Great Album Covers

Here is a collection of what I consider the greatest album art. The rules in determining a great album cover

1. No nudity or subtle profanity. I'm not against nudity and profanity. To deserve being on this list the album's appeal must exceed a higher standard than being sexually attractive
2. Generally I'm against portraits of the artist. I love sultry images of Allison Moorer or Shania Twain. But, again, to be great you have to achieve a higher beauty.
3. Disturbing and great are two different things. When I first saw Van Halen's 1984 it disturbed me. That does not make it great. Just attention grabbing. Likewise with Blind Faith

Without further ado, in no particular order:

Pearl Jam
by Pearl Jam
I love avocados. I grew up next to an avocado grove. There's just something magical about them for me. And then impose it on a simple, deep sky blue background

Complicated Game

James McMurtry

Well balanced. Great continuum and contrast of white to black. Captures loneliness and music. Inspires imagination

Dare You To Do It Again

Jessie Mae Hemphill and Friends

A cowboy hat, a cigarette and a gun. I don't like cowboy hats, guns or cigarettes. But, on Jessie Mae, in a dress, they look fantastic

Back To Oakland

Tower of Power

For so many Oakland is nothing more than the city with a lower cost of living and a higher rate of crime on the other side of the Bay Bridge across from San Francisco. What New Jersey is to New York City. When I see this cover it makes me smile. To me it shows Oakland as the home and San Francisco as the place to escape to get back home to Oakland

Born Not to Run

Car Talk

Rest in peace Tom Magliozzi. A great homage and pun on another great album

London Calling

The Clash

So many things have been said about this cover. The unleashed angst. The loss of control. And the homage to Elvis's eponymous album. This is greatest cover of all time

Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee

Here they are the best to the worst episodes of Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee

Best: Letterman: Brings his own car. Actually drinks coffee and eats a meal. Is funny. Very funny. Jerry is funny and comfortable with him. 

Worst: Fred Armisen. Just awkward. Awkward. And not funny. The only good part is the choice of car because the car is awkward. And Not funny.

I thought Miranda Sings was actually quite funny. It intrigues me the number of people on the Internet who don't get her humor. Genius, I say.

The Stephen Colbert episode seems to be earning good reviews yet I found it tedious and boring. The only interesting part is that this it was the only episode since George Wallace where the guest gets to drive. But it was painful not funny that Colbert couldn't drive a manual despite his non-chalance and insistence that he could. And again another episode where the first knows nothing about cars.

Best to Worst Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee

letterman

don rickles

michael richards Trevor Noah

carl reiner and mel brooks

steve harvey

chris rock

aziz ansari

julia louis dreyfus

bill burr

louis ck

jon stewart

jay leno

tina fey

sarah silverman

brian regan

howard stern

larry david

bill maher

seth meyers

kevin hart

miranda sings

jimmy fallon

bob einstein

sarah jessica parker

ricky gervais

colin quinn and mario joyner

todd barry

joel hodsgon

gad emaleh

patton oswalt

barry marder

amy schumer

george wallace

alec baldwin Stephen Colbert

jim carrey

george castanza

alli wentworth

robert klein

fred armisen

Lancia Ardea - Bizarre

I double backed to the Mountain View Trader Joe's parking lot a few weeks ago to inspect a catchy looking vintage car that I didn't recognize. I thought - had hoped - that it was a rare rear-engine Mercedes. Turns out it was a Lancia Ardea. It struck me so much that I snapped a couple photos.

Then, to my surprise, shortly thereafter BringaTrailer.com runs an ad for a nearly identical Lancia Ardea for sale in Hollywood. Bizarre. And they even wrote, "We don’t see this model on offer in The States very often."

Bizarre

Kirby's Third Law of Software Engineering

Always be ready to answer the question, "What have you done for me lately?"

Managers don't care if you were a super star two quarters ago. They only care what have you produced last week. And when they want to know, they want to know now. I always maintain some means to answer this question quickly: a Word document, a Jira query, a spreadsheet, a notebook. I even created an Access database for two different jobs where I had to track who I was billing to.

Kirby's Second Law of Software Engineering

Kirby's Second Law of Software
The more I get paid the smaller my desk


Also see Kirby's First Law of Software

git stash show all

Seems to me there should be a git stash show all command.
Perhaps there is.
Alas, I couldn't find one.

So I wrote one. Not very complicated.

#!/bin/sh
# Created by Jeff Kirby on 3/30/12.
for stash in `git stash list | sed 's/\(\w*\)\:.*/\1/'`
do
   echo
   echo "$stash Contents"
   git stash show $stash
done

Kirby's Law of Software Schedule Estimation

Kirby's Law

Software schedule estimation is impossible.

Proof

To know how long writing software will take you have to have written it before. If you have written it before, then there is no need to be writing it now. Therefore any software that you are writing now hasn't been written before. Therefore it is impossible to estimate how long it will take.