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Which one is more evil? strcpy or strncpy?

Google suggests ‘strcpy is evil’ when looking for ‘strncpy is evil’. Or as the author of this page says:

The usage of char * and strcpy causes horrible memory problems due to “overflow”, “fence past errors”, “step-on-others-toe” (hurting other variable’s memory locations) or “memory leaks”.

Horrors.

It came to my attention that this year it’s the Queen’s 25th coronation anniversary. Which led me to look around for quotes and events that happend around that 1980 coronation. I can only remember the infamous pictures of a smoke bomb (to my surprise, no reference found on the internets).

But I agree with Wikipedia’s summary of Queen Beatrix’s reign: formal but professional. There’s a neat link to a recent acceptance speech of the Queen (in Dutch), for a rare doctorate: her humble speech is more or less a reflection of those 25 years of being head of the Dutch Royal House. I’m not particularly a Monarchist, but I have a tremendous respect for the Queen’s (and, naturally, her late husband’s) intelligent approach to politics. I remember there was a sigh of relief when she brokered the start of what was later known as the Purple Cabinet.

Which brings me to back to the part that drew my attention to this anniversary: the Queen’s 25th anniversary coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Liberation of the Low Lands. We received an invitation for one of the many celebrations around the province. Since this may be one of the last commemorations, it might be a good idea to check the agenda for local celebrations. Naturally, I wish that the liberation of the former Dutch-East Indies (now Indonesia) will get the same level of attention. After this, we can finally let it rest. Lets hope others do too.

Last night, I decided to try to listen to a couple of podcasts. Podcasts, as you probably already know, are fragments of (uh) spoken things. Some people call it the next installment of blogging. Some say it’s the future of the Internet. And others claim it will bring the mainstream media to a grinding halt.

Uh, actually, I believe those things are going to bring the Internet to a grinding halt: podcasts are (generally) plain mp3 files with an average size of 10-20 MB. There are (were?) attempts to utilize Bittorrent for downloading podcasts, but, looking at the sites of ‘Podcast Poineers‘, it looks like they have those mp3 files just available as a regular download. My first thought? Bandwidth. (I noted that one of the ‘Pioneers’ actually uses his homepage at Mac.com to store those podcasts).

Next: I was listening to a Scripting Podcast Pioneer (you know who you are) and had to force myself not to turn the sound off within the first minute. What followed was so pretentious, so amazingly un-un-(I have no word for this) , that I wonder if anyone ever told the Pioneer that he is such a bore. Maybe mr. Scripting Podcast Pioneer’s friends don’t dare to tell him. Since I’m not associated with anyone here I’ll say it: “Mr. Scripting Podcast Pioneer: you’re such a bore“.

I assumed that listening to the Veejay Podcast Pioneer might be actually interesting. I ended up listening to endless rants about endlessly amazing New York, and his endlessly funny (uh the f-word) great nightlife and that. “Mr. Veejay Podcast Pioneer, you are such an endless bore”.

I could go on and on, but I would be repeating myself endlessly and bore the readers to death. After listening a couple of podcasts, I ended up with the following conclusion: ‘If you’re not interesting, then you must be a podcaster’. I think that summarizes it perfectly.

I was always under the impression that Jelly, or rather, gelatine, was made from seaweed. Nope: Made from bones and some acid. Uh. Yummy.

There are alternatives, which brings me back to the seaweed I just mentioned: particularly agar-agar, that substance my mother used to have in her kitchen cabinet. If I remember correctly they were small strips, sold in little pouches.

Not that I mind the original Jell-O. That gibberish ¹substance just gives a different meaning to crushed bones, acidic liquids and Cousin Vinnie.

^1. 04/17/05: Actually I thought I meant glibberish (which is a non-existing word). Blubberish, then?