Posted by Skrud at Sunday, February 11th 2007 at 4:45pm
I stumbled to an older issue of xkcd and immediately looked up this episode of Ghostwriter from 1993, where a 12-year-old Julia Stiles guest stars as a hacker.
Her speech is ripped straight out of Neuromancer. Awesome.
Posted by Skrud at Monday, July 24th 2006 at 9:56am
A number of top names in programming were recently interviewed, being asked questions ranging from how they learned to program, how useful is math (really), and which books they read. The interviewees include Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux operating system and Steve Yegge, one of my favourite bloggers. Java creator James Gosling and Python creator Guido van Rossum are also on the roster, as is David Heinemeier Hansson of Ruby on Rails fame and a number of others.
Even if you haven’t heard of any of these programmers, if you have even the slightest interest in programming I highly suggest reading the article. The insights are pretty interesting.
Posted by Skrud at Wednesday, April 26th 2006 at 4:28am
I love personality tests. I find them to be an excellent waste of time – regardless of how meaningful they are. Often I find them to be pretty accurate, and all too often brutally honest about my faults. I suppose that’s a good thing, I should learn to be fault tolerant.
Harley pointed the forum-goers to the PersonalDNA test, which is a pretty unusual test as far as online personality tests go. It was very well done, and you can see my results in this PersonalDNA Profile if you’re interested. Spurred on by this renewed interest in my own personality, I decided to retake TheSpark’s Personality Test.
TheSpark’s Personality Test is a staple of Internet culture. I remember taking that test for the first time when I was about 14 years old, and seeing all those neat “compatibility” charts with my friends. (Of course, I’d be mostly incompatible with virtually every girl I knew at the time). I scored a “Dreamer” (Submissive Introverted Abstract Feeler) the first time I took the test. Here’s what they say about Dreamers:
You are a DREAMER (SIAF)— reserved and imaginative. You are basically the shy, silent type. You don’t have much interest in facts and figures or most of what’s going on around you, but the internal worlds you build for yourself are rich and complex. Luckily, your creativity and strong heart mean you have a deep personality evident to anyone who gets to know you. It’s just that not many people do. Talk to yourself less, other people more.
I used to retake the test every six months to a year or so, to see how I might have changed since then. Every single time I took the test, though, I would invariably be a Dreamer. Other interesting factors that I remember, is that I’d be right at the edge of the Introvert-Extrovert spectrum; almost all the way on the “Introvert” side. Also, I distincly remember being exactly 50/50 on the Thinker/Feeler spectrum.
The PersonalDNA Profile, however, said I was extroverted. This is a change in my personality that I think has surfaced only in very recent years. Coming to university and finally feeling like my education is justified has given me some sense of self-worth. Keeping a blog has made me focus more on expression. Being comfortable with the state of my academic career and learning so much, and understanding so much has given me incredible confidence. Making some amazing new friends, with a group of people on the forums who proudly call themselves “skrud.netters” has given me a major boost in social confidence. Take all of these factors combined, and you have a Skrud with an inverted polarity bit on the introverted/extroverted scale. That facet of my personality has been completely turned around.
I decided I would take TheSpark’s test again, since it has remained constant for so long, to see if there were any changes this time. Lo and behold, I am now a Guru (“Submissive Extroverted Abstract Feeler”):
You are a GURU (SEAF)— kind, knowing, giving. Like Buddha of old, you can be a persuasive speaker, and you use your creative talents to further the objectives of your heart instead of your mind. But be careful that your friends don’t take advantage of your relaxed nature.
Above all, you like going with the flow. That’s cool. Oh yeah, you like to talk a lot. That’s cool, too. Whatever.
What’s amazing is that not only am I an extrovert, but the scale was almost to the end of the spectrum. As if that part of my personality really did do a 180-degree turn. The other interesting thing, is that once again I am exactly on the midpoint of the Thinker/Feeler line.
All this makes me wonder about how everyone else might have changed (or grown, if you prefer) over the past few years. So I ask you, readers and fellow bloggers: How have you changed since the last time you took these tests (and since you’re on the Internet, I’ll assume that you took them at some point)? How has your personality changed since entering the current stage of your life (be it University, full-time work or whatever)?
Posted by Skrud at Tuesday, April 25th 2006 at 10:34am
It’s official TV Turn-Off Week. The challenge is to unplug your cable for an entire week, and try to live without TV. The timing couldn’t be better: it’s exam period, after all.
Kathy Sierra, highlight of my morning syndicated feeds, invites her readers to rise up to the challenge.
So, is there anyone here who isn’t already diligent with their Tivo, who is willing to disable the TV tuner (unplug cable/antennas, etc.) for a week and watch DVDs or shows on the computer? (Under the assumption that for most, viewing habits change dramatically when you shift from having television available 24-7 vs. watching specific shows–as mindful choices–on a computer.)
I think the point is to quit being a slave to the television: turning it on for the sake of having it on, as oppose for the explicit purpose of watching a specific show. There’s a key difference in watching something because you’ve conciously made a decision to do so. So I’m going to give this a shot. As long as I have Diggnation, I think I’ll be fine.
Officially, TV Turn-Off Week started yesterday, so I’m going to make up for the day missed by going up to and including next Monday.
Posted by Skrud at Thursday, April 20th 2006 at 12:55am
I’m addicted to Diggnation.
For those of you who aren’t aware of it, Diggnation is a weekly video podcast by two of the guys behind digg.com: Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht.
digg.com is a kind of “social news bookmarking” site, where news stories are submitted by users, and users vote on which stories they like (called a “digg”). After a certain number of votes, stories appear on the front page, and they aren’t so much “stories” as they are links to the original source. I greatly prefer digg to slashdot.
Each episode of Diggnation is between 30 minutes to an hour long, and has the two hosts discussing the week’s top dugg stories while trying out a new beer; there is a different beer each week. What’s surprising about diggnation is that it’s so much fun to watch. The stories are delivered with such witty commentary and discussion that it’s extremely entertaining.
I’ve been spending the past couple of days catching up on older episodes. In fact, I’ve been subscribed to the video podcast thru iTunes since December (when I watched the Diggnation in Japan episode) and haven’t watched it since. If Diggnation were on TV, I’d watch it regularly. I highly recommend downloading some episodes of the video podcast (video is much better than audio) and watching, even if you have only the slightest inkling of geek in you.
