Just another brick in the wall

 Recently I received an email from the LLVM Foundation, asking permission to re-license my contribution to the LLVM project. They very helpfully included a link to my contribution.

Here is my contribution in all its glory.

I think this change was needed because SUSE's GCC identified itself as just 4.3, rather than 4.3.something. Sometimes I wonder if any person besides myself benefited from this change. There couldn't have been that many people building clang and LLVM from source on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP1.

 I always thought of a contribution like this as "my brick in the Great Wall of China". Actually, the Great Wall of China contains an estimated 3,873,000,000 bricks, and the LLVM project contains about 8,000,000 lines of code. One line of code would correspond to 484 bricks. Even if I rate that change as 1/4 of a line, it still corresponds to 121 bricks.

So, not just another brick in the wall. More than a hundred, actually :)

A million kittens ?

Reading through Azumanga Daioh minor characters , I saw Masaaki Ooyama described as "meganekko". Decomposing it into "mega" and "neko" seemed to make perfect sense given that "neko" was one of the few Japanese words I knew. A million kittens didn't seem so out of place in a manga (although somewhat strange as a description of a character).

The correct meaning is rather more prosaic :-)

Support with support

How often do you get to raise partner with six cards to the AQT ?

Teams (IMP scoring), I was East.
Board 19, Dealer South, EW (us) vulnerable

    64
    J2
    JT873
    K863
KJ932      AQT875
K763       QT8
K5         A64
Q7         2
    -
    A954
    Q92
    AJT954

South West North East
1♣    1♠   pass  4♠
all pass

There wasn't much to the play and we took 11 tricks for 650. Our teammates bid 5♣ and went -1 undoubled, for a 12 IMP gain.


This isn't the biggest trump support I've seen. The record is 8 cards headed by the AK when partner opens 1♠, promising a five card suit !

The perfect defense

Flawless play is a rare thing, but this hand came pretty close:

Teams (IMP scoring)
Board 27, Dealer South, None vulnerable. I was sitting East.

    AKT984
    84
    83
    A42
653          -
AJ76         KQ93
AJT          Q97652
K76          T85
    QJ72
    T52
    K4
    QJ93

South West North East
pass  1NT  3 ♠  end

1NT was 12-14
3 ♠ merely showed a one-suited hand, 2 ♠ would have promised a two-suiter with a minor (Pinpoint Astro)

I led the ♥K and switched to the ♦Q, covered by the King and Ace. Partner cashed the ♦J and ♥A and continued hearts, ruffed. Declarer drew trumps and led the ♣Q. My partner, Edna Gilette, ducked, thereby condemning the contract to fail (covering would have allowed the contract to be made by finessing against the ♣10).

This hand alone made the trip worthwhile.

Lenin in Siberia

Comrade Stalin is visiting an art exposition. Walking around, he pauses in front of a painting depicting a man and a woman in an intimate pose.

- What is the title of this decadent art ? - he demands.
- Lenin in Siberia - his aide replies.
- Who is this woman in the painting ?
- It is Nadhezda Krupskaya, Lenin's wife.
- And who is this gentleman ?
- It is Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, head of the Cheka.
- So where is Lenin ?
- Why, in Siberia, of course!

(Yes, it is a joke)

Sad what ???

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I browsed weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore...

In fact, I went to Wikipedia to read about Norman Spinrad

They say that in an encyclopedia there are no answers, only references. It's even more dangerous at Wikipedia because it has links, lots of links. It's all too easy to start chasing links and end up in strange places. This is what happened to me.
I followed the link to The Iron Dream, an alternate history/science fiction novel by Spinrad which I have read many years ago. The article describes it as pastiche, of course there is a link. On the Pastiche page under "See also" there's a link to doujinshi, which sounded Japanese and hence intriguing.

On the Dōjinshi page there were many links to "Famous dōjinshi authors" (never heard of them), mostly with Japanese-sounding names; since I can neither read nor understand Japanese I decided to stay away. In contrast, Megatokyo seemed safe since it's written by an American. Now I'm hooked.

What has all this have to do with the name of the blog ? Check out
Sad girl in snow and you'll get the idea :-)