I noted earler that I’d been professing my friendship to Mike, and here we are – documented by Copenhagen blog evangelist Jon Froda.
(It could also be that I’m trying to explain some intricate delicacy of functional programming languages – or JavaScript. But our passion for the subject is there.)
Met up with a number of Copenhagen bloggers at a sushi bar. Geek Dinner, in the tradition of Hugh McLeod, the New York blogger and cartoonist. Hugh has put up a wiki – [The Hugh Page](http://thehughpage.com/):
> to give **bloggers** a place where they can **centrally collate** their **links** for whatever reason: Work, jobs, love, sex, networking, friendship, apartments, furniture, cars, **arranging geek dinners** etc etc.
One Copenhagen blogger, Henriette, arranged a geek dinner. [Here is its page](http://thehughpage.com/Copenhagen_%28_Denmark%29_Geek_Dinner), so that you can see how agile the form is.
Had some fine vegetarian sushi and some engaged discussion on dynamic programming languages.
The waiter kept calling everything vegetarian. Vegetarian coffee?
In the room with a group of 25 rather loud meetup people were also two other people. I recognized the woman at that table, and went over and chatted a bit. It was Anna, the Lund commuter, with whom I was train buddies when I did the Lund-Copenhagen commute. Her man was there, an Axapta specialist (Danish proprietary ERP system, with good money in it for specialists – a system with its own language) whose office had been relocated to Brøndby. Anna’s still working in Lund. They plan a move to Malmö. Nice bumping into them. Serendipitous.
The evening meant I got to meet and talk to the people I read. Web ninja Anders Pollas, pragmatic hacker Christian Dalager, blog advisor Jacob Bøtter, magazine editor and old hand at “misc programming” Line Ho Young Kjær, new media consultant Henriette Weber Andersen and her longhaired programmer man Thomas Kristiansen. Jon Froda came just in time for the food, fresh from evangelizing blogs and social software. Didn’t get a chance to chat with the blogging sysadmin Daen. Seemed like a nice guy.
My buddies Peter Brodersen and Mike Ditlevsen were on the participants list, but I noted that just an hour before the event took place. Talking with Mike, and professing my friendship in a sincere and heartfelt manner, was a good experience. I was on table water, as well, taking a smart route, as I wanted to be able to talk to everyone. Still, me and Mike were best buddies.
The evening ended at Line’s apartment, with around 15 people (out of an original 20+ of us, that is good cohesion), after a lightning decision after a local bar was too full and smoky.
I’m pleased it turned out so well. [Geek Dinner Copenhagen 2.0](http://thehughpage.com/Copenhagen_%28_Denmark%29_Geek_Dinner_2.0) is already in the making. The wiki works its magic, and a venue will be found. I think I’m gonna post a requirements list for the venue now. I’m making Luisa join us next time — everyone was asking about her, and urged me to bring her next time.
**Related:** My friend Tobin Harris is leading the attempt at making a meetup called [Leeds on Rails](http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/Leeds+On+Rails) in the UK. Good on him!
**Update:** On a sour note, there appears to have been [some disorganization](http://thehughpage.com/Talk:Copenhagen_%28_Denmark%29_Geek_Dinner_2.0#We-could-do-betters) in the money-handling, as the money bundle was 1500 DKK short of the bill for drinks. “Next time, individual drinks orders.” I hope my mineral water (instead of alcohol) was included in the cover fee.
Stuff you miss not living in Stockholm, Sweden.
Today I read some Seth Godin, and it turns out he is a great person.
(Who’s Seth? A marketing guru. (Read more at Wikipedia.)
He explains the service Kiva, which is a “microlending system”.
> Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world.
Read more about Kiva’s concept.
A list of active Kiva-funded businesses can be seen online. Take a look at the figures: ridiculously low amounts get these people started, and paying back. Yes, it’s financing. These microcompanies pay the lender back.
Some of the businesses have awesome names: Riwirok Ber – “Unity is Strength”, or God helps sound like something from Puritan England. A name like Blessings puts a tear in me eye.
And the Mot Mot piggery is a distant name-relative of my own company olleolleolle.
This is good stuff. Tell this story.
Release announcement for “cake_0.10.0.1217_alpha”, which is more stable than any other release.
