John Borwick’s blog

Neat stuff John likes.

September 27th, 2005

I’m a Pony!

You Are A: Pony!

ponyWho doesn’t love a pony? You are one of these miniature horses, renown for your beauty and desired by many. Full of grace, you are a beautiful and very special animal, full of strength and majesty.

You were almost a: Lamb or a Kitten
You are least like a: Frog or a ChipmunkThe Cute Animals Quiz

September 27th, 2005

lede

Somewhere, recently, I read the term “lede” in the course of an article, which some web pages define as “the lead paragraph of a story, spelled phonetically so it’s not confused with ‘lead’ the weighting between lines or with the metal ‘lead.’”

The funny thing is, the only relevant entry in the OED is “lede: obsolete variant of lead.” That usually means that ‘lede’ is extremely old and not worth talking about. See also Random House’s word of the day for 2000/11/28. Random House says

The spelling “lede” was not invented by journalists. This spelling (and several other variants) was used for all meanings of the noun and verb up through the 1500s; the spelling “leade” or “lead” starts appearing at this time.

Therefore I believe “lede” should not be talked about today, because it’s totally obsolete and should not have been used in the last 500 years; it’s like saying “mine eyen.” Alternatively the OED should have something descriptive to say about “lede”. (I also checked the “lead” entries to see if “lede” were used in the examples, but I didn’t see any.)

“Lede” is used today. See

September 19th, 2005

GEEK CODE

YES I REALLY DID IT

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS d+(--) s++: a- C++$>+ UBLA++++$ P+++$ L++$
E(+)$ W+++ N o K--? w !O M+>$ !V PS+++ PE-- Y++
PGP++ t+ !5 X !R tv+ b DI+ D G>-- e++ h--- r++ y?
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
September 12th, 2005

Article in SysAdmin Magazine

I just got an article called “System Automation with PXE, Kickstart, and Cfengine” published in the October 2005 issue of SysAdmin magazine. We just got it in the mail today at work!

September 11th, 2005

Cats

Lauren and I got two kittens: Fred and Emma! They are really cute! Fred and Emma are brother and sister, and were born on July 1 2005. We got them last Wednesday, September 7 2005.

September 11th, 2005

“Christendom”

One point Neal Stephenson makes in The Baroque Cycle is that people from (Western) Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries used the term “Christendom” to refer to Europe, rather than Europe.

I like the term “Christendom.” It gives me a better idea of what most people in the West are thinking about when they use like “the West”, “First-World countries,” and “developed nations.”

It could make the news a lot more obvious: “Christendom gave $100m to tsunami victims,” for example. Christendom is running out of oil.

September 11th, 2005
September 7th, 2005

Slowest sudoku solver ever

Lauren’s mom introduced me to sudoku puzzles. While away from the Internet I wanted to write a Python program to solve the puzzles. My program is VERY EXTREMELY slow, and I even made it slower while writing it. 80% of the computational time (according to the “profile” module) is spent copying the Sudoku object in the “solution” method.

Now that I’ve got the Internet again, I can see the hundreds of google search results for “python sudoku”.

September 6th, 2005

The Baroque Cycle

I’m reading Quicksilver, the first in Neal Stephenson’s 2000 page “Baroque Cycle” trilogy. Historical fiction isn’t really my thing, but I’m off work all this week and I thought I could use a challenge.

September 6th, 2005

Rock the Block 2005

Rock the Block is occurring once again in downtown Winston-Salem. Please go to the website: the bobblehead people there scare me.

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