UNIX Magic poster

I went looking today for mounting options for my new! signed! Effin’ Birds poster and my first thought was how much I like the aluminum dibond on my UNIX Magic poster:

then I realized that I had never blogged it! So back in 2021, I read this story via Hacker News about a legendary 1970s conference poster full of inside Unix jokes and references, was instantly smitten and ordered one:

Anyway, the Unix poster is all that and continues to occupy a place of honor, right in the corner of my eye, because frankly my entire career has been Unix in various forms: Linux, NetBSD and OpenBSD, Irix, SunOS, Solaris, AIX, and others that I can’t recall any more. I’m counting MacOS since yeah, it’s Unix with a professional makeup, and so are Android and IOS.

(The time spent on OS/2, BeOS, Windows flavors, Desqview, GeoWorks, DOS… well, ahh well)

Now its time to add my signed EB poster – my better half bought this for me at ComiCon 2025:

but you can’t buy the dibond sans a print, so I’ll probably cheap out and get this locally from Blicks.

So this is a mixed post – yeah, you should totally get a unix poster, you can DIY it for much less than the fancy print. Secondly, Effin Birds is awesome, I also have his wall calendar and some conference tchotchkes.

A story in two posts

I adore a great rant and this one is right up there. Here’s the setup: WPAC, the Watch Purchasing Abstinence Club, is a group of watch addicts trying to help each other wasting money. One of the recurring conversations is that a member posts a prospective watch and the others ritually insult it. This is my favorite so far.

For context, a cyclops is a piece of watch crystal shaped to magnify the date. Rolex pioneered and still uses them, but many dislike a cyclops due to the distorting effects and occlusion of the dial.

Sometimes the bashing is good, and sometimes it’s this good.

Had to share. Thread is here… enjoy.