geek – Page 11 – The Bald Heretic – Short, bald dude with a goofy beard

Now I know my ABC’s

Notice: Undefined index: image in /home/geekradio.com/domains/baldheretic.com/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/highslide/wp-highslide.php on line 56

Notice: Undefined index: thumbnail in /home/geekradio.com/domains/baldheretic.com/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/highslide/wp-highslide.php on line 56

Notice: Undefined index: altdesc in /home/geekradio.com/domains/baldheretic.com/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/highslide/wp-highslide.php on line 56

Notice: Undefined index: captiontext in /home/geekradio.com/domains/baldheretic.com/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/highslide/wp-highslide.php on line 56

Notice: Undefined index: thumbid in /home/geekradio.com/domains/baldheretic.com/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/highslide/wp-highslide.php on line 56

Notice: Undefined index: image in /home/geekradio.com/domains/baldheretic.com/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/highslide/wp-highslide.php on line 56

Notice: Undefined index: thumbnail in /home/geekradio.com/domains/baldheretic.com/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/highslide/wp-highslide.php on line 56

Notice: Undefined index: altdesc in /home/geekradio.com/domains/baldheretic.com/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/highslide/wp-highslide.php on line 56

Notice: Undefined index: captiontext in /home/geekradio.com/domains/baldheretic.com/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/highslide/wp-highslide.php on line 56

Notice: Undefined index: thumbid in /home/geekradio.com/domains/baldheretic.com/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/highslide/wp-highslide.php on line 56

In my line of work, the need for a phonetic alphabet comes up rather frequently. You know, when you’re trying to tell someone how to spell something.

You hear it used in emergency radio and ham radio communications all the time.

Standardized Phonetic Alphabet

A	ALFA	M	MIKE	Y	YANKEE
B	BRAVO	N	NOVEMBER	Z	ZULU
C	CHARLIE	O	OSCAR	1	ONE
D	DELTA	P	PAPA (PA-PA’)	2	TWO
E	ECHO	Q	QUEBEC (KAY-BEK’)	3	THREE (TREE)
F	FOXTROT	R	ROMEO	4	FOUR
G	GOLF	S	SIERRA	5	FIVE (FIFE)
H	HOTEL	T	TANGO	6	SIX
I	INDIA	U	UNIFORM	7	SEVEN
J	JULIETT	V	VICTOR	8	EIGHT
K	KILO	W	WHISKEY	9	NINE (NINER)
L	LIMA	X	X-RAY	0	ZERO

During the show last week, as I was trying to impart a web address to a caller, I was struggling with one of the letters. I always get confused with N and Q for some reason.

After the caller disconnected I mentioned on air that there should be a geek version of the phonetic alphabet. Makes total sense to me. G as in Google and so forth.

We tossed around a few ideas on the air and then my co-host Barrett threw it out to our guests in IRC and hammered out version 1.01

Geek Phonetic Alphabet

A	APPLE	M	MICROSOFT	Y	YAHOO
B	BOOTDISK	N	NEWBIE	Z	ZAXXON
C	CAFFEINE	O	OBSOLETE	1	ONE
D	DONGLE	P	PRINTER	2	TWO
E	ERROR	Q	QUICKTIME	3	THREE (TREE)
F	FREEWARE	R	REBOOT	4	FOUR
G	GOOGLE	S	SERIAL	5	FIVE (FIFE)
H	H4x0R	T	TOOLBAR	6	SIX
I	INDIA	U	UNIX	7	SEVEN
J	JOYSTICK	V	VIRUS	8	EIGHT
K	KILOBYTE	W	WEBCAM	9	NINE (NINER)
L	LINUX	X	XMODEM	0	ZERO

This is still in development. We changed Y from YMODEM to YAHOO on the air last night, per a brilliant suggestion from Dwight Silverman, so I guess this is technically Version 1.01 rev A

Barrett goes into a bit more detail on his Geekspeak Bog over at the Chronicle website.

White and Nerdy – Weird Al

New theme song for Technology Bytes?

Perhaps….

Parody of “Ridin’ Dirty” by Chamillionaire

White and Nerdy

Jonathan Coulton: Eventful request

via xtopher42

—

You may recall me blogging about a guy named Jonathan Coulton. He’s the guy doing the “Thing a Day” blog where he writes and records a new song every day for a year. The most popular one (IMHO) has been Code Monkey.

