
_why's site is updated - feedward
http://whytheluckystiff.net/#
======
milesf
Amazing that a guy who disappeared almost 4 years ago can make it to the top
of Hacker News, more than a few times, just by an obscure change to a
basically defunct website.

I think it's pretty safe to say people love why the lucky stiff. He's funny,
provocative, mysterious, strange, smart, creative... how could anyone _not_
want to see him back? We need more men & women in the world like _why.

~~~
hkmurakami
As a corollary, we need more men & women in the world who love and appreciate
people like _why, so that people who are like him but are less confident about
showing their character in public (or even just to their immediate peers)
would be more comfortable with doing so.

In other words, to be more accepting and appreciate of each others' quirks and
differences.

~~~
hariis
It works the other way around. Be who you are first.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you
win.

~~~
hkmurakami
That's easy for you and I to say, who are (presumably) fairly strong willed in
being who we are. But what about our peers who _are_ afraid, _right now_ , in
being themselves?

Yes, seeing others shake off the naysayers as they blaze a path of genuine
individualism and (positive) weirdness is encouraging, but surely this isn't a
binary situation where we can only have one or the other.

~~~
milesf
What I like are safe zones, such as smaller communities within a larger. The
club I run does that (<http://www.fvrb.org>). We really strive to not only be
accepting, but encourage others to take risks and be willing to fail or look
foolish.

If someone threatens that safe zone at our club, I remove them. We simply do
not tolerate people who are disrespectful to others. That doesn't mean we
agree on everything (in fact we argue all the time!) but as long as things
remain respectful, and apologies are publicly made when the line is crossed,
our club remains healthy.

Smaller communities are, IMHO, the best way to foster growth in those of us
with fears about being different.

~~~
milesf
I'll also speak candidly about this issue, knowing that what I'm going to
share will offend some people. If you find religious stuff offensive, please
just move on and disregard this comment. This isn't for you.

While it's important for communities to be accepting, I also think it's up to
individuals to grow a tougher skin. Chuck Swindoll does the best job I've
heard to describe this
<http://www.insightforliving.ca/broadcast/lifetrac/thick-skin>

~~~
think33
Having a thick skin isn't sufficient. Simply patiently explaining your
position to people who are being hostile (eg: my previous experience on HN)
doesn't do anything more than make them form up into mobs and start pursuing
you and harassing you. (Seriously, everything from blatant name calling, to
finding personal revelations in past comments and then posting them publicly
to be mocked... ok I'm a minority, I should feel bad about that? Mocking me
for being a minority was massively upvoted, while me asking why this was
tolerated here was downvoted.)

Eventually, I find this site to be too much to waste time on, and simply left.
(I doubt this account will last more than a day anyway.)

This site has a narrow minded and intolerant culture. (And those who are
within the range of whats "Acceptable" think that its quite the opposite so
they never see it.) This culture knows that it can call people names, attack
them personally, dig up private information and harass them and get away with
it because there will be no punishment-- since they all vote each other up in
their game of "smear the queer".

This is, of course, why they do it. Hounding those who are different into
leaving until you have an ideologically pure little "community".

Meanwhile the moderators of this site hellban people for the "crime" of
linking to a scientific paper that disagrees with global warming (since this
is a leftist site, obviously, if you disagree with global warming you're not
part of the realm of people where "tolerance" applies.)

And so the people who are different leave, the "community" sits around and
congratulates itself on how tolerant it is, never recognizing how completely
homogenous it is.

~~~
peterjancelis
I agree you have to pick your battles on HN. You have to realize, however,
that it comes with the nature of the animal that the progressive left is much
more outspoken and mob like in their views. There are more people that agree
with you than you realize, it's just that few of them bother to make it
public.

~~~
cema
Still, if true, it is sad to see it on HN.

------
milesf
Summary:

Who's this guy _why? (also known as why the lucky stiff):

<http://bit.ly/whytheluckystiff>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_the_lucky_stiff>

\--

The site <http://whytheluckystiff.net> is being hosted on GitHub under this
account:

<https://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com/>

\--

The git repo for the site has seen activity today, and has sparked
conversation:

<https://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com/issues>

\--

The site is serving up files in PCL:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_Command_Language>

\--

Here are the contents of these files converted from PCL into images:

<http://www.gironda.org/pcl/SOLICIT.png>

<http://www.scribd.com/doc/135635255/DESOLEE>

<http://www.scribd.com/doc/135635189/Trumpets>

<http://www.scribd.com/doc/135650965/Caprice>

<http://www.scribd.com/doc/135658986/-why-Homework>

~~~
x__
How did you find out which github account hosted the site?

