Chipping the web – Memphis
June 30th, 2007 2:30:20 pm pst by 
Sterling Camden
Franklin Junction was the original name of the town in Virginia where I grew up. It was named for a junction in the railway system there, and it was the last scheduled stop (which was skipped at full speed) prior to the wreck of the Old 97, which occurred about a dozen miles further down the line.
Stu Savory also asked me to mention that the number 97 “has a reciprocal period of maximum length (96) that starts with the powers of 3 (because 97=100-3)”, but I couldn’t think of a succinct title hint for that. It’s a cool fact, though: 1/97 = 0.01030927… and it repeats after 96 digits, which is the maximum (n-1).
OK, today’s should be eeeasy.
Kent plays link-love Robin Hood to Louis Gray’s Sheriff of Technorati.
Chad Perrin is building a microframework in Ruby for his new Copyfree site:
I very briefly considered constructing the site with PHP, but really, I’m trying to stop mistreating myself like that.
Chad supplies a perfect acronymic explanation for my POOHP coinage: “Pretend Object Oriented Hypertext Processor”.
Chad’s also featured in Quasi Fictional’s “Fine Art of Blogging” series.
I guest-posted on [Geeks are Sexy] Technology News about Google’s offer to place an advertising shroud over health care concerns.
SGRSQOTD (Strange Google Referral Search Query Of The Day): “is it true that Science has replaced God as the final answer to all question“, which led them here. I don’t think that really answers the question, though, so I’ll try — the answer is: “No, Google has.”
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[...] Link to Article sicko Chipping the web – Memphis » Posted at Chip’s Quips on Saturday, June [...]
[...] Sterling pointed out today, Quasi Fictional featured me today. Quasi Fictional is an interesting cross-section of the [...]
I think your choice of statement to quote from my microframeworks post was excellent, by the way.
Yeah, that one made me spit liquid refreshment.
[...] Memphis was the internal codename for the Windows 98 project. Like the city, it’s a great source of the blues. [...]
Bottles, you say?
Speaking of liquid refreshments. . . .
Hitting the sake again, apotheon?
Not at the moment — but I do have a bottle sitting on the kitchen counter. I should probably crack that open before it “goes over”.
Couldn’t let that happen, fer rice sake.
I was going to respond with some kind of “says you” = “seishu” pun, but I realized it wouldn’t work in print. I decided to explain it in dry terms instead.
“Seishu” – ha! That really knocks me out.
It’s even better than that. Seishu means something else in Japanese, too.
What a coincidence that the first surgeon to use anaesthetics was a Japanese man who shared a name with sake. That’s as if the inventor of the toilet was named Crapper or something. But of course, that didn’t happen.
The way I heard it, he wasn’t just named Crapper — he was named John Crapper.
Of course, considering that the modern, unbroken line of descent for the flush toilet was initiated by Sir John Harington and later popularized by Thomas Crapper seems conveniently coincidental.
Coincidental enough that “John Crapper” is most likely an urban legend. I found it interesting, though, that the Wikipedia entry says that “crap” was used as a name for feces prior to Thomas Crapper. Rather than lending his name to the invention, perhaps he pursued a, um, crappy career because of his name?
One must wonder what Thomas was thinking, getting into that business — unless he wasn’t aware of the word “crap” in that context. It just seems like a good way to attract insults.
Then again, as they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity for a business endeavor.
True. Wouldn’t be hard to remember his name (with a chuckle).