{ dubovsky.com rantings }

Continuing with Jono’s meme:

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the closest.

My result (while at work): “DeviceRect must compute these values from those supplied.” — Design Patterns, Gamma, Helm, Johnson, Vlissides

My friend Paul had a gig last weekend with Greg Hawks for a new CD, Coming Home. He’s a solid song-writer, a pleasant singer, and has the backing of a good band. The CD is well worth buying if you’re into roots country music.

My two favorite Edsger Dijkstra quotes:

… if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself “Dijkstra would not have liked this”, well, that would be enough immortality for me. (From EWD1213.)

and:

Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a quality that decides between success and failure. (From EWD1284.)

Dethroner has a cute little post about diner coffee. An excerpt:

Let me tell you why coffee — even the scalding devil’s spunk of truck stop pots — is a precious, positive force.

No one without hope ever drinks coffee. If you put a cup to your lips, you’ve made a tacit acknowledgment that you expect life to get just a little bit better. If you’re hung over, coffee is the first, scrambling step towards level. On the long road, coffee is the assumption that you’ll make a few more miles. Coffee is the signal to an antagonist world that you’re ready to stand up for one more day.

No other liquid, not even our Dread Lord Beer, carries with it so much implicit optimism. If beer is heaven, coffee is faith.

The next time you’re forced to choke back swill in lieu of a proper cup of hand-wrought coffee in full bouquet, try not to think of what you’re missing; instead appreciate the unadorned truth in your hand: a molten, metallic distillation of hope.

Dethroner’s recent series on coffee (beans, tasting, equipment, and general thoughts) has some good ideas in it. I recommend reading it if you’ve missed it (start with Why Not Great Coffee?). My favorite bit of pure entertainment from the group: video of making free-poured latte art.

One of my favorite bands, the Barenaked Ladies have a new album, Barenaked Ladies Are Me, out on their own label. (NPR’s Weekend Edition had a good interview (RealAudio or windows media formats only; sorry) with them on Saturday.) Along with the normal CD and LP formats, the album can be had via download (MP3 or FLAC) and on a USB flash drive. The (256 MB) flash drive contains all the tracks, plus videos and such. It’s good to see established artists embracing new ways of distributing music and engaging their fans, and BNL has been at the forefront of the movement for quite some time.

Yeah, flash sucks, but that’s all we get for the moment.

• If you’re following a bad guy (problem) through a dimly-lit building, don’t get tunnel vision. There’s probably another bad guy hiding right next to you, waiting to bite your neck or otherwise ruin your week.
• If you see a dusty treasure sitting on a dusty temple shelf, look around and think before you pick it up. It probably wasn’t left there because it was useful.
• Spend some time every game looking for a better weapon (skill), but don’t spend all your time looking for it.
• If your teammate dies out in the open, sometimes it’s worth getting shot in order to rez them. Doing this when your teammate is only going to be immediately killed again is neither helpful nor popular.
• If no one else is around, you’re the best tank driver. If a better driver shows up, it may be wise to hand over the keys.

Do you know what the Easter Bunny does the other 364 days of the year?

Web comics that I think are (usually) worth reading:

• Scary Go Round, by John Allison
• Penny Arcade, written by Jerry Holkins and illustrated by Mike Krahulik
• Achewood, by Chris Onstad
• Over-compensating, by Jeffrey Rowland, author of the (now-web-dead) Wigu
• Questionable Content, by Jeph Jacques
• Diesel Sweeties, by Richard Stevens III
• Copper, by Kazu Kibuishi. It’s worth checking out his other work at boltcity.com
• Perry Bible Fellowship, by Nicholas Gurewitch

I’ve been using a fountain pen for years, but I had never known a fountain-pen-safe waterproof ink — until today. Apparently the folks at the Noodler’s Ink Company have created a few inks that contain cellulose-reactive dyes. No pigment means a happy pen, but waterproof means I can finally use my fountain pen to address envelopes, too. I’ll definitely have to order a couple-few colors and give them a spin.