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Ever heard the story of the giant ship engine that failed? The ship's owners tried one expert after another, but none of them could figure but how to fix the engine. Then they brought in an old man who had been fixing ships since he was a youngster. He carried a large bag of tools with him, and when he arrived, he immediately went to work. He nspected the engine very carefully, top to bottom.
Two of the ship's owners were there, watching this man, hoping he would know what to do. After looking things over, the old man reached into his bag and pulled out a small hammer. He gently tapped something. Instantly, the engine lurched into life. He carefully put his hammer away. The engine was fixed! A week later, the owners received a bill from the old man for ten thousand dollars.
"What?!" the owners exclaimed. "He hardly did anything!"
So they wrote the old man a note saying, "Please send us an itemized bill."
The man sent a bill that read:
Tapping with a hammer ......................... $ 2.00
Knowing where to tap ............................ $ 9,998.00
Effort is important, but knowing where to make an effort in your life makes all the difference.
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Suddenly, I find myself with 2 17" monitors.
I should be happy that I have 2 of them. 
Don't ask.
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Read that as 217" monitors, now that would've been pretty sweet 
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I'm guessing you have a new job.
#SupportHeForShe If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.-John Q. Adams
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
Only 2 things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.-Albert Einstein
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Wow! Time to dust off that CV!
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I got 2 26" at home! 
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I've got a 12 incher - but I don't use it as a rule
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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I'm reading a book which is even better than I expected it to be:
Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds (amazon link)[^]
I love TED Talks anyways, because so often they make me think about some subject in an entirely new way.
The book is great, because it reminds you that if you can talk about something you probably really understand it. Or, another way of saying it: if you really know something you can probably speak clearly about it and explain it.
Absolutely important to developing software.
Have you read the book? Do you like TED Talks?
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I just started watching TED talks, like last week. Interesting stuff. Thanks for the link.
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Most of TED talks are very good - you can learn a lot of things in various subjects. I do watch one in every week...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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newton.saber wrote: Have you read the book?
Not yet.
newton.saber wrote: Do you like TED Talks?
Yup. This one[^] is my current favorite.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: This one[^] is my current favorite.
Adding that one to my watch list.
Thanks.
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Duncan Edwards Jones wrote: also the RSA Animate[^] series
Yes, I've seen those on TED also and they are great.
Didn't know about that site though. Thanks.
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Never heard of TED Talks... Looks interesting.
Public speaking isn't my strongest point... Even when I know the subject. Even when it's just about my day. And even when I picture the audience naked
I'd love to work on it, but I'm not much in a situation where I have to speak publicly (last time was at school, that didn't go so well...).
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You are so lucky you've never heard of them.
Because it's going to be a whole new favorite thing for you to experience. 
Watch Jane McGonigal (one of my favorites) about How Gaming Can Make Our Lives Better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t3y7EeBhxg[^]
It's quite inspirational.
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I've seen that one and I know you are kidding.
That is an odd one isn't it? It's just silly.
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I kid you not, this is really working.
And I find the talk fascinating : This guy is talking about modifying a habit that billions of people have genuinely acquired, which brings a lot of question about mass effect and tradition learning. Why do we all do that wrong ? Is this because we were taught to do so, or because it is related to the way the human being works ? How come nobody ever changed that in the evolution of using shoes ?
The impact is emphasized by the fact that it is something a lot of people is doing instinctively (or not) every day and by the fact it is such a simple thing.
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newton.saber wrote: if you really know something you can probably speak clearly about it and explain it.
Actually, I've found that to rarely be the case.
People who know things really well might as well be speaking a foreign language, a lot of the time.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Agreed. I write some training on occasion and the hard part is not to get caught up on the nuances of the subject matter and focus on getting the point across where the person can be functional. Also when you're training someone who has no exposure to your subject matter it can be extremely hard to get the person to relate. As my old English teacher said, "Make the abstract concrete."
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newton.saber wrote: Do you like TED Talks?
I liked TED the movie.
Michael Martin
Australia
"I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible."
- Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
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So I'm reading this book about Haskell[^] and the author creates a function that converts an int to a lower case letter. The function is called 'int2let'. If I did that in any of the major languages today (and probably a few non-major languages as well) I'd probably be lynched by an angry mob of (non-Haskell) programmers.
Well, maybe that's why Haskell isn't that popular yet... 
Other than the function naming Haskell is pretty awesome though. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to use it in a real project though.
For the enthusiasts 
One of the things that amazed me is currying functions.
--function definitions
add x y = x + y
incr = add 1
--usage
add 5 5 -- result 10 (duh)
incr 5 -- result 6 How cool is that? add x actually returns a function that expects y and thus incr returns that function.
Can be practical when working with lambda's or partial application (like in the example).
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Haskell also has a function to convert human hair into fingernails. It's called Hair2Fingernails. It's almost as valuable as the int2let.  int2let is amazing and no one should question that ever.  
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