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Boy that firefox spell checker sure read my mind!


As seen on the Daily WTF.

Update: this has been fixed.

Fabaceae

A few weeks ago I needed a few integer values whose hexadecimal values were clearly recognizable when debugging -- magic numbers. I did a search on the web for a list of good magic number, which I was sure would exist, but couldn't find any. I ended up using 0xBADDEAD and 0xBEEFDAD which I thought were pretty good.

Then I made a mistake: I decided that I should make that list of magic numbers if no one else would. It wasn't until I was done that that I realized the depth of pointlessness of the thing I had just done. But here it is: a list of all hexadecimal words that are meaningful in the english language, in the form of a google spreadsheet. As proof of the words' meaningfulness each word has a link to a dictionary or encyclopedia describing the meaning. Most of them are pretty obscure -- like dace, a small fish, or eba, a food eaten in West Africa. However, some are pretty meaningful (scroll down to see the list, for some reason blogger messes up the formatting):

ace	A playing card
bad	Not good; unfavorable; negative
bead	A small decorative object
bee	A flying insect
beef	Culinary name for meat from bovines
cab	A type of public transport
cafe	A coffee-shop
dad	Father
dead	Bereft of life
deaf	Insensitive to sound
decade	A period of 10 years
decaf	Decaffeinated coffee
fabaceae	A family of flowering plants
facade	The front of a building
face	The front part of the head

The next time I or anyone else has to come up with a magic number it should be a lot easier. I'll try to ignore the fact that I probably spent ten times as long compiling this list as any programmer spends inventing magic numbers in a lifetime.

Update

Jeez, it's been months since I've last posted. Partly I've been busy and partly I just don't have anything to say. But now I've come up with a few half-interesting links to post so I thought I'd give a sign of life.

First, in case you haven't seen it already, there's this brilliant flash game that I've wasted far too much time playing: gravity pods.

Second, I keep meeting people who have never read Olin Shivers' acknowledgements in the scheme shell reference manual. If you haven't already, go read them.

Finally, I came across this great description of a person, from Tim Moore's Frost on my Moustache, which had me laughing out loud in the train. It is Lord Dufferin's description of his butler, Wilson:

Of all the men I ever met he is the most desponding. Whatever is to be done, he is sure to see a lion in the path. Life in his eyes is a perpetual filling of leaky buckets and a rolling of stones uphill. He brushes my clothes, lays the cloth, opens the champagne, with the air of one advancing to his execution. I have never seen him smile but once, when he came to report to me that a sea had nearly swept his colleague, the steward, overboard.

If you think that's funny you should read the whole book.