Agent Palmer

Of all things Geek. I am…

Cheval’s Ideal Palace a Lesson in Patience in an Era of Instant Gratification

Joseph Ferdinand Cheval Joseph Ferdinand Cheval built Le Palais ideal

Joseph Ferdinand Cheval was a French postman who spent 33 years building Le Palais idéal (the “Ideal Palace”) in Hauterives, France.

The building began in earnest in April 1879, at first with stones from his pocket. It gradually moved to stones in a basket and eventually included a wheelbarrow to move larger stones. It took him 33 years to build the palace, 20 of which were spent on the outer walls alone. From one stone to another along his postal route, he collected them while thinking to himself, “Since Nature is willing to do the sculpture, I will do the masonry and the architecture.”

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In Suspended Reality, How Important is Proper Syntax?

Nedrys Workstation in Jurassic Park

The question started to fester after spotting a Tumblr post entitled “Source Code in TV and Films.” It’s a brilliant concept of taking an in-depth look into the code on computer screens in television shows and movies and finding out what it really is.

The lines of code in SwordFish are from a DES cracking program, Nedry’s screen from Jurassic Park appears to be source code for a SGI UNIX machine, the boot up sequence for the Mark I version of the Iron Man suit in Iron Man written to boot up the suit for Tony Stark’s escape is some butchered C code, but does it have to be? Does it have to hold up?

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