Blog News · LOLCODE

A new HAI WORLD of sorts

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:08:31 +0000

A new HAI WORLD of sorts

Reddit has been infected by this meme of “A Reddit clone in X lines of Y programming language.” I suppose, then, that it was inevitable that someone would pull it off with LOLCODE. Naturally, as with any high performance web programming needs, they turned to PHP, and Tetraboy's LOLCODE implementation, which was one of the very first out there (and why it might not look like other dialects of LOLCODE found elsewhere).

CAN HAS SQL?
DBASE IZ GETDB('db/lcsn.db')
FUNNAHS IZ DBUCKET(&DBASE&,"CAN I PLZ GET * ALL UP IN lollit")
IM IN UR FUNNAHS ITZA TITLE
	VOTEZ IZ &TITLE#ups& - &TITLE#downs&
...

Well played, keyz182, well played.

PragPub

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:33:51 +0000

PragPub

Well played, Pragmatic Programmers, well played.

The inaugural issue of PragPub, an electronic magazine for programmers edited by Michael Swaine, former editor of Dr. Dobb’s Journal, has a cameo appearance for LOLCODE.

(originally via Gruber)

For the lulz. Also, marblecake.

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 23:44:43 +0000

For the lulz. Also, marblecake.

Paul Lamere, a blogger for whom I have long had much respect, has outdone himself with a long look at the recent 4chan hack of a time.com poll.

At the core of the hack is the work of a dozen or so, backed by an army of a thousand who downloaded and ran the autovoters and also backed by an untold number of others that unwittingly fell prey to the spam url autovoters. So why do they do it? Why do they write code, build complex applications, publish graphs - why do they organize a team that is more effective than most startup companies? Says Zombocom: “For the lulz”.

Amen, brother.

Google code search

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 23:24:20 +0000

Google code search

Just minutes into April 2nd, I discover that Google has introduced LOLCODE language search. Nice.

(via NetworkWorld)

The Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom song

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:31:13 +0000

The Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom song

Parry Gripp is a brilliant, mad genius. Anyone who rocked to Buffy the Vampire Slayer's theme tune at any time in the past twelve years already knows this. Lately, he has been building his reputation as the Mayor of the Internet by creating such musical hits as ”Hamster on a Piano,” ”Fuzzy Fuzzy Cute Cute,” and the below “Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom” song:

I came across the above video, and knew I had to remix the music using my latest project: a script that created automatic, parameterized random re-edits of a song. It lead to a potentially limitless number of variations, most of which are actually less annoying than the original:

I wrote up a full explanation of how I did it on my personal site. It tries to get across some tricky computer and music concepts in a non-technical manner.

But why do I bother posting it to this site? I mean, other than the fact that it's a mashup of a cute, popular internet meme?

LOLCODE helped me create it. No, I didn't code it in our favorite esolang, but the process of designing LOLCODE got me thinking about fluent interfaces: code that when you read it, just makes sense. While the below code might not have the same enduring qualities as CAN HAS STDIO?, it's definitely motivated by the same desire to create code that anyone can read:

  beats = song.analysis.beats
  first_beats = beats.that(fall_on_the(1))

I didn't create the open-sourced Echo Nest Remix API, but I have contributed parts that might make it more fun to code. If you want to learn more about Remix, I have also written a semi-technical overviewof the API, as well.

And if you want to share the remixes, you can get the embed codes at the bottom of my explanation of the remixes, or point people to an OpenTape of the songs.

More LOLCODE-related news soon…

If programming languages were religions

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:02:37 +0000

If programming languages were religions

Variations of this joke get passed around all the time, but this one was special. LOLCODE joined the ranks of Lua, Ruby, and Erlang as the languages of the moment worth comparing.

LOLCODE would be Pastafarianism - An esoteric, Internet-born belief that nobody really takes seriously, despite all the efforts to develop and spread it.

Nailed it.

The whole piece is worth checking out, but I just couldn't resist quoting the highlight here.

The LOLZ keep rolling in

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:42:36 +0000

The LOLZ keep rolling in

I recently learned of a lot more developments in the LOLCODE world.

First off, congratulations to Dale, Brendon, and Carlos, winners of the N-Squared LOLCODE Challenge. Achievements like this give me hope for the next generation.

Secondly, Adrian Tsai provided a C++ LOLCODE interpreter for Windows. I haven't had time to investigate fully, but it sounds promising.

Also fresh off the blogosphere is a Ruby-to-LOLCODE code translator that works via Ruby's abstract syntax tree. (Also available on github.) It reminds me more than a little of Patrick Michaud's talk on using Perl6's Parrot to do a similar thing. But that doesn't dampen my delight, because I love this sort of hack.

