Vern

27 September 2005 » In Funny » 1 Comment

Vernon is a friend of mine at Yahoo!, who invariably comes up with things that stick in your head for a while. He’s funny, to say the least. The latest:

Vernon: If you ever need to kick an old grandma to death, Slayer is the music to do it to.. No wait, Ministry is better.

Soup du Jour

21 September 2005 » In Food, Funny » 5 Comments

Seen on the cafeteria lunch menu at work:

Stockpot: Scarlet Runner Bean Soup with Ham Hocks

I hesitate to ask what “scarlet runner” means in this context. And in general, to think of it. Although, mmmm, ham hocks.

Rendezvous at the Fiction Corner

19 September 2005 » In Books » 1 Comment

I love books. But I adore new books.
To me there is something singular about picking up a crisp volume, feeling it heft or lightness in my hands, turning it over to inspect how well it’s been put together. I like to run my fingers over the texture of the cover and the pages, flicking them like playing cards, one thin sheet after another in a deliberate and languorous movement, catching a glance of a letter, a word, a sentence. I look at the unbroken spine, binding the book until its proper owner decides to make the first crease by unfolding it harshly, to keep it in its place during breakfast or lunch.
I like to glimpse through the quotes and adulations on the back cover, all unequivocally promising a remarkable experience. I look at the foreign objects affixed to the book by the book mongers, the promotional stickers and pricing labels, pinning its value to a specific amount and categorizing it among its brethren. I open a page at random and look at the typeface, noting its stylistic grace, the seriffed letters, the elaborate initials, the ascenders and the descenders, forever trying to fill the empty space between the lines. I hold the book closer and gently inhale its unique and tangy smell: the ink, the glue, and the paper melting together into a characteristic bouquet that makes you swoon slightly and triggers the memories you thought were long gone.
I sit and look at the new book in my hands, thinking about the promise contained inside this veritable Schrödinger’s box, the work that went into it all, the time someone spent in a dusty office, in a country house, in a dark room illuminated by the glow of a screen, capturing the words out of ether and into their solid form, struggling against the entropy, stringing one sentence after another, and another, and another. I wonder whether I will be absorbed for hours or abandon it after just a few chapters, condemning it to sit in the book case until given away to someone more appreciative. I savor the anticipation of turning to the first page and being seized by the opening sentence. But until I do that… this moment is mine, and this experience will remain, always, a sublime one.
Here’s to a new book.

UPS or Oops?

19 September 2005 » In Funny » 11 Comments

I got home after work and noticed the red message light blinking on the house phone. The voicemail was from UPS, “Please call us, we think we might have a package for you”. How tentative, I thought. The call went something like this:

Andrei: “I got a message that you might have a package for me?”
UPSer: “Yes, we have one with half of its label torn off. It’s addressed to your street and apartment number, but we have no building number. Are you expecting a package?”
Andrei: (trying to recall) “Maybe. Where is it from?”
UPSer: “New England.”
Andrei: (boggles) “New England? Can you be more specific?”
UPSer: “No, that’s all it says: NE.”
Andrei: (wishing one could smack people over the phone) “Yes, it’s mine.”

I was in fact expecting a package. From Nebraska. Clearly UPS has superior training for its associates.

Unicoding

12 August 2005 » In PHP, Work » 3 Comments

The project that we have been working on for the past 4 months is finally seeing the light of day: yesterday I merged the Unicode support into the public PHP tree. I was going to say that my part of the hard work is done, but I guess I still have to edu-ma-cate developers about Unicode and other finer things in life. 🙂

Futuristic Bikes

09 August 2005 » In Other » 3 Comments

If these are for real, I’ve gotta get me one (or two) of those.
UPDATE: I was kidding, of course.

OSCON 2005 Photos

08 August 2005 » In Talks » 2 Comments

Photos from OSCON 2005 are uploaded. I stole some from Marcus, and no doubt will steal some from others as well.

OSCON 2005

06 August 2005 » In Talks » 3 Comments

I am back from OSCON 2005, where I presented a talk about the work we’re doing on the Unicode support in PHP. The slides are available here. Mine was not the only talk regarding Unicode at the conference: Dan Kogai gave a presenation on Perl 5.8 and Unicode, and in my opinion, PHP 5.5/6 or whatever it ends up being will have a much better integrated runtime support in this area, not to mention an awesome set of i18n functions thanks to ICU. The goal is to make PHP as good as or better than any other Web development language out there when it comes to Unicode support, and so far that pretty much means Java. I am confident that that goal will be achieved.
This conference was, by any account, an excellent one: great talks, good networking, seeing Portland for the first time, and of course a chance to catch up with old friends and make new ones.

Pasting Wrapped URLs

22 July 2005 » In Other, Tech » 6 Comments

Here’s another Mozilla/Firefox tip: if you copy a URL wrapped over multiple lines from somewhere and try to paste it into the address bar, you will end up only with the first line of it. To fix it, go to about:config and change editor.singleLine.pasteNewlines setting to 3 or add:

user_pref(“editor.singleLine.pasteNewlines”, 3);

to your user.js file. Now all the line breaks will be removed upon pasting.

Ask Jeeves Interview

19 July 2005 » In Funny, Tech » 2 Comments

I didn’t know that SatireWire was back until Jeremy mention it on his blog. Anyways, this interview with Ask Jeeves is one of the funniest things I have laid my eyes on lately. <wiping tears> Thanks, guys.
P.S. Maybe it’s not really back. Oh, how easily dreams are crushed.