Archive for September, 2006

More Insights…

Saturday, September 30th, 2006

After the last one, OnStartups.com has posted another nice article which, this time, gives advice for people who work for startups.

Hmm. My first job was for a startup, and I leart quite a bit of stuff there. But whatever happens, once you’re a startup employee, your mindset is always that way. You never take anything for granted. Anyways, out of the 17, I think this is what I want to remember most:

If you’re not building something you think you’ll be proud of, it’s not worth it. Life is short..

Amen, brother.

God Wrote in Lisp

Friday, September 29th, 2006

This is so cool, it has to be reproduced here. Original from here.

The Eternal Flame (God Wrote in Lisp)

Tekst van Bob Kanefsky, gezongen door Julia Ecklar.

I was taught assembler
in my second year of school.
It’s kinda like construction work –
with a toothpick for a tool.
So when I made my senior year,
I threw my code away,
And learned the way to program
that I still prefer today.

Now, some folks on the Internet
put their faith in C++.
They swear that it’s so powerful,
it’s what God used for us.
And maybe it lets mortals dredge
their objects from the C.
But I think that explains
why only God can make a tree.

For God wrote in Lisp code
When he filled the leaves with green.
The fractal flowers and recursive roots:
The most lovely hack I’ve seen.
And when I ponder snowflakes,
never finding two the same,
I know God likes a language
with its own four-letter name.

Now, I’ve used a SUN under Unix,
so I’ve seen what C can hold.
I’ve surfed for Perls, found what Fortran’s for,
Got that Java stuff down cold.
Though the chance that I’d write COBOL code
is a SNOBOL’s chance in Hell.
And I basically hate hieroglyphs,
so I won’t use APL.

Now, God must know all these languages,
and a few I haven’t named.
But the Lord made sure, when each sparrow falls,
that its flesh will be reclaimed.
And the Lord could not count grains of sand
with a 32-bit word.
Who knows where we would go to
if Lisp weren’t what he preferred?

And God wrote in Lisp code
Every creature great and small.
Don’t search the disk drive for man.c,
When the listing’s on the wall.
And when I watch the lightning burn
Unbelievers to a crisp,
I know God had six days to work,
So he wrote it all in Lisp.

Yes, God had a deadline.
So he wrote it all in Lisp.

With The Don

Friday, September 29th, 2006

Stanford Magazine has published a really cool article on Donald Knuth recently. Go check it out. Did you know he actually wanted to be a musician?!

From BloGTK

Friday, September 29th, 2006

Just checking all ye, if the xml-rpc thing is setup correctly or not. I’m currently using BloGTK, if this thing works, I might move to an emacs-based blog client soon ;-)