~~~
croddin
I found it by searching for "DESOLEE"

~~~
milesf
GitHub's search or Google's search? I was only able to find it using Google
and "site:github.com DESOLEE"

~~~
croddin
github's. You have to click to search code on the left, but then it is the
first result.
[https://github.com/search?q=desolee&ref=cmdform&type...](https://github.com/search?q=desolee&ref=cmdform&type=Code)

------
gabrielgironda
Here are all the PCL files rendered to PNG:

<http://www.gironda.org/pcl/DESOLEE.png>
<http://www.gironda.org/pcl/SOLICIT.png>
<http://www.gironda.org/pcl/TRUMPETS.png>

~~~
enoptix
the second image uses the word "exile" several times. Exile is typically
associated with being cast out from one's group. The _why saga was before my
time as a Rubyist but I always thought he vanished, i.e. left on his own
accord.

Was there an "exile" event that I am not aware of? Or does anyone know what
he's talking about?

~~~
bitops
I can't think of any specific "exile event", but it did seem some time before
he left that there was a trend in the Ruby/Rails community that made him feel
unwelcome. That trend was "replace why's libraries and make noise about how
his library wasn't any good".

Hpricot in particular was under heavy assault. I'll be the first to say that
maybe it wasn't always the most performant solution, but for a long time it
was the only _good_ solution (and I tried a few). So when people are ripping
your libraries left and right, forgetting to pay a little bit of respect to
how big an impact he had on the community, then yeah...I could see how he'd
feel the need for a self-imposed exile.

~~~
bmelton
While I've never followed either of the stories that closely, isn't that
fairly similar to what happened with Zed Shaw? Only in Zed's case he ended up
finding a happy home in the Python community vs. completely disappearing from
the face of the earth forever.

~~~
askimto
His software ended up being too good, actually. It made other people feel
embarrassed.

------
joelmichael
_why, to respond to your questions in SOLICIT, you don't have to play the _why
character if you don't want to. Most of us are happy to see you, whether you
act bizarre or not. We miss your insight and commentary and sense of humor.
Experiment if you like, and ignore the jerks.

For everyone else, _why made some videos before, here is my favorite:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXZ_htL1rOI>

~~~
coolj
"It's like I'm superman, and lexicon Luther has a big chunk of vocabulary
confounding kryptonite and he's jabbing it right in my thesaural gland..."
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du_RTMmofWM>

------
NathanKP
Does anyone here know the tool or technique to convert the printer format on
his website to human readable format on screen?

Edit:

So far I've discovered I can go to
<http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/TRUMPETS> for example to download a file.
Trying to figure out how to read the format at the moment.

Edit #2:

Looks like it is PCL format. I'm trying to find a decent Mac OS X program for
converting PCL to image.

Edit #3:

Managed to generate this: <http://i.imgur.com/AL9mSLr.jpg> The quality is
horrible though. I see now that some other people have already linked rendered
versions in high quality, though.

It was fun trying to figure it out though. :)

~~~
itafroma
On OS X (Mountain Lion), I used PCL to PDF[1] and got the same output that
gabrielgironda got[2].

[1]: <http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/pcltopdf.html>

[2]: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5540904>

~~~
NathanKP
Thanks for the link. I'll try it out.

------
croddin
The site is served from github. This appears to be the repo:
<https://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com>

------
milesf
I've had April 18th in my calendar for weeks after the initial activity at
whytheluckystiff.net. Forget the haters, Ruby's better with _why around.

~~~
michaelhoffman
Who are "the haters?"

~~~
donaldguy
Mostly people who were understandably pissed off that along with wiping out
his blogs, twitter, etc., he took down his github and abandoned his projects
without helping to oversee a transition of stewardship. This included a few
high-profile rubyists.

And then presumably also some people who always thought his whimsy was a
detriment to the ruby community (by making it seem less professional or
something).

(Not my opinions, just information)

~~~
michaelhoffman
Are there a substantial number of "haters" who have stated that Ruby is better
with _why gone? It seems like a straw man.

~~~
milesf
It's not a large number of people, but rather some who hold a lot of influence
and sway who've attacked _why.

