'Drawing Names' for Christmas, Revisited

Okay, so, Randal had some good things to say (and they're incoporated into the code, below). One bug was pointed out: a state could arise where the last recipient is also the last giver, and that'll make the program go into an infinite loop. However, that

Concoctions of Caliginosity #2

I've been doing some more thinking about Word Verification parsing. And I think it is do-able in a fashion that would not have to amount to a Ph.D. project. The biggest challenge would probably be that of dealing with letters that touch each other. Naughty, naughty letters.

Unions are Evil; Stand on Your Own, Whiny Brats

I wonder how many of the MTA union workers understand the issues for which they are striking; and how many are blindly following their Union Leaders. These workers will eventually return to their jobs, and perhaps even with slightly improved pension plans or an extra dollar an hour. And yet

'Drawing Names' for Christmas

Back in the days of the Internet Bubble, when stocks of which I owned none were doing so very well, it was expected that everyone in the family would buy at least one gift for everyone else in the family. n * (n - 1) gifts. Ridiculous. When the word budget

Crip Memoir Resurrects Slain

...or, "It's Okay to Murder People if you Document it in the Form of Children's Books." So, Stanley Tookie Williams establishes the Crips with the ill-conceived notion that it'll help his crime-ridden neighborhood. Along the way, he kills some people. In 1981

Ghostly Car Commercial

This is from an email I received a while back. It's a stupid, cheesy story, but just read it, and then watch the commercial. This is a car advertisement from Great Britain. When they finished filming the ad, the film editor noticed something moving along the side of

Installing a JAR without a JAD

Apparently that's supposed to mean something to me. It sounds pretty funny. I guess I need to keep reading the manual. I just a got a new phone, you see, and it'll supposedly run little Java programs ... they call them MIDlets. Like Applets. Only smaller. Stupid.

Concoctions of Caliginosity #1

I intend to shamelessly substitute substance with grotesque imagery in my new series, Concoctions of Caliginosity; this being the first in the series. I give you, psychotic cat. Click for a larger view. Then just stare. I start laughing after about 2.3 seconds. It sees into your soul. Use

Computer Programmer or Serial Killer?

This is great. Ten pictures. Determine whether the person is a Computer Programmer or a Serial Killer. Update: I got 8/10. It seems that I gave less credit to programmer's and their personal hygene than I ought; twice.

Steam Powered Harleys

Here is an interesting article on Slashdot about BMW and its new steam engine that re-claims lost energy from the exhaust by using the heat. Seemingly brilliant. And since I am not a mechincal engineer, that seemingly is there to protect me. http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/