Idiotprogrammer: Texas Literary Blog

Month: February 2006

  • The Show that Blows Your Mind

    I just finished watching two new episodes of my favorite shows, King of Queens and How I met your Mother (Both on CBS). King of Queens had a hilarious shot of the main character Doug as seen from the viewpoint of inside a microwave. It’s one of those shots that is hilarious, effective and utterly…

  • Perfect Hearing: An Audio Story

    Here’s an absolutely amazing audio story featured recently on This American Life.

  • Pycon 3: Gadget Overkill

    I thought that bringing both my PDA and laptop to the Python conference was overkill until I ran into a man who brought 2 laptops and 1 PDA/Phone. “Having another laptop is convenient,” he said.  “That way, I can bring one laptop to a session while the other laptop is charging in my hotel room.…

  • Reelect Delay!!! Impeach Soros!!

    Tom Delay fans run TV ads in Houston blaming the anti-Delay ads on my old boss! According to factcheck.org, the group behind it had some Swift Boat connections. The pro-Delay ad seems over-the-top, though I have a hard time believing that viewers would believe anything spoken in defense of Delay these days. And now, hundreds…

  • Pycon Day 3: The Zen Nudge

    Last night, I was sitting around the conference lobby and overheard some people talking. One person was saying the conference was ok, though he’d heard nothing remarkable so far. Going to a techie conference can be a hit-or-miss thing. You never know what’s going to strike you, what’s going to be relevant. I’m reminded of…

  • Python/Linux/Nokia

    For the record, my last day working at Texas Instruments was Tuesday. (more on that later). But I’m now at a session about python programming for Nokia cellphones. (Nokia was Texas Instruments biggest customer). Curiously, in this room, I bumped into about 5 different owners of Nokia 770 PDAs, a device which  I own also. …

  • Pycon Day 2: Updates: Not Famous

    This morning I ran into someone who was wearing my exact same windbreaker. Yes, we admitted with embarrassment, we bought them at Walmart. At conferences like this, people are constantly looking at each other’s nametags to see if you’re famous (I’m not). Yesterday I sat through two tutorials: one on Text Processing with Python. Dry…

  • Conference Faux Pas

    I am typing this from my brand new Thinkpad T43 laptop. I just received it three days ago and haven’t had time to configure anything anyway. I’ll be totally reconfiguring it next week with Fedora 5 Test Build 3 is out. (Actually the final release will be March 15). That is why I am using…

  • Liveblogging at Pycon

    Hi, there, I’ll be at pycon python conference in Dallas, TX. I’m still a python newbie, so it’s one of those “talk to dozens of people who are smarter than me” kind of conferences. I might give updates/reports, although I feel no extreme burden to do so. On the way here, I listened to some…

  • Bawdy Comics and Videos

    Eventually I’ll have a convenient way to bookmark/blog about my fave video shorts. Here’s one: Agent Rod Brickman: Copy Protection  The writer/director is Kirby Ferguson. Here’s some more videos and the blog. Lots of bawdy stuff with adult themes (even a little sexual content). Here’s a somewhat safe for work Coedswithcolds.com (a porn parody). This…

  • Learning Swedish Slowly

    How to Learn Swedish in 1000 Difficult Lessons. Actually a 1st person literary blog containing random observations about living in a foreign country. Highlights: The first thing I notice back in the old U.S. of A. is that everyone can understand what everyone else is saying. Which, of course, is true here in Sweden for…

  • SXSW & WASP

    The most amusing panel description in the upcoming SXSW Interactive: Each year, the Web Standards Project holds its annual meeting at SXSW as so many WaSPs are in attendance. Last year, Microsoft Robert Scoble walked by the meeting and was told by Group Lead Molly E. Holzschlag that the meeting was closed and we’d need…

  • Why not a Gimp book?

    While reading a Slashdot book review about Linux Multimedia Hacks, I wondered aloud why no one hasn’t written an up-to-date gimp book. Well, it seems that someone has (or will) . Looks like the idea for this book came from a Linux Chic email course . The author Akkana Peck has a weblog and is…

  • If All Goes Well..

    If all goes well, this weekend, I will be enabling comments soon. Lately, I’ve been averaging 1500 spam comments a day.

  • Evolution of Weblogs

    Clive Thompson on Profit, A-List Blogging and the Blogosphere. Here are some reactions: Another model is taking place in Houston (and perhaps other cities). The Houston Chronicle not only has started hosting lots of journalistic blogs, they are also hosting blogs by members in the community. Already some  bloggers are switching to this hosting space,…

  • Literally, A Weblog

    Literally, a weblog devoted to tracking misuse of the word literally in mainstream media. Actually their commentaries on correct uses of the word are just as hilarious. A sample: The phrase “it pays for itself” means that by purchasing and using this product, you will save an equivalent amount of money by not having to…