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You know you are a nerd when…

• You read a news post about a Vim version that you know that was released half a year ago, just to enjoy the umpteenth battle of the editor war. Then you remember old times, when people from the Church worked harder. You think their arguments against Vim, although completely false, used to seem better than now. Then you go back to edit your code, and press i.

• You read that Scientists Harvest Nano-Power From Hamsters, and you think that posting about it in your blog is the best way to remember to tell it to your nanoscience colleagues tomorrow morning.

• You read that False Fact in Wikipedia Proves Itself, and you are not surprised at all. You expected it. Since causality concerns information, there’s no problem with Wikipedia not being causal. Although you hate it being like this, because you enjoy reading and editing it. But there are too many editors that don’t really understand what primary sources (like you) are.

• You read that Intel Moves Up 32nm Production, Cuts 45nm, you know what this means and the benefits of the change without reading anything but the title, hope Intel’s bet is successful, and enjoy reading comments like Do you know how much CPU it took to fucking land someone on the moon? Why does it take 200 times that just to browse the web? or —Why would even watching a video on youtube need a 16-core processor?—You clearly underestimate how much Flash sucks. And you think you should not begin criticising Flash now if you want to sleep before tomorrow morning.

• You read that Microsoft is being accused of squandering billions on R&D (and follow a couple of links), you learn how the R&D investments of Microsoft + Big Blue compare to the (already known) totals of your (supposed-to-be-developed) country, and ask yourself why things cannot change at home, at once.

Slashdot. News for nerds. Stuff that matters.

John Williams

If it wasn’t for the title of the post, could you imagine what Fiddler on the Roof, Star Wars (episodes IV, V, VI, I, II, III), Superman, Jaws (1, 2), Indiana Jones (I, II, III, IV), E.T., Born on the Fourth of July, Home Alone (1, 2), Jurassic Park (I, II, III), Schlinder’s List, Sabrina, Seven Years in Tibet, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan, The Patriot, Harry Potter (I, II, III), Catch me if you can, Minority Report, The Terminal, Memoirs of a Geisha and Munich have in common?

Yes. A composer. A man with 5 Academy Awards (out of 45 nominations: 40 for Best Original Music Score, and 5 for Best Original Song), 2 Emmys (5 nominations), 4 Golden Globe Awards (20-22? nominations), 7 BAFTAs (11 nominations) and 21? Grammys (59-60? nominations). John Towner Williams (Wikipedia, Imdb, homepage).

And here’s A StarWars a capella tribute to John Williams (thanks Pol and Roser for the link!):

Server names

Some days ago I read an article on personalities and the names of servers.

If you can’t remember the IPs of your computers, what kind of root you are?