Music Quiz

The following is one of my favorite pieces of music. Not because of it’s musical merits, but because it immediately conjures up the time around the Anarchy Online Launch, when we were working hard to Finish The Game. Somebody shared this around the office, and while I’m not sure about its origin, rumor has it that it was made by one of the guys in the audio department.

And now for to the quiz part of this post: Where are all those sound bites from? Having grown up with a lot of dubbing before I first heard this track, I had a vague idea about a few, and since then, new bits have been popping up every now and then when I was watching TV or movies. This is part of what makes this fun to me: I knew the sound bites first, and I’m finding the references later.

So far, I can tell:

  • Shall we play a game? is from War Games, of course.
  • We need more monkeys! … We’re formulating a new plan! – from Toy Story, the scene where they try to use they Barrel of Monkeys to save Buzz.
  • You said bullshit and experience is all it takes, right? – Google says this is from 48 Hrs, which I never saw.
  • Beavis and Butthead are in there, probably a clip from the “Vistual Stupidity” computer game.
  • Unorganized Grabasstic Pieces of Amphibian Shit is from Full Metal Jacket
  • Not enough time is from Heat.

But there’s a lot of them I have no clue about. Got any ideas?

Shakespeare’s Pulp Fiction

ACT I SCENE 2. A road, morning. Enter a carriage, with JULES and VINCENT, murderers.

J: And know’st thou what the French name cottage pie?
V: Say they not cottage pie, in their own tongue?
J: But nay, their tongues, for speech and taste alike
Are strange to ours, with their own history:
Gaul knoweth not a cottage from a house.
V: What say they then, pray?
J: Hachis Parmentier.
V: Hachis Parmentier! What name they cream?
J: Cream is but cream, only they say le crème.
V: What do they name black pudding?
J: I know not;
I visited no inn it could be bought.

More here.

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

That was the solution I was offered by customer support regarding my DSL problems. And you know what? I actually hadn’t. So I felt like a real git when it turned out that power cycling actually fixed it.

Reboot Me!

At this point, let me say something positive about Alice DSL customer service. They get a lot of bashing, but in my only encounter with them, they’ve been nothing but polite and professional. I got past the first level guy really fast, to a technician who obviously had a script that catered to a lot of configations: “What version of Windows do you have?” “Do you see more than 10 icons in the control panel?”, etc. are very good questions.

You get an extra brownie point for recognizing the quote.

Eclipse RCP Patch 1 for 3.3.1 (3.3.1.v20071002_331) requires feature “org.eclipse.rcp”

I recently spent half a day trying to fix this Eclipse error message, which prevented me from updating/installing anything at all. So in case I ever trip over it again, here’s the solution:

  1. Help -> Software Updates -> Manage configurations -> Eclipse RCP Patch 1 -> disable
  2. restart
  3. Help -> Software Updates -> Find and Install -> Scan for updates of the currently installed features
  4. restart

Al Gore has a new slideshow

This one still needs some polish, but after hearing his old one so many times now, it’s refreshing to see that he is still fighting the good fight and continues working on the problem.

Interesting question at the end regarding his feelings about the democratic candidates’ stand on the issue. Originally found it here.

Linkage Six

Today I’ve got a list of Difficult English Words you can use to impress your friends with and really stand out as the nerd you are. If you’re also a coder then you may appreciate this collection of bit twiddling hacks — there’s something there for everyone, and of course it also has the famous HAKMEM bit counting algorithm. City Shrinker makes large things look very small. It’s hard to believe that these aren’t models. For the audiophiles and cat-lovers, here’s Purrcast, the sound of cats purring. And last, but not least, this man is my new hero.