December 13th, 2009
I almost couldn’t believe it. Last night I was rummaging through my stuff when I found this little notebook from almost two years ago. Apparently, I did jot down many of the things said and done in class when I was at Cornell University.
Class notes always start with the best of intentions. Fresh clean notebooks. Crisp paper. Aahh!
Of course, one day later, the notebook is no longer fresh and clean. It has been written on, which could almost be slang for defiled. I have taken great pains to write neatly and clearly, without messing up anything, but…it isn’t the same.
Mistakes cannot be avoided. Eventually, some words get messed up. In the beginning, I tear out the page and start over, but later I let it be. The notebook is no longer sacred.
And then there are those lectures. While my ears are listening and my brain is thinking, my hands are drawing cartoon characters on the nearest piece of paper they can find. Did I just draw Bugs Bunny on the margin of my page? Uh…
So going back to the notebook I discovered: to fill up a notebook almost completely with no more than a few doodles and only the occasional change in handwriting is quite an accomplishment.…


Tags: Bugs Bunny, Class, Cornell, Lectures
Posted in Humor | 1 Comment »
December 11th, 2009
Of all the different kinds of commercials you get to watch are forced to watch on television, the ones that advertise prescription drugs and medicines are the oddest. Here’s a typical breakdown of a 45 second commercial:
- 10 seconds announcing the product and explaining how wonderful it is. (“Chuchachuva gives you good night’s sleep!”)
- 30 seconds describing the various side-effects of the drug. (“Possible side-effects include headaches, nausea, liver-damage, hallucinations, low IQ, kidneys shutting down, impotence and suicidal tendencies. And oh, your tongue could fall off.”)
- 5 seconds telling you how wonderful the product is. (“Chuchachuva is the most awesomest thing ever! Ask your Doctor about Chuchachuva today!!”)
You’ll notice that the bad stuff is sandwiched between the good stuff, as if they’re hoping you’ll miss it. You can also see how they keep repeating the name of the product aloud again and again, and yet again, hoping to register it firmly in your brain.
The best part though, is how during the thirty seconds of hallucinations and headaches, everyone featured in the ad sticks around and gives you their best smiles, as soft soothing music plays in the background. Anyone who didn’t understand the language would think these guys thoroughly enjoyed their nausea and suicidal tendencies.
Tags: Commercials, Television
Posted in Humor | 1 Comment »
December 6th, 2009
Writing code tends to be harder than it needs to, because there’s a constant need to please a bunch of other people who want to read and understand it. Sometimes, the person who writes the code needs to worry about being able to understand it several months later.
Conventional wisdom holds that the solution to the problem is documenting the code appropriately. Conventional wisdom is wrong. Reasons are manifold, and quite obvious once you start to think about it.
Documentation is always out-of-date. It’s impossible to have anyone and everyone who updates code to update the comments and documentation accurately. Sure, you could try, but to a large extent, this is simply beyond your control. Typically, this means you need to assume the documentation is wrong and read the code in detail anyway, so you might as well simply start by reading the code.
Reading the code is the only way to figure out what it is doing. Documentation only tells you what somebody thinks the code is doing. It is quite possible that they’re wrong, or only partially correct. Besides, it’s better to build up a model of what you think the code is supposed to do, than to be told what to expect.
Code is more concise. If the code is well-written and self-documented, it is generally faster to read the code and understand what’s going on than to read the comments (which are, by definition, more verbose than the code they attempt to explain). And if you can’t trust the programmer to write good code, you can’t trust the guy to write good documentation either.
There are some situations where documentation is necessary, of course. Examples would be when you are attempting to explain the motivations or structure of your design at a larger scale, or if you want to explain what the code is not — why you decided to something one way and not the other.
Tags: Code, Documentation
Posted in Tips and Tricks | 4 Comments »
December 5th, 2009

It was –2°C on this Saturday morning, and the warmth from the Sun had not yet thawed the grass and leaves that were covered with frost.
Tags: Photos, Seattle, Winter
Posted in Photos | No Comments »
December 2nd, 2009
Photos of my trip to Irvine, California, followed by Death Valley National Park, Dante’s View, Badwater, Beatty and various other places along the route. It was an exciting Thanksgiving weekend.
Tags: Beatty, California, Death Valley, Irvine, Nevada, Photos
Posted in Photos | No Comments »
November 12th, 2009
Now that we have all these algorithms that try to detect if comments left on a blog are made by bots impersonating humans, I wonder if they’re sophisticated enough to detect humans emulating bots.…
When I get the time, I’m going to perform an experiment, the anti-Turing test of sorts. I’m going to leave comments on various sites that sound like bots, but are, in fact, me. (I’m mostly human, by the way.) The goal of the experiment would be to get them marked as spam. Of course, the crucial thing is that these should be comments relevant to the post, not real spam.
Tags: Bots, Humans, Spam
Posted in Daily Rant | 1 Comment »
November 1st, 2009
This Daylight Saving Time phenomenon is occurring so frequently I am almost getting bored talking about it. I’m sure you’re already bored hearing me talk about it. Turn a corner and poof! — the time’s changed again.
The funny thing is, I woke up this morning and had to hunt for evidence that the time had changed from PDT to PST last night.
I guess it’s technology catching up with social stupidity. Almost any clock that has a microchip is now capable of automatically adjusting to the jump in time with no manual intervention. The exceptions, of course, are the clocks that don’t store your time-zone.
So here’s what I found this morning.
Clocks that show the correct time:
- Computers (all desktops and laptops)
- Digital alarm clock
- Cell phone
Clocks that do not show the correct time:
- Microwave (stores only the time, not the date)
- Camera (stores the date, but not the time-zone)
- Pager (stores the date, but not the time-zone)
Perhaps I should have at least one good analog clock hanging on the wall to maintain my sanity.
Tags: DST, Technology
Posted in Daily Rant | No Comments »
October 31st, 2009
There was a young man who was a masta’
At making all kinds of great pasta
He cooked for the whole town
But gulped it all down
And wished he could eat it much fasta’.
Tags: Humor, Limericks
Posted in Humor | 3 Comments »