Es Tea Double Eye

I’ve been playing around with Lisp a little just out of curiosity. The (format) macro used with the “~r” directive convert numbers into english words. Unless you’re a mathematician or a Zimbabwian, these numbers will be new to you like it was to me.

Here we go:

(format nil "~r" 1000000000)
"one billion"

Nothing new here.

(format nil "~r" 1000000000000)
"one trillion"

Nope, know that one too.

(format nil "~r" 1000000000000000)
"one quadrillion"

Yep, have heard of that.

(format nil "~r" 1000000000000000000)
"one quintillion"

Vaguely recall that number.

(format nil "~r" 1000000000000000000000)
"one sextillion"

Horny little number…

(format nil "~r" 1000000000000000000000000)
"one septillion"

Say what!?

(format nil "~r" 1000000000000000000000000000)
"one octillion"

Yeah, that should cover my debt. In Zim dollars.

(format nil "~r" 1000000000000000000000000000000)
"one nonillion"

We’re starting to get religious about numbers now.

(format nil "~r" 1000000000000000000000000000000000)
"one decillion"

By now you can feed me any bullshit, I’d swallow it.

(format nil "~r" 1000000000000000000000000000000000000)
"one undecillion"

o.O *speechless*

(format nil "~r" 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000)
"one duodecillion"

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen drugs with that name…

(format nil "~r" 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000)
"one tredecillion"

Like, whatever man :P

(format nil "~r" 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000)
"one quattuordecillion"

Say that one when you’re drunk, I dare you.

(format nil "~r" 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000)
"one quindecillion"

The odds of me winning the national lottery. No really. I don’t even play.

(format nil "~r" 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000)
"one sexdecillion"

Kinky!

(format nil "~r" 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000)
"one septendecillion"

That’s right!

(format nil "~r" 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000)
"one octodecillion"

Because octopi can count!

(format nil "~r" 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000)
"one novemdecillion"

Start counting now. November you won’t even be close.

(format nil "~r" 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000)
"one vigintillion"

HUH?! WFT-illion if you ask me.

That is as far as Lisp’s number to words macro can go. A lot of these are new to me, but hey, now we know.

For the record, if you want to know a little more about Lisp than the joke “Lets insert some parenthesis” I’d recommend you read Practical Common Lisp by Peter Seibel. You can read it for free online should you wish.

A while ago I was fed up with Vodacom. I was planning to move to MTN and give them the finger. I found out how to do it and decided that I’ll phone Vodacom Direct on 0821959 (since my upgrade is due) and confirm why I hate them and tell them to get stuffed while moving to MTN.

Sadly for MTN, it was a mistake. No lengthy hold times listening to corny music. No DNA proof required to verify that it was in fact me talking. Got straight to the point good advice and a not too bad deal. 5 minutes later, I was upgraded and left completely speechless by how painless the process was.

The guy I talked to (Lance) said that I can phone and ask for him if there is problems or when i want to upgrade my wife’s phone. Great to have a real person who is great at what he does as a point of reference.

Well done Vodacom. You’ve got me for another 2 years. It seems that RED is faster. At least when it comes to deal with admin work. That is how you do it. Keep it up, please!

I need to give one last push to see if I can out think my fellow bloggers and win the Afrigator “Livin’ It Up” Blogger challenge. Although I have discovered some cool tips that may come in handy for those of you who would also like to play the game and stand a chance at winning the grand prize of the BMW 320i, I think that my competitors in this particular challenge may have figured out some tips and hints that I do not know about.

Anyway, I need to give one last push. Worst case scenario, it has been great being a part of this challenge.

On my way to work this morning I had to stop at my friend’s place and pick up his two beautiful Labradors’ piles of crap since I got home too late last night to take my son to do it. Not an ideal start to a day. When I got to work, the morning took a turn for the worst when I had to help someone with a strange error on a Windows machine.

The poor bloke came to me for help. When he opens MS Word, a message saying “Insufficient memory or disk space. Cannot open font” graced the screen. How arb… After mucking about for 30 minutes just trying to find my way in Windows again (it’s been a significant while) I ended up taking somebody’s advice and inserted the Office install CD and run a repair.

Low and behold it worked! How very clever of me to listen to someone else’s advice. Job well done. The world is right again, or is it?

I had this very unsatisfying, empty feeling of total unaccomplishment. That, my dear friends, are why Linux/Unix folk hate Windows.

It is quite a feeling of achievement fixing a Linux issue. Hacking your way around until you’ve sorted it out. It takes a certain level of skill and require you to think and apply yourself to a problem which is very satisfying once you solved the problem. Any fool can insert a CD and select the repair option, reboot after repairing and Voila! the world is round again.

Now I just know that Windows pundits will harp on about how easy it was to fix the problem. Sure. I’ll admit it, it was so easy a monkey on a typewriter could fix it with his feet. My problem is that I have no idea what caused the problem in the first place. If it happens again will inserting the CD work? What if it doesn’t work next time? It’s a simple case of I started out with nothing and still got most of it left.

