Teeeeejirrrrr

This topic comes up for me not necessarily as a rant, but as I was going through some old notes before tossing them away, and this issue came up. How much damage can an organization do to themselves by hiring discount, unqualified programming resources?

The answer: A hell of a lot.

If you own a small software development shop, do yourself a huge favor and keep reading.

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The Sarawak Chamber is the largest known underground chamber of its kind in the world. It is part of the ‘Good Luck Cave’ system which is located in Gunung Mulu National Park, in the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo.

The chamber is not yet fully explored, and roughly measures about 700m (2,300 feet) long, 400m (1,300 feet) wide and at least 70m (230 feet) high. To get a sense of how much space this is, imagine the amount of land you would need to park ten Boeing 747-400 aircraft in line.  That’s a lot of space! The irregular shape of Sarawak Chamber would probably fit at least 30 more inside if the ground was flat, and the entrance was big enough… well, it’s safe to say that I would have to be making a good number of assumptions indeed. In any event- It’s BIG.

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Gary Hobostein, my new comic strip

Shameless plug alert!

This is something I’ve started as a bit of an odd side project.

It’s a rather mature and cheeky webcomic about a strange character named Gary Hobostein.

Those of you who know of my odd sense of humor may find these strips entertaining- or absolutely horrifying. It’s your call

I haven’t been posting much on here this month because of a trip to Paris, and a generally busy working schedule. Sorry about that. I did take a lot of pictures while traveling though.

Warning- this may not be really all that funny unless you are a database administrator or a geek with the right knowledge. This rather silly product I am working with stores its data in the backend via a Microsoft SQL Server database. There’s nothing wrong with that… but on further examination of the schema I found a pretty ridiculous jewel of a table setup. Click on the picture to see the bloody details.

For those not technically inclined- this is precisely NOT how you would utilize a relational database server. It’s poor design, and rather an extreme and laughable example.

Octomom. Patron saint of the Clown Car. Image by davidvogler@flickr

I’m beginning to wonder if something really unavoidably bad has happened to the core of American society. I used to think that the rise of religious zealotry was one of the biggest issues we face internally as a nation and as a (relatively) educated people, but now I realize that is only the tip of the tidal wave.

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Does this really need a freaking sign? Picture is non related to the iPhone.

Is your 1st edition or 3G iPhone home button stuck?

Does it take multiple presses to get back to the home screen?

Does it sometimes not respond at all to the touch, even though the clicker mechanism seems to be intact and not making any grinding noises?

Is your phone no longer under warranty so you fear those sales reps er… Genius Bar technicians are going to try to gouge you on repair costs?

Is your phone not going to be serviceable because it’s been jailbroken?

Well, I’m not saying I have all the answers, but consider this before you take matters into your own hands and begin dissecting your iPhone looking for a way to replace the switch.

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Some workers at Alang, by carrieteicher@flickr

Alang is where ships of all sizes and nationalities go to die.
Located on the western coast of India, the great differences in shoreline between low and high tides allow ships to easily beach themselves where they are then disassembled on the spot. Dozens of ships are broken up here every year, and tens of thousands of workers flock here to earn a living in what could best be described as a free-for-all involving hand labor, blowtorches, and hammers.

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Good job, Yahoo.

Republic of Korea's King Sejong the Great

The battleship is dead!

No navy has built a new one since the close of World War II, well over 60 years ago. The concept of an all-gun surface warship is basically a relic from a time past. Imagine if the term “carriage” was used in a car review for something modern like a Lamborghini Gallardo. It would be out of place, and makes the writer sound less intelligent than they may be.

For example in this recent article by Paul Alexander of the API, he uses the word ‘battleship’:

…Japan has deployed battleships and Patriot missile interceptors off its northern coast to shoot down any rocket debris that the North has said might fall over the area…

Sure you could argue this is just petty semantics but unfortunately makes the writer look ill-informed about the basics of contemporary naval military technology. I’m sure that Paul is not a stupid fellow though- but it is a mistake that he is helping to perpetuate. Unfortunately for him what is normally a goof that only happens in conversation bit him with a published article on the web.

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Here are some photos I stumbled upon on Flickr, which I felt were quite good… subjectively valued by their framing, artistic merit, emotional content, and the vaguest of them all, sheer beauty:

Happy Birthday by redrocker_9@flickr

Feliz cumple.... by Espace vitto

Pattern by d's 2nd@flickr

Down the road, by humanwarmth@flickr

Pogled sa zvjezdarnice by *shana@flickr

Trio, by La Señorita Pil

To go to heaven, by ~ Araien ~@flickr

Dargın mıyız ? by Derya Hacalaki@flickr

Now for the fun part. These pictures come from two of the WORST digital cameras ever manufactured. Again- the pictures are absolutely beautiful and nothing bad can really be said about them… but the hardware is almost universally derided.

The first four photos were taken with a Polaroid i-Zone 550, a camera regarded as a toy. Its own user base tends to not really like it all that much. Not only a camera, it also comes with a built-in MP3 player, and unfortunately is good at neither task. Advertised as a 5.1 megapixel camera, it was shown to be a 3MP CCD that was upsampled to meet the specification- yet look at the nice shots that came out of the camera in this particular case.

The next four shots were taken with a Pentax Optio E-10, a camera known for its technical crappiness and generally hate-filled user reviews, and for its CCD imager chip randomly dying or batteries mysteriously being drained in abnormally short times.

Again, this is proof that the camera really does not make you a better photographer. Good tools help, but that’s all they are- tools. Many pixel-peepers today simply fail to grasp that.