The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

  • My badges

    Mastodon

  • Twitter Updates

  • My Flickr Stream

    20140508-Delphi-2007--Project-Options--Cannot-Edit-Application-Title-HelpFile-Icon-Theming20140430-Fiddler-Filter-Actions-Button-Run-Filterset-now20140424-VMware-Fusion-6.0.3.-no-reclaimable
    More Photos

  • Pages

  • All categories

  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 1,862 other subscribers

Archive for the ‘Fun’ Category

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »

Geek Prank 😈😂😜 Windows XP Desktop Prank

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/04/01

Prank your friends by secretly opening this website on their computer while they’re away. Wait for them to return and watch their reaction

[WayBack] Geek Prank 😈😂😜 Windows XP Desktop Prank

There are others too, for instance:

Via: [WayBack] geekprank.com Simulate Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 10 and other annoyances in the browser (and switch it to full screen). – Thomas Mueller (dummzeuch) – Google+

Edit 20250730: per comments below there is also [Wayback/Archive] Windows XP – Full Screen || Geek Pranks which has two other pranks as well:

  1. [Wayback/Archive] Hacker Typer Online | GeekPrank
  2. [Wayback/Archive] Fake Broken Screen Prank || Geek Prank (these images are too low a resolution to be usable)

--jeroen

Posted in Apri1st, Fun, Prank | 3 Comments »

IP over Avian Carriers

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/02/21

From the geek fun department: [WayBack] IP over Avian Carriers – Wikipedia.

I learned through this slightly after the fight to keep HTTP status code 418 (I’m a teapot) which is part of RFC2324 released on April 1st, 1998.

The IP over Avian Carriers is part of three RFCs, all released on April 1st in various years:

–jeroen

via: Http-statuscode ‘I’m a teapot’ is voorlopig veilig – IT Pro – .Geeks – Tweakers

Posted in Communications Development, Development, Fun, Geeky, HTTP, Internet protocol suite, Software Development, TCP | Leave a Comment »

Di Cleverly – Google+: on 42 and geek stuff

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/02/11

Since it is the 42th day of this year: Via [WayBack] Di Cleverly – Google+

  • Adrian Colley
    For a slightly more serious answer, asterisk is most commonly used (in computing) to mean “repeat the previous pattern zero or more times”. In HHGttG, it’s suggested that if the Question and the Answer were known at the same time, the universe would vanish and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is a theory that this has happened several times. Zero or more times, you might say.
  • Perry Winkle (Shy Geek)

    pedant powers activated !

    in regex * is zero or more of the preceding character, but there is no preceding character

    as a file glob * is zero or more anything

    as an operator * is multiplication, but there are no operands

    in sports * next to a stat flags possible cheating

    there will be others if I go looking, but I think the point is that the question was ill defined with lack of context, therefore the answer is also ill defined with lack of context, at least that is how I interpreted the answer when I first saw the tv series (it was a radio show before that, but I never heard it)

    saying the answer is * is also ill defined and lacks context (i.e. is * a regex or a glob or an operator or …)

    also ASCII is not computer software, let alone the most basic computer software, ASCII is simply an agreed mapping from numbers to symbols eg 01000001 = 65 = 0x41 = A

    so if 42 was actually hexadecimal, then 42 = B and maybe the question was multi-choice (aka multi-guess), therefore my answer is 44 = D = all of the above

  • Martin Krischik
    +Perry Winkle not ever regular expression. And as i said the books predates regex.
  • Perry Winkle (Shy Geek)

    +Martin Krischik in sed, vi, awk, Perl, Python, Posix and many others it is, any exceptions would be painful regex engines to work with IMO

    also, I think you’ll find regex is actually older than HHGttG. HHGttG was first a radio play in 1978, regex was coined in the early 1950s for algebra and used in unix in the early 1970s

  • Jeroen Wiert Pluimers

    Sorry to spoil it: groups.google.com – Why 42 ? where in 1993, Douglas Adams writes:

    <<
    The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an
    ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations,
    base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk,
    stared into the garden and thought ’42 will do’ I typed it out. End of story.

    Best,

    Douglas Adams
    London, UK | d…@dadams.demon.co.uk (dormant)
    Currently in Santa Fe, NM | ada…@nic.cerf.net (current)
    >>

  • Mr. Firestone

    The first time someone handed me an iPhone with Siri, I asked the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Siri simply gave me information on those specific search terms. (More recently I asked the question again, and Siri answered 42)

    Google responded with a reference to Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, “Be excellent to each other”.

    I need someone to ask Alexa and report back.

    I’m using this to gauge where we are in the possibility of having AI overthrow humanity in the immediate future. 😁

  • Di Cleverly
    +Martin Krischik he played the guitar left handed! Wow! You really do learn something new everyday!
  • Matt Osbun

    +Adrian Colley You’re mixing regex with “everything in computing”

    +Martin Krischik And Douglas Adams worked mainly with Apple and Unix. Apple ripped off the * wildcard from Unix, CPM ripped it off from Apple, and MS-Dos ripped it off from CPM. The fact that DOS used it isn’t relevant. And regex started in 1951. A quick Google search confirmed that. So yes, it was in existence in 1979. GREP was using regex long before 1979. And yes, DA’s programming experience would have exposed him to all this. You seem to be conflating degrees with actual ability.

