I’d like to talk about a very good friend of mine.
Whilst he’s much older than me ( 11 or 12 weeks at least), we do happen to share interests common to programmers of a certain vintage.
About a year ago, he became rather unwell.
Since then, whenever I’ve gone to visit, I’ve taken care to wear something that’s particular to our friendship and/or appropriately geeky.
At one point, when things were looking particularly dicey, I promised him, that whilst “Captain Scarlet” was already taken, if he came through he could pick any other colour he liked.
As a life-long Luton Town fan, his choice was somewhat inevitable.
So then, what follows – through the medium of Geeky T-shirts – is a portrait of my mate Simon The Indestructable Captain Orange…
When we first met, Windows 3.1 was still on everyone’s desktop and somewhat prone to hanging at inopportune moments. Therefore, we are fully aware of both the origins and continuing relevance of this particular pearl of wisdom :
Fortunately, none of the machines Simon was wired up to in the hospital seemed to be running any version of Windows so I thought he’d be reassured by this :
Whilst our first meeting did not take place on a World riding through space on the back of a Giant Turtle ( it was in fact, in Milton Keynes), Simon did earn my eternal gratitude by recommending the book Good Omens – which proved to be my gateway to Discworld.
The relevance of this next item of “Geek Chic” is that, when Simon later set up his own company, he decided that it should have a Latin motto.
In this, he was inspired by the crest of the Ankh-Morpork Assassins’ Guild :
His motto :
Nil codex sine Lucre
…which translates as …
No code without payment
From mottoes to something more akin to a mystic incantation, chanted whenever you’re faced with a seemingly intractable technical issue. Also, Simon likes this design so…
As we both know, there are 10 types of people – those who understand binary and those who don’t…
When confronted by something like this, I am able to recognise that the binary numbers are ASCII codes representing alphanumeric characters. However, I’ve got nothing on Simon, a one-time Assembler Programmer.
Whilst I’m mentally removing my shoes and socks in preparation to translate the message, desperately trying to remember the golden rule of binary maths ( don’t forget to carry the 1), he’ll just come straight out with the answer (“Geek”, in this case).
Saving the geekiest to last, I’m planning to dazzle with this on my next visit :
Techie nostalgia and a Star Wars reference all on the one t-shirt. I don’t think I can top that. Well, not for now anyway.
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The Anti-Kyte 