Pepper

I've been thinking (oh noes!)... Peppers are hollow, but what's actually inside? Is it simply air or perhaps some gas secreted while growing? Assume it is air, is it then air from where the pepper is grown, or from a more recent location? If the "filling" is indeed from where it's grown - let's say Croatia (I've got reliable intelligence that the best tasting vegetables are grown there): If I'm lucky, I might just manage to carefully make a couple of holes in the pepper, breath in, and get a small breath of this mysterious gas. That's a mini vacation right there!

Vårt svenska språk

Only in Swedish... Fick en fråga av en kollega: Varför heter det att man "ligger i lumpen", "sitter i fängelse" och "går i skolan"? Nästan Anders och Måns-kvalitet på den. Men hur kommer det sig? Ligga i lumpen; motiverat med allitteration... Sitta i fängelse; man kommer ingen vart? Sitt still! Går i skolan; det går framåt? Err.. Hm..

Asking for a day off?

Hittade en lapp på jobbet som förklarar varför man inte kan få ledigt om man ber om det...

Vet du vad du egentligen begär? Året har 365 dagar, men du arbetar ju inte varje dag. Under årets 52 veckor har du ledigt 2 dagar varje vecka. Då återstår 261 dagar. Du är ledig 16 timmar varje dag, det blir sammanlagt 170 dagar. Då återstår 91 dagar som du kan arbeta. Varje dag tar du lunch 1 timme, det blir sammanlagt 48 dagar. Nu återstår 43 dagar. Du behöver inte arbeta 6 röda dagar under året. Det blir 37 dagar kvar. Varje dag tar du kafferast 10 minuter, det blir totalt 11 dagar. Kvar finns 26 arbetsdagar. Sedan har du 25 dagars semester. Då återstår bara en dag. Och den förstår du väl att du inte kan få ledigt.

Which (loosely) translates into: I found a note at work why I can't have the day off. (Notice that this is is with Swedish vacation, 5 weeks each year).

Do you even know what you're asking? Each year has 365 days, but you're not working all of them. For each of the year's 52 weeks, you've got 2 free days, leaving 261 days. Being free 16 hours a day adds up to 170 days. 91 days left to work. Add up 1 hour lunch each day, that's 48 days. 43 days remains to work. You don't have to work the 6 holiday-days, 37 days remains. 10 minutes coffee break each day adds up to 11 days. Left is 26 days to work. Then you have 25 days vacation. Only one single day to work. Now you must understand you can't get that day off?

I don't really get the numbers to add up, but hey! :D

RIP rydis

Martin "rydis" Rydström disappeared the 24th February earlier this year. His body was found last week in the water outside of Göteborg. Martin was a fellow lisper, which I only met irl one single time. I regret I didn't get to know you better. We will remember you, friend.

Fun at work

Imagine my face when I walked into the kitchen at work and saw a keyboard with dirt all over it, well wrapped in plastic film. Is it supposed to be there? What happened and who did it? While taking another cup of tea, I recalled an old prank I've seen circulate the net. Ah! Five days later, it had progressed nicely... Looked like a green carpet. Nicely set-up. Guess if he was surprised? What would you say if your office looked like that after the easter holiday? Oh yeah. All you need is an old keyboard, some dirt or cotton, and seeds of something easy growing. Childish humour can be an asset too. Complete instructions on the other site. This is yet a reason why I choose to write the report of my thesis at work instead of at home :D Now back to work!

xmonad

If you've followed #haskell@freenode the last month, you've had to try hard to not hear about heard about xmonad. It's a lightweight window manager, a clone of dwm, similar to ion, ratpoison, wmii and larswm. To be more precise it's a tiling window manager which means that it makes sure that no windows are overlapping. It can take a while to get used to, but it's well worth the effort. While xmonad still is relatively easy to learn, the Ion manifest still applies. It will help you to put down the mouse. The impressive part is that while one of dwm's goals is to be <2000 lines of C, xmonad has similar features in <400 lines of Haskell. It also does a couple of things dwm doesn't, namely automated testing of the internal window manager properties (with QuickCheck) and support for xinerama. (The lack of xinerama is, otoh, listed as a feature of dwm). See a screenshot here. It's not yet released, so you'll have to "darcs get" the sources, instructions on the homepage. Unless you're running Gentoo Linux with the haskell overlay, in which case a "emerge xmonad-darcs" will do. Give it a try and give feedback on #haskell!