VSHN.timer #69: Geeky Funny Thingy

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.
This week we’re going to talk about funny things that have an inherent, strong, definitive geek trait to them. Hang tight!

1. Raise your hand if you have ever used Winamp, the player that advocated for mistreating llamas? Raise your hand if you remember what it was like to listen to MP3 files? This being the generation of the streaming music service, I thought I’d ask that first. I personally was more of a Mod4Win user back then (say whaaaaaaa) and these days I’d rather listen to my MP3s with musikcube instead. Yes, in the terminal. Anyway, I digress: if you miss the Winamp days, check out the Winamp Skin Museum! It’ll probably bring back some memories. Le sigh.
https://skins.webamp.org/
2. If you are old enough to have used Winamp, you might also remember that sound modems used to make when connecting to your dialup provider. It turns out there’s a reason for that particular sound, and this blog post contains all the details, including a fantastic poster explaining every element of the handshake, step by step.
http://www.windytan.com/2012/11/the-sound-of-dialup-pictured.html
3. Data compression is a fascinating subject, and we found the best possible resource to learn everything there’s to know about it: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Compression. Lempel-Ziv, Run-Length Encoding, and Huffman algorithms are included, together with some interactive animations explaining how they work. Excellent!
https://go-compression.github.io/
4. How do you create diagrams? Some of you might use Dia or Visio, but at VSHN we literally write our diagrams as text, using tools like ASCIIFlow Infinity and Kroki. Here’s another cool option is to use, called… well, Diagrams! It allows us to create… you guessed it, diagrams, using 100% Python code. Can’t get geekier than that. Also, the name. Perfect choice, and follows what Sean Kelly suggested: “Name things after what they do”.
https://diagrams.mingrammer.com/

Codenames are for projects, not for services

Name things after what they do
— Sean Kelly (@StabbyCutyou) September 9, 2020

5. The tool of the week is Kube DOOM. This tool takes the “clusters as cattle” principle to a new level: “pods as video game enemies to shoot down while screaming at your screen.” What can we say to this? Paraphrasing the catchphrase Marques Brownlee uses at the end of his videos, “Peace!”
https://github.com/storax/kubedoom
Have you ever killed pods or whipped llamas? Do you write your diagrams as text or do you draw your prose with images? Do you have any other funny geeky thingies to share with the community? Get in touch with us through the form at the bottom of this page, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.
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PS³: check out our previous VSHN.timer edition #36 about random funny stuff.