Entries tagged 'humour' ↓

Oh, those witty Google engineers!

Oh, the irony!

Around this time of year, it pays to be on top of your feed reading. I’ve just seen these two posts in Google Reader and in both cases thought “WTF? You have to be kidding me!”:

• Scott Hanselman - .NET 4.1 Preview – New Base Class Library (BCL) Extension Methods – RFC
• Ayende Rahien – Saying Goodbye to Proprietary Software

Only when I reached the comments did I realise that both were authored on April 1st…  d’oh!

I was just thinking - now that Woolie's has gone under, where will the losers of bets expose their rears?

It’s worth subscribing to the Microsoft Download Center RSS feed to be amongst the first to get notified of such gems as this. Nice to see they’re supporting Mac OS X!

Presumably it will be deleted soon, so I took a screen capture :-)

and yes, I did try downloading the file, and this is what I got:

12:05 PM 12/8/2008
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 
TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST 

Oh my, these URLs are going to come in handy:

http://www.wheresthebuild.com/

http://www.buildsonmymachine.com/

http://www.youbrokethebuild.com/

We had a day out in Harrogate today, during which I saw two signs which confused me a little.

Firstly, en route there was a sign which read "For Wetherby Follow Existing Signs". Which got me wondering what the possible alternative courses of action were? Attempting to follow signs which had once existed but did so no more? Or perhaps following signs which did not yet exist, but would do so at some future date? Most strange.

Secondly, in the town centre, I noticed a sign on a lamppost which read "Anti-Social Drinking of Alcohol In This Area Restricted". Could that be any more vague? What counts as anti-social drinking of alcohol - failing to pass the Port to the left, perhaps? And were not told of an outright prohibition, just that restrictions of some ilk exist. Not a very useful sign, then.

Funny story from a school friend of mine who had his gas meter replaced yesterday.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jontait2002/2241549511/

Incidentally, Jon's Flickr photostream is well worth subscribing to, there are lots of good shots each day.

Bill Gates opened this week's CES show in Las Vegas by showing a hilarious spoof video featuring one or two people you just might recognise

 

It probably won't surprise you to hear that the majority of the 167 RSS feeds to which I currently subscribe are technical blogs. But, for some light relief from all the geekery, I do have a folder in Google Reader entitled "Fun Stuff", which contains the following feeds (some of which, alas, no longer appear to be regularly updated):

A Soviet Poster A Day

What it says on the tin. The Soviets wrote the book on propaganda, and here you can see their work exemplified in daily chunks. The graphical techniques are frequently excellent, and the posters have many layers of meaning, which are decoded by accompanying text each day.

Clientcopia

Clientcopia is a user-submitted collection of dumb things that have been uttered by customers, frequently of web designers and graphic artists. The quality varies, but really poor entries are usually removed fairly quickly, and there's a voting mechanism to rank the submissions.

A recent example:

Client was asked to send a photo by email of the problem. "Okay, I can email it to you, but can you send it back when you're done? I need to keep the photo here just in case we need it later."

Doh, The Humanity!

Screenshots of web pages that are "broken, but in a funny way". Sadly not updated very frequently, but worth subscribing to for the occasional post.

Bug Bash

The site describes itself rather well:

"Bug Bash is a comic strip written and illustrated by Hans Bjordahl. Bug Bash is a comic strip about technology: managing technology, the business of technology. It's about project management and managing projects through the dull world of Rational Rose, use cases, and requirements. Functional requirements, user requirement, functional specifications, design specifications, call it what you want but it's still the bane of project managers. And when you're done with that, you can think about all the fun that comes with timelines, scheduling, estimates (PERT estimation anyone?) and resourcing until Gantt charts are coming out of your ears. Let's not forget the risk management in the software engineering life cycle. Maintaining the project is just as much fun, managing what was initially set out in requirements and trying to keep feature creep / scope creep in check with change management. If any of these words send nightmares to you, the project manager, then this site probably rings true with you."

