orthogeeks

So anyone want to explain to me why its so pretty?

I guess maybe if you have a see-through case it makes sense. But for the rest of us, we’ll open the package, go ‘ooooh!’, and that’s the last we’ll see of that neat casing. What’s wrong with the appearance of a raw circuitboard?

According to the WSJ:

Steve Jobs, the ailing tech visionary who founded Apple Inc., said he was unable to continue as chief executive of the technology giant and handed the reins to Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook.

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More + some video at the link. I didn’t link a video because they’ve all been chopped up with a talking head before the content. My comments AFTER the fold.

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Hat tip to Alex for this uber-geeky link.

A comparison of PHP, Perl, Python and Ruby

Writing code is not unlike the writing of poetry; there are rules, syntax, and there is a problem to be solved. You use a specialized subset of the language which is dictated by structural rules (meter, rhyme, stanza, style, in the case of poetry) And as with poetry only certain approaches are appropriate for certain ‘problems’. In poetry the problem is usually more abstract; how to describe an experience, a scene, an idea, an argument, but to do so while communicating nonverbal aspects of the thing you are attempting to describe. In that sense code is very much the same; what is going in the program is not what you see, but what happens as a result of the intended audience (the compiler and CPU) reciting the work. However, usually the problem in coding is not emotional, spiritual or artistic; it usually involves doing some heavy lifting on data to rearrange it.

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You’ve seen that ad before. But it’s all part of a greater thing. Emacs vs. VI? (git Vs. subversion?) Among fans and devotees of anything, there is what you might call a turf war. But this – this ad you see above? It’s not the turf war. But a clever marketer figured out that if you can personalize a turf war, you can make it seem a lot bigger than it is. But wait a minute, isn’t the idea that Macs are used by hip people and PC’s are used by stodgy dittoheads? (No offense to the chill actor who plays the part of the PC) But to be realistic, Mac could be represented by one person (maybe) but to represent PCs – a concept and not a single company or line of computers – you would need a legion of people.

In any case, the reality is that in order for there to be a turf war, the two things must be to some extent comparable; and for the turf war to continue, one must not be vastly superior to the other – or what I’m saying is, they really aren’t that different. The Jets and the Sharks? Other than being of a different ethnic origin, we’re talking about dudes cut from the same mold. What I’m trying to say is this –

- but the reality is that this has always been the case. As soon as we were able to make that comparison between Mac and PC reasonably, the comparison was and will always be… stupid.

Randall can. Or so it would seeeeem:

I’ve always been an advocate of passwords that are easy to remember. A friend of mine who worked as a tech said that he once came into an important person’s office to do support on their computer, and couldn’t log in. They didn’t have the password and we can assume the system was supposed to be logged in. So what did they do? Flip to the last page of the ink blotter and try the distinctly password-looking collection of letters written there.

It worked!

The internet anagram server is excellent at coming up with collections of common to rare words by rearranging a phrase or long word. If you have trouble coming up with a good four-worder, try some of Lady Gaga’s lyrics in it. (Hint: advanced will let you set a minimum number of letters per word to avoid lots of ‘a’, ‘an’, ‘the’, ‘of’, ‘in’, etc.)

‘Lady Gaga’s Latest Lyrics’ -> Rascal Saggy Tally Diets

Is an odd sentence really better than a l33tsp34k word, though?

It is waiting...

One day I’m hoping Chris will change his avatar from the bizarre (but hilarious) random Gravatar, but then again, maybe its fitting. (UPDATE: He did now.)

Random geekiness here; I was running through my favorite type and stock image site and I ran into these interesting (and affordable) faces: Koch’s Signs.

Looked up the book, and as it turns out it’s an interesting little volume written by a foundry-type – a typesetter by the name of Rudolph Koch. With what you can see in the Books result, you can read the first chapter (an interesting study in how simple signs can communicate complex things) and the second chapter (all about crosses.)

Looking on my computer (it was this random) I saw the power button and wondered what the intent behind the symbolism was.

With Koch’s book, you might expect that since the straight line is the power descending from above, and as from the circle, breaking through and ‘hovering over the face of the waters.’ Man, that’s some powerful imagery there in just a little button.

Then again, I saw a switch on the side of a laptop for the wireless radio – you know the little ‘radio tower’ picture on a sliding switch – and it had the same symbol above, but divided like so:

[ 0  (wireless radio)  | ]

It then occurred to me: It’s pure binary. The circle is ‘off’, or zero (Oh) and the line is ‘on’, or one. When the slider’s ‘one’ end is flush with the slot, the radio is on, if the zero end is flush, it is off.

Thus I think our little power switch is actually depicting  ‘on/off’  which is being represented by the one and zero breaking through one another. It is almost just a symbol for ‘switch’.

Then again, it is cool to think that the zeroes are ‘sleeping eyes of God’ and the ones are ‘power descending from on high.’ Maybe the simplicity of the symbols still communicates the essential ideas Koch is talking about in his book.

So which is correct? It’s interesting to wonder, where symbolisms intersect like this, does the more general one still apply? Or are we mistaken in applying it? Or can we not help but participate in the more general symbolism when we select an icon or logo for something?

‘Intentionalists’ would argue that I’m incorrect in relating Koch to this whole thing, but I wonder. How aren’t the general symbols influential in how we choose logos like this?

Plus – I guess when you turn on your computer its like a whole new Genesis or something. ‘And the RAM was formless and void…’

Profound(ish)!