Blog News · LOLCODE

IM IN YR DATABASE

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Mon, 12 May 2008 10:43:34 +0000

IM IN YR DATABASE

One development that has been cooking for months but has gotten a lot of attention lately is Joshua “eggyknap” Tolley's PL/LOLCODE. It's a procedural language flavor of LOLCODE used to access PostgreSQL databases. One of the things that really sold it for me was Selena Deckelmann's exemplary slides that she gave for a local PerlMongers meeting.

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION 
gimmeh_dinnr() RETURNS TEXT AS $$ 
HAI 
  GIMMEH OUTTA DATABUKKIT "SELECT food FROM bowl ORDER BY time DESC LIMIT 1" 
        FOUND YR IT 
KTHXBYE 
$$ LANGUAGE PLLOLCODE;

If you want to check out or contribute to the project, it's available right on the pgFoundry.

LOLCODE: DokuWiki cover girl

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Thu, 08 May 2008 11:04:03 +0000

LOLCODE: DokuWiki cover girl

LOLCODE has now been featured as the DokuWiki of the Month for May 2008. It was really the first interview I had conducted about LOLCODE, and I was grateful for the chance: for me, working with the underlying DokuWiki software has been nearly all pleasure, with very little pain.

I launched at the end of May 2007, using DokuWiki alone. The week following the launch was full of sleepless nights, just buzzing on the volume of attention the site was getting. …[It] quickly made the front pages of Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us, BoingBoing and StumbleUpon, [and] we served over a million pages in less than a week. The site still gets thousands of new visitors a week from people who still haven't seen the joke.

If you need to run a Wiki for a project, unless you have specific requirements leading you elsewhere, I would readily recommend DokuWiki.

It's everywhere!

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Mon, 05 May 2008 12:57:34 +0000

It's everywhere!

LOLCODE is cropping up everywhere I look. It's becoming unsettling. First, I learned of Leah Culver's work on the Pownce API. LOLCODE is a legitimate return format: just append .lol to your request:

http://api.pownce.com/users/atl.lol:

OH HAI
INVISIBLE FLICKR API OM NOM NOM NOM
  GIMME USER
    I CAN HAS USERNAME
      atl
    KTHX.
    I CAN HAS FRIEND_COUNT
      27
    KTHX.
    I CAN HAS PERMALINK
      http://pownce.com/atl/
    KTHX.
    ...
  I IS BORED
KTHXBYE.

But then I learned it was just in emulation of the Flickr API (as implied by the second line of the response), where, thanks to Cal Henderson, format=lolcode sits proudly next to xmlrpc and json.

http://api.flickr.com/services/...&format=lolcode:

HAI
IM IN UR BUCKETS MAKING UP FORMATS
GIMME A_T_LS FAVORITES
  I CAN HAS PHOTO 2008_04_25_ROFLCON_10
    ITZ AT http://www.flickr.com/photos/docsearls/2442343070/
    INVISIBLE METADATA
    LOL
  KTHX.
  I CAN HAS PHOTO ICANHASCASESTUDY
    ITZ AT http://www.flickr.com/photos/stoast/2444666738/
    INVISIBLE METADATA
    LOL
  KTHX.
  I CAN HAS PHOTO ICANHASCASESTUDY2
    ITZ AT http://www.flickr.com/photos/stoast/2443843469/
    INVISIBLE METADATA
    LOL
  KTHX.
...

Really, you have to admit that as API formats go, this is pretty easy to read. I look forward to seeing it elsewhere: if you spot it, as always, you can send a note to lolcode@lolcode.com.

ROFLCon LOLCats panel coverage

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 11:56:35 +0000

ROFLCon LOLCats panel coverage

(DSC_0059, originally uploaded by davefishernc on Flickr)

Speaking on the LOLCats discussion panel (“LOLCATS: I CAN HAZ CASE STUDY?”) was fantastic. I shared the stage with some thoughtful, humble, and very funny people in the same lecture hall where I had once taken a bunch of Comp Sci classes a long time ago.

What people have written about the panel has been very generous. David Weinberger, whose keynote and subsequent panel set a very high bar for the rest of the Con, wrote some very nice things about our panel. Anna Pickard from The Guardian also wrote up the panel, and reports some of my non-cat LOL shout-outs. The ROFLCon blog itself had an abbreviated live-blog of the event. Justin Ellis of the Portland Press Herald also gave some insights into the panel, as did Gunnar and Joel.

