A Few Changes

So I hacked into the CSS for this erstwhile beautiful template to make it all my own. Decidely craptastic and the victim of a geek thinking he can make stuffs look nice. (here's a hint why that's bad, programmers designed Frontpage, as well as, I'm sure, not a few of the American Cars on the road today (honestly, Pontiac Aztec, you can't tell me that wasn't thrown together by a bunch of engineers from MIT after a power failure wiped out the amazing design the actual designers had spent months doing. It honestly looks like someone made a car out of one of those fudge chunks you see at fairs. Or, just as easily, those MOUNTAINS OF CHOCOLATE that used to be portrayed in the DQ commercials).

But hey, I wanted to make this my own, so there you have it. I also bought the domain www.periodically.org, so now you can tell all your friends you read Periodically.org, not some random effusive ramblings of a writer wannabe who couldn't get Niteowl as a blogger URL so got THEniteowl.

Geez louise, uncool even in the nerdosphere.

Anyhoo, someone remind me to post a buncha links to some very very funny stuffs on the internets that the average non-nerd might not know about.

Oh, well, it's not really that much of a bother, here are two, at least.

The first one is a doozy. Alright, in the programmer world, new languages pop up, 'cool' ones, ones that do neat things very cleanly, or do old things in new ways, or do new things in old ways the way current languages should have done them. Before you all go comatose, I'll try and huck an analogy your way.

Let's say you got this saw right? Ok, that's your current programming language. It cuts stuff, and stuff. It does it's job. Then along comes another tool, this is a jig saw. It's lighter, it can cut through fricking coping for god's sake, it's pretty dark cool. It can also be hanged (hung? shit, I'm so using this word the wrong way) in your workspace much easier. And then along comes the black and decker jigsaw cordless thingamadoohickey. And it's even better. So there is a natural progression of languages. Some are made to be very cool. At least from a coder's perspective.

Ruby is such a language. I won't bore you with details except to note that the more or less official manual for Ruby is this, written by some fella by the name of why. Yes, why. Yes, it's the sort of name that will inspire many "Who's on second?" type of discussions. I have neither the talent nor the inkling to go down that way.

So anyhoo, this fella is super popular. In the blogosphere, I think he would actually be completely out of mine. He'd be the sort who'de be invited to conventions just on his blog. Luminaries in tech would quote him, or reference him in witty Silicon Valley banter. He's that cool. But that's besides the point. My point here is that the guy is a bloody genius. Bordering on completely insane due to his truly awesome sense of absurd humour, but there you have it, love him.

He's like Robin Williams and Bill Watterson's love child with a little genetic splicing with Salvatore Dali and maybe a pinch of pure, brazen, wild eyed and heroin induced madness. He's that good.

And the second is.. Well, it's nerdy within nerd. I'm not even sure if an analogy would work here. If I know you in real life, and we meet up for some social event, I'll explain it to you. If you are nerdy enough, then let me just say one word "Penultima".