(no subject)

[robinturner]

My geek credentials are still in order. I just saw an article in the LJ SL community entitled "I finally found the perfect latex catsuit" and still thought for a moment that it was something to do with typesetting.

Comments

[eve-prime.livejournal.com]

And concatenation?

[solri.livejournal.com]

Haha — I missed that one!

BTW, yesterday I gave a lesson on ways of expressing opinions in academic writing, using ten variations on the sentence "Foobars are grepped" ("Foobars may possibly be grepped," "We are drawn to the inevitable conclusion that foobars are grepped" etc.).

[eve-prime.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of a fantasy novel I read online - it really wasn't very good, so I don't mind giving spoilers. A Silicon Valley hacker is summoned into a magical fantasy world, because it is believed that he can use a form of magic that can't be detected by the evil powers that threaten the well-being of everything good. After much protestation, the guy discovers that he can indeed work magic, by treating it as a form of object-oriented programming. Eventually his beloved is kidnapped by goblin-types and held in their dungeons, and he teleports into her general proximity to rescue her, but she's nowhere to be seen, so... he greps her. Ha ha ha ha ha! That was the payoff for me. True geek humor.

[solri.livejournal.com]

so... he greps her.

Love it!

Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.

[solri.livejournal.com]

LaTeX is a set of macros to facilitate (relative) ease of use of TeX, which is a typesetting language designed by Donald Knuth, who is to computer science what Michaelangelo is to interior design. Knowing LaTeX is thus more impressive than knowing some common-or-garden programming language like C++, because people often learn C++ because their job requires it, while people learn LaTeX because their PhD supervisor requires it, or (as in my case) for purely aesthetic reasons. So yeah, if I see the word "latex" and think "typesetting" rather than "rubbery stuff" it means I'm still on the Path of Geek.