On the flight back to Atlanta today I was without my laptop, which is at Apple’s repair depot for who knows how long, and started to think of things geeks tend to do when they get bored. I had considered making a “you know you X when..”-type post similar to one of my favorite posts, You Know You Go To a Tech School When… but I figured I would just ask you what you do when there’s nothing else to be done, or everything else is being ignored?
Do you do any of these geeky things when bored?
- browse the recent and random code postings on clipboard services like Pastie
- emerge world on your Gentoo Linux box
- check your website’s traffic stats
- participate in meaningless banter on miscellaneous tech forums
- spec out your next file server on Newegg
- kill -9 non-responsive processes hogging up too much of your system’s resources (great video)
- practice your power napping skills
- run a Google Code search for “here be dragons” or expletives
- recompile your kernel, ignoring options and modules you don’t ever use
- write the about page for that tech startup of yours that never seems to get established
- attempt to code FizzBuzz in esoteric programming languages like Chef (I’ve actually had to use Chef for a class last year) and Brainfuck
- think up amazing get-rich-quick schemes so you can actually afford Adobe’s CS3 line of creative applications (Photoshop CS3 is $771! I wonder what the educational version runs for..)
- stay up-to-date with your many, many RSS feed subscriptions
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I do check my site stats when I’m bored. As for the last point, they do bore you more.
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- Create crazy websites
- Link Build
- Listen to music
- Watch old episodes of canceled shows
- Write blog entries
- Design Wordpress themes
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- try to keep up with your social networking sites
- browse whitesoap
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keep on refreshing 9rules for something new to come up
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Try to solve wired programming qustions in my mind.
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- Fiddle with my Firefox extensions
- Catch up on my @ToRead bookmarks on del.icio.us
- Try to learn Ruby…for the nth time
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FizzBuzz in PHP:
for ( $i = 1; $i \n”;
}
elseif ( ( $i % 5 ) == 0 )
{
print “Buzz\n”;
}
elseif ( ( $i % 3 ) == 0 )
{
print “Fizz\n”;
}
else
{
print $i . “\n”;
}
}
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I wrote it in about 1 minute, too bad my FizzBuzz php code doesnt display properly on here. Paul, you can delete that comment if you wish.
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I wouldn’t exactly call PHP esoteric…
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@Don, for next time use http://www.elliotswan.com/postable/ for pasting web-safe code.
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I have no clue what esoteric means ;)
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It means that only a small number of people have knowledge of it. Take Paul’s example of Chef. It’s likely that he’s the only one here who’s ever written anything in it, or even heard of it for that matter.
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Heh interesting list Paul. Yet no, I don’t do any of those on the list. Maybe this means I’m not a geek :-O
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Good one!
I never get bored! Yeah, generally catch up on RSS feeds or if no computer at all – I just grab my notepad and write down ideas/thoughts for future posts.
Cheers!
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I do check up on my hundreds of RSS feeds but other than that I don’t think I’ve done any of those things when I’m bored. I do however use stumbleupon from time to to time.
Don Wilson: Your PHP Code doesn’t implement this theory. Before we state that you can’t program as stated in on the Coding Horror page, perhaps you didn’t read the excerpt correctly.
My attempt:
http://blog.neoeliteusa.com/2008/05/17/fizzbuzz-test-in-php/
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Sometimes I go to those trivia or study quiz sites and take quiz after quiz after quiz (you can go for *hours*). Also, I’ve seriously been known to read through old textbooks, on multiple subjects (Physics, Chemistry, History, etc).
Memorize as many digits of Pi as possible???