Writing Unmaintainable Code...

A treatise on how to write programs that are very difficult to maintain.  As any experienced programmer will recognize, the techniques are commonly found in code that wasn't (presumably) intentionally written to be unmaintainable.  Even though it might as well have been.  An example:

Creative Miss-spelling
If you must use descriptive variable and function names, misspell them. By misspelling in some function and variable names, and spelling it correctly in others (such as SetPintleOpening SetPintalClosing) we effectively negate the use of grep or IDE search techniques. It works amazingly well. Add an international flavor by spelling tory or tori in different theatres/theaters.

But do go read the whole thing...

A USB Typewriter?

This may be an elaborate hoax, but it sure looks real.  The tagline looks like a joke, though:

The USBTypewriter™ is a new and groundbreaking innovation in the field of obsolescence.

The claim is that this fellow has developed a circuit board that can be attached to any old-fashioned mechanical typewriter, converting it to a USB keyboard input device.  From a technical perspective, this is completely plausible.  From just about any other perspective, it's some degree of crazy (and leaning toward very crazy).  Here's the company page, the Etsy storefront, and below is their marketing video.




I'm pretty much speechless...

Faster Than Light?

More than likely you heard the news yesterday: scientists at CERN have made the results of an experiment public – and those results seem to indicate that a beam of neutrinos traveled between two locations at a speed greater than the speed of light.

If verified, this is a remarkable result that turns much of modern physics on its head.  It's as if someone discovered that one plus one doesn't always equal two.

Probably in the end it will turn out there was some flaw in the experiment – but maybe not.  After all, it's a fine group of scientists who performed the experiment repeatedly, and got the same very unexpected results every time.  More here, here, and here...