~~~
michaelhoffman
Which people are those?

~~~
milesf
It doesn't matter. Less attention they get the better.

------
ericd
For those who don't know what all the fuss is about, you should check out
_why's Poignant Guide to Ruby (<http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-
guide/book/>). It remains one of the most enjoyable reading experiences I've
ever had, not even just limited to programming books. It exudes so much joy
and enthusiasm in its constant absurdity, it's unbelievable. The sidebars are
legitimately laugh-out-loud funny. It's really hard to write humor well, but
holy crap. I mean, just read this:

"At my local Barnes and Noble, there is a huge wall of Java books just waiting
to tip over and crush me one day. And one day it will. At the rate things are
going, one day that bookcase will be tall enough to crush us all. It might
even loop the world several times, crushing previous editions of the same Java
books over and over again."

or

"What I’m Going to Do With the Massive Proceeds from this Book

Anyone who’s written a book can tell you how easily an author is distracted by
visions of grandeur. In my experience, I stop twice for each paragraph, and
four times for each panel of a comic, just to envision the wealth and
prosperity that this book will procure for my lifestyle. I fear that the
writing of this book will halt altogether to make way for the armada of SUVs
and luxury town cars that are blazing away in my head." (This is a completely
free book)

Just wonderfully absurd.

~~~
agravier
I've made a Latex version of WPGtR, available here:
<https://github.com/agravier/wpgtr-latex> . I think that it makes a nice
printable version, but I welcome pull requests and would like to see some
beautiful forks.

I started working with Latex again not long ago, so I'll maybe improve it
soon, too.

~~~
ericd
Oh, neat, I think I might print one of those out!

------
joshmcmillan
Another new file: HOMEWORK

PDF version here: <http://www.scribd.com/doc/135658986/-why-Homework>

(I've rotated the PDF 180 degrees; the original PCL is upside down)

~~~
catch404
Looks like the homework is to make an OCaml client for reading the spool
files. Perhaps this is the start of a poignant guide to OCaml?

------
51Cards
New file: CAPRICE

Converted to PDF from PCL here: <http://www.scribd.com/doc/135653743/-why-
Caprice>

------
picklefish
Here is the previous HN post detailing the previous printouts
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5015087>

------
croddin
The next change to his site should be on the 18th:
<http://www.scribd.com/doc/119155590/DESOLEE>

~~~
c-bayprogrammer
How apt. Ruby is from Japan. April 18th is, according to wikipedia
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_18#Holidays_and_observanc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_18#Holidays_and_observances))
"Invention Day" in Japan.

------
cresssandwich
Am I alone in thinking that the obsession with this guy is a little on the
creepy side?

------
fsiefken
_why's blend of programming with collages remind me of the blend tonke dragt
did with children's novels and physics or michael ende's short stories to his
father's surrealist paintings or experiments with interactive fiction.

a refreshing sense of adventure. crossing boundaries

------
alpb
Why does nobody think that the guy posted this here (@feedward) is _why
himself?

~~~
milesf
Didn't consider that :) Maybe _why is feedward. The account has no other
submissions and no comments. It was created on September 22, 2012. Does that
date stick out as being significant?

~~~
feedward
Honestly, I'm not _why.

~~~
milesf
I believe you :) It wouldn't be very _why-like to flat out deny it.

------
asciimo
To respond to one of the questions posed in the second print job, yes, I think
he is on the right track here.

------
wubbfindel
New 5 minutes ago:

[https://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com/commit/4bc2fbde5...](https://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com/commit/4bc2fbde5055e78b60e957dabfeffa387783c81f)

------
kroo
Here are all the files from the git repo converted to png:

<http://imgur.com/a/WkWtP>

And PDF:

<http://cl.ly/3Y423m390Y1Z>

Edit: added imgur album.

------
cxhristian
The site just updated with another file:
[https://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com/commit/e65bf73e2...](https://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com/commit/e65bf73e20c61a904537c73ed99df26cab3541a6)

<http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/CAPRICE>

I don't have any pcl to image tools so I can't check what it is.

