Hug a developer today

Funny video with a point to make...

You have to burn the rope!

This game is so hard...

[Hat tip to Osias for the link]

A dream during siesta

I had a strange dream this Sunday afternoon. I was in a complex enterprise of some sort. Don’t know of what kind but seemed very powerful and diverse, yet loosely organized. I was a stranger in that place and apparently had just escaped prison. Don’t know why I was in prison in the first place; don’t know how I managed to swiftly appear outside of it either.

At some points, I had friends walking with me through doors of different departments and rooms. Friends and rooms were simply popping in and out, without any explanation. Like a poor movie. Effusive were my efforts to understand what was going on. I was looking all over the place for something; at least some clue. Don’t know what. And nothing gave me any edge. And nobody seemed to care so I kept walking.

I see the prison again and a friend materializes right next to me. Don’t know how or why. Now at least we have a purpose. We need to escape, get out of there as soon as possible, no matter what. We try to pretend we have nothing to hide while walking casually. They see us, of course. It was clearly obvious that they would. The sun was shinning brightly in the sky; there was nowhere to run to.

I get rid of them. Don’t ask me. Don’t know what happened to my friend. But I meet new friends, a lot of them, all ready to go to some war. We walk past some door and suddenly we are finally outside the enterprise. We turn left and the street was empty but they tell me to stop. I see a door, everything else was blurred and I ignore my friends. I run to get inside, having some unidentified hope.

The building is tall but thin. It is just stairs and the door I came through. Not even windows, just grey walls and cement stairs. And again I run up until I find another door. The top of the building is a small balcony and I can contemplate my tiny friends down the street. No other building is as tall as this one so I cannot jump. They engage a huge fight with another group. I am passive.

After a while, some of them go through the same door I took before. I hear a friend shout: “I will take care of them! I will leave only the easy ones for you!” Am I not able to take care of myself? I see I can go up the structure built around the exit door. It’s not simple to reach the top so I climb it. Up there I lay down. It seems like a plan to attack anyone who comes out the door and push them off the balcony. But I’m worried: What if it is my friend? I wake up.

How many open source developers does it take to change a light bulb?

The answer is 17!

17 to argue about the license; 17 to argue about the brain-deadness of the light bulb architecture; 17 to argue about a new model that encompasses all models of illumination and makes it simple to replace candles, campfires, pilot lights, and skylights with the same easy-to-extend mechanism; 17 to speculate about the secretive industrial conspiracy that ensures that light bulbs will burn out frequently; 1 to finally change the light bulb, and 16 who decide that this solution is good enough for the time being.

From Peter Wayner, cited by Steven Weber's book, The Success of Open Source, p. 81.

Are you tired or sleepy?

For Wiktionary, which in this case borrows the definitions from the Oxford Dictionary, “tired” and “sleepy” are synonyms. However, in other dictionaries and sites, the definition of “tired” is slightly different:

1. From Babylon:
"fatigued, dead-tired, exhausted (Informal)"

2. From Wikipedia, not Wiktionary, where it is a synonym of fatigue:
"It is ubiquitous in everyday life, but usually becomes particularly
noticeable during heavy exercise. Mental fatigue, on the other hand,
rather manifests in somnolence."

3. From Wordnet:
"depleted of strength or energy;"

In these cases, sleepiness might be just one manifestation of being tired, but someone can be sleepy without being tired (when taking a pill, for example). Therefore, in some circumstances there can be a causal relationship but these are independent words in my opinion.

I know this is a rather silly discussion but I started it with a friend the other day and now I want to settle it down. I even opened a thread on Wiktionary, proposing to change their first definition of the word “tired”.

Of course I’m ignoring the other uses of the word which don’t apply here, for example:
1. Fed up, annoyed, irritated, sick of: “I'm tired of this”
2. Overused, cliché: “a tired song”

A filthy rat at the restaurant

This was the first (and probably the last) time I tried Harima, a Japanese restaurant recommended by a friend here in Bangalore.

The place was organized, had a good variety, and tasty food. It was not the best Japanese I've been to but I was satisfied with my friend's tip... Until the very last minute.

We were waiting inside the restaurant for the cab when we saw a really NASTY, DIRTY, VILE, AND FILTHY RAT coming out of the kitchen running though glasses and bottles at the bar. What is worse, the waiters didn't seem to care about the ongoing episode. They simply looked at the rat as if it was the place's mascot or something...

It really puts the whole "nice restaurant experience" into perspective, right?

Walking on the grass is good for eyesight

That is something I didn't know: walking on the grass is (supposedly) good for your eyesight. An indian friend just told me this.

I, of course, immediately went to Google to try to find evidence of this. In a quick glimpse, the two links I found are related, I think, to popular belief. They are not from a trustworthy or scientific source. One is a Yahoo Answers reply and another, which is quoted below (my emphasis), comes from the site tips4me.com.

So what do you think? Is this something already known around and I was the only one who didn't? Being true or not, this can be a good excuse for walking on the grass where you are not allowed to...

WALKING BAREFOOT IS GOOD THERAPY
Shoes trap energy around the feet, and that could be one of the reasons for feeling tired at the end of a long day. So take them off whenever you can and give them as much air as possible. Barefoot walks help tone the muscles of your feet, keeping them young and strong. An early morning barefoot walk on cool, dewy grass is refreshing and invigorating for the entire system, not just your feet. It is also believed to have a very good effect in improving eyesight. Do walk barefoot as much as possible to help the bone structure of your feet function according to its natural shape.