4 February, 2004

Amusing Line From The Python Manual

I just extracted the following line from the Python documentation (for those of you who don’t know, Python is a relatively-new and somewhat unusual programming language who’s name is derived not from the snake but from Monty Python):

Attempts to pickle unpicklable objects will raise the PicklingError exception; when this happens, an unspecified number of bytes may have already been written to the underlying file.

You have to love any manual with that line in it! It almost beats the famous Fortran line about defining pi as a constant in case it’s value changes.

Burger King Love Us

A new-looking manager (young, with a shiny badge) is making Changes at the Burger King around the corner from us. From Monday, the entire restaurant will become No Smoking (yay!), and the old upstairs toilets – once closed owing to vandalism – have been re-opened. Claire and I were in there this evening, discussing our comparative days (mine at work, hers learning Japanese), and met the new-looking manager, who gave us vouchers each, redeemable for free meals there in future. Nice.

Space Mutiny!

[this post was lost during a server failure on 11 July 2004; it was partially recovered on 13 October 2018]

Not the worst film I’ve ever seen (fourth worst film in the world, according to the IMDB), and seeing it as the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 version only made it funnier in it’s stupidity!

Here’s a brief synopsis of the plot (if it can so be called), as I understood it:

A retired Santa look-alike runs a spaceship called the Southern Star, which looks like Battlestar Galactica from the outside (stolen footage) and like the warehouse of a brewery on the inside. For some reason, sunlight streams in through the open windows, and the computers look like running Asteroids would be beyond them.
Unfortunately, the head of his security forces (who for some reason wear painball masks and balaclavas at all times), a man who laughs manically and frowns in such a way as to make you think his skull is trying to escape, is plotting a mutiny. He is killing or freezing members of the security team who do not comply with this plan. His motive isn’t terribly clear. He and the other mutineers are planting bombs made of soap around the brewery. His name is Calgon… yes, like the detergent.
…