Archive for March 6th, 2009

Dankness at the edge of the Nerdery: A Chili Cook-off 09 recap

Today was Chili Cookoff day at The Nerdery. What follows is a totally true and not-at-all biased review of each of the entries in the contest along with pictures of the awards ceremony.

Entry #1

Looked upon as nothing but a prank, Chef Boyardee’s entry into the 09 Chili Cookoff not only garnered a second place finish (tied with #3), but it managed to do so on reputation alone. Nobody actually claimed to have tried the Macaroni with Beef in Chili Gravy.

Entry #2

Stunned by the beauty of this racing-red crockpot, our photog was a little shaky. Chili #2 started out with a nice bouquet of chili powder and a hint of ground black pepper. It finished with a piquant red pepper and was definitely a winner in our book.
Read more

Songs in the key of nerd*

Editor’s Note: Hey, we’ve got a new name on Inside the Nerdery. This is Ryan Kucera’s first post. He’ll be popping in from time to time with some nerdery for you to enjoy.

Control structures and code syntax becomes second language to us programmers, almost literally. It’s very common to find complex commentary communicated with terse code snippets – for example, searching Twitter for common PHP keywords pulls up some real gems.

Some time ago, my brother (a C++ nerd) and I had the following IM conversation, in which we attempted to best each other with witty source-code versions of song lyrics. Yeah, yeah, most of these won’t compile; most are considered “pseudo-code.” Take a look, and see if you can recognize these tunes!

1. Joel says:
   if( tan(bull) ) ! const & noop();

2. Joel says:
   do {
       triangle(can);
   } while (triangleman);

3. Ryan says:
   my $blue; 2*($d); for (1..2) { die(); }

4. Ryan says:
   while ($me->getUp()) {
       knock($me,”down”);
   }

5. Joel says:
   while (beer.bottles.quantity > 0)
   {
       take_down(bottle = beer.get_bottle(1)):
       pass_arround(bottle);
   }

6. Joel says:
   boat.row();
   boat.row();
   boat.row();
   go(upstream, gently);

7. Joel says:
   char * word;
   if (word[4] = ‘d’ && word[3] == ‘l’ && word[2] = r)
   {
       // it’s the end of the “world”
       // and we know it.
   }

Editor’s Note: *Trip Shakespeare, my cubemate, is demanding proper credit for his rather witty headline. I got his proper credit right here.