Prof. PZ Myers, the author of the excellent Pharyngula blog and one of the West’s most prominent atheists and biologists, has an article up describing himself as the Elvis Presley of atheism. Of course, this raises questions - can we classify people as famous personalities in their own category, particularly bloggers? Well… let’s find out…
And finally…
- PZ Myers: The Jamie Hyneman of Atheist Blogging
(If anything, Richard Dawkins would be Gandalf.)
Here’s something a little different. What I’ll do (probably with some irregularity) is devise one of those humorous lists of ten every week, probably to do with computers.
So, how do you spot a computer programmer in the street?
- He or she will be wearing a shirt and tie. Either that or will be in the nude.
- Will smell strongly of coffee and/or Coca-Cola.
- Usually seen in public in a branch of Starbucks, poring over heavy books with titles like LINKED LISTS IN C++ BY EXAMPLE BY T. CODA.
- Will usually be invisible because of the hundreds of take-out coffee cups on his/her desk.
- Refers to his/her house as ‘/home/~’.
- Uses either a Mac, Linux or FreeBSD box as their primary machine at home.
- Usually awake at 2am.
- Can spontaneously quote from Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
- Outside their house or apartment, their address’s number is in binary. Or hex.
- Leaves work in this fashion: stands up, brushes Costa coffee cups into bin. Disconnects laptop computer’s power supply, with the IDE still open. Turns off light. Takes laptop in hand, and walks towards Reception to sign out. Doesn’t bother to sign out. Continues through the door, still finishing that AcctDataGet() module. Walks along the street, crosses road, goes through subway and into the train station still coding with their eyes fixated on the computer. Gets on train still coding. When asked on the train for his/her ticket by the conductor, produces the ticket from his/her pocket without looking at it. Gets home, puts computer down. Changes out of work clothes. May not bother to re-dress. Finishes module, checks it into work’s SVN repository. Goes to sleep on the laptop.
