Geeks and Film

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Three amusing articles, all via /.:

  1. Top 20 Hackers in Film History:

    My fellow Geeks! Below you will find a list of the 20 coolest, funniest, dare I say sexiest hackers and computer geeks that have graced the silver screen. While we may be misunderstood and maligned in everyday life, geeks have always been portrayed with a certain power, mystery and intrigue in movies. Practically since the word ‘computer’ entered the American lexicon, Hollywood and the public have been fascinated with the people who make these strange electronic boxes do such cool shit.

  2. Servers in the Movies:

    There are two guidelines for this list. One, they must exist only in the world of movies or TV. Second, they need to fit the following definition: A server is a computer system that provides services or data to other computing systems—called clients—over a network or other communication device.

  3. What Code DOESN’T Do in Real Life (That it Does in the Movies):

    I understand that Hollywood needs to dress things up to make them more entertaining, but in the case of programmers, code, and hackers they’ve done more than dress things up – they’ve morphed a little stuffed teddy bear into a cybernetic polar bear covered in christmas lights and phosphorescent hieroglyphics with a fog machine pumping rainbow smoke out of his ass. In other words, they’ve layered a ridiculous amount of extravagance on top of something that in reality is very grounded.

Gaiman, Webley, and Toasty Tuckuses

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Nifty randomness of the day: seeing Neil Gaiman quote and promote Jason Webley (by way of someone posting the video to Eleven Saints).

Nifty plan for the afternoon: three movies have been rented (Clerks 2, Scoop, and Slither), much warm finger food has been purchased, and the couch has been covered with an electric blanket so we’ve got a warm place to sit as we spend a quiet evening at home.

Snowy Days

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Three more header images have been added to the rotation up above, all taken over the past few days of snowfall.

Y’know, I moved out of Anchorage to get away from this kind of weather. ;)

It’s been entertaining, though, amid all the frustrations. The mall was dead yesterday, as nobody wanted to go out on a jaunt, so the Powers That Be sent out a notice that the stores could close whenever they wanted so that their employees could get home safe and sound. We had some higher-ups coming through to check the store out, so we weren’t actually able to close until around 8:30, but still — it was nice that we had the option and could close when we got the chance.

Seen lots of accidents, photos of accidents, and stories of accidents. The local news is a hoot, from the perspective of an ex-Alaskan — the first twenty minutes of each broadcast can be boiled down to, “stay home, it’s slippery and you don’t know how to drive.” Then, maybe, if there isn’t a new front moving in, they might fill us in on some of what’s going on in the rest of the world.

And that’s it. Blizzard 2006 in progress. Whee!

No Snow Day for Us

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Why in the world, when the WSDOT is telling people to stay home, King 5 is telling everyone to stay home (in between breathless reports of doom, destruction, car accidents, and OMG the END OF TEH WORLD!!1!!11), and nearly every other school in Washington is closed…what’s up with the Seattle Community Colleges (and, specifically, North Seattle Community College) staying open?

Grrrrr. It’s not just that I want my snow day — and sure, I do — but it’s dangerous out there. Demanding that students and teachers fight their way through this crud to get to school is stupid and irresponsible.

Rainier and the Flood

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Looks like the scenery is going to be a little bit different next time Prairie and I are able to head down to Mt. Rainier for a weekend getaway. The heavy rains and flooding of the past weeks have hit Rainier National Park hard, including quite a few of the areas that we went through this summer.

All park roads and entrances remain closed. Crews continue repair work on Nisqually Road at Sunshine Point and on Longmire utilities.

Extensive damage to backcountry bridges and trails. Sections of the Wonderland Trail may be unusable next summer.

The suspension bridge and boardwalk damaged at the Grove of the Patriarchs. The Grove is covered in a thick layer of silt.

More than two miles of the [Carbon] road are severely damaged. There are washed out sections in at least four places.

The main channel of the Nisqually River is pushing closer to the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) building. Parking behind the building is gone.

The [Sunshine Point] campground, located directly on the bank of the Nisqually River, and the dike that protected it, is gone with the exception of a few campsites.