I'm sure more coverage will come out later, but for now, some more pictures (showing off my shirt):

ROFLCon in the Mainstream Media

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:09:25 +0000

ROFLCon in the Mainstream Media

The pre-ROFLCon party set up by Laughing Squid was just the start of the ROFLCon awesomeness. There were so many dyson people there, it's impossible to list. Steve Garfield was the first to get a picture of my glow-in-the-dark t-shirt onto Flickr. Stories previewing ROFLCon have already appeared on blogs from The Guardian and Wired, as well.

Right now, my favorite way of gorging on ROFLCon info is the Tweetscan feed of ROFLCon info. If you want to keep an eye on what's happening, you could do worse than watch that page/RSS feed.

To all of you who already keep an eye on the LOLCODE news feed, I wish you were here, so that I could give you all a big hug.

Live! On video!

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:08:39 +0000

Live! On video!

This ROFLCon thing is turning out to be even more awesome with each passing moment. Word just got to me that the panels and discussions are planned to be live-streamed on the internet. For the LOLCat panel (where I'll be sharing the stage with Cheez of ICHC and other folks with the lulz), tune in at Ustream at 3:30 PM EDT (GMT+6:00, I think). (Update: the link may be here or here: I don't know which room maps to my panel talk yet.)

If you wanna say hi or see what's up in real-time, feel free to say hi over my Twitter stream. I plan on live-tweeting as much as I can.

Another amazing by-product of ROFLCon is The Weekly Dig's (a free Boston-area weekly) current issue having all the heads, subheads, and captions copy-edited in LOLSpeek. It is an amazing thing to see in print. Check it out! (pdf)

lolfood

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:20:40 +0000

lolfood

I had a slight taste of what ROFLCon might hold in store for me yesterday when I was out for lunch with my brother's family. I was wearing a LOLCODE t-shirt, and my server must have recognized the language, because before I knew it, I was holding a receipt that identified me as “LOLCAT”.

AWSUM THX.

Mitch P., wherever you are, I want to thank you for seriously confusing your co-worker who had to call out my order, and for making my afternoon infinitely weirder.

Comings and goings

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:58:33 +0000

Comings and goings

I flew into Boston a couple nights ago, and finally got to see a big batch of LOLCODE t-shirts. I had a couple thoughts as a result: 1) the old CaféPress black shirts were a bit embarrassing in quality. I had no idea they came out that way. (I had personally gotten a green t-shirt, which was a lot nicer, IMHO.) 2) I am really psyched about the Spreadshirt-printed shirts now available from the LOLCODE store, which honestly look stellar. It's a night-and-day difference. These are not comments from a marketing maven: it's an honest assessment from someone who wants to wear a cool shirt himself.

So.
I'm in town for ROFLCon. If you're anywhere near the MIT campus this weekend, it is mandatory that you contact me. I have a surprise gift for you, dear reader of the LOLCODE home page.

quokka-wakka-wakka

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:30:44 +0000

quokka-wakka-wakka

The ever-present Nick Hodge points us to another episode of LOLQuokka, by Stephen Price, in which LOLCODE makes a guest appearance. It's apparently there to plug REMIX 08 in Australia. To me, though, the comic raises a more serious question: What's a quokka, anyway?

A video introduction to LOLCODE

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:13:54 +0000

A video introduction to LOLCODE

Since I was busy last week launching the new store, I missed out on some other news. On April 1, Scott Hanselman gave a keynote at Devscovery, a .NET-oriented conference. Eagle caught some video of the talk, which, after a characteristically modest introduction, gives a brief introduction to LOLCODE. (The LOLs start at about 8:40 into the clip, unfortunately after the video got very blurry.)

Scott Hanselman has been a longtime LOLCODE champion, of course. Thanks, Scott!

New store

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:07:13 +0000

New store

It's April Fools' Day (somewhere in the world), and that's as good time as any to re-launch the LOLCODE store.

Be the first with shirts and more from the new LOLCODE store. Now featuring new designs, bolder, brighter printing, lower prices on black shirts, many more women's (and juniors') products, writeable shirts, glow-in-the-dark designs, budget t-shirts, and color customization.

