Delicious LiveJournal Links for 11-30-2009

• Steampunk on the BBC
  (tags: steampunk)
• Bill Sienkiewicz Art For The Dungeons and Dragons Cartoon
  (tags: BillSienkiewicz art dungeonsanddragons)
• The Essen Board Game Fair
  (tags: games)
• Indonesia minister says immorality causes disasters
  Better delete that porn otherwise global warming might get you
  (tags: EpicFail religion)
• The Best Way to Solve a Problem: Give Up
  (tags: inspiration productivity lifehacks psychology)
• Visualisations of Choose Your Own Adventure books
  Quite pretty.
  (tags: visualization books games infographics)

Events from the last few days

Had lunch with Marianne (my first GF), Billy (very old friend from Stirling) and George (slightly less old friend who emigrated to Australia three years ago).  Enjoyed that a lot.

Played Poker with George, Hugh, Rob, Neil, Euan and Adam.  Lost badly, but still enjoyed it quite a lot.

Discovered that OpenID delegation is incredibly simple, and that I could set up andrew.ducker.org.uk as an OpenID in less than 5 minutes of faffing about.

Julie made steak pie!  And it was delicious, and had pastry both above and beneath the meat, making it proper pie, not the rubbish you sometimes get fobbed off with that is merely stew with a pastry hat.

Discovered a bug in Project White, a .Net wrapper around UIAutomation.  Fixed it locally and reported it to them.  I love finding bugs in other people's code.

Finished Defense Grid and went back to the beginning to gold star everything.  It's staggeringly good fun and I highly recommend you try the demo (or just spend the £6 it costs to buy it).

Tidied the living room with Julie and packed up a bunch of stuff that wasn't necessary.  She then threw out a bunch of stuff that wasn't even slightly necessary, and the living room is now much nicer to be in.

Visualisation FAIL

From andlosers

How programming works

  A novice programmer was once assigned to code simple financial
  package.

  The novice worked furiously for many days, but when his master
  reviewed his program, he discovered that it contained a screen
  editor, a set of generalized graphics routines, an artificial
  intelligence interface, but not the slightest mention of anything
  financial.

  When the master asked about this, the novice became indignant.
  "Don't be so impatient," he said, " I'll put in the financial stuff
  eventually."

===

  A manager asked a programmer how long it would take him to finish
  the program on which he was working. "I will be finished tomorrow,"
  the programmer promptly replied.

  "I think you are being unrealistic," said the manager, "Truthfully,
  how long will it take?"

  The programmer thought for a moment. "I have some features that I
  wish to add. This will take at least two weeks," he finally said.

  "Even that is too much to expect," insisted the manager, "I will be
  satisfied if you simply tell me when the program is complete."

  The programmer agreed to this.

  Several years later, the manager retired. On the way to his
  retirement lunch, he discovered the programmer asleep at his
  terminal. He had been programming all night.

From The Tao Of Programming - which like all the best zen texts made no sense the first time I read it and now seems incredibly obvious in its wisdom.

Puppies for Christmas

I posted the cutest video in the world to my parents:

and got this back from my Dad:

I have all the animals I need
We are moving
Tara is on heat
and Uther is very very interested

Where Tara is their 8-year-old Belgian-ish Shepherd, and Uther is the 1-year old German Shepherd...