I'll just add that it's very funny :-)

Dilbert

Surely I don't need to tell you about Dilbert? What you might not know, however, is that an unofficial but highly reliable feed is available at http://www.tapestrycomics.com/dilbert.xml.

In Passing

"Bizarre, tragic, true and sometimes hilarious things a college girl overhears during the course of her day."

Appears to be down at present.

I Can Haz Cheezburger?

Pictures of cats! With funny captions! Who can possibly resist?

LOL President

Pictures of US Presidents! With funny captions!

The Daily WTF

Now back to its original name (hooray!), The Daily WTF provides daily real-world examples of crappy code, dodgy database designs, and ugly UI. The disturbing thing is, they're all real, even all-time class The Brillant Paula Bean.

XKCD.com

Of all these sites, XKCD is my favourite, as it covers four subjects that are close to my heart:

"A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language."

New comics are currently being posted regularly, three times a week. You can read much more information about the comic on its Wikipedia entry.

LOLSecretz

A cross between I Can Haz Cheezburger and Postsecret, this site lifts the lids on the dark secrets kept by the planet's pets.

The Superficial

I'd never buy a red-top tabloid, let along a gossip magazine, but I still enjoy getting my daily dose of celebrity news and photos, and to that end The Superficial is my guilty pleasure. It's a bit US-centric so I've never even heard of many of the post subjects, but it's worth wading through the dross to get the latest goss on Britney, Paris, Jessica and Lindsay, complete with paparazzi photographs.

So, what other funny feeds should I subscribe to, to further brighten my days?

Gmail does such a fantastic job of identifying the swathes of spam that floods my inbox each day that I rarely get to see messages from 419 scammers at all these days. Which is almost something of a shame when they contain bizarre passages like this (from a mail that managed to slip through the net):

"Due to intergalactic and unsolicited email. I will advise that we discurse vividly on phone. Please write me your phone number for more discursion." 

Intergalactic email!  Who'd've thought it?!

Oh, the irony!  On the day that the front cover of The Times reported on death and destruction across northern England caused by heavy rain...

 

 

... just look what they're advertising on page 39...

  

 

The wife spotted this advert in a local mag, which appears to be missing one key piece of information:
 

Now that The Daily WTF has changed its name to Worse Than Failure (I ask you, what does that mean?), I've been getting my laughing-at-other-people's-stupidity kicks over at This Is Broken instead.  The short entries and picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words posts make for a quick burst of entertainment during a prolonged working day.  Such as this great sign on the door to a first aid room - not something you want to see when bleeding profusely, I shouldn't think...

It's been a while since I posted one of these mixed bags of links n things which don't merit a full post.  Reason being, I tend to share such links in Google Reader, or post them to my del.icio.us bookmarks, both of which have feeds that you can subscribe to if desired.

Still, here's a few interesting things that caught my eye in recent days: 

Firefox 2.0 tip - Ctrl-Shift-T will reopen the last closed tab.  Nice.

Parenthacks - Leaving Your Kids With The Neighbourhood Babysitter: A Primer.  This looks like it could be a very useful website, come the second half of this year :-)

iTunes on Vista - Apple have released an "iTunes Repair Tool for Windows Vista" to fix some compatability problems.  I haven't tried it so don't blame me if it swallows your MP3 collection.

If you're reading this in Google Reader, try hitting g then u, then start typing the name of one of your subscriptions.  Cool, huh?  For more hints on Google Reader's fantastic keyboard shortcuts, check out this LifeHacker article.

Unhandled Perception - how to put the IE7 menu bar back at the top of the window (a la IE6).

UselessAcount.com - you know you want one.

Steve Jobs - "Thoughts On Music", 06 Feb 2007.  Even the Apple boss is in favour of ditching the evil that is DRM.  Hallelujah.

Second Life Stats - some fascinating figures highlighting the growth of Second Life (in excel format).

Tim Sneath has been posting a series of blog entries highlighting Great WPF Applications.  If you have Vista or XP with .NET 3.0 installed and want to know what WPF is capable of, this is a great place to start.