This is way overdue, but I'm glad of the fact that I was finally able to find a place where I could offer people better prices, more robust printing transfers, and things like black babydolls that I couldn't offer before. I also had a lot of fun with the new designs, too. I hope you like them!

Insider information on the store

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 09:00:20 +0000

Insider information on the store

If you're a big fan of CafePress's products (e.g., mugs) and printing processes, I suggest you act now and buy something from the store before Tuesday.

But for the rest of you, you might like to wait and see just what happens at the start of April…

LOLCODE DLR on video

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:26:08 +0000

LOLCODE DLR on video

More Microsoft lovin' for LOLCODE… While I couldn't possibly comment on the rumors that Windows 8 will be written in LOLCODE, we do see further evidence of support for our favorite language from the Microsoft Developer Network.

Channel9, the MSDN media arm, has an in-depth, one-hour video discussion of the dynamic language runtime with John Lam and Martin Maly, chief instigators behind the DLR implementation. LOLCODE gets some nice mentions just a couple of minutes in, which made me smile.

(Thanks once again to Nick Hodge!)

Last ROFLCon Registrations

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 09:49:00 +0000

Last ROFLCon Registrations

So, any of you interested in a rare LOLCODE public appearance should act quickly and register for ROFLCon as soon as possible: I hear straight from the organizers that the conference is nearly full, and they may close registration as soon as today.

I'm getting really excited to see people there in just over a month!

Update: Registrations are now closed.

Another Nu language

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 11:04:08 +0000

Another Nu language

Another week, another language, more LOLs. I've followed the development of the Nu programming langugage since it was first unveiled at last year's C4 conference. I like the LISPy flavor on top of the Objective-C foundation. Well, Tim Burks, the creator of Nu has LOLified it with: I CAN HAS NU. (Reload for more LOLs, but not necessarily more cats.)

Also, an old friend of mine forwarded a job posting for a Swiss-Army-Knife Software Engineer for Bose Corporation. If you're a generalist, flexible programmer who would like to live in the Boston area, give it a look. I've got friends at Bose, and can attest to it being an invigorating, challenging intellectual environment. Sounds like a really cool job.

"hi world".to_lolspeak

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:58:22 +0000

"hi world".to_lolspeak

Dave Dribin's Daring Furball project was based in Ruby, and so he, being (twisted, brilliant, and) community-minded, created a Ruby Gem for it and made it easily downloadable and installable. If you're set up with Ruby and the right permissions, a simple

gem install lolspeak

should get you started. See the lolspeak page for more details!

ICHC jobs

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:42:47 +0000

ICHC jobs

If you're the sort of geek who keeps returning to this site, then you just might have the 1) time and 2) programming inclination to be interested I Can Has Cheezburger's job posting for a .NET web programming guru.

Interested? Tell them Adam sent you…

Daring Furball

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:51:52 +0000

Daring Furball

One of my most enduring RSS reads is John Gruber's Daring Fireball. Yet somehow I'm still surprised (and pleased) by Dave Dribin's LOLization of it: Daring Furball.

Lambdacats

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:50:28 +0000

Lambdacats

I love functional programming. I cut my programming teeth on making tail recursion work just right in Scheme. A Haskell e-mail list was one of the first serious group of coders discussed LOLCODE. So I'm a little embarrassed that I'm a little late to the Lambdacats party. But at least I can share the news now.

[via Jens Alfke, also the originator of Visual H4×1c]

Joyent FTW!

lolcode@lolcode.com (Adam Lindsay) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 23:44:38 +0000

Joyent FTW!

As LOLCODE got a shout-out in their recent newsletter, I thought I'd give a reciprocal holler back to Joyent, the people responsible for my web hosting. They're a great company, staffed by amazing people, and the center of a great community. Also, the hosting doesn't suck, either.

They've been supportive throughout the LOLCODE adventure, and were very responsive (and amused) when LOLCODE's popularity on launch continually threatened to crash its small Accelerator (virtual host). It's a testament to their infrastructure that it never did, during the worst Digging. If you're looking for a good deal in a solid web host, you could do far worse than approach them. If you want to support the site and you're interested in what Joyent has to offer, you could click on this affiliate link before signing up, but really, I only mention them and carry the link because I believe in their products.