Found via The High Definite.
This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
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Photo
This image actually had me rolling out of my chair laughing. Click it to see it at full size:
This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
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There, I Fixed It is a hilarious photoblog that catalogs kludges, jury rigs and hastily-improvised duct-tape repairs and modifications to everyday objects. The photos below are a sample of some of the quick fixes shown on the site, each one somewhere on the spectrum spanning “clever and thrifty” to “cheap, shoddy and frightening”:
(Regarding the photo in the right column, second one from the bottom – the piece of paper attached to the pencil sticking out of the computer says “Pull to turn on”. It’s a jury-rigged replacement for the power switch.)
Sloppy work like this isn’t limited to the physical world. I’ve seen (and okay, sometimes I’ve written) code that could’ve been a candidate for There, I Fixed It, and chances are you have too:
- Some of my hacks were a little more elegant and useful in the long-term, as long as you weren’t going to be too fussy about aesthetics. They were the software equivalent of the CD-ROM drive installed below the car radio and attached to it with a cable with 1/8” stereo jacks. They weren’t pretty, but they were solid, reasonably maintainable and viable in the long term.
- Others were terrible kludges that were originally intended to be temporary solutions that forgotten and lived much longer than they should have. They were like fixes shown in the two photos on the bottom (the hasty bridge repair and the car exhaust held together with zip-ties).
- I’ve also copped out by glossing over bad user interface design with some explanatory text or dialog box instead of actually correcting the design. This is not unlike labelling a doorknob “hard to open” or a hastily-improvised switch “pull to turn on”.
Be sure to check out There, I Fixed It. They’ve had some pretty hilarious pictures lately, and perhaps it’ll inspire (or shame) you to eschew the quick fix or kludge in favour of putting some time and thought into writing better code and building better user interfaces.
This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.
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Here’s Linux creator Linus Torvalds, taking a break from the Japan Linux Symposium to pose at a store where Windows 7 was on sale:
[Thanks to Stefan Arentz for pointing me to the picture!]
This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.
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I bought a fuzzy “Cat in the Hat”-style raver hat with a Canadian flag pattern on a whim earlier this year, thinking that I’d probably find a pretty good use for it some day. That day, it turns out, was yesterday, where I turned it into what I believe was yesterday’s only Steve Ballmer photo-op with a non-management Microsoft Canada employee:
Photo by Barnaby Jeans.
Yesterday was a busy day at the Harbour Castle Convention Centre, where we had an all-day Steve Ballmer-rama. In the morning, Steve keynoted an event showcasing Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010 for the media, key customers and partners. This was followed by an employees-only “town hall” where Steve did a short presentation followed by a Q&A session. On a whim similar to the one that led me to buy it, I took the hat (along with the accordion) along with me.
Following a suggestion from my co-worker Damir, I arrived very early for the town hall, grabbed a seat by the stage and donned the hat. When Steve made his appearance, he did so in classic Ballmer style, running and whooping, high-fiving people as he made his way to the stage. As soon as he saw me, he yelled “Hey!”, put the hat on and posed with me for the photo above.
I’d made a decent splash at Microsoft in my first year, and I’d been wondering if I could match it in my second, which began on Monday. This isn’t a bad start.
This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
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Are there any computers available today that come in that particular shade of blue, with matching chair?
Click the photo to see it at full size. Photo courtesy of retrofuture.
This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
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Photo courtesy of “SirMildredPierce”.
Click the photo to see it at full size.
I’m sure that this beast of a hard drive is now dwarfed by the USB keys that they give away as swag at tech conferences.
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It’s a busy, meeting-filled day for Yours Truly down at the local headquarters for The Empire. Here’s a (slightly edited) photo that I took at our big Evangelism team meeting around 3:30 this afternoon:
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20X200 is selling this lovely photo by Mark Richards featuring an “exploded” view of the original Apple I computer, the predecessor of my first computer, the Apple //e. These are limited edition prints; as of this writing, there are:
- 76 8” by 10” (about 20cm by 25cm) photos remaining, selling for US$20 each
- 463 11” by 14” (about 28cm by 36cm) photos remaining, selling for US$50 each
- 12 16” by 20” (about 41cm by 51cm) photos remaining, selling for US$200 each
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For no other reason than the geeky amusement it will provide, here’s Wil Wheaton in a clown sweater:
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Click the photo to see its source.
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I know that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but this promotion doesn’t exactly inspire confidence:
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Over at Seldo.com, there’s a handy table of HTTP codes, their official meanings and their everyday office culture conversational equivalents. Here are some examples:
| Code | Status | Conversational Equivalent |
| 100 | Continue | Uh-huh… |
| 101 | Switching protocols | Let’s take this offline |
| 200 | OK | OK |
| 201 | Created | I wrote you an email about that |
| 300 | Multiple choices | You can get that from Bob, John or Sue |
| 301 | Moved permanently | That’s Bob’s job |
| 401 | Unauthorized | You’re not allowed to know that |
| 402 | Payment required | Maybe a twenty would refresh my memory |
| 404 | Not found | I have no idea what you’re talking about |
| 406 | Not acceptable | Maybe when you’re older |
| 500 | Internal server error | Drooling from side of mouth |
| 503 | Service unavailable | I am way too busy to deal with your shit |
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