Gadgetopia

i have some doughts in .net Please clarify me.: Some guy made a weak attempt to get posters on Spolsky’s discussion group to answer a homework question for him. Hilarity ensued.

Strong typing is hitting the keyboard with your fists. Weak typing is hitting it with so little force that the key doesn’t depress enough to activate the keyswitch

[…] Cyclomatic complexity refers to the vast number of washing machine cycle choices available on today’s machines.

Mario Theme Played with RC Car and Bottles: This is so many shades of awesome that I might die.

Super Mario theme recreated by driving an RC car at perfectly placed line of glass bottles.

A HTTP Story: This is several degrees of awesome.

A friend asked if I wanted to go to a party and I 202, and said 200. When we got there I asked for a glass of water, only to be given a 400 instead. So I asked for a Coke and the reply was 402, so I 202.

Gmail: Google’s approach to email: Here’s Google’s April Fools Day entry for this year.

Just click “Set custom time” from the Compose view. Any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient’s inbox. You can opt for it to show up read or unread by selecting the appropriate option.

Cute, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the Gmail Paper thing they did last year, which I actually fell for. They also did Google TiSP last year, which makes me think there are other goodies out there for today.

Make The Logo Bigger. The Song.: We play this in our office everything someone asks us to…

I don’t want to tell you how to do your job.
But, could you make the logo bigger?
Bigger, bigger, make it big.
Make the logo bigger.

Chorus
Make the logo as big as you can.
And make the logo bigger.

The Clbuttic Mistake: Absolutely love this.

“Apple made the clbuttic mistake of forcing out their visionary - I mean, look at what NeXT has been up to!”

Hmm. “clbuttic”.

Google “clbuttic” - thousands of hits!

Single Serving Sites: Kottke put together (he was kind of forced to put together) a great list of single purpose Web sites — one page sites that do something interesting. Think “Is It Christmas?”

Lately I’ve noticed a pattern of people building Single Serving Sites, web sites comprised of a single page with a dedicated domain name and do only one thing.

I must say I like “Let’s turn this f**cking Web site yellow.” I could have done without the profanity, but I still thought it was funny. Kind of like that new movie Untraceable, but with more color and less poison.

Stupidity or just refreshing honesty?: Good for a laugh this morning.

But I don’t think the scammers quite thought this through to the end, as you might notice looking at the URL that the “Log in” button links to - stupidity or just refreshing honesty?

I like one of the comments: “I wonder what the old scam was like.”

Tim Berners-Lee’s original NeXT machine — first Web server: I love this.

That’s Tim’s handwriting on the first computer on the Web (this is the computer that Tim used to invent the WWW).

This link runs a slooow SQL query on the RIAA’s server. Don’t click it; that would be wrong.

Found on reddit.com. I clicked it, just out of curiosity. It pulled a press-releases index page. I don’t know how someone knows it’s slow.

Computer Randomly Plays Classical Music: The most bizarre Microsoft help topic ever.

During normal operation or in Safe mode, your computer may play “Fur Elise” or “It’s a Small, Small World” seemingly at random. This is an indication sent to the PC speaker from the computer’s BIOS that the CPU fan is failing or has failed, or that the power supply voltages have drifted out of tolerance. This is a design feature of a detection circuit and system BIOSes developed by Award/Unicore from 1997 on.

Is it Christmas?: There’s RSS if you need it.

FARK.com: Frequently Asked Questions: Farkisms: I hate it when people comment on something with “First” or “First Post.” Fark found a good solution.

For whatever reason message boards on sites like Fark are forever plagued with morons posting “First Post” anytime a link is posted. Fark automatically turns the words “first post” into the word “boobies” and resets the timestamp on the message to some time in the future so that it isn’t the first post anymore.

Now, commentors, let’s see if you can avoid the obvious.

There’s a science to CBS’ ‘Big Bang Theory’: The CBS sitcom “The Big Bang Theory” (which is quite funny, I must say), employs a consulting physicist to try and keep the geek science accurate.

But the science gets some attention, too. David Saltzberg, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California-Los Angeles, checks scripts and provides dialogue, math equations and diagrams used as props. He says he’s more consultant than contributor.

“Physicists love to nitpick, so for the 100 in the 10 million people who might watch the show, I try to get it as close to 100% accurate as I can,” he says.

A summary of the show, from the Wikipedia page:

The series is about two socially inept prodigies in their 20s who are living across the hall from a beautiful girl with a questionable intellect. When one genius falls for the girl, the other tries to discourage his interest because he believes his friend is chasing a dream he’ll never catch.

When you’re browsing the network in Leopard, this is what the icons for Windows machines look like.

Google Answers HCI PhD Program: This page comes up first when you Google for “cancel google.” The page happens to allow comments. The results, like we’ve seen before, are hysterical.

I WANT TO TAKE GOOGLES OFF OF MY HOME PAGE

[…] I did not authorize google to invade and set up on my computer. If this was my house/home the offending person would be under arrest. Google can fry for doing this

[…] Remove my name from your list NOW. I don’t and won’t be a part of a left wing liberal operation like yours. You can sign up all the MOVEOVER.Nuts your want but leave me out.

And they go on and on, despite repeated warnings and, apparently, repeated mass deletions by the site owner.

This page now shows up as #1 for “cancel google”. I initially deleted all comments related to that but eventually found it so amusing that I had to let them through. I get a chuckle out of the “don’t be evil” mantra and then reading these comments.

I got a packet in the mail the other day from a company called “Highlet.” They’re not a real company — it’s a contest of sorts.

An ad agency called Publicis Modem is running a campaign for some unnamed company posing as Highlet. If you figure out the actual company, you get a prize. They won’t say what it is. (And Publicis Modem keeps referring to this as a “buzz campaign,” which bothers me — if you have to say it’s a “buzz campaign,” do you really have buzz?)

Anyway, Highlet is a company that’s behind the times and proud of it. They sent me this brochure (JPG scan), accompanied by a 5.25” floppy, which I have no way of reading (which is, I think, the point).

Their Web site is highlet.com. I took a look through domain records, but didn’t turn anything up but a known fake address in France.

If you solve it, I guess let me know and I’ll submit your guess to the agency. If you win, I’ll send you whatever the prize is.

Toshiba Battle Royale: Here’s this week’s question at the Battle Royale:

What technology would be better used for something other than its original purpose?

My response will piss about a third of you off.

Chuck (TV series): I saw a preview for this show on the flight from Denver to San Francisco. It looks pretty hysterical — Chuck is a member of the Geek Squad “Nerd Herd” at Best Buy “Buy More,” and he gets a bunch of spy secrets embedded in his brain. The government wants them back. Hillarity ensues.

It’s kind of a Johnny Mnemonic meets WarGames type thing, with a little Office Space thrown in.

I Want You To Watch Me Play Madden: One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen on MadTV.