Danish Cartoon Desaster

I have been long dithering about what to write about the Danish cartoon bullshit which tripped off a whole avalanche of other bullshit, when at long last Mr. Ellis comes along and writes

My perspective on the mess begins with the fact that these are shitty, stupid, evil-minded cartoons produced by obvious hacks for a conservative rag that would appear to embody everything bad about the word “conservative” simply by publishing the things. In a sane and ordered world, everyone involved in their publication would be taken behind a stables and hit in the face with a shit-shovel. Jyllands-Posten has a lousy reputation when it comes to ethnic tolerance, their intent to offend in the most racist and simple-minded way possible was quite clear in the commissioning of the cartoons, and their apology was mealy-mouthed at best. The test of free speech always lays in that which is hardest to defend. It really would be nice if maggots like these didn’t make the rest of us work so hard.

I have nothing to add.

2 Things I learned from Japanese

The Japanese have two incredibly useful expressions.

One is 'Ah so', and it works wonders for filling up any awkward silences when you can't think of a suitable reply.

The other is 'un'. Which is more of a grunt, really.
It means yes.
It's not a slang term or anything of the sort, it's a totally accepted and widely used word.

I use these two all the time. A well-placed affirmative grunt can do wonders to a conversation. You can let a conversation die a slow death by pulling the sound out a little, and ending it on a falling note. If you, hovever, vigorously exhale the 'un', while keeping the tone flat, maybe nodding a little as the occasion demands, you can participate (or create the impression of participating) in a wide range of conversations, without descending to something as crude as actual words. Throw in a thoughtful 'ah so' or two, and you are set for 90% of life's conversational challenges.

Satanic API

Out of a silly moment at work

Size Matters

I'm building a really simple small demo app, and after it compiles, I switch over to the Release build target, and wow look at that file size!

40.0 KB

I might be tempted to write w00t here, if I was the type to use expressions like w00t.

Ok, copy it to the deployment machine, test it - whoops, crash.

Apparently, clicking an arrow up/down stepper control (MS call them spin controls) crashes the program.

Back to my development machine. Bug verifiable. It really crashes when compiled as Release, not when compiled as Debug. Well, there's my solution right there. Just a demo prototype, no production stuff. Doesn't matter if it's a Debug build.

I do it.

137.0 KB

Well. What's the opposite of w00t? t00w? z0rn?

Copy -> deploment machine -> run.

Can't run because file needs MSDEBUGFU.DLL

Argh, but only to be expected. So I link all libraries statically, and end up with a whopping

1.37 MB



orz

Admins

Just as I'm leaving for home, I meet our nocturnal administrator at the door.

Admin:	Hey.
Me:	Hi.
Admin:	By the way, it's the boss's wish that all computers be turned off overnight.
Me:	Oh, yeah, I heard. Someone told me yesterday.
Admin:	Yours too. It was till running last time.
Me:	Yes, but I turned it off today.
Admin:	'Cause I'll use a script in the future to shut down all computers. Only I'll use 'force', so if you have open documents, you'll lose data.
Me:	Ah so. Ok, thanks for the heads up. Bye.

You have got to hate administrators. (BOCTAOE)