I'm going to be taking a bit of a holiday, so things on the site and forums might be a bit quiet from my end for a while.

HEPPY HOLIDAYZ!

ROFLThing in New York

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 13:00:45 +0000

ROFLThing in New York

If you haven't heard the news, the folks behind ROFLCon, a watershed in LOLCODE's life, have teamed up to do another event, this time in NYC. Alexis Ohanian, of the big hands, the OLPC Laptop Auction, the LOLCats panel, and an obscure news aggregation site, is the host this time, and it looks like it's shaping up to be another nice event.

Check out the news: if you can be in New York on January 24, 2009, then try to do so. (LOLCODE won't be there, sad panda.)

DRGBLZ

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 23:26:09 +0000

DRGBLZ

Airships are funny. Dirigibles cast as flying LOL-Manatees are somehow magic. I caught Aaron Muszalski's flickr set of BaLOLoons, and thought it was great. However, co-conspirator Meredith Yayanos went one better and blogified the concept at DRGBLZ.com.

(Thanks to Simon Willison for pointing out the blog/site.)

Lucky students

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:40:19 +0000

Lucky students

Unless you're one of the lucky students of Massey University in New Zealand, this is merely a curiosity, but I hear that there is a contest with cash prizes for the best LOLCODE program to compute square roots. The fine and clearly discerning folks at N-Squared Software (i c whut u did thar) are sponsoring this programming challenge to support local programming talent.

This is not the first time I've noticed the role of LOLCODE in education in the lands down under. Good luck to all who compete!

(via Cantareus)

PL/LOLCODE

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 08:49:01 +0000

PL/LOLCODE

I've mentioned Josh “Eggyknap” Tolley's adventures with LOLCODE in PostgreSQL before, but never really gave him the spotlight. About a week ago, he presented his work at PostgreSQL Conference: West about a week ago. LOLCODE once again proves its worth as a “HAI WORLD” language for language implementors, as Josh's 90-minute presentation was a tutorial on how to implement a procedural language for PostgreSQL.

The entertaining and informative slides are here, and there's a bonus program listing telling you how to calculate pi.

Thanks, Josh, and congrats on a job well done!

In other news, I've had to turn off new user registrations in the forum. For more details, see this announcement.

State of the LOLs

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 11:22:27 +0000

State of the LOLs

It's been a while since I did a roundup of the memes, and there's some news to spread, so I may as well get down to it.

I recently received a pre-release version of the much talked-about LOLCats book. I learned that it was in production back at ROFLCon, and the team who originated ICHC created it as a labor of love. It's really cleverly compiled. In addition to the cat macros we all know and love, there are numerous, cute, effective illustrations that help stitch things together. The illustrations also serve, in some cases, to mask the poor image resolution of the originals where higher-res images couldn't be found. In this way, some classics (e.g., ceiling cat & monorail cat) are able to make it into the book when they might have been excluded.

The book is a nice keepsake for those of us who are deeply into the LOLs, but where it really shines is as a gift to those relatives who are not so much into online culture. I know I have to get a copy for my cat-crazy aunt. The LOLCats in the book are fairly dominated by the “Tofuburger” end of things: popular, cute, and not too obscure. Geek classics are also in there (passing it around to officemates got a lot of guffaws from quantum cat), so you can use the book as a gateway drug for the LOLs. It's really well produced, with full-color, full-bleed printing throughout.

You can check out the book's website or order it from Amazon.com (affiliate link).

Secondly, Ben Huh, the CEO of the ICHC empire, gave a presentation at Gnomedex this year (which was an expansion of his well-received SXSW 2007 talk), and Chris Pirillo documented the talk, which begins with a decent history of LOLCats and continues to an interesting discussion of running a business based on memes. The video of the talk and PDF of the slides are both available and worth your while.

Finally, if you're a fan of medical dramas like my family is, you should get a good chuckle out of LOLHouse, which gives a LOLTrek-style treatment to recent episodes of House.

Talk like a lolcat day

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:22:56 +0000

Talk like a lolcat day

O HAI!

Tihs jus in: itz talk liek a lolcat day todaez!

10.1 == lol

Y? Cuz dey tol me so! Haev a l00k!

kthxbye!

Testing

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:55:47 +0000

Testing

So, late last week, the Google Testing Blog got a hold of LOLCODE for their weekly tutorial. Unlike some posts out there claiming to teach LOLCODE, it seems they're actually closer to the leading edge in understanding LOLCODE objects (BUKKITS).

