Tag Archives: Humor

FR, Gridview, and puns

I follow @Cassidoo on Twitter and spotted this thread she started.

I know a few folks who think puns are for children and not groan adults, but me, I’ve always enjoyed a good play on words. She continues on for a few more tweets, all playing off CSS units of measurement, and other people chimed in with their own.

As I said, I like a good play on words, but one thing was bothering me, “What’s this ‘fr’ thing?” One Google search later, I now know it’s a unit of measure meaning, to use an automatically calculated fraction of the space in a container. It’s used in grids and flexboxes and solves some problems where you accidentally use more than 100% of the available space.

You can read about it in the spec, but I found this introduction to the fr CSS unit to be quite helpful.

I do believe, I may have a few dozen uses for this. ?

Mike Friedman is not the devil

For the record, Mike Friedman is most certainly not the Devil. I suppose it’s easy enough to understand why you might think that, but it’s not true.

Granted, he does have that happy “devil-may-care” attitude and really, who could get away with that sort of thing better than the Devil himself? It’s also true that Mike was the one who came up with the idea for Crazy Eight Press, and the very first story to come from that group was a tale called “Demon Circle”. Although it’s incriminating, it’s still just coincidence.

But the thing that really gets people wondering is his publicity photo. He’s got a spread of books laid out in front of him, and he’s dressed a bit like Han Solo. Then there’s the background: It’s not a fiery pit, but it’s certainly a deep, blood red. And Mike’s got a big smile, like he knows every sin you’ve ever committed; and his face appears to be reflecting that same blood red, as though he’s surrounded by some sort of flames.

I know that photo well. It shows up on various convention web sites now and then (Shore Leave’s been using it since 2010), and recently its been showing up in “meet the contributors” emails for various Kickstarter projects he’s participating in.

But that photo’s origins aren’t at all demonic. Back in 2009, when I had just recently purchased my first-ever digital SLR, I took it to Shore Leave and took photos of a bunch of the authors. I didn’t yet realize how little I understood about photography and between that lack of knowledge, and the hotel’s rather “unique” color scheme, some of the photos came out rather deeply saturated. Mike just happened to be sitting in front of a wall covered, not in brimstone, but particularly garish red wallpaper, and the camera did the rest.

That’s really all there is to it, Mike’s not the Devil; it’s just the photographer was (and still is) a real hack.

If you’ve spent any time at all chatting with Mike, you know, he’s actually a very friendly guy, and not the Prince of Darkness. Indeed, he’d likely be quite hurt if anyone thought otherwise.

And I’m not just saying that because he’s holding my soul hostage.

They Keep Killing Glenn – You Only Hurt the Ones You Love

If “you only hurt the ones you love,” then Glenn Hauman has been loved like few others. Loved to death in fact. Repeatedly. A different way each time.
 
They Keep Killing Glenn is a collection of short stories with one thing in common, in each story, Glenn Hauman dies. One might be forgiven for thinking that this would only be entertaining for people who actually know Glenn (and there is a joke or two which make more sense that way) but overall, the stories should appeal to anyone who enjoys a bit of lighthearted entertainment, regardless of whether Glenn has crossed their path.
 
(Full Disclosure: I know Glenn, and many of the people who killed him. Through some cosmic error, my own tale of his death was also included.)

Random Memories of Shakespeare

A Random Memory…

In my mid-twenties, I spent six years living at Lake Tahoe. Literally within a half-mile of the beach. Every summer, I would Volunteer at first the Music at Sand Harbor festival, and then a month later, at the Shakespeare at Sand Harbor Festival. A set of events taking place in the dunes at the Sand Harbor Lake Tahoe Nevada State Park. (The latter event is still around as The Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival).

I would work every night at both festivals as one of the security Volunteers. They called it “Security”, but it was really ushering. We were mainly concerned with helping people find a spot for their blanket and then keeping them from going into the environmentally sensitive parts of the dunes. Since I was there every night, and people somehow got the idea I was responsible, after a year or two, I was put in charge of security for both events. Which mainly meant getting there early so I could drag a shovel through the sand to mark where the aisles would go.

People tended to Volunteer for a few nights, so you’d get to know one another. One Volunteer I recall was a young woman named Ashley. She’d arrived early one Saturday and after we’d drawn the aisles, we had some time to kill. I looked at the aisles and commented, “Y’know, those aisles would be a lot easier for folks to see if we marked them with a rope.” Ashley agreed that was probably true, so I asked, “Would you go over to the lifeguard station and ask if we could borrow about 200 feet of shore line?”