Most of all, this release is about making the developer experience more cohesive, and “orthogonal”. Method calls and return values look more or less the same everywhere, and when you grok how Cake hangs together, it becomes easier to make web apps.
I am becoming a bit more expressive with it.
I looked at Perl yesterday, using my Linux laptop. Without perldoc or man pages, it’s difficult broaching a new programming language. When there’s no editor with emacs keybindings, it gets harder. Vi is hard for me. Playing Nethack’s been making it easier lately. I know how to navigate, and the modefulness is becoming less of an enigma. But still, it ain’t like emacs yet. I’m used to jed, a lightweight editor with emacs bindings. (It’s a Debian package, so just apt-get it. That’s what I should do, when I get that laptop online again.)
Now, see you. Been nice writing for you.
Update: just installed the Windows binary for jed. It’s cute, and it’s a lot faster to work with than a terminal window on a remote computer. I don’t know yet if I’ll use it locally.
I heard the news today. That’s because I get up earlier. Part of a program of working smarter.
On the news was a single Reuters story, just spoken from the telegram, no commentary or anything, this was “the news”. It was a note on that the Defense Ministry of the United States of America are developing new weapons called “bunker busters.” Piercing atomic bombs, to take out deep targets.
Tac-nukes are not called that anymore.
The idea of having “little nukes” is like being a little pregnant: there is no such thing.
Newspeak for tactical nuclear weapons is the unsavoury “bunker buster” – a reference to the dam busters of WW2. Everything from World War II is fine to make heroic computer games out of, and the intended train of thought this piece of newspeak has might be:
> We had dam busters during the war and took out dams. What if we had been able to take out the Führer bunker, too? We woulda needed a bunker buster.
Tac-nukes to pave the road to peace?
A Google Image Search for “bunker buster” turns up a lot of fighter bomber porn.
BBC graphic of how the thinking goes:
Author of Markdown, and strange Mac funniness man: Gruber.
Yesterday night, I was at the KafCaféen venue, where Livingstones Kabinet opened their new show “We love you too”, a political raunchy trip with the band’s trademark Weimar Republic feeling.
The dancers – a new addition to the troupe’s shows – were stunning.
Some rude discontent in the audience waved arms and was vocal about something. I presumed she was a mother of some participant in the show, and that she was outraged at artistic decisions made by the band. Turns out she’d pulled props from the stage and written on them – thereby making them unusable for the next night’s show – using the props as writing paper. Indicting that band of being without a political message is… truly a misguided attempt at righting a perceived wrong.
In the Wikipedia article on the geniuses of Holy Modal Rounders they have something profound on naming, a subject dear to programmers:
> As regards the name, Peter Stampfel explained in Perfect Sound Forever: “We kept changing the name. First it was the Total Quintessence Stomach Pumpers. Then the Temporal Worth High Steppers. Then The Motherfucker Creek Babyrapers. That was just a joke name. He was Rinky-Dink Steve the Tin Horn and I was Fast Lightning Cumquat. He was Teddy Boy Forever and I was Wild Blue Yonder. It kept changing names. Then it was the Total Modal Rounders. Then when we were stoned on pot and someone else, Steve Close maybe, said Holy Modal Rounders by mistake. We kept putting out different names and wait until someone starts calling us that then. When we got to Holy Modal Rounders, everyone decided by acculumation that we were the Holy Modal Rounders. That’s the **practical way to get named**.”
My emphasis, man.
That picture is *priceless*.
For more lovely hippieness, check out Llamasoft’s website, with [this image of Jeff Minter](http://www.llamasoft.co.uk/jeff.php). Serenity, that’s what it is.
Rejoice! A PEAR class for Danish numbers is now in alpha: Docs For Class Validate_DK are sparse, but you can see the four methods:
* carReg
* phoneNumber
* postalCode
* ssn
I like this. One person, in this case Jesper Veggerby Hansen, can make a significant contribution to the Open Source world. [An article](http://asay.blogspot.com/2005/09/analyst-nature-and-size-of-open-source.html) I read yesterday told the real story: most projects involve few minds. If you are able to add something (a fine bug report or a piece of documentation), you are golden.
Cheers to Jesper for this micro-project.
