I’m not the type to do those posts where I link to interesting things that other people have told me about, or to post posts about posts that link to other posts that link to things that link to posts about interesting things that other people have told other people about after reading about them in posts that linked to other posts.

Today, though, I’m going to make an exception.

Thing Number One – Slacker Astronomy

Eric Gunnerson left a comment in a recent post in which he pointed me to a site called Slacker Astronomy.

It’s a team of smarty space people who do a podcast about astronomy. They’re filling in the stupidity gap created by most news organizations where science, and particularly astronomy, is concerned.

Although the humor could use a little work, the information and format rock your socks.

Check it out, yo.

These people should be bronzed.

(On a side note, my heart still skips a beat every time Eric posts a comment here – back when I was reading the first edition of A Programmer’s Introduction to C#, I had no idea that I’d ever be in communication with the guy who wrote the book that formally introduced me to my favorite programming language. Weird.)

Thing Number Two – Custom Creature Taxidermy

Stuart sent me a note about this site last week, and my brain’s been reeling ever since.

I’m not going to try to explain it. Here’s the link. Knock yourself out (the fumes from the embalming fluid will if you don’t).

Also, if you’ve ever wanted to get me a present, I would like, but cannot afford, both the squirrel lamp and the squirrel decanter.

Magnificent.

Thing Number Three – Tell us how you really feel about Linux, Mr. OpenBSD

Marco Poponi, an Italian reader, sent me a link to a Forbes article in which Theo de Raadt, founder of OpenBSD, talks about how Linux makes him feel (hint: bad).

It’s interesting because I think that many people lump Linux and the various BSD’s into one group and turn it into an Us vs. Them scenario, when that isn’t the case at all. An old friend of mine, probably the best coder I’ve ever met, was the kind of guy who’d quit his job so he could stay at home and go kernel spelunking. He was pretty intense. I don’t recall ever having seen him blink.

I remember one IM session we had a couple years ago where he was going off about the mess that is the Linux kernel. He had been playing around with the internal gollywots of OS X, and had found order and beauty where, on the Linux side, he had found convoluted hacks that were like miraculous OS band-aids.

Reading this article reminds me of that IM session.

Theo has some choice quotes in there:

"It's terrible," De Raadt says. "Everyone is using it, and they don't realize how bad it is. And the Linux people will just stick with it and add to it rather than stepping back and saying, 'This is garbage and we should fix it.'"

And:

"Linux has never been about quality. There are so many parts of the system that are just these cheap little hacks, and it happens to run."

Yup. Read on.

And thanks for the link, Marco :)