Scott Guthrie has posted more information about new features in Visual Studio "Orcas", including Multi-Targeting (the ability to create projects that target a specific version of the .NET Framework).

ThisIsBroken.com - I love this site.

My results:
I am Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom 66% Riddler 57% Lex Luthor 51% Apocalypse 50% Poison Ivy 45% The Joker 42% Dark Phoenix 42% Magneto 41% Catwoman 39% Mr. Freeze 36% Green Goblin 32% Juggernaut 32% Mystique 24% Venom 21% Two-Face 20% Kingpin 20%

Blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity.

Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test

My results:
I am Superman

Superman 70% Robin 67% Spider-Man 65% Supergirl 55% Batman 50% Iron Man 50% Hulk 45% Green Lantern 30% The Flash 25% Wonder Woman 20% Catwoman 15%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

From an anecdote on Scott Hanselman's blog:

He said "Humour me." He's from the Bay Area, but you can always here the "u" in words like Humor with Jeff. It's how he maintains quiet superiority over you and I.

Full Story

Not so much, actually... :-)

(OK, so it's a beta release of Office, and it's very impressive, so I shouldn't be too harsh, but this still made me smile...)

Here we go again - permit me to dump all of those "flagged for follow-up" emails and "keep as new" bloglines posts into this entry, and then I can move on with my life:

Transformers Costumes - turn from a robot into a car (or whatever) whilst you're wearing the costume.  Tempted?  Only £2000!

New Zealand Traffic offence letter - kinda long, but well worth reading through.

Magic Ajax.NET - another open source framework for integrating Ajax technologies into ASP.NET apps.

Phil Scott - watch out for Request.Browser.MajorVersion throwing exceptions in ASP.NET 2.0

Firoz Ansari - using TextPad to View Source in IE.

Jeff Putz - how do I copy a List<T> object?  It's a good question.

Daemon Tools 4.0 is out.  DT is an excellent virtual CD-ROM/DVD-ROM emulator, which I use to mount the various iso images downloaded from MSDN.  It's quick and easy to use, and saves me a fortune in blank CDs/DVDs.  The new version has been redesigned from scratch and supports four virtual drives (useful for those multi-disc installs).

Anyone watch American Chopper?  The folks at OCC are now using SQL 2005 to run their operation - watch the video.

The CSS Properties Window is a neat add-in package for VS2005 that makes it easier to edit inline and inherited styles.

Scenarios, Patterns, and Implementation Guidance for Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 3.0 - I must get round to reading this...  maybe during the Christmas holidays :-)

PowerCollections by Wintellect is described as "A Community Project to Develop the Best Public License Collection Classes for .NET".  The results (using the .NET 2.0 Generics feature) are impressive, so I'm using this class library in some of my projects.

 I think everybody's seen this already, but I found it interesting to learn that IE7 and Office 12 will use the same "RSS" icon that is found in Firefox.  Hmm, "Embrace and Extend", perhaps?

ASCII Art of War

Another useful FF extension - Firefox OneNote Power Toy - send clippings from FF straight to a new OneNote side note.

 

Another random bunch o' links:

A November CTP of Enterprise Library has been released.  It's still missing the configuration tool, but it is aligned with .NET Framework 2.0 and is looking pretty good.

Microsoft have bought the excellent FolderShare, providers of innovative P2P software which allows you to sync folders across multiple PCs, share your files with friends, and access (and search) your files from anywhere.  Alas, I'm prevented from using it at work due to a combination of firewall and SuperScout restrictions, so I'll stick to moving my files around using my cute 80Gb Freecom FHD2-Pro and a copy of SyncToy.

2006 H1 will see Service Packs for VS2003 and VS2005.  About time - though to be honest I hope not to still be using VS2003 by then!

An October CTP of the "Atlas" bits for ASP.NET has been released.  This is Microsoft's answer to the AJAX hype, and I really should try giving it a whirl soon.

Scientists debunk the cow-tipping myth.  Shame.

Encrypt your web.config with ASP.NET 2.0 and VS2005 - an eight-minute screencast.

