If you insist on pronouncing “gif” as “gif” instead of “jif”, you should pronounce “jpeg” as “jfeg”.

Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Tapiooooca!

Sorry; you are right. I never saw that reader with any other authors, so it’s not something that’s really stuck in my memory.

The Hyperion books by Dan Simmons. Hyperion has full cast, the rest doesn’t, but still very high quality narration.

Honourable mentions:

• Alastair Reynolds and John Lee collaborations. Lee has the perfect voice and tone for Reynolds’ precise (and somewhat aloof) language.
• Neil Gaiman books. Gaiman does his own narration, and I can’t imagine his books without his voice.

Dishonourable mention:

• John Scalzi, read by Will Wright. Wright reads as if every line in Scalzi’s works was hillarious. Scalzi is a very funny writer, but his books have somber set pieces, and Wright ruins the immersion there.

I wouldn’t change anything, but I would be far less stressed that everything would work out just fine.

Geocities. That’s how I lerned HTML. Used their WYSIWYG editor and then tinkered with the code. Built several pages close to my interest, and even scored some free stuff from marketing early online retailers like CDNow.

Also spent a lot of time browsing other Geocities pages and contacting people with shared interest.

I don’t mind discussing politics or religion, even though I don’t repeat myself in the same discussion and don’t engage with trolls. However, I absolutely never discuss my family, my personal matters and my racist views.

This tuling was passed due to a contract obligation to open a sandwich store. These cases are ueually related to regulations. Kind of like when an Irish court ruled that Subway subs are cakes, so higher VAT and sugar tax would apply to them. (In all fairness, the sugar content in the Subway “bread” is several times higher than the max allowed for bread.)

I used to use Ubuntu up to 12.04. By the time the support ended, the new versions had the Unity desktop, I didn’t like it, so for a while I switched to Crunchbang (may it rest in peace), and now I’m using Mint Cinnamon. Some of my developers are using Ubuntu with Unity. Everyone is free to pick what suits them; I’m not one to judge them.

I paint and draw, purely as a hobby. You wouldn’t believe the amount of crap some people have. Brushes they use only once in a lifetime, for one specific element. Special colours they also get to use only once. Pencils they don’t even open. Get a basic set, familiarise yourself with it, stretch it to the full extent of its capabilities (that’s mastery), and then upgrade to a higher quality version of what you have. No single-use novelty tools and materials.

There may be dozens of us who still remember Captain Future. I used to get in trouble in school for doodling his space ship in my workbooks.

Americans also expected me to leave a voice message instead of sending an SMS when I didn’t reach them. That was quite a culture shock for me.

Geocities. A platform where anyone, regardless of technical skill or any design sense could go wild about their passion.

I insist on slippers. I tend to bang my toes or, even worse, catch my toenails on all kinds of protrusions (from stairs to skirting boards). I run a lot, so I keep my toenails very short, but it happens quite often, and slippers are the best way to prevent it.

Mother’s Day? Really? That’s quite surprising. Why is that?

Can’t argue with that. I never really paid attention to Paddy’s Day while I was in the US, so all I have to go by are the news reports (which may be a bit sensationalist).

As a Dubliner (Ireland, not one of the many Dublins across the pond), I must say that Americans are really weird about Paddy’s Day. We have a large parade in Dublin and smaller ones in smaller cities, and then those of us who have kids ho to family fairs, and the rest for a pint at the local. We leave the city centre to the tourists who get shitfaced on overpriced, prepoured Guinness for no good reason. And even though we did some weird things with our river (the time in the slime), we never dyed the Liffey green.

Middle manager in an IT company here. My job description is saying “no” to requests outside the official pipeline, in order to shield my team from outside interference and burnout. I need a manager to fight for me whenever I pick a fight with one of the VPs who think we need to drop everything and refocus on their pet project.

That’s how I was taught. Quarter past, half past, quarter to, and add to it the minutes. Then again, I was also taught to hide under my school desk in case of a nuclear attack. I think times may have changed slightly since then…

Last summer, I was in a water park, one of the few people still wearing a watch. A man asked me what time it was, and I replied “half past one and ten minutes”. To me, this was completely natural, and I didn’t even think about it. I’ll never forget his confused look. You could almost see slight movements under his hair as the wheels in his brain worked overtime to translate it into digital time…