzt alle umrÃ¼sten?

Nerd Test, reloaded

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 21:10:19 +0100

Soso:

via Eckes

Archaic?

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 01:12:00 +0100

There is something really crazy I just found out about the login to Unix machines. And I have no clue why this 'feature' still exists besides pure nostalgia! What am I talking about? Well, you might be able to try that for yourself. Ctrl-Alt-Fn-yourself away from the splendor X is and login to your machine. Twice. The second time type your username in all-caps and be surprised. Here is what happens for me:

Welcome to jane!
I am running Linux 2.6.17-jane-2 on a i686.
You are on tty1.
How may I assist you?

jane login: steffen
Password:
Last login: Fri Nov 30 00:31:33 +0100 2007 on tty1.
No mail.
[steffen@jane ~]$

Okay, not quite that unusual. But now logging out and retrying it in all-caps:

Welcome to jane!
I am running Linux 2.6.17-jane-2 on a i686.
You are on tty1.
How may I assist you?

jane login: STEFFEN
PASSWORD:
LAST LOGIN: FRI NOV 30 00:32:28 +0100 2007 ON TTY1.
NO MAIL.
[STEFFEN@JANE ~]$

Continue reading "Archaic?"

The unknown meaning: ILU

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 01:59:00 +0200

A few minutes ago I was searching for possible translations of 'Wahnsinn' into english and what do I learn there? ILU stands for 'I love you' (probably chat or SMS lingo). Now, it does have a certain appeal that a search for 'madness' brings up 'I love you', but the real knack is that I actually have been thinking that ILU refers to the incomplete LU-decomposition. Should this concern me or does it simply rise my nerd score? Or both?

Firefly

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Tue, 08 May 2007 17:07:53 +0200

Your results:
You are Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic)

Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic)		85%
Malcolm Reynolds (Captain)		60%
Wash (Ship Pilot)		60%
Derrial Book (Shepherd)		55%
River (Stowaway)		55%
Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic)		45%
Jayne Cobb (Mercenary)		40%
Alliance		40%
Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command)		35%
A Reaver (Cannibal)		20%
Inara Serra (Companion)		20%

Medicine and physical healing are your game,
but wooing women isn't a strong suit.

Click here to take the "Which Serenity character am I?" quiz...

via Mela

Nerd Test

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 16:10:35 +0100

via Mela

Was wird da eigentlich beworben?

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 17:26:47 +0100

Interessantes Quiz bei SpOn. Partiell etwas einfach, aber dafÃ¼r teilweise auch sehr haarig und generell eine putzige Idee. Ich hatte 7 Richtige, aber hauptsÃ¤chlich durch glÃ¼ckliches Raten. Ist das nun ein Zeichen fÃ¼r ein 'Thema verfehlt' der Werbeschaffenden?

Clippy

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 17:43:00 +0100

The stuff nightmares are made of. Yeah, I know. It is old. Nonetheless funny. And since Clippy now is officially dead (full story starts here), it seemed a good time to bring that up again. A spectre of the past?

Evil things...

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 23:59:00 +0100

I just found a – rather common – typo in my C program: sizeog(long double) instead of sizeof(long double). Okay, that is something the compiler would have found, too. But over in #Wagenrad, Oleg had the idea that it would be a nice compiler easter-egg, if it would have functions (defines) for commonly mistyped things. So I suggested something in the terms of #define sizeog(a) (sizeof((a)) + 34), hidden somewhere deep in stdio.h or so – more an easter-egg of the libc, though. Evil evil. Maybe something like this is implemented in var'aq? More suggestions for.. ehm.. features like this?

Rationale

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 15:22:00 +0100

Of course nobody would doubt that people writing technical documentation can have a fine sense of humor. Just stumbled upon another proof of that whilst reading the ANSI C rationale X3.159-1989. I checked there to find out if realloc(NULL,n) should indeed be equivalent to malloc(n). It should. But the nice line was with calloc:

If a scalar with all bits zero is not interpreted as a zero value by an implementation, then calloc may have astonishing results in existing programs transported there.
—X3.159-1989, 4.10.3.1

Religious?

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 16:43:33 +0100

After some time, another Quiz, spotted over at Knutsens Blog:

You scored as agnosticism. You are an agnostic. Though it is generally taken that agnostics neither believe nor disbelieve in God, it is possible to be a theist or atheist in addition to an agnostic. Agnostics don't believe it is possible to prove the existence of God (nor lack thereof).

Agnosticism is a philosophy that God's existence cannot be proven. Some say it is possible to be agnostic and follow a religion; however, one cannot be a devout believer if he or she does not truly believe.

agnosticism

71%

atheism

67%

Paganism

58%

Satanism

54%

Buddhism

50%

Christianity

25%

Islam

25%

Judaism

17%

Hinduism

Which religion is the right one for you? (new version)
created with QuizFarm.com

Web Legal

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 06:17:00 +0100

During my vacation I was reading a glossy paper magazine in a cafÃ©. No, no, a serious one; if I remember correctly, it was mare. On one of the first pages there was a full-page advertisement for an apparently quite valuable watch (it claims to double the value of your yacht). Now, the advertisement is somewhat funny in my opinion and I would like to show you the picture here, but reading through their 'Terms and conditions of use', I am not allowed to put it here. So I may watch the advertisement in the magazine, but I am not allowed to visually communicate it: Doesn't that somehow defy the purpose of advertisement?

Anyhow, I might as well just link to the page where you can order a poster of that advertisement (for only 20CHF), they have a nice picture of it there. But:

You may not establish a link to the IWC Web Site from a third party site without our prior written permission.
— IWC Terms and conditions of use web page

The whole 'terms and conditions of use' page is interesting to read. I would link to it, but they do not allow me to do so. I would laugh if that would not be such a sad example of legal talk.

The White Rider

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 08:41:53 +0100

Okay, one useful thing fell already out of last.fm: Plug all songs in your media player, switch to shuffle mode and let the selected songs be answers to a set of questions. I stumbled upon that on the front page of last.fm and just had to give it a shot. The full version of that is here, the artist links then also work. But okay, for a quick laugh this version is fine too:
Continue reading "The White Rider"

Tiger attack

nospam@example.com (Steffen) — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 11:18:08 +0100

Another interesting discussion started at the chat mailing list of Linux from Scratch: The question what to do in the case of being attacked by a tiger was risen. That reminded me of the not-so-great Life of Pi which – if I recall correctly – does give an advice on how to deal with this situation. I have to look that up though. In the meantime, one could try this suggestion to handle the tiger:

You need to have a long, strong spear handy any time you are in tiger country. [..]
When the tiger pounces, you plant the blunt end firmly in the ground between your feet and tilt the sharp end in the direction of the tiger's trajectory so that he comes crashing down on the point of the spear anywhere in the area of his chest or the base of his neck.

— quoted from Barius Drubeck

Good to know.