I came across this rather excellent comic about how people see your resume depending on who they are and after glazing over it and appreciating it as one of my ~5-10 daily interweb funnies, I looked over it again and noticed that it’s eerily accurate.

Positives

1. Has written a compiler or OS for fun.
   That’d be a yes.
2. Resume compiled from latex.
   Actually, from hand made xsl to latex. There was a time when I was all excited about single source publishing, so that’s what I did here. Xml to html/pdf/txt. (Last time I checked the latex->html bridge was seriously lacking anyway.)
3. Contributes to open source software.
   Check.
4. Has written compiler or OS for class.
   Check.
5. Has blog discussing programming topics.
   You’re here.
6. President of programming/robotics/engineering club.
   Nope.
7. Participated in programming/robotics/engineering contest.
   Nope.
8. Internship at Google or Microsoft.
   They know where to find me.
9. Has written non-trivial programs in dynamic languages (perl/python/ruby).
   Mhm.
10. Knows 3 or more programming languages.
    Right.
11. Previous position demonstrates similar skills.
    Not really.
12. Has internship.
    Has.
13. Founded a company.
    Only a pretend company, and we haven’t been active for about 10 years.
14. Personal web page uses Rails, PHP or Asp.Net.
    Been meaning to switch from PHP to Python, but there’s just no pressing need for it.
15. Email address at own domain.
    Not since 2005.
16. Has modified programs in dynamic languages (perl/python/ruby).
    That’s how I started out with dynamic web stuff in 1999, found perl scripts and tried to mod them without breaking them.
17. Has personal web page.
    Welcome.
18. High grades, top of class, etc.
    Meh.

Neutrals

1. Won scholarship.
   Have never applied for one.
2. Lists job at fast food chain.
   Haven’t had the pleasure.

Negatives

1. Looks kind of drunk in facebook picture.
   One of [apparently] few specimen in the human race who don’t find unending ecstasy in alcohol.
2. Has Ph.D.
   Not so much.
3. Generic cover letter.
   Might be tempted.
4. Mentions skills in Excel/Word.
   Over my dead body etc.
5. Spelling or grammar errors on resume.
   My typing is a bit dodgy, but I tend to proofread.
6. Resume font too small.
   Let’s hope not.
7. All programming experience in class.
   Nah.
8. Knows only 1 programming language.
   Once upon a time.
9. Resume more than three pages long.
   I try to make it in two.
10. Includes irrelevant objective section.
    Never knew what the point was of that one.
11. Took certification course in a technology.
    Never occurred to me.
12. Low grades in relevant courses.
    Nah.
13. Lists visual basic experience first.
    Don’t have any.
14. Topless in facebook picture.
    Only by mistake.
15. Resume uses combination of tabs and spaces to indent sections.
    I’m clean, narc. (Actually, if you use Tab in vim with wildmenu, it’s tricky to type a tab without a space first, because it will try to auto complete the current token. Haven’t tried to fix that yet.)

As I was pondering this, the line advanced and soon I found myself making my order. And that’s when I noticed how poorly organized the staffers were. First I made my order to the girl leaning over the cake counter. She proceeded to yell it down the line to the production division. Then I approached the cash register and had to repeat my order to another girl. “A large caffè latte.” “Was it a venti?” “I have no idea, I said large.” I refuse to speak their pretend language.  The girl who had taken the order chimed in to clarify. I forked over cash and, strangely enough, did not receive a receipt. Are they saving on paper?

That’s when I got in line behind the six previous customers who were still waiting to get theirs. Clearly, they were backed up with orders.  My coffee was ready before all of theirs was. But the girl in production had no idea whom it was for, because there were no receipts to work from. The orders were filled, but how to match them with customers? So she asks every person in turn “what are you waiting for?” That was the third time I had to say my order.

All of this somehow distracted me from noticing the beating I took on the coffee. €3.95 for a large caffè latte? That’s hilarious. At MacDonalds you can get a meal for a little over 5 bucks. Maybe they could justify the price if the café was a great place to hang out. Or if the coffee were especially good. Or if they were especially well organized and efficient.

I know, facts!

The World Weather Information Service has climate information on 1000+ cities around the world. I decided to do a little data mining. All conclusions to follow are based on that data. Just for kicks, I should mention there are very serious methodological problems with this exercise. First of all, they say countries don’t necessarily use the same definitions for what’s a rainy day or measure precipitation the same way. So you’re not really supposed to compare cities. Secondly, when placing cities on a world scale, sampling is everything. And nothing is known about the criteria by which cities are included in the list. We’re not gonna let petty details like that stop us, though.

I should also mention that “rain” as used here also includes snow where applicable.

Is it rainy here or what!

So is it rainy here? Let’s compare it to the control point: Trondheim. And let’s throw in some other data points too, for good measure.

• Cities with a reputation for rain: Bergen, London, Seattle, some town on the Spanish north coast (found A Coruna on the list).
• Cities known to be dry: Los Angeles, Zaragoza (turns out to be the driest city in Europe)
• Other cities: Berlin, Dublin, Milan, Paris, Stockholm

The first number is the total annual precipitation. The second is the number of rainy days.

city            mm/y   days
Bergen          2250   235
A Coruna        1008   171
Seattle          945   122
Milan            943    86
Trondheim        892   216
Amsterdam        780   185
Dublin           733   129
Paris            650   112
London           611   145
Berlin           571   106
Stockholm        539   173
Zaragoza         317    79
Los Angeles      305    27

Download this code: rainy_cities

Bergen’s reputation is well justified, it turns out to be the rainiest city in Europe. Rainy London, on the other hand, is a complete myth.

No, not like that, use *all* the facts!

