dsandler.org/wp

In the spirit of costumes: Why BSD is
better than Linux. It’s so, so true. (Thanks, Marco.)

Joel: We used
to write algorithms. Now we call APIs.

I posted a short guide to champagne-sabreing
technique to MetaFilter.
You just never know when a skill like that will come in handy.

Dan’s champagne-slicing quick reference

1. Hold the bottle (in your non-dominant hand) pointing away from
   you and tilted upward about 30°.

2. Hold the knife in your
   dominant hand, level with the horizon, blade away from you. Place the
   flat of the knife on the surface of the bottle (on or around the
   label).

3. In one smooth, firm, confident motion (believe
   me, this helps), sweep the knife down the length of the bottle,
   maintaining bottle contact the entire way. Imagine that you will slice
   cleanly through the neck of the bottle, because this is what will
   (hopefully) occur.

The pressure of the champagne is
focused on a weak point in the glass of the neck of the bottle, and it
(the neck) will split along invisible lines of cleavage. You’ll be
left with some champagne on the ground, the bottle neck somewhere
across the room, and a bottle of champagne ending in an elliptical
conic section, ready to be poured out to your admiring friends.

Thermodynamics entertainment for the day:

1. Start with an empty ceramic mug.
2. Use the water valve on an espresso machine to fill it with
   about two ounces of boiling water. Swirl for 5-10 seconds. (This is
   ostensibly to flash-clean the inside of the mug.) Empty into sink.

3. Fill mug with cold water from water cooler.
4. Hold the mug in both your hands; over the course of about
   20 seconds, the hot ceramic will be palpably overcome with cold.

It’s a unique sensation.

When Steve Jobs touted the new iPod as a “breakout device”, he wasn’t kidding.

This isn’t the first time Apple engineers have snuck a version of this
classic
videogame
into a shipping product as an Easter egg;
seems it has special
significance for Steve.

There’s something really terrible about the top story on Slashdot:
Wil
Wheaton Responds to your Questions. I mean, there’s an element
of sadness to this. “We’re all such Star Trek geeks that
we’ll salivate over juicy tidbits from an actor who played a character
so annoying that he had his own
hate newsgroup!” I mean,
I got the ST:TNG reference in last week’s
Buffy episode, but
I’m not this bad (am I?).

I’m not often amused by spam, but I received this a couple of days ago and
it’s quite a gem. Prepare to be amazing!