Extra88

Tip for accidental programmers

Say you're writing a script, in Perl for instance, that calls a program on the system. The script works fine when you run it manually but when it's scheduled to run via cron, the program isn't called. Check to see if you used the full path to the called program. Chances are the script will not have a $path to check when run via cron.

Figures large and small

For some reason a number of action figures and "collectibles" showed up in my Amazon.com recommendations (btw, I appreciate the recommendations feature, I think it does a pretty decent job, especially considering I'm a relatively infrequent shopper) today. "The Bride" from Kill Bill, yeah okay but these beauties really caught me off guard. It's the Pulp Fiction Geoms Set: The Gimp, including Butch, Zed, The Gimp, and Marsellus. There's a larger picture the more clearly shows their features including the bloodied visages of Butch and Marcellus. Yes, it's called "The Gimp" set because there are 3 other sets.

I'm not really complaining because some of it is kinda cool but this collectibles stuff is getting out of hand. This company (or Association, whatever), NECA, has figures and other items based mostly on movies and comics but also from other elements of pop culture. They have The Christmas Story figures and bobbleheads, which are stupid, but also a 40" Leg Lamp, which is awesome! Anyone would be proud to have this in their home, I mean, it's a major award!

Electromechanical Pong

This is super-nerdy, super-cool. Pongmechanik is Pong "reimagined" with the paddles and ball moved around by strings on pulleys and controlled not by a modern computer (transistors, microprocessors) but by a series of telephone relays manufactured in 1958! It even has sound effects, one wooden block is tapped when the ball "hits" the wall and another is tapped when it hits a paddle.

Watch the video, it's really well done. I found the low-bandwidth version to be "good enough" but if the site is currently Slashdotted, check the comments from the Slashdot's story about it for mirrored sites.