Meme in lieu of work or BoGS-induced angst

[emperor]

The idea of this meme is that someone asks you about three of your interests and three of your user-pics. the_lady_lily enquired of me as follows:

Explain to us why shell hackery does not involve the seashore, why cam.misc is apparently a source of endless delight, and I give you full permission to wax forth on early music.

The shell is the program you interact with at the command-line of most computer systems. On Unix systems (at least), its most basic mode of operation is to execute the commands you type at it - if I type foo, the shell will go away and try and find an executible called foo and run that for me. The shell also provides the ability to string a series of commands together in a shell script, as well as containing some useful language features itself (looping, variable substitution, globbing, etc., etc.). This means it's possible to write a vast range of programs consisting mostly or entirely of shell commands. It can sometimes be fun to hack up a solution to a problem in shell, rather than using a "proper" programming language, hence shell hackery.

cam.misc is a newsgroup local to the Cambridge (UK) area. I still read it, despite no longer living in Cambridge; as well as a useful source of location information, and forum for discussing local issues, it has an entertaining range of characters, injokes, and pedants.

Early music. What to say in a brief meme answer? One of the things that interests me about early music is the variety; whilst plainsong chanting is what many people think of if you say "early music", that's really only a part of a huge range of musical expressions, some of which played with tonality in ways that would only become common again in the twentieth century. That was one of the key things I tried to get across in my CUR1350 radio show.



Then, elucidate why you have an image for Sweden, tell us if it is really you with your hand up a cow's bottom, and reassure us that the scary axe really shouldn't concern us.

In 2006, new_brunette ran an LJ-sweepstake for the Football World Cup, and I drew Sweden. I obviously needed a userpic to illustrate posts on the topic :)

The veterinary photo isn't of me, but I have performed many rectal examinations. I just don't think anyone was wielding a camera at the time. I'm fairly certain the animal in the picture is a horse not a cow.

The axe is mine - we got it to deal with fence panels that had blown down in Girton, and it has been useful since from time to time. It's a Canadian felling axe, I am reliably informed...

Comments

[simont]

*blinks* When I read the_lady_lily's question, I automatically assumed that the phrase "shell hackery does not involve the seashore" was actually on your interests list, and that it was a roundabout way of saying you didn't like the C shell. So I was mildly surprised to find the interest in question was simply "shell hackery", and gobsmacked to find not a single C-shell gag in response to what ought to have been a feed line from heaven :-)

[emperor]

There is a category of jokes that One Just Doesn't Make. These include "ball" jokes around jugglers, "Sally" jokes around ringers, and "C-shell" jokes around shell hackers.

HTH :)

[simont]

It wouldn't have occurred to me to put C-shell jokes into that category. Perhaps around C shell hackers, who talk about it all the time, it might make sense (for the same reason as your other examples, namely that if you did make such jokes you'd be doing it until Christmas); but around sensible people on the POSIX/Bourne axis, to whom the C shell is rarely even mentioned and then only to slag it off, I see no problem with permitting ourselves a greater variety of ways to slag it off on those rare occasions :-)

[pm215]

Have you actually met a C shell hacker any time this decade? I'm hoping they're extinct...

Also...

[emperor]

sadly, there is a 4-word limit to interests, otherwise I think I'd have been tempted to add "shell hackery does not involve the seashore" as one :-)

Re: Also...

[keirf.livejournal.com]

I managed to add "shell hackery involves the seashore" to my interests - it's the 50 character limit that blocked my attempt to add the proper phrase.

[the-lady-lily.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly certain the animal in the picture is a horse not a cow.

Whoops! Just goes to show how much time I spend around livestock :)