  • Perry Winkle (Shy Geek)

    FYI (geek alert) Unix was popular as a document printing/typesetting system early on hence tools like latex and nroff/troff (especially for printing formulas in computer science papers etc)

    (trivia alert) grep comes from the ed (or sed) command g/re/p where re is short for regular expression, it translates kind of as “globally in the file/stream, if the re matches, then print the line”

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Fun, History | Leave a Comment »

Reddit: parodies on O RLY Books

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/01/02

Many more “Essential Programming Guides” that are not in the O RLY Parody Book Generator for Slack are at [WayBack]  O RLY Books.

Related: [WayBack] generate (500×700)

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, Fun, Quotes, Software Development, T-Shirt quotes | Leave a Comment »

50 Shades of Grain

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/12/25

Have a good holiday season!

[WayBack] 50 Shades of Grain – Lars Fosdal – Google+: Adult cereals.

Original from [WayBack] Shopping Can Be Quite Entertaining 20 pics

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Fun | Leave a Comment »

It’s actually only “Helvetica” if it comes from the Helvetia region of Europe. Otherwise you have to call it “sparkling Arial”

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/12/24

Check out [WayBack] Pavel A. Samsonov on Twitter: “It’s actually only “Helvetica” if it comes from the Helvetia region of Europe. Otherwise you have to call it “sparkling Arial””

Too much font goodness:

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Font, Fun, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Start-up or Pokémon? Big-data or Pokémon?

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/12/17

Remember the introduction of Pokémon during summer 2016? Despite usage being far less by now ([WayBack] 80 Amazing Pokemon Go Statistics and Facts) you might still recollect the odd names the Pokémon Go characters in the Pokédex had: [WayBack] List of Pokémon – Wikipedia.

Back then I had the vague sense that some names reminded me of species, and others of companies. Both appeared to be true, for instance [WayBack] Seel looks awfully familiar to Seal. Domo has many meanings (including a Dutch dairy desert). Oh, and [WayBack] Gloom has quite a few meanings so I’m OK with being confused.

So I was amused bumping into these a while back: Pokémon names versus those of names of start-up and big-data companies:

The quizes also have very funny descriptions of what the companies behind the names stand (stood?) for, like “Hadoop is distributed system for counting words”.

Via many, including:

Maybe I should turn the GitHub repository in to a Google Assistant Trivia questionaire using a Google Sheet.

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Cloud, Fun, Infrastructure, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Programmer humour: Working at PornHub

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/12/11

Programmer humour from a while back:

“I don’t think I would be comfortable telling my family that I develop PHP either.”

Via:

 

Posted in Development, Fun, PHP, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Shark stepping on LEGO brick

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/11/23

A while ago I found [WayBack] Rare image of a shark stepping on a LEGO – Jeroen Wiert Pluimers – Google+ via [WayBack] Roderick Gadellaa – Google+.

I did some research for the origin, which turned out to be very interesting:

More background information:

More stunning pictures by Mike:

Mike Coots lost his leg to a tiger shark at age 18 while surfing off Kauai, Hawaii. But the experience didn’t shake his love for riding waves, the ocean—or sharks.

[WayBack] Stunning Photos by Shark Attack Survivor Capture Predators’ Beauty

–jeroen

https://twitter.com/Sonikku_a/status/781469409281921024

 

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Fun | Leave a Comment »

Likely the end of a tradition… ᴊᴏᴏsᴛ su Twitter: “Dear Mr. Juncker, you may not know this but here in Holland we have Dirk-Jan and it is tradition to read this comic twice a year don’t take this away from us it’s the only non-racist tradition we have!!!! Please!!!!!…”

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/10/28

[WayBack] ᴊᴏᴏsᴛ su Twitter: “Dear Mr. Juncker, you may not know this but here in Holland we have Dirk-Jan and it is tradition to read this comic twice a year don’t take this away from us it’s the only non-racist tradition we have!!!! Please!!!!!… https://t.co/wRIkBcQtnV”

It is about moving the clock forward in the Dutch comic DirkJan – Wikipedia by , which is done transitioning to Summer time – Wikipedia:

[WayBack] Annelies Hofstede on Twitter: “… “ posted the mirror image of moving the clock backwards:

I tracked the mirroring down to [WayBack] Reddit: Vannacht moet de klok weer verzet worden! : thenetherlands

Vannacht moet de klok weer verzet worden!
byu/—E inthenetherlands

Posting one of the above pictures was a long standing tradition in The Netherlands, usually resulting in other comics to be posted as well, like at

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Fun, History | Leave a Comment »

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »