blog-j: Symbolizing, Coding, Objectifying, Processing

There’s something incredibly cool about chatting online with completely random strangers. I used to do it quite a bit when I was a kid [ed: I know some of you would argue that I’m still a kid; really, you’re welcome to your opinion, but as I pay taxes and have kids of my, whether I act like a kid or not, I’m not a kid. boo.]. So you can imagine how excited I was when I heard about Omegle, this neat little service that you can hop on and chat with a random stranger. I had a minute of downtime and figured I’d try it out…and here is the result:

Connecting to server…
You’re now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!
You: hi!
Stranger: HI!!!!!
Stranger: ARE YOU EXTREME?
You: um. not as extreme as you, apparently.
You: though i do like some of their older stuff.
Stranger: WHO’S OLDER STUFF?
You: extreme.
You: the band.
Stranger: EXTREME IS A PERSON?!?!?!?!
Stranger: OH
Stranger: THAT’S STILL SUPERAWESOME
You: oui.
You: y’know, the caps lock key might help you.
Stranger: NAH.
Stranger: UNCAPS LOCK IS FOR PUSSIES.
You: actually.
You: i can think of a lot of things that are for pussies, but caps-lock ain’t on the list.
Stranger: TO BE HONEST, I’M OVERCOMPENSATING FOR SOMETHING WITH IT.
Stranger: MY EXTREMELY ENORMOUS PENIS.
You: ah. yes.
Stranger: IT EMBARRASES ME.
You: it must.
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

So. I recall that I used to have conversations with strangers, not just strange conversations…

See for yourself @ omegle.com. Who knows? You could chat with me (really, though, I don’t want to hear about your penis…).

Got an email this morning with info on a “virus” that has been being propogated via Facebook. Koobface. What a name for a virus. Usually, I make a mental note of these things so I can avoid them, but for some strange reason I decided to read the whole email and encountered this gem:

Richard Larmer, chief executive of RLM Public Relations in New York, said he threw out his PC after it became infected by Koobface, which downloaded malicious software onto his PC. “It was really bad. It destroyed my computer,” he said.

I don’t mean to be disparaging of people who do not understand how computers work, but seriously…he threw out his PC? Wtf?!?

Koobface spreads by sending notes to friends of someone whose PC has been infected. The messages, with subject headers like, “You look just awesome in this new movie,” direct recipients to a website where they are asked to download what it claims is an update of Adobe Systems Inc’s Flash player.

If they download the software, users end up with an infected computer, which then takes users to contaminated sites when they try to use search engines from Google, Yahoo, MSN and Live.com, according McAfee.

Hmmm. Honey, I’m seeing contaminated sites. Guess I’ll chuck this puppy in the trash and get a new one. Considering the economy is doing so well, I can afford this.

Somebody needs to get this guy a capable IT staff…

More over @ reuters.com.

Hat tip to the guy or girl who decided to spam the entire building with this breaking news.

Not that I'm against a bit of cross-pollination, and I certainly enjoy the occasional ad that speaks to my inner (and outer) geek, but if you're going to do it, do it right. Case in point, the Axe ad to the left. On first look to most people it probably seems funny, if perhaps a bit cutesy. Upon closer inspection, though, I suspect most people will recognize the code's flaws, but semantic and logical.

For starters, the call to "understand.this" makes no sense. At best, this would likely return a reference to "understand", which makes it redundant. At worst, it's a compiler error. (Both these comments are, of course, somewhat language dependent.) Next, we all know that using the equals operator (==) can be problematic. Further, it seems odd to compare "you" to "understand.this", which are likely different data types and therefore defy comparison. A more logical and semantically valid statement would be:

As well, the call to "get.a.girlfriend" is problematic. For starters, the object/property/call chain makes little sense. While it might be work well as a URL, it is clearly an action and therefore (again) should be a method call, not a property/field call. Notice as well that the call operator (()) is missing, which, while valid in a few languages, is generally not acceptable. Again, the perhaps correct way of writing this would be:

Or, perhaps:

Or we could go all the way, abstract it out a bit more, and go with:

Rolling that up into a complete block, you wind up with:

'Nuff said...

(Thanks to Kelly for the original link to the ad - http://cerium50.niloo.fr/18-10-2008/creatives-ads-volume-3/)

Man. It has been too long.

Been busy. Obviously. New kid, new job, new haircut. Another new year, another birthday (hit the big time this year, too...wow).

This is me getting back into the swing of things. Lots to blog about. Hurrah!

Bet you're all excited.

This post's fun involves a simple ImageMagick command to convert an animated gif into a sequence of png's. Simple, I know. But as I originally did this on Monday and had to do it again today and neglected to document how I did it on Monday, I thought I'd take this opportunity to store it here, on my much-neglected blog, for posterity.

At the command line:

convert <IMAGE NAME HERE>.gif +adjoin <IMAGE SEQUENCE NAME HERE>_%03d.png

Obviously, you'd be replacing and with actual values. And you will need to download and install ImageMagick.

Ah. It's good to be back. Ta ta for now...

October 21st, 2007, at approximately 3:12pm, a 7lb 10oz bundle of wonder named Anne Maya entered the world. Mommy and Annie are feeling great and looking forward to coming home. Daddy is trying to rapidly get home into a state worthy coming home to.

Yes, really, I have no real idea how you’re supposed to phrase these announcements.

A few more pictures are up at flickr.com/photos/jasonnussbaum

Sadly, the day has come. Jim Rigney (aka Robert Jordan, author of the Wheel of Time series) passed away on September 16th, 2007, after battling amyloidosis for just under two years.

I am short of words. I have been following his blog since I learned of his ailment. Today I happened to see that the 12th book in the series is on pre-order at Indigo, and (elated!) decided to make one of my random jaunts to read his thoughts and see how he was doing. The news that greeted me sank my spirits like a tonne of bricks.

My condolences go out to his family, friends and fans alike.

He came like the wind, like the wind touched everything, and like the wind was gone.

These are words Jim said to me several books ago, in the weary but always thrilling hours of putting the manuscript to bed, ready to carry to New York in the morning — I remember grabbing a piece of discarded script and scrawling those words up the margin, because they were so beautiful. He was talking about Rand. I of course am not.

- Harriet Rigney, dragonmount.com/RobertJordan

RIP, Jim/Robert. We'll miss you. As the wheel of time turns...

An age has come to an end.