Cum Grano Salis : Touchy Feely

Code Art - like ASCII art, only sucks so much more to create....

Shahar — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 04:32:00 GMT

I have made two examples of Code Art - taking a piece of code that does something and placing the text in such a manner that it conveys the idea of the program. The reason it sucks so much more than ASCII art is two-fold:

a. It is very hard to do significant touch-ups to the "art" - since the order of the characters is important (it's a program!)

b. You only have so many characters to play with. You need to gauge the needed size of the "art"

There are a few rules:

1. You cannot use comments as part of the "graphics" - every single character needs to be something that actually compiles.

2. You cannot create "nop" functions for filler. You can, in some cases, make things longer than they need to be. For example, if you have a "+2" somewhere, you can type "+ 1 + 1" if you need longer text. However, you should use that as a last resort.

3. You should not have "dead" code. Every piece of code that's in the art needs to be reachable (and should actually be reached where it makes sense).

Here are the screen-shots of the examples. The first is a program that calculates Pi to the 1000th character. If you cut and paste the code as is into Visual Studio, into a C# project, it will compile and show PI on a console window.

The following code shows the Bubble-sort algorithm:

(If you don't get it, these are 3 soap bubbles at the top and the plastic thing you use to create them at the bottom).

A download of both source files are attached to this post.

Nice article in CNet - shipping Vista

Shahar — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 20:58:00 GMT

http://news.com.com/Vistas+last+mile/2009-1016_3-6133357.html?tag=nefd.lede

This is probably the first time I have seen an accurate portraiel of how shipping at Microsoft works. While the Vista process seems to be a little different than the Office one, they have a lot in common.

Office 2007 Party - Things to regret at a later date

Shahar — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 02:38:00 GMT

(Disclaimer: This post contains words, phrases and audio that may offend some people. Please hit your "back" key if you are easily offended by rude words)

Last friday we had a party for the Office group. One of the things that we had there was this booth that created DVDs of your head over dancing animation.

Jen and Luis both joined me in doing the "Baby got Back" dance. Jen was the Mix Meister and Luis and me were, in her own words, "her Ho's".

Can't say my first experience as a Ho was too much of a bad one. I may have to explore it some more.

Luis is the left dancer and I am the right dancer. Jen is in the middle busting some rymes.

Video: Jen, Luis and me dancing

Zune in hebrew.. Give me a freaking break.

Shahar — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 05:13:00 GMT

The tech sections in Israeli news-papers were full of the AMAZING news that MS has shipped a product who's name sounds just like the F-word in Hebrew.

Wouldnt have minded this too much - the tech sections of Israeli newspapers are notoriously amaturish (great example is "Captain Internet" in Haaretz), but now the international news networks seemed to have picked it up. Some things are best left untouched.

Give me a F-ing break. The words don't sound anything alike. The word "Sheet" and the S-word sound closer to each other than Zune does to Zi-Yoon.

Hebrew words I really miss in English..

Shahar — Tue, 16 May 2006 19:17:00 GMT

Generally speaking, English is much richer than Hebrew*. The number of words in English has been recently pegged at just under 1,000,000 (1 million) words - this includes "double counting" words such as dog - where, at the very least it can be a noun and a verb. Even the most modest estimates peg English at 250,000 words. Hebrew, in contrast, probably has fewer than 80,000 words.

And yet, every now and again, I find myself wanting to use a word that does not exist in English. Four words especially come to mind:

* BeTeavon - the equivalent of Bon-Apetite. Literally translates to "with apetite". I hear people using Bon Aptetite every now and again, but it's not really wide-spread.

* Nu or Noo - a word used to hurry someone. The equivalent of "Tsk"ing.

* Davka- roughly translates to "out of spite", but not quite. Literally translates to something like "actually" (but can have other meanings). Usually used by kids.

* Titchadesh - when someone gets something new (pretty much anything, from matirial things to a new hair-cut), the congratulatory term used is "Titchadesh" which literally translates to "Be New".

Of the four, the word I miss most is "Titchadesh". What do I tell someone who tells me "I got a new iPod"? (Other than "Why the hell did you get an iPod?!") Congratulations doesn't seem to cut it for me.

* This is the moment where my friend Amir usually interjects and complains how in Hebrew both Desk and Table are "Shoolchan", but each finger of the hand has it's own name (as opposed to English where the names of the fingers - other than the thumb and pinky - have something to do with the function of that finger)

What's next? Binding you to your couch during commercials? Some content providers are slowly going insane.

Shahar — Mon, 08 May 2006 19:27:00 GMT

http://news.com.com/Someone+has+to+pay+for+TV--but+who/2100-1041_3-6069449.html?tag=nefd.top

Apparently there's a new standard that will prevent you from (get this) fast-forwarding through commercials. Worst - it will not even let you change channels.

I have a TiVo. It makes watching TV bearable. For every 2 minutes of actual TV you watch w/o it, you can expect to watch 1 minute of commercials. And now, it seems, content providers want to block that too.

From the article:

Four years ago, Jamie Kellner, then head of the Turner Broadcasting System, remarked in an interview in CableWorld magazine that viewers who used DVRs to fast-forward past commercials were committing "theft," then a moment later described it as "stealing the programming." He did allow trips to the bathroom as a noncriminal exemption.

He allows us trips to the bathroom? Thanks man!

What's next? "Turning off your TV is considered theft since you are not watching all the commercials that our advertisers pay for.."?

DRM.. Broadcast Flag.. No internet neutrality.. No fast forward.. [Insert melodramatic closing statement here about not owning our own DNA soon]

What if TVs were presented like digital cameras...

Shahar — Mon, 01 May 2006 23:40:00 GMT

I was just thinking about this a couple of days ago. How dumb would it be if, instead of using diagonal size for TVs back in the 1930's they would have used the complete area of the TV? We can even find a funky name for it! A Squinch!

Think about it. Your small 13" TV would actually be a 81 Squinch TV! Wow. Sounds much more impressive than a measly 13". So the, the next step is if somebody told you: "Want to upgrade to a 192 Squinch TV?" you immediatly think to yourself "Man. That rocks. Twice as large!!". But of course, a 192 Inch TV is only a 20" diagonal.. Not as impressive.

A 40" TV would actually equate to a 768 Squinch TV. That's almost ten times as large as our measly 81 Squinch TV. 7.68 Centa-squinch, if you will. Now that really rocks.

Conversely, using a diagonal pixel count (Pixonals!) instead of the impressive Mega-pixel woud make your old digital camera a 288 pixonal camera (that's 1 MegaPixel). The more advanced one would be 500 Pixonal digital camera (that's 3 MegaPixels). And the high-end shooters today would have a CCD which is 816 Pixonal (for those keeping count - 8 MegaPixels). Might be less impressive than using Megapixel, but it gives people a better feel as to what to expect from an upgrade.

I am a dad for the first time!

Shahar — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 02:55:00 GMT

Last night my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named Dani she was so cute that we decided to keep her!

See why? :)

My S1 TiVo has finally been retired.

Shahar — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 11:01:00 GMT

Replaced with an S2 140h TiVo I got for free from TiVo (through their rewards program).

Now I have two S2s in my network. Can transfer shows between them etc. Very nice indeed.

The S1 was showing its age - it was still kind'a functioning, but the MfsFtp hack I had on it (the one that allows you to extract shows) stopped working..

The king is dead. Long live the new king!