But what do random cities tell us about the big picture? Not much. Let’s see how countries place on the overall ranking. Here we see the span they occupy in the list, from the rainiest city on the left to the driest on the right. (Spain refers to mainland Spain.)

The Netherlands place smack in the middle. So to say it’s a rainy country is an obvious exaggeration, it’s pretty much average. The very narrow span is probably due to the small and uniform geography. Norway, on the other hand, is definitely rainy, occupying the space in the rainy portion of the list. Bergen is most rainy, Oslo is least. As for London, it’s actually the lower end of the UK span, further diffusing its rainy reputation.

If you like staying dry the very best place to be is Luxor in Egypt, where precipitation is a minuscule 3mm annually. At the other end is Quibdo in Colombia, with an incredible 8m of rainfall and 305 days of rain.

But you didn’t…

I know, but this isn’t supposed to be comprehensive. If you want to do further work on this data you can get the list I generated:

• climate_raindata.gz

“A little rain never hurt nobody”, said Obama, as McCain headed the stampede to the nearest shelter. Damn right, Barack.

Europeans, take notice. Rain is water. Most of your bodies are water already. You’re carrying around water bottles to counter balance dehydration. Stop being so schizophrenic.

Disclaimer: I am not a special interest contributor to the Obama campaign. Obama merely chose to point and laugh at people who are scared of rain for the fun of it.

Exhibit A:

Scandinavian verbs have some of the easiest conjugation you can find in Europe. Present tense is made by adding an -r to the verb, regardless of who’s doing it. That gives us:

ha – to have

jeg har – I have
du har – you have
han har – he has
vi har – we have

Such simplicity is brilliant (and unheard of).

The full rationale is here. A few selected gems follow.

Norwegians understand 88% of the spoken swedish language
understand 73% of the spoken danish language

Swedes understand 48% of the spoken norwegian language
understand 23% of the spoken danish language

Danes understand 69% of the spoken norwegian language
understand 43% of the spoken swedish language

Norwegians understand 89% of the written swedish language
understand 93% of the written danish language

Swedes understand 86% of the written norwegian language
understand 69% of the written danish language

Danes understand 89% of the written norwegian language
understand 69% of the written swedish language.

Hah, suckers! More succinctly:

“Norwegian is Danish spoken in Swedish”

Norwegian + phonology – vocabulary = swedish

Norwegian – phonology + vocabulary = danish

Why? I have no idea. It’s a symptom, haven’t found the cause yet. The transformation is practically asymptotic, that’s for sure.

There is compelling talk from TED by Barry Schwartz about how having a lot of choice ruins your experience, because you have to take your pick out of an enormous set of possible choices, which leaves you agonizing over whether you made the right choice or not. There are so many choices, which means that whichever you pick, there is a chance that some other option would have been a little better still. Whereas if you only had a few options to choose from, you would choose the one best for you and know that none of the others could possibly make you any happier, because they weren’t as close to your preferences as the option you chose.

So that makes me think about people who work in job agencies. I mean these guys must see tens of jobs everyday, thousands of jobs every year. And it’s not so much that they are in a position to choose between all of these, but just *knowing* about them must make you think. Many other jobs may not be as enjoyable, but where else are you constantly confronted with a ton of other jobs out there?

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How bout that. SAS Braathens has my email address, because I book all my flights online. Periodically they send me this spam, which is “great offers” included in “important membership information”. Today they sent me an update on my bonus miles (along with a host of “great offers”, of course), including this paragraph, which I find completely incomprehensible.

Booking flights online using air miles is free

Since we are about to introduce a service charge for booking flights out of air miles through our Membership Service, from May 21, we encourage you to book them on our website. Basic-members will incur a charge of 150kr from May 21.

Well that’s an interesting way of telling you that 5 days from now you’ll be paying money for booking flights from air miles you’ve saved up. So something that’s not supposed to cost you anything now will, meanwhile you can avoid paying the service charge if you book online. Which is exactly what you expected to hear based on the headline, isn’t it?

It almost reminds me of Orwell’s 1984. First the weekly quotum for chocolate is 30 grams. So first they announce it is lowered to 15g, and the a week later, as if nothing happened, the “increase it” to 20g, to demonstrate how generous they are.

Yes, that’s right, yet another fire. Trondheim chock full of wooden houses has been a feast to fires in the past couple of years. The biggest one destroyed a whole block:

The city decided to reinvent itself by putting up an ugly ass new building:

And that’s just a prospect from the architects, believe me it looks crap up close. But the fun didn’t stop there. A restaurant smack in the middle of town caught fire. The place is so central that it’s practically a landmark.

I don’t know if you shop at Hennes&Mauritz much, but their building burnt to the ground a few years ago:

And apparently, last year in April while I was here in Holland, yet another fire.

Come see Trondheim, a city that enjoys a good bonfire. Here’s a full timeline, but unfortunately doesn’t list upcoming events. That’s just the big ones, there are bound to be plenty of smaller fires as well, like one covered in the past.

On the upshot, I don’t think any people were hurt in any of these fires. “But”, you say, “that’s good, Trondheim center is packed with these old wooden houses that are all the same and the city badly needs urban development. At least this way, new buildings can come up.” Well, that’s true, but it would be nice if this could come about through controlled change and some proper innovative thinking, not clumsy accidents followed by damage control. As it is, the city is hell bent on preserving these “cultural treasures” instead of actually building something that is worthwhile. Conservativism to the fullest. The cathedral is one of those landmarks that really stand for something, the rest of the city center is practically expendable architecturally. Well, it’s little old Trondheim, with all its close minded provincial mindset, don’t expect urban progress.

Oh, and happy Constitution Day.

It’s a stunning piece of psychological experimentation.