Author Archives: sbrandt

Cajun Snowman

Posted on December 11, 2008 by sbrandt

Global warming took a holiday today in Baton Rouge. We awoke to a major blizzard, and being the Northerners we are, we immediately went out and constructed a snowman and engaged in battle with snowballs. We then came in and … Continue reading →

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Hands-free Cell vs. Talking to a Passenger

Posted on December 6, 2008 by sbrandt

One often sees studies claiming that even talking on a hands-free cell phone impairs driving. The next logical question one asks is whether talking to a passenger presents the same problem. The answer, apparently, is no, and there’s a study … Continue reading →

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Wyrms

Posted on October 16, 2008 by sbrandt

I’ve started to listening to books on CD in an effort to ease the monotony of driving to and from work. My present choice is “Wyrms” by Orson Scott Card. So far I like the book quite a bit, but … Continue reading →

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Learning Haskell

Posted on September 6, 2008 by sbrandt

If you do any programming, you may have heard of a strange language called Haskell. It’s gaining rapidly in popularity, and has many cool features. Implicit Strong Typing – It provides the compile time error checking that one gets with … Continue reading →

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Memory Conserving Regex Engine for Java

Posted on August 30, 2008 by sbrandt

Many regular expression engines, my own package pat included, suffer from a tendency to produce stack overflows in some circumstances. This seems to be a widespread problem, common to many java regular expression engines. To overcome this limitation I recently … Continue reading →

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Babelcon Report

Posted on July 24, 2008 by sbrandt

Picture from the Advocate Me, Sir Noah, and Darth Babelcon is Baton Rouge’s science fiction and fantasy con. It is small, but has been rapidly growing. This year was a major leap forward for the Con in many ways. Excellent … Continue reading →

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Klingon Campfire Songs

Posted on July 12, 2008 by sbrandt

Translated from the original Klingon, of course. To the tune of: On Top of Spaghetti On top of a blood pie, All covered with rokeg, I lost my poor targball, When somebody snorted. It rolled off the table, And on … Continue reading →

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Thursday 13: Things I learned from reading Sci-Fi

Posted on June 26, 2008 by sbrandt

McNugget’s will some day be all-natural health food, relatively speaking (Caves of Steel, Asimov). Apparently our diet will consist largely of yeast grown in vats. My cockroach problems really aren’t so bad (Starship Troopers, Heinlein). Mr. Rico has to face … Continue reading →

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Wedding Dress Pun-ishment

Posted on June 20, 2008 by sbrandt

Katrina Chalifoux of Rockford, Ill. won a contest sponsored by Ripley’s for the best wedding dress made of folded toilet paper. See the ladies below, posing, smiling, flush with pride! Katrina’s dress was just charmin’. I hope she keeps up … Continue reading →

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Unicorns Do Exist

Posted on June 12, 2008 by sbrandt

(source http://www.physorg.com/news132406601.html) A unicorn deer named ‘Unicorn’ was born June 11, 2008 in Italy. This appears to be a genetic defect, but it was a natural occurrence. It remains to be seen whether it has magical healing properties in its … Continue reading →

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