------
danielweber
> Public Print Queue SPOOL/DESOLEE 2013-01-06T08:21Z SPOOL/TRUMPETS
> 2013-04-12T19:43Z SPOOL/SOLICIT 2013-04-12T20:10Z

Amen, brother.

------
notjoeflynn
A CAPRICE PCL that was just added: <http://cl.ly/OF2O>

------
dccoolgai
Based on a cursory examination of the comments, it seems like this would be a
lot of fun (I'm guessing it's like a riddle or something)? Would someone care
to offer a primer or background on what this is / how you start following the
clues?

~~~
phillmv
It's just _why being _why. If you're late to the party, try reading:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/03/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/03/ruby_ruby_on_rails_and__why_the_disappearance_of_one_of_the_world_s_most_beloved_computer_programmers_.single.html)

------
sfcgeorge
The SPOOL was updated yesterday with LEVELS. I have converted it to PDF like
the others. It is an amusing chart for programmers to express their feelings
with.

PDF of LEVELS: <http://www.scribd.com/doc/136676459/LEVELS> GitHub Repo:
<https://github.com/cwales/cwales.github.com> PCL Converter:
<http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/pcltopdf.html>

~~~
sfcgeorge
There's more. Oh my yes. I just stuck the converted PDFs in a zip file because
Scribd is a pain. Why were we using Scribd anyway? No matter, here's a zip.
<http://cl.ly/OOCV>

------
doki_pen
If you look in the revision history there was an IDEAS file. Someone mentioned
it and got downvoted, not sure why.

Sorry, best I could do:

<http://imgur.com/VgossGD>

------
gcr
How do we know this is really _why? I think someone could have registered the
domain after it expired.

~~~
mattdeboard
Occam's razor says so

~~~
milesf
The handwriting and pictures look a lot like his. If this is someone spoofing
_why, then kudos to them. They're doing a great job.

------
merlish
_why, you're a pretty funny and cool guy. You give me hope that I can be funny
and cool like you one day. Also I think I saw you at a train station once, but
I stared at you and by the time I decided to go to the platform and ask you if
you were you you'd gone.

------
fatbat
Just a random-lol-thought but somehow my brain floated this. Could _why =
Satoshi Nakamoto?

~~~
fsiefken
no. i think satoshi nakamoto is from the old world, while _why is from the new
world. but both are from a similar generational background and from the 80s
hacker culture. these mavericks geniuses are rare but exist in more
subcultures (music, religion, magick, skeptics, science, cryptography)

------
timinman
Awesome. See you on the 18th!

------
stuaxo
Like the david bowie of creative coding which can only be a good thing.

------
brenfrow
Public Print Queue SPOOL/DESOLEE 2013-01-06T08:21Z SPOOL/TRUMPETS
2013-04-12T19:43Z SPOOL/SOLICIT 2013-04-12T20:10Z SPOOL/CAPRICE
2013-04-12T22:06Z SPOOL/HOMEWORK 2013-04-12T23:19Z

------
Bjoern
_why, please come back.

------
duiker101
guys leave him alone... he will let everyone know if he wants any attention.
If ever. And this is fine. It must be up to him. Don't push it.

~~~
Kiro
A bit late to jump on the "leave him alone" bandwagon considering the obvious
attention seeking updates to his homepage.

------
tiglionabbit
Would be nice if it served this page with Content-Type: text/plain, so it
wouldn't look like random garbage at first.

------
lifeformed
Can someone provide some backstory to this? Who is _why, and why is his
reappearance interesting?

~~~
teod
I remember reading [Why's (Poignant) Guide to
Ruby](<http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/>) back when I first started
out learning ruby. I'm not familiar with his other projects, but I think they
mainly dealt with ruby. A few years ago he randomly deleted his entire web
presence and essentially disappeared.

------
doki_pen
There is also TEST, but as far as I can tell, it's pretty boring and not worth
posting.

------
aneth4
I have to wonder whether _why is an intentional or unintentional PR prodigy.

------
chasingtheflow
How did people know/figure out that it was a PCL file?

~~~
itafroma
PCL is a well-known format and _why (or whoever is controlling the domain) did
this a few months ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5015087>

~~~
chasingtheflow
thanks!

------
thomasfl
Feelgood Ruby news of the day.

------
nidrash
i've had a big problem with the site on my Blackberry for a looooong tyme, it
only started working yesterday...!:(

------
netghost
Hooray.

