Friday Afternoon Geek-Out
It's Friday. I'm at work. Who really wants to do work on a Friday? Hell, for that matter, let's include Monday in that statement.
And since We're not working on Fridays or Mondays, Thursday and Tuesday are the new Friday and Monday, so who really wants to work on them either?
With Thursday and Tuesday out of the picture, Wednesday has now become the new Friday AND the new Monday at the same time. So now I'm expected to get two days work done in one day? No thanks, I quit!
Anyway, a co-worker sent me a link today to a very cool little puzzle. It's a puzzle with 5 dice, and you have to guess the number that each roll of the 5 dice represents. As I understand it, there's four rules:
- I'm allowed tell you that the name of the game is 'The Petals on the Rose'.
- I'm allowed tell you that every answer even.
- The only other thing I'm allowed tell you (or in this case, the web page at the link above) is the answer for any given roll of the dice.
- Having figured out the puzzle you aren't allowed tell anyone how to solve it. Part of the point of this game is the joy of watching people bash their heads against it.
The guy who sent it to me guessed correctly that it's the sort of puzzle that I would really like. It took me half an hour to work it out, which is apparently a pretty good time, although now that I've figured it out I'm disappointed I didn't get it quicker :)
Leave a comment here if you manage to solve it (and mention how long it took you). I'm interested :) Just don't post the answer, that's not fair!
Also on the geek topic, Heather linked to a geek test to rate your geekiness. I wear my geek badge with pride, thank you very much!
65.08876% - Geek God
It's nowhere near the 100% mark, but given how many questions there, it's pretty hard to get much higher than that without being sad, twisted little individual :)
The way I see it, being a geek is very important for every developer out there. Being a geek doesn't just mean a lack of social skills, a copy of every star trek episode ever made, or not playing sports, it's about being fascinated by learning, particularly the sciences (we are developers after all, not historians or artists).
Actually, I tell a lie, I think that writing good code (and more importantly, designing good code) is an art form of itself. Yes, you need to a learn a lot, but just knowing the stuff isn't enough - it also takes talent to be great. That spark of talent is where the artistry comes in to play.
But with that talent comes the thirst for knowledge. To play with numbers, words, puzzles, equations, theories - it helps keep you on top. It keeps your mind working, thinking about and looking for interesting scenarios. Keep your thinking machine in shape, and solving those impossible coding problems isn't as hard as it used to be. Experience certainly does help - keeping on practising.
Speaking of being able to code well, Grant posted yesterday about music to get in the zone. While his music tastes clash with mine (in a very big way) he does name one song that I love - Delerium - Silence (Airscape Remix feat. Sarah McLachlan). The rest of the stuff he mentions is techno and dance.
Music is really important to me for getting into the zone. My mind wanders a lot - I guess it's part of being a geek. If I've got my headphones on and the volume is cranked up high, the sound coming into my head keeps my head me focused on just one track - the one staring me in the face, normally the text editor within visual studio :)
Dance/Techno and me don't a long. There's some that I quite like, but not that many. Mostly I'm a hard-rockin kinda guy. Most of my playlist is the Foo Fighters, some Greenday, Metallica, Pantera, Alice in Chains, Blink 182, Def FX, that sort of thing. But basically it's gotta be rockin', and it's gotta be LOUD.
Part of being a proud geek is status. In the geek world you achieve status in one of two ways: proof of intelligence, and cool stuff.
Cool stuff is the more important one. Me, I used to be a collector. I'd collect everything. Once my family grew to include children, I gave the collecting thing due to lack of funds. But I've still got my set of the first 250 or so Tazo's, almost all the Widescreen Topp's Star Wars trading cards, and still a fair chunk of Buffy and Angel comics (anyone interested? Make me an offer, I need to offload them).
I still like to get cool stuff when I can though, and in the last week I've managed to increase my set of cool things by a little.
Most treasured of my cool stuff is my 9guy and TabletPCguy that sit on top of my monitor. Currently in the mail is a third friend for these guys - a small stuffed MSN butterfly. Now, I hate the whole MSN brand, and I won't touch anything that involves it (msn messenger, websites, hotmail even...but I also apply this rule to yahoo as well, so I'm at least fair), but this butterfly is gonna look cool next to the other guys, so it's worth it.
Also coming soon is a new mouse and a new keyboard. I absolutely love natural keyboards, so a chance to get the latest version for cheap was too good to pass up. And this is my first wireless mouse ever! I'm so excited.
Hmm. My geekiness is coming out again.
It's all balanced however. There's some things that would (you would expect) fit into the geek category, that I really suck at. I can type a simple letter in Microsoft Word. Anything more advanced than that, I honestly probably can't do. Formatting in Excel. Anything to do with Access. I just don't use them in my day to day job, so I've never learned very much to do with them.
But then there's the really embarrassing stuff. Some pieces of hardware confuse me. I can build a pc, I can use a microwave, I'm at expert at figuring out how to set the time on a VCR. But every time I need to send a fax, I need to ask someone how to use it. And just 5 minutes ago there was a paper jam on the printer I was trying to use. I had to get someone to help figure out how to fix that too.
I guess that's where my missing 35% went.