The [Longmire] main campground road is completely removed at the road fork immediately behind the Community Building.

About 200 yards of the [Nisqually] road is washed out and impassable at the former entrance to Sunshine Point Campground.

Both lanes [of SR123] are washed out at MP 11.5 to a depth of 60-80 feet.

And those are just some of the key, most recognizable areas (well, most recognizable to me after a whopping single visit to the park).

There’s a collection of images and videos surveying the damage on this page. Pretty impressive.

Best Bad Review of the Zune

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Andy Ihnatko does a wonderful job of slaughtering the Zune, Microsoft’s new iPod competitor…

Yes, Microsoft’s new Zune digital music player is just plain dreadful. I’ve spent a week setting this thing up and using it, and the overall experience is about as pleasant as having an airbag deploy in your face.

“Avoid,” is my general message. The Zune is a square wheel, a product that’s so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity.

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The Zune is a complete, humiliating failure. Toshiba’s Gigabeat player, for example, is far more versatile, it has none of the Zune’s limitations, and Amazon sells the 30-gig model for 40 bucks less.

Throw in the Zune’s tail-wagging relationship with music publishers, and it almost becomes important that you encourage people not to buy one.

The iPod owns 85 percent of the market because it deserves to. Apple consistently makes decisions that benefit the company, the users and the media publishers — and they continue to innovatively expand the device’s capabilities without sacrificing its simplicity.

Companies such as Toshiba and Sandisk (with its wonderful Nano-like Sansa e200 series) compete effectively with the iPod by asking themselves, “What are the things that users want and Apple refuses to provide?”

Microsoft’s colossal blunder was to knock the user out of that question and put the music industry in its place.

Ouch.

(via /.)

So Long, Space Needle

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Thank goodness we have the journalistic integrity of the Weekly World News to fill us in on what’s really going on in our city…

The Space Needle will once again become this city’s tallest building in April 2009, when NASA launches the tower into Earth orbit.

The unmanned mission will test the landmark’s suitability for carrying astronauts to the moon, Mars, and beyond.

“We hope this flight will point us in the direction of cheaper modes of space travel,” said Project Director Mike Dale.

Early next year, NASA engineers will remove the 72 bolts anchoring the Needle to her 6,000-ton concrete foundation. Construction cranes will lower the building onto its side, and a convoy of trucks will transport the structure to Cape Canaveral, using the straightest roads possible.

“There, the building will be thoroughly caulked against the vaccuum of space,” Mr. Dale said.

The Needle’s elevator shaft will be filled with rocket fuel, her antennas will be oriented toward Houston, and her manned explorations of the solar system will begin no later than 2014, according to Dale.

Despite the reduced costs to NASA, the Space Needle project represents a giant leap in astronaut amenities.

“The rotating restaurant will provide simulated Earth gravity, not to mention fresh salmon and Dungeness crab from Washington and Alaska waters,” Dale said.

“It was NASA spacecraft that originally inspired the tower’s architecture,” Dale reflected from his seat in the Needle’s whirling restaurant. “But now the tables are turning.”

(via seattle)

Black Friday Recap

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Ick.

There were people lined up outside the store, waiting for us to open the gate at 6am.

We had everyone who works at the store there for opening — the manager, five salespeople, and two lab techs — there and on the floor, and all of us were constantly busy for the first few hours. When things started to slow down, there would be one or two of us that had a few minutes to breathe before they got caught up again.

By 10:30/11-ish, things had slowed down to a more moderate pace, so I went home for an extended lunch (along with two other employees). Came home, had leftover turkey dinner with Prairie, and then fell asleep for two hours. Got up (unwillingly) and went back in at 4pm.

And spent the next six hours selling virtually nothing. Sales-wise, the latter half of the day was a complete bust for me — where the morning was a lot of buyers out for the sales, the evening was all the shoppers. Meh. Sales is definitely not where I want to work for the rest of my life. Right now, I’m just hoping some (or most) of the people I talked to in the evening actually come back.

Finally closed the gate at 10:00, got out by 10:15, went home, had dinner, and fell over into bed. Long, un-fun day. But at least it’s over.