Audiophile - I love this page, which provides links to the most ridiculous "audiophile" products available.  $240 for a plank of wood, anyone?

iLounge buyer's guide - looking to buy someone an iPod accessory for Christmas?  This guide should help.

Wired: History's worst software bugs

Remember when the covers of software books used to show bridges or parallelograms?  No longer - see the exciting cover of  AW's Build Master title.

ASP.NET 2.0 - "Man, it's cool!".  Oh, good grief...

Less hype, more info - a step-by-step guide to converting web projects from VS2002/3 to VS2005.

Security Guidance for .NET 2.0 now available on MSDN.

How to Disable Autorun for your CD-ROM drives.  Wonderful - I hate those prompts telling me that an image exists somewhere on a CD-ROM, hence would I like to launch Picasa?

Jocelyn and I both have a single freckle in roughly the same place on the base of one foot.

We're sole mates.

Which File Extension are You?

With thanks to Jez (a .inf)

If you haven't seen today's DailyWTF yet, go take a look.  It's a real beauty:

http://thedailywtf.com/forums/35925/ShowPost.aspx

Alex Papadimoulis (he of DailyWTF fame) has posted a couple of v.funny articles recently:

• Computer Programmer Inflation
• Comicality Inflation

LOL!

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,67357,00.html

"turnkey b2b enterprise-level web-based tea management solution infrastructure" - fantastic!

Thanks to Jez for bringing this (and hence TeaBuddy.com) to my attention..

Looks great!

I have to blog this MSN conversation I just had with Damian - it's too funny not to share:

Damian: "I just got a voice recognition software"

Damian: that last sentence by tight without using my hands"

Ian: "Are you concerned about RSI or is this just for the gimmick factor?"

Damian: "It it is for my mother"

Damian: "she is going back to university"

Damian: "to study duo gruffly"

:-)

Here's a good monkey story (and heaven knows, you can never have enough good monkey stories):

 Highway to be cleared of monkey raiders [BBC]

What I particularly like is the sentence "According to the latest count, some 2,035 monkeys reside along the Kalka-Simla highway".  Who counted them?  How, exactly?  Can you imagine counting monkeys for a living?  "1, 2, 3, hey don't move, 4, 5, shit have I counted you already?  Stop running around..."

"What do you do for a living?"  "I count monkeys."  Fantastic.

Update [2004-12-07]: Hey, my questions are answered - a news article from the BBC explaining how to count orang-utans:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4072571.stm

http://www.marryanamerican.ca - Hey, I'm already doing my bit to save a liberal American from "four more years of cowboy conservatism" - and I'm not even Canadian!

This is utterly brilliant - check it out:

http://neilhetzel.com/blog/archive/2004/10/30/1156.aspx

Courtesy of Alex :

f(x)=6x+3 walks into a bar and says to the barman "Got any sandwiches?"
"Sorry," the barman replies, "we don't cater for functions."

Some of my nieces n nephews just brought Magical Trevor to my attention, and now I can't get the tune out of my head!

"Yeah yeah yeah, the cow is back...."

Is this site for real?  I'm not sure.  Either way, I'm sticking to SQL Server!

Ooh, there's more - read the dress code!

This recent entry on TheDailyWTF is one of the worst pieces of code I've ever seen in my entire life.  When I stopped laughing and picked myself up of the floor though, it got me thinking - I hope this is a wind-up.  Surely nobody having the audacity to call themself a professional programmer would really concoct something so hideous?

That said, I've come across some pretty bad code (in previous employments, I'm happy to say), so maybe this isn't too far fetched.  I often think it's unfortunate that, for the most part, source code goes unseen by those who've paid for it, so the client is often unable to determine whether they have received a quality product in return for their money.  If coders were aware that their efforts would be scrutinized by all and sundry, surely they'd make more of an effort to avoid such abominations as the one above, and perhaps also to comment their code more often, generally making life easier for the rest of us developers who have to pick up after them?  Maybe then there'd be fewer cowboys in the industry.  For now, a lot of software applications out there remind me of sausages - the end user doesn't really know what's gone into the making of the product, and they're probably happiest remaining the dark.  Which isn't to say that there aren't some damn fine sausages out there - I'm quite partial to Lincolnshires, myself...

