Tech Talk — Legacy Forums — Strolen's Citadel

Tech Talk

#1

Well, we have a thread devoted to dice talk, why not one devoted to tech talk too? :twisted:

Widgets:
http://www.konfabulator.com provides cool widgets that provide such things as to do lists, weather reports, currency converters, bit torrent search bars and so forth. All of these widgets are relatively small and you could probably fit 3-7 on the right edge of your computer screen.

Or as the developers say:
Konfabulator is a JavaScript runtime engine for Windows and Mac OS X that lets you run little files called Widgets that can do pretty much whatever you want them to. Widgets can be alarm clocks, calculators, can tell you your WiFi signal strength, will fetch the latest stock quotes for your preferred symbols, and even give your current local weather.

Tech Talk

#2

MoonHunter is only somewhat technical, but I read way, way, too much. Way back when, I was one of the guys who wanted to learn to code (we were using punch cards okay?). I found myself on the bottom of the curves after the guys who were living in the computer labs. Realizing I was a minor computer geek, but a major gaming one. I found my way out of the lab and into the fan world. But I still keep my hand in.

This piece reinforces my lifelong belief that unless your archetype (class) is coder/ hacker, you should stay out of the field.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/07/21/spark.codejam/index.html

SAN FRANCISCO, California (CNN) -- Computer software code writing may not be everyone's idea of a competitive sport, but thanks to a type of contest that is growing in popularity, things may soon change.

U.S.-based company TopCoder runs coding competitions for up-and-coming software programmers.

The contests -- called codejams -- take place online as well as at venues, attracting up to 60,000 participants for big competitions, with prize money for individual winners reaching up to $20,000.

During codejams, software engineers are presented with a problem, and they have to write a code that solves it. The engineer who comes up with the best solution in the quickest time, wins.

TopCoder chief operating officer and president Rob Hughes told CNN that the competitions were growing in popularity among software engineers, as well as among technology companies who use them to scout for future employees.

"In the software development industry, it's fairly well-known that you can get up to 10 times the productivity gain from a very talented software developer versus an average software developer and our clients are looking for that kind of productivity gain."

He said the United States was full of discovered talent, but the rest of the world remained untapped.

Online versions of code jams were a way of discovering people from other parts of the world, Hughes said.

Like most big players in the tech world, search engine Yahoo is always on the hunt for top software engineers to join the company.

But Yahoo chief executive Usama Fayyad told CNN that finding the right kind of future employees was no easy task.

He said the code jams gave the company the chance to look at parts of the world it would not normally have access to.

"These are the kinds of candidates who don't necessarily respond to job ads. They're not necessarily looking," he said.

"You need to essentially actively seek them and TopCoder is a good mechanism for us to make connections with this crowd."

Search engine Google, meanwhile, recently held a code jams in Bangalore, in India, and the company has offered the winner a job.

TopCoder's next algorithm competition starts August 16, 2005.

Tech Talk

#3

What a perfectly great geek tool

http://makeashorterlink.com

About Make A Shorter Link
This web site provides a simple service - when you find a page on the web whose address is too long to paste into an email or other document, you can use our free service to generate a shorter, simpler address.

You can pass that shorter URL on to your friends by email, confident that most email clients will recognise it as a URL and turn it into something clickable.

Tech Talk

#4

This is a fun read....

Care and Feeding of your Hacker, by Peter Seebach

A tiny segment of What is Hacking? (same page) that seemed appropriate.

:Other Interests:
=================

Some hobbies are widely shared and recognized as going with the
culture: science fiction, music, medievalism (in the active form
practiced by the Society for Creative Anachronism and similar
organizations), chess, go, backgammon, wargames, and intellectual
games of all kinds. (Role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons
used to be extremely popular among hackers but they lost a bit of
their luster as they moved into the mainstream and became heavily
commercialized. More recently, "Magic: The Gathering" has been widely
popular among hackers.) Logic puzzles. Ham radio. Other interests
that seem to correlate less strongly but positively with hackerdom
include linguistics and theater teching.

blinkenlights

#5

This term derives from the last word of the famous blackletter-Gothic sign in mangled pseudo-German that once graced about half the computer rooms in the English-speaking world.

ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS!

Alles touristen und non-technischen looken peepers!
Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben.
Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken
mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen.
Das rubbernecken sichtseeren keepen das cotten-pickenen hans in das
pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das blinkenlichten.

Or the internet version

ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS!

Das Internet is nicht fuer gefingerclicken und giffengrabben. Ist easy
droppenpacket der routers und overloaden der backbone mit der spammen
und der me-tooen. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. Das
mausklicken sichtseeren keepen das bandwit-spewin hans in das pockets
muss; relaxen und watchen das cursorblinken.

http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/blinkenlights.html