Oh NOES! Usin' internets in ur unit testz? Don't clog the tubes! Is not big truck! Mock the LOLIO thingy. No moar tubes!

There's actually some serious business in there, if you're concerned with Unit Testing. Check it out…

A comment on ads

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:05:28 +0000

A comment on ads

I don't usually comment on what goes on in the sidebar of this site, because normally the self-serve ads have absolutely no bearing on the editorial content here. That said, I did encourage the currently-running ad (by offering an ad slot for free) for electoral-vote.com for several reasons. First, the guy who runs the site is a hoopy frood in the computer science world. Secondly, I watch that site avidly, myself. The biggest reason from my point of view, however, is that this US election is important.

It's not all that computer-y, and not all that LOL, but some things trancend the lulz: if you're a US citizen (even if you're abroad, like ast and me), please make every effort possible to find out about the candidates and vote this November.

LOLapps

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:52:25 +0000

LOLapps

A couple months ago I learned about an up-and-coming company with the intriguing and inviting name of LOLapps. They've fleshed out their web site a little bit since then. More to the point, they're trying to recruit while while being obliged to tell next to nothing about their company. In any case, I suspect what they do is Seeryous Bizniss, at least more serious than some previous job postings.

They're looking for a project manager, a community manager, and software and network engineers, so if you're looking for a new opportunity and want to increase the LOL quotient in your life, I suggest taking a look at lolapps.com. I have my theories about some things they might do, but it would be irresponsible to speculate here. I do note they keep a presence on Facebook….

Godspeed, LOLapps. We need more lulz in the world.

Lightning Parrot

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:58:17 +0000

Lightning Parrot

I just heard about the goings on at YAPC (yet another Perl conference) Europe, 2008, in Copenhagen earlier this month. Patrick Michaud gave a lightning talk on LOLCODE in Perl 6's Parrot. Not only did he give a great overview of LOLCODE (v. 1.2), he gave a live demo of code translation from Perl (and, potentially, other languages) to LOLCODE via Parrot.

I've embedded the video here, and unlike previous offerings, it's short and sweet, at under seven minutes. Alternatively, download it and check it out at your leisure.

Wow. Thank you, Patrick (and Simon and Will and everyone in the Perl 6 community)!

A different sort of Twitter bot

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 21:36:22 +0000

A different sort of Twitter bot

I've long held a strong fascination for Twitter in conjunction with LOLCODE. Twitter was pretty much the first vector for people to hear about LOLCODE on its first day, before Reddit and Digg struck. I also thought that LOLCODE would make a good language for a bot running on Twitter: if people could access it via SMS, and it looks close to TXT SPEEK anyway, it could be a compelling combination. That never materialized, but the idea stuck around.

My latest project has been a music recommendation agent for Twitter. Yes, Twitter bots are so 2007, but I'd like to think that recom.me brings something new to the table by giving user queries some persistence. Not only does the bot react on Twitter, but it creates a permanent URL on its own website.

If you like music and have some tolerance for Twitter, please check the user @recomme out, and send it a band name or solo artist. It should respond within a couple minutes with a list of other, similar musicians worth checking out. Respond again with “more” (or, if you prefer, “MOAR”), it'll send a few more artists to consider. I designed it to be easy to use via SMS at, say, the record store.

If you're not on Twitter, you can still explore a sample query, or read more at the about page.

This is just an early preview version of the site. Thanks to the awesome guys at The Echo Nest, whose APIs are behind the uncanny recommendations, recomme should soon be able to learn about your tastes and customize its recommendations for you.

P.S.: We're in the final hours of the LOLCODE Back-to-School sale. I have no idea when Spreadshirt will offer such a good discount again.

KTHX BAI

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:10:38 +0000

KTHX BAI

Photographer Michael Woodward caught a snapshot of a great vanity license plate this weekend. I know it's light on news, but I had to share.

(Yes, I know about the discrepancy in spelling. Too AWSUM to pass up.)

OBTW: Only a few days left in the 25% off back to school sale!

LOLBush

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 08:30:03 +0000

LOLBush

Some of you will already have come across this political commentary from the Guardian, highlighting some of George W. Bush's adventures in China during the Olympics.

Seeing this go through a mainstream (not technology) editorial flow (even if it appears to be online-only) seems to mark a new point in the development of LOLCats. I've known the Guardian Technology folks to be very hip to all things LOL, but this is mainstream coverage that goes beyond “Oh, look at those wacky geeks and their wacky humor.” It pretty much assumes you know what image macros are, or at least will find them funny on their own. LOLCats are entering the vernacular.

Step two, then, in LOL world domination would be a book. A little bird tells me that's coming, too…