No, not me.  This guy.

Far too much work to get finished by the end of the year, it's an impossibility. But I keep plugging away at it as my remaining few days in this position tick away. In some perverted ways, I'll miss this project, and this department (it's been my introduction to the world of work, and has taught me much), but the time is right for a change, and there are many mundane tasks which I'll certainly be glad to pass on to some other sucker.

In the evening some kind colleagues treat me to a meal. During conversation they teach me some city slang, and I teach them how to use a vinegar bottle. It seems like a pretty fair exchange of knowledge.

Some seasonal mirth, courtesy of a colleague:

A Russian man and his wife are wandering down a street one cold evening, when they are suddenly caught in a spot of inclement weather.

"Is it raining or snowing?" asks the man.

"I think it's snowing," replies the woman.

At that point, they pass Rudolph, a minor communist party official, walking in the opposite direction.

"Rudolph, is it officially snowing or raining?" asks the man.

"Raining, comrade." replies Rudolph firmly, as he walks past.

A few minutes later the woman comments "I still think it's snowing. Why is Rudolph so sure that it isn't?"

"Rudolph the red knows rain, dear" replies her husband.

Only a mild hangover, which was nice. To quote Rich, we seemed to drink just the right amount of alcohol so that today could be spent relaxing, not recovering. Besides, I had things to do, shirts to iron - not an easy task for an INTP geek such as myself. I needed help. Altavista wasn't much cop, pointing me only to this satirical guide. Thanks, fellers, but I'm serious here. Jeeves came to my rescue once again, pointing me to this excellent how-to site. I love the internet.

Felt unwell again this evening - Wednesday's abdominal pain returned, sending me surfing to the medical self-help pages of the web. Within 10 minutes I had diagnosed myself as having everything from indigestion to cancer, via appendicitis and irritable bowel syndrome. I guess perhaps I should register with a GP instead. The last time I visited a doctor was in 1986 when, aged 10, I had an earache.

The current issue of FHM has an amusing "Are you an emotional cripple?" self-test. One of the questions is "Do you resist visiting your GP for anything less than amputation, scared he might find something?". I had to tick that one. In fact, out of ten categories, I scored positively on eight of them. This is probably not a good thing...

I declined the offer, saying I felt that the private sector was better able to match my career aspirations, and citing the potential pay drop as making it difficult for me to repay the crippling student debts that are oh so prevalent in this country. Sold my soul to capitalism's shiny silver dollar...

All of which leaves me with another decision to make - I'm not looking forward to another winter of commuting, so I need to find myself somewhere to live. Ah, but I'll put that off for another day or two...

A funny thing happened today - I got to work to find two A4 pictures on my cubicle wall - one was of me, from this website, and was titled "Harold Lloyd". The other was of someone I now know to be Harold Lloyd, a late silent comedian, and was titled "Ian Nelson". I must admit, there is a certain likeness:

Harold Lloyd	Ian Nelson

Listening to: My 20th birthday tape from Jammy - ah, memories...

Reading: Julian Barnes - "England, England" (yes, still - I'm a slow reader, OK?)

Browsing: Kevin Kelm's Virtual Vomit

A good week for internal email. Sometimes it's the only thing that keeps me sane. I know people see my typing long missives about Manic Street Preachers lyrics and complain that I should be working, but I figure it makes me happier and more productive. Honestly. Anyway, here's a snippet from a conversation between some friends which made me laugh out loud. It doesn't seem so funny, in retrospect, but y'know how it is, you're sat coding some JCL or whatever, and it's so dull that the slightest thing makes you piss yourself...

DO: "I saw a fox spread over 3 lanes of the M62 last night."

SSB: "How fast was it going?"

DO: "Not very fast, it's head was in the inside lane and the rest of it was on the outside lane."

SSB: "Sorry, I thought you said a fox sped over the M62 - not spread over the M62."

Look, it made me laugh, anyway...