Science for SEO: friday humour

Showing posts with label friday humour. Show all posts

January 23, 2009

TGIF - weeeeeee

Welcome to yet another installment of TGIF, and I do hope that this post finds you well. It has been a long week for a lot of people I have spoken to, some of the adjectives used were "crappy", "boring", "stressful", "@!*%£^&!" and so on. Something must be up with the universe. I think me having a particularly relaxing time on idyllic islands in southern Thailand has put everything out of synch. Fear not, the balance will return very soon.

Without further ado...

Stuff I liked this week:

This cool site shows you how the brain works from top to bottom.

A list of 10 debunked scientific beliefs of the past.

I like Design 21, the Social Design network in partnership with UNESCO - excellent stuff.

My favourite thing this week was Steve Spalding's article called "Why I love the scientific method and so should you" on the "How to split an atom" site.

The scientific method is:

1 - Ask a Question

2 - Do Background Research

3 - Construct a Hypothesis

4 - Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment

5 - Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion

6 - Communicate Your Results

Oh look, there's my thesis plan all written up and ready (apart from the "further work" section) :)

Quotes:

Computer Science is a science of abstraction -creating the right model for a problem and devising the appropriate mechanizable techniques to solve it. (A.Aho and J. Ullman)

The Analytical Engine weaves Algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves. (The Countess of Lovelace on Babbage's Analytical Engine)

I, myself, have had many failures and I've learned that if you are not failing a lot, you are probably not being as creative as you could be -you aren't stretching your imagination. (J. Backus)

Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming: testing is the treatment. (K.Beck)

Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen. (E. Berard)

I particularly like:

Rules of Optimization:

Rule 1: Don't do it.

Rule 2 (for experts only): Don't do it yet.

(M.A Jackson)

Facts:

Macintosh invented the start menu in 1982 and the Recycle bin in 1984

Xerox invented desktop icons in 1981

John Atanasoff & Clifford Berry founded ABC Computer in 1942 thus becoming the 1st computer business.

John Presper Eckert & John W. Mauchly invented the UNIVAC computer which was able to pick presidential winners

Dan Bricklin & Bob Frankston invented the 1st Spreadsheet Software called VisiCalc in 1978 (it paid for itself within 2 weeks of its release)

This is a really cool video made in stop motion with paper - it's simply brilliant.

December 12, 2008

TGIF - terrific!

Hello, and welcome to another edition of TGIF. This week has been cold, icy and snowing for a lot of us, but lets not forget all those living on the other side of the world enjoying a hot and sunny summer season. Amongst other things I spent my time filling in customs forms and so forth so I can send my things on to Sydney, where I'll be for a while as from late Feb. I am not sad to escape winter!

Without further ado:

Facts:

Do not believe in miracles. Rely on them.

Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.

The solution to a problem changes the problem.

It works better if you plug it in.

Given any problem containing N equations, there will be N+1 unknown.

Quotes:

“If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.” (L.Wittgenstein)

“Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.” (M.Kapor)

“Yes, we have a dress code. You have to dress.” (S.McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems)

“Computer viruses are an urban legend.” (P.Norton, 1988)

Error messages from Hex ("A Heath Robinson/Rube Goldberg-esque, magic-powered computer"):

Mr. Jelly! Mr. Jelly! Error at Address Number 6, Treacle Mine Road.

+++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++

+++Whoops! Here comes the cheese! +++

*Blip* *Blip* *Blip* End of Cheese Error

The coolest coolest computer program ever: Do you want one? I really do.

November 21, 2008

TGIF - hooray

I hope that you all had a brilliant week full of fulfilling and exciting projects and that the less interesting things eased by. I hope you're looking forward to a nice weekend hiding from the cold or boldly facing it with vigour!

Without further ado...some cool comics this week:

Be sure to check out "Kevin and the Googlebots", it's a brilliant comic strip by, well...Kevin. It's one of my new favourites!

Also check out the Geeky comic, a nice site if you're looking for a smile.

And then there's Monty the inventor of course.

I love Abstruse Goose too, simple and super funny.

I don't need to mention Dilbert, but if you haven't come across him yet...shame on you.

The usual geek facts for your pleasure:

TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

By the year 2012 there will be approximately 17 billion devices connected to the Internet.

E-mail has been around longer than the World Wide Web.

The first computer mouse was invented by Doug Engelbart in around 1964 and was made of wood.

Microsoft has no idea why the following happens:

Open Microsoft Word and type

=rand (200, 99)

And then press ENTER.

To finish...one of my favourite bits of footage ever...enjoy.

BTW I love the fact that some of you only visit on Friday for the TGIF post - clearly it's my best work :)

November 07, 2008

TGIF - weekend ahoy

Welcome to another Friday, time for an easy and chilled out post with geeky humour and some inspiration to celebrate the end of a long week. I'll be working on my PhD this weekend, so will be in a darkened room in front of my laptop and a series if IDE's - fret not, I like it :)

Without further ado:

Programs for sale: Fast, Reliable, Cheap: choose two.

I, myself, have had many failures and I've learned that if you are not failing a lot, you are probably not being as creative as you could be -you aren't stretching your imagination. (J.Backus)

It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it. (J.Bronowski)

The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time. (T.Cargill)

Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. (E. Dijkastra)

On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. (Babbage)

About the last two:

So stop asking me to fix your computers - I have no idea how to I'm a Comp. Scientist
And this still happens all the time, still!

A few examples and funny ones at that from teaching days:

Student 1 catastrophe (after 2 intensive weeks of Java classes): "So, is the compiler a person or some software?".

Student 2 (admittedly after only a few classes of Java):

- "My code doesn't work"

- "Humm...let's take a look"

...after 15 minutes... "It's very strange, everything looks perfectly ok, lets type it all out again"...

...typing... System.out.println("Hello World!");

- Oh! Is it "println" with an "L" and not a "1"?

- Yes.

October 24, 2008

TGIF - at long last.

Welcome...you survived yet another week, and you're now on the home run...the weekend hits soon.

As every friday here at SFS, we'll treat ourselves to some fun stuff - here goes:

The huge printing presses of a major Chicago newspaper began malfunctioning on the Saturday before Christmas, putting all the revenue for advertising that was to appear in the Sunday paper in jeopardy. None of the technicians could track down the problem. Finally, a frantic call was made to the retired printer who had worked with these presses for over 40 years. "We'll pay anything; just come in and fix them," he was told.

When he arrived, he walked around for a few minutes, surveying the presses; then he approached one of the control panels and opened it. He removed a dime from his pocket, turned a screw 1/4 of a turn, and said, "The presses will now work correctly." After being profusely thanked, he was told to submit a bill for his work.

The bill arrived a few days later, for $10,000.00! Not wanting to pay such a huge amount for so little work, the printer was told to please itemize his charges, with the hope that he would reduce the amount once he had to identify his services. The revised bill arrived: $1.00 for turning the screw; $9,999.00 for knowing which screw to turn.

Commentary: most debugging problems are fixed easily; identifying the location of the problem is hard.

It is...it drives me mad. Luckily I have some clever friends to help out :)

Our usual...this brings to mind the mess that is Vista:

"If you can't make it good, at least make it look good".

....aw...Bill....