Apparently he has agreed to a performance in any city that can generate 50 or more Eventful requests. I confirmed this at his Myspace page.

I just added my name to the list for #33 so we just need 22 more “demands” to get him here.

I think this would be an awesome show. If you would like to add your name to the Eventful demand list please follow this link. It only takes a few minutes.

Patch Tuesday

So Dwight Silverman spotted this shirt on Todd Bishop’s Microsoft Blog, specifically in this post.

It’s very funny on many levels, but mostly in that mega-dorky geeky way that not everyone gets so I find myself chuckling quietly to myself.

Through a bit a finagling he was able to acquire two, one for himself and one for me. How very thoughtful, Dwight! And THANKS!

To better understand why this is funny you have to know what Patch Tuesday is.

If you don’t get it, don’t fret. It just means that you are probably much more socially well adjusted than I am and that’s a good thing.

Microsoft’s next killer app

The potential of Microsoft Live Labs Photosysnth is mind boggling.

From Live Labs:

Photosynth takes a large collection of photos of a place or object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed 3-Dimensional space. With Photosynth you can:

walk or fly through a scene to see photos from any angle;
seamlessly zoom in or out of a photograph even if it’s gigapixels in size;
see where pictures were taken in relation to one another;
find similar photos to the one you’re currently viewing;
explore a custom tour or see where you’ve been; or
send a collection to a friend.

Check out the video tour that shows the basic concept.

Can you just imagine merging this with something like Google Earth?

Macintosh commercial parodies

3 new Mac commercial spoofs.

Networking

Gaming

Performance

Technology Bytes Anniversary Party = Success!

Last night’s gathering of geeks in celebration of the 11th anniversary of Technology Bytes was a spectacular success. Many, many fine people showed up as the band played and adult beverages were consumed.

A heartfelt thanks to Drop Trio for providing the music and for the special tunes learned, rehearsed and performed for the event. You guys are awesome!

The Houston Chronicle had a photographer there and I can’t wait to see THOSE pictures. For now I have the ones I took uploaded to this gallery.

We had a nice turnout, the full crew of the show was there; Peter, Barrett, phliKtid, Dwight and Groovehouse, as well as show contributors Charles Born and the lovely Aurora Losada.

I believe Jennifer the Intern has officially crossed over as evidenced by her new I Heart Geeks shirt.

Also in attendance were many of the regular geek gathering attendees as well as Groovehouse’s IRC Army, including Amateria, Sketkar, Lambo, Kimberly, BeingKatie, KD5, Yivit and TomTom

We also met many, MANY new folks who had not yet attended one of our events.

And, to make it a TRUE Tech Bytes experience, I even helped a total stranger perform a complete clean install of Windows XP on her laptop while sitting at the bar. When she arrived at the party she had a computer that didn’t work very well. By the time we were done she was happily surfing the web using the Wi-Fi provided by Dean’s Credit Clothing.

I AM a party animal, yes indeed.

How did a lion get riches? … It was the olden days

Before the Internet and the infernal Intraweb there were BBS’s.
Electronic bulletin boards that were hubs of free speech and pirated software and some very cool turn based “door” games like Trade Wars 2002.

This is what we computer nerds used to interface with our brethren all across the globe.

In my time I have known quite a few of the Houston based underground including Chris Goggans aka Erik Bloodaxe of Legion Of Doom fame. I read Phrack and cDc religiously.

In 1991 I was approached by a group of people to participate in an online “zine” called The Worldview (Der Weltanschauung). It was an eclectic group of folks and we had some very good times.

My “Nom De Plume” was The Reverend Scott Free.
We believed we were going to change the world.
Perhaps we did. It’s hard to say. Those were heady times. Reagan had been the prez for 8 years and we were under the stewardship of Bush Sr. and the first Gulf War.

These “zines” were distributed all over the world using very basic modem technology. One BBS would call another and download the issue and then pass it on.

I was pleased to discover that our little enterprise has been archived at a number of web sites like the one linked here: The Worldview (Der Weltanschauung)

It’s really odd to go back and read some my old political rants.

My paranoia and hyperbole are very apparent in my first rant in issue number 2 which came out on May 4 1991. You can read it here:

http://www.textfiles.com/magazines/WORLDVIEW/wview1.2

Yowza!