Full of BS » Miscellaneous

Making a correct Postgres user

John Haugeland — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:46:48 +0000

Yeah, the reason it won’t connect is that create user foo with password ‘bar’ explicitly means “they can’t connect unless their password is sent plaintext”, which awesomely the manual doesn’t mention.

You wanted create user with encrypted password ‘bar’ instead.

Rest In Peace, Ted Kennedy

John Haugeland — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:25:12 +0000

A great man passed last night. Ted Kennedy, a man who made sweeping concrete improvements to civil rights, health care, education, immigration – probably the most effective senator of his time – fell to brain cancer, at the age of 77. We have all lost a pinion who kept our lives safe and our rights secure.

America is diminished with his loss.

Manipulating Wolfram Alpha for Comedy (or, How Many Faggots Fit in a Butt)

John Haugeland — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 05:37:22 +0000

As some of us remember from digging through trapper keepers while ignoring second grade teachers, there are several units of measurement with comedic value.

For example, three hogsheads (approx. 160 gallons) of beer constitute a butt of beer, which is how one gets to that George, the Duke of Clarence, died drowning in a butt.

Similarly, a bundle of sticks is a faggot (which is what those fundies are misreading in the bible – they’re talking about burning bundles of sticks). Indeed, there are even long faggots – two foot girth by four foot length, which qualifies for some awards, I suspect.

As such, Wolfram Alpha is entirely happy to calculate the number of faggots that fit in a butt.

It’s more than I expected.

Erlang jokes are too rare

John Haugeland — Fri, 08 May 2009 22:23:04 +0000

But this one’s funny.

Munctional

Reminders are nice

John Haugeland — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 01:49:35 +0000

Always nice when someone lets you know, y’know?

[19:43]  by the way StoneCypher, if you're curious, the level
          of functionality provided by my SMTP server in C, which is
          ~1000 lines, i trimmed down to less than 100 in erlang :p
[19:45]  lel
[19:45]  and i bet it's less buggy now too
[19:45]  quite
[19:46]  oh, and i wrote it in an hour
[19:46]  awesome
[19:46]  can i post that quote on my blog?
[19:46]  sure thing

Helps one remember one’s doing the right thing to push people to learn new things.

Kutiman Mixes YouTube

John Haugeland — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:14:34 +0000

Those of you know know me personally know that I am extremely picky about music: whereas I enjoy nearly every genre, I am very particular about stylistic elements, quality, and skill of execution.

My friend Poffy turned me on to Kutiman Mixes YouTube about an hour ago; I’ve watched it several times before realizing I needed to spread it around. It appears that some guy got a bunch of YouTube videos and mixed them into a video album, compositing the video elements into a barely explicable thing which vascillates between montage, pastiche and 60s-style disoriented spook video.

It’s honestly mindblowing. Speaking as someone thoroughly inured to things like the McRoll and the Windows song by being double oldbear enough to remember the various versions of .MOD, this really still tweaks all my knobs. This isn’t just weird. This is genuine music. It’s good.

This is one an mazing.

Link: Programmer Competency Matrix

John Haugeland — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:46:06 +0000

I originally found the PCM through Starling Software‘s copy, but it turns out to originally be by Sijin Joseph. As both sites have lots of other interesting content, I’m linking both.

The Programmer Competency Matrix is a surprisingly realistic grid of capabilities sorted by topic, which gives an extremely rough but in my opinion basically valid idea of an engineer’s gumption. Starling republished it as part of their standard set of tools to be used during a hire.

Regardless of whether you agree with the grid or its data, it’s fun. Have a look, and try scoring yourself.

Math only shows some countries the love

John Haugeland — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 22:42:55 +0000

It turns out that time() is going to report 1234567890 on Valentine’s Day this year for about 1/3 of the planet. Anyone on the wrong side of Greenwich Mean Time gets the joke.

A Happy New Year’s into 2009 to All

John Haugeland — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:46:02 +0000

A happy, healthy and safe 2009 to everyone. Remember the best parts in people you know, help the less fortunate, and help make 2009 better than 2008 in your part of the world.

SMS and Data

John Haugeland — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 22:44:46 +0000

Am I the only person who resents having to pay for SMS when I’m already paying for unlimited data?