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It's funny. Laugh. Books Media Book Reviews Entertainment Technology

Two Funnies: BotBOFH and Joy of Tech 74

Posted by timothy from the if-you-don't-laugh-we-kill-you dept.
Craig Maloney and honestpuck contribute two reviews for your almost-the-weekend reading pleasure: read below for their respective impressions of two dead-tree compendiums of online humor: Bride of the Bastard Operator From Hell and The Best of The Joy of Tech.
Bride of the Bastard Operator From Hell, The Best of The Joy of Tech
author (see each)
pages (see each)
publisher (see each)
rating (see each)
reviewer (see each)
ISBN (see each)
summary Tech-oriented humor in strip-cartoon form; your mileage and laughter may vary.

Bride of the Bastard Operator From Hell
author Simon Travaglia
pages 160
publisher Plan 9
rating 8
reviewer Craig Maloney
publisher Plan 9
rating 8
reviewer Craig Maloney
ISBN 1929462484

> DUMMY MODE ON < If you've been around computers for a while, you've probably read the adventures of The Bastard Operator from Hell (or BOFH). Throughout the years, Simon Travaglia's version of the BOFH has become the canonical version with it's witty and humorously sadistic vignettes. Bride of the Bastard is the third print compilation of the tales of treachery from The Register. (Note: a fourth, Dummy Mode is Forever is now available as well.)

When we last left our heroes...

The Bride of the Bastard Operator From Hell picks up right where The Son of the Bastard Operator from Hell leaves off. The higher-ups of the corporation want this new-fangled video conferencing, and the Bastard is only happy to oblige, with his usual underhanded tricks, and wanting to dabble in his movie making abilities. What follows is 35 hilarious tales which would get anyone outside of a complete bastard from hell fired or sent to prison. Similar to Son of the Bastard, the stories in Bride of the Bastard Operator From Hell are only a few pages apiece, so the casual reader can take in a few without much trouble. The truly voracious reader will look at this book as merely an appetizer. What it lacks in quantity it more than makes up for in quality. There are some real laugh-out-loud moments in this book which have to be read in context in order to appreciate them. Suffice to say, readers of this book won't be disappointed.

Judge this book by its cover

This edition of The Bastard Operator from Hell is expertly illustrated by Jeffrey Darlington, creator of the web-comic "General Protection Fault." Unlike The Son of the Bastard Operator from Hell, Jeffrey illustrated every single story with an illustration that matches the story. It's a welcome change to have a matching illustration to look forward to rather than the handful of sight gags penned in the previous volume by J.D. "Illiad" Frazer.

Plan Nine Publishing does fantastic work laying out their books, and this book is no exception. My only complaint remains from the previous book: no table of contents. Locating a story in this book to come back to is downright difficult, and a table of contents would help out greatly.

So what's in it for me?

If you're a fan of the series, you've probably already read this book. If you're on the fence about this book, get the heck off of it and pick it up before someone applies current to it. If you've never heard of the BOFH, this book would be a fine place to get acquainted with him. Just make sure you watch your step. And don't take the lift.

The Best of The Joy of Tech
authors Nitrozac and Snaggy
pages 192
publisher O'Reilly
rating 7
reviewer honestpuck (Tony Williams)
ISBN 0596005784

I must be crazy, I was flamed so badly after my last review of a cartoon book that I had to replace my asbestos review suit. The Best of The Joy of Tech may be worth the risk.

Of course it's easy to enjoy a cartoon book by a pair of cartoonists that share your prejudices. It is obvious from the cartoons that Nitrozac and Snaggy are Macintosh-