As Stupid as...

Trying to think of programming aphorisms. Got one or two so far:

"As stupid as writing an interrupt handler in Prolog"

"As fast as a Pentium IV running MS-DOS 6.0"

"As scary as a run time error at 30,000 feet"

Any ideas folks?

There is no such thing as slightly garlic

The package looked innocent enough. Slightly Garlic Sausage. "Oh well, makes a change from Smoked Ham" I thought, and slung it in the basket. I made my sandwich with it this morning and took it to work. My office began to smell of garlic. Strongly of garlic. I've eaten the sandwich now and I probably smell of the stuff as well (although I can't smell it in the office any more - funny that). We are having a project viva in here in half an hour. I hope Ope likes garlic, although she is too polite to mention the pong even if she doesn't.

I should have remembered that there is no such thing as slightly garlic. It is indeed funny stuff. Apparently it is one of those rare chemicals which you can absorb through your skin. Put on a pair of garlic socks and, shortly afterwards your breath would smell of garlic. Ugh. I've just thought - garlic socks, now there's an idea worth running away from...

The Love of Randomness

The new firmware in my Jukebox has a wonderful feature. Todally random play. It just picks up a track from anywhere on the disk and plays it. Followed by another and another and another. It is like having my own personal radio station. I'm even going to put a whole load of the best radio adds (including the Budweiser "Real American Heroes") on there as well to make things even more authentic. I've already got "On The Hour" for the news. Not heard of "On the Hour"? Excellent spoof radio news show from the BBC. Spawned The Day Today, an even better TV news spoof show which also launched Alan Partridge. I've just bought the DVD of that. Cures you of ever taking TV news seriously. Should be required viewing for all.

Anyhoo, I think the IPOD has had random play since it was first sold, but for us who have been using disk based MP3 Players for longer than that, it is a new feature to us. It has made me realise just how much good stuff that there is on that there disk. I've now reached the point where I'm thinking about keeping this particular machine because it's taste is so good......

Morality Test

So I go down to the coffee machine (not to get coffee - I'm not that stupid..). And I notice that there is already 10 pence paid into it. This causes a huge crisis. Do I:

1. Pay less for my drink and consider myself 10 pence up on the day (a major win on my part)?
2. Pay less for my drink and donate the 10 pence to a good cause?
3. Leave the machine with 10p in so that is causes the same conscience crisis for the next user of the machine?

In the end I opted for option 3. I kind of felt that my integrity was under threat. Options 1 and 2 would have me leaving with the extra money (and they wouldn't necessarily know it was going to a good cause). And it might be that somebody had just popped off to get extra change to finish paying.

And they say that us programmers obsess over small things....

I got a new MP3 Player

I got a new MP3 player today. It has a snazzy icon driven display, shows a neat clock when it plays music and it cost me nothing. Great stuff. All I had to do was upgrade the firmware in my exisitng Creative Nomad Jukebox 3. Silly me, the upgrade has been around since the end of last year, but it took me until now to notice it.

I really like this idea of getting new, better, products for free. I've done it a couple of times with my Smartphone too. I guess in the future this will happen all by itself (anybody thinking "Windows Update" yet?)

By the way, you can get this device (which cost me oodles around two years ago) for around 140 quid from ebuyer in the UK. You even get the tuner/mic/remote control thrown in. If that isn't a bargain, I don't know what is. And the product itself is superb. And mine is now nearly full.

Which means that what I really, really, really want next is one of these.