I can go on and on and on. Bottom line is that we hate Windows not so much because it sucks, but because it leaves us feeling empty and dumb while we should feel smart. Then again, it could possibly be that I simply had a shitty start to the day…

I am always keen to try news things, especially when there’s a game involved. (I love games) This new “Livin’ It Up” game by Standard Bank seems like a blend between Farmville and the SIMS, so I am quite familiar with the concept.

After selecting my 4×4 car, Hobbit House and Staffy and Baobab tree, I was really excited to know that I could add a half-pipe, and considering how much I have been skateboarding (as you can tell from my Player Profile), this addition to my crib was necessary.

Now all I have to do is figure out the best way to increase my score so that I can beat my fellow bloggers. Game on!

So there have been some disasters in the Livin’ It up game, which has made me realise that I need to always be insured so that if a disaster strikes, I can be covered. I also noticed that depending on what security items you have bought, the game gives you a indication as to how much cover you have against the following criteria:

So I have a few more tips to add to my original tips in last week’s post:

You should buy as many security items as your Standard Bucks can get you. As you can see from the screen grab above, the more security products you buy, the better your percentage of prevention.

I have made a friend on the game and just the other day I received a gift from Mum-z. (Contrary to his name, he is, in fact, a man so it was weird to receive a gift of flowers from him on the game.) I heard a rumour, that accepting gifts gets you points, so the next tip I have discovered is make sure that you make lots of friends so that you too can get lots of tips.

If I had more money to buy more things I may have some more tips for you, but that’s all my money spent for now. Will keep you posted next week.

The iPad always seemed like a novelty to me. An expensive and fancy reader and web browser thingy. That’s only because I didn’t have one. Now I do, and yes, it still is an expensive and fancy reader, but I discovered this brilliant little app that teaches you Lua through an interactive interface (pic). Now we’re talking!

Oh and this was written with the iPad, so I guess there are more uses for it after all. All in all, I’m loving it. I’m not yet convinced it will become an irreplaceable tool or be a novelty for a while. One thing is for sure, it is the best book I’ve read in a long time.

I do hope this will inspire me to blog a bit more. I do miss blogging a lot.

I hope that you guys have logged in to the game yourselves and if you have not, you should click on this link and start playing Livin’ It Up. I discovered some tips as to how to get points.

It seems that you get the amount of points as the item that you purchase. (i.e. if you buy the half pipe for $b15000, you get 15000 points).

The easiest way to get points is to invite people using the E-mail or Facebook invite. Every successful invite gains you $b2000. (So if you get an e-mail from Standard Bank in your inbox, or spam folder, please accept and help me win).

Make sure you play the game with me and I will keep sending you guys some more tips on how to push up your score…

Embassy cables aside, I am astounded at how badly the US Government is dealing with this “crisis” (for lack of a better term).

I’m hardly an expert in politics or diplomacy. No, in fact, I know nothing about it. What I do know about it is that if done wrong, the effects could be disastrous. As is the case at the moment. The thing is, if they practiced “quiet diplomacy”, things would’ve been very different.

We all know how it works on the Internet. News are highly combustible. It burns fiercely and dies as quickly as it started. Sure, there may be a number of “interesting” cables, but people would woohaa about it for a couple of days and move on.

Think I’m talking crap? Well, let’s see. Go to any news site. Anyone. Find me a story about a specific cable on the home page and I’ll eat my words. You’ll find articles related to Wikileaks or Julian Assange, but very little about the cables. The major news for the last couple of days have been about how Wikileaks and Julian Assange are being hunted, not about any of the cables.

I believe that they should have accepted that the cables leaked and dealt with the consequences it arise. Let’s face it, they’re going to have to deal with the consequences anyway.

Now, the whole world is interested in what they are trying to hide. They look like bullies. Even after the attacks on Mastercard, Mastercard looks like the villain deserving what is coming to it.

As I said though, I’m just a simple guy. I know very little about the complexities of diplomacy. I do find it interesting and amusing.

Normally, I would be very, very skeptical about anything trying to take on an established, market dominating service. I’m not going to be this time. I think this could be quite a great move by Facebook. Exciting! Will it be as good and properly compete with Gmail? That remains to be seen.

There are two things that would not make me move anytime soon:

1. Google Apps. Unless Facebook let me use my own domain for mail, I will not use it seriously.
2. Priority Inbox. It has become a tool I cannot live without. I’m not particularly fond of Gmail’s web interface, but their Priority engine made it more than bearable.

That being said, it certainly cannot be ignored. It makes perfect sense. If and when you visit Facebook, you can check in on mail as well. They also have the opportunity to be very clever regarding the integration which could make it a winner. I will use it, just not in a professional capacity.

If I was Google, I’d be worried. This is one I’m looking forward to. Whether or not it will be executed properly, remains to be seen. I hope so. I really hope it won’t be a “oh, we just got to do it, so let us put something out there” job.

Two things on the side:

1. The owner of the domain Fmail.com is either going to get bullied or be able to make some money.
2. Is it going to look as bland as Facebook itself looks? We really need a funkier, uncluttered mail interface compared to Gmail. We can hope…

Ps: Facebook should look after their mail service. It would quickly be dubbed #failmail should there be problems…