Ashley came back about 20 minutes later to report that the lifeguard didn’t have that much available and had suggested she try the park office.

Sadly, the whole thing fell apart at that point because I couldn’t keep a straight face any longer.

(Image by Wikipedia user DimiTalen, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)

They Keep Killing Glenn

The usual rule with a scandal is that when it first breaks, you start off with the angry denials. This goes on for a few weeks, with increasingly intense press coverage, until at last you get to the next stage, the tearful confession. Well, let’s skip over all that and go straight to the part where the accused becomes the prosecution’s star witness and throws his co-conspirators under the bus in exchange for leniency….

At the 2017 Farpoint convention, I attended the panel for Crazy 8 Press. As nearly as I can remember, most of the Crazy 8 authors were present: Peter David, Robert Greenberger, Michael Jan Friedman, Russ Colchamiro, Aaron Rosenberg and Glenn Hauman. Only Paul Kupperberg was missing (Mary Fan hadn’t yet joined the collective). Kathleen David was sitting in the audience.

The panel started off with comments that the group is looking for ways to boost their book sales, with some dark humor thrown in about how Peter’s book sales skyrocketed after his stroke several years ago. So naturally the question was raised of who was willing to “take one for the team” and boost book sales by having a stroke.

Somewhere in there, the suggestion came up, “Maybe we need to kill someone” to which Glenn replied, “We’re writers. We’re always planning to kill people.” My recollection is that it was Aaron who responded, “Yes, but it’s usually you.” Pandemonium ensued as one author after another took turns suggesting ways Glenn might die.

In short order, they decided to publish an anthology of short stories in which Glenn would die. Once Peter announced the title should be, They Keep Killing Glenn, I knew what I had to do. I pulled $20 from my wallet, marched to the front of the room, and offered it as my contribution to the expected Kickstarter campaign.

And that’s why Glenn says it’s my fault the book was written.


This next part kind of boggles my mind. They Keep Killing Glenn is now available, and this is the list of authors from the book’s back cover

I mean, look at that list of names:

David Gerrold – that’s the guy who wrote one of the most popular Star Trek episodes ever, The Trouble with Tribbles.

David Mack, Robert Greenberger, Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman, Keith R. A. DeCandido – These are Big Names in the world of Star Trek writers. They’ve all been on the New York Times best sellers list. Multiple times.

Paul Kupperberg – that’s another Big Name. He’s the guy who writes the current incarnation of the Archie comics.

As far as I can tell, almost everyone else on that list has been published multiple times and most of them have authored multiple books.

And then there’s that name circled in red. Blair Learn. What’s that name doing there?

Most of what I write is software documentation, describing how the pieces fit together, explaining processes to other developers. And yet somehow, a story I wrote has been included in an anthology with all those big names.

In February of this year, they announced that yes, they really were going to publish the book. And in addition to gathering submissions from professional authors, they were also going to accept up to three submissions from fans. I’ve spent a little time chatting with Glenn over the past several years, and having a story published professionally has been an entry on my bucket list for a while… So I submitted a story titled “R is for Roadster.”

They Keep Killing Glenn will be debuting next month at the Shore Leave science fiction convention, just outside Baltimore. But you can order it from Amazon right now.

Geek Humor

One of my co-workers retired back in the Spring, but still stops by to visit on occasion. He understood the importance of software source control, but had a few struggles with it. As he was leaving after his most recent visit, we had this brief exchange

  • Co-Worker: You know, I left on March 15 and haven’t had any tree conflicts since then.
  • Me: That’s great! No branches falling in the back yard?
  • Co-Worker: Well… at least, they weren’t trying to merge.

It’s difficult to get much geekier than when you’re making source control puns.

By Google’s Command

I’m a bit embarrassed I hadn’t noticed this before.

The icon for Google’s new Chrome web browser features a sort of beach-ball thing with a circle in the middle. It looks a little like a robotic eye.

Chrome eye.

They’ve included that eye in the logo on the download page.

Chrome eye.

On the new Battlestar Galactica, the human-appearing cylons are frequently referred to as “skin jobs.” The more classically robotic centurions are occasionally referred to as “chrome jobs.” These so called “chrome jobs” have only one eye.

One eye. Robotic. Chrome.

Do you suppose Google is being run by Cylons?