Geek Code

Remember this old bit? Well, I figured it was about time to generate my own. Gentoo users just emerge app-misc/geekcode and run geekcode. There’s also an online generator you can google for. It takes around 15 minutes, and transports you about 15 years into the past.

Here’s me:
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GAT d- s+: a-- C++ UL++ P- L++ E W+++ N o- K w
O-- M-- V-- PS PE- Y PGP t++ 5 X- R !tv b+++ DI+++ D+
G e++ h* r y?
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------


Here’s a geek code interpreter.

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SILT: Google’s Latest Gifts to Coders

This lady on the netbook is almost certainly perusing Google's coding gifts while being frustrated with Gentoo. She gets me. I took this photo at PayPal's Innovate conference a couple weeks ago and it's already my second-most popular photo on flickr. I dedicate this post to you, free netbook lady!

Work and life are trying to keep the SILT posts down, but no way, josé. Fight the power.

I don’t know if these are really the latest, but they’re pretty recent and boy are they handy.

• I was thoroughly impressed by Google’s properties’ APIs, as demonstrated at the Google Code Playground. Seriously, there’s an incredible amount of data/functionality there.
• I cannot wait to have something cool enough to code in Go, Google’s new programming language. It’s everything C++ could have been (in a much more perfect world). It mixes everything one could want from dynamic languages (e.g., Python) with the performance and compile-time checks of compiled languages. I’m really cheering for this one, hoping that Google’s backing brings forth a plethora of libraries and frameworks to leverage for practical purposes. Qt bindings or a web framework is what I’m seeking.
• I’ve basically been relearning Python while using it for the biggest project I’ve done at work, yet. It’s really killing me in spots where there is some unwritten “Pythonic” way of doing something, and I’m met with implicit resistance in doing it the way I had thought made sense. Enter Google’s Style Guides (Python | All). It may not seem like much, but it really helps in those situations when the decision seems arbitrary, but somehow like you might regret making the wrong choice. The simple things, guys. Fundamentals.

As for things I am less grateful for, I am very frustrated with the fact that Gentoo is still on PHP 5.2, because 5.3 has a lot of sweet features, including much better crypto support (of which I am in dire need currently). PHP 5.3.1 is already out, and I can’t get 5.3.0? You guys call this bleeding edge?

Photography Hosting Strife

I realized with disgust that, having written a post about photography, I was more obligated than ever to find a picture to attach to this post. This is a totally random shot I got from the PayPal X Innovate conference, currently available on my Flickr account.

I take pictures. Normally, I process them, and stash them away on hard drives, only to post a few select shots some weeks later. But lately people have been wanting me to take pictures and put them up for public viewing post haste. Facebook is utterly unmentionable, that goes without saying; butchering photos with a sickening amount of compression and resizing to 614px on the long side. I have a Flickr account (it feels way cleaner and more respectable than DeviantArt), but I really dislike Flickr’s interface when it comes to sets (and the “All Sizes”/sizing thing is horrid). SmugMug is better but still not that good for my purposes. Flickr has a nice community and clean, if not very usable, interface. I just feel bad using it for an all-purpose photodump.

So I’ve been thinking about starting to use Picasa Web as my photodump for large sets of images. To me, Picasa feels pretty amateur, but at least others can easily navigate forward/backward, zoom-in, do other NORMAL things. I have frequently had to show others how to do this stuff with Flickr. What solutions have you all found? Anyone else run into the angst of diluting their portfolio with obligatory images? Does my Flickr portfolio/Picasa photodump solution sound sound?