The happy new year is here. I was conversing offline with individuals about courses a little ways back in time. And, if it’s any solace to anyone online deathly afraid of the future, keep reading?

Fun fact: Many seemingly think that I’ve used generative models to build this inert static site (hoho). How would you know the difference? And can you fully trust it?

There are a collection of poems called The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. I saw references to one of its four liners in a random video clip of a show. That’s unexpected.

Oh, threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain–This Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.

The translation on the third line is especially spiffy, and the fourth, sufficiently crafty (at least in my opinion).

I’m remembering something kind of amusing. I used to be big on portable documents until I discovered the ultra hard way how cryptic everything was underneath the hood. They’re good enough, but have any of you ever heard of the cracked WWF format (not wrestling)?

It was an encrypted portable document where the defining feature was to make printing technically impossible to save the world. Good thing it was .wwf and not .wwe. This might sound fantastical, but maybe it was really true.

There’s truly nothing more liberating than deleting all of your work by mistake (or having it deleted). That’s why it never hurts to have multiple distribution (and backup) strategies. A newer way is invented every day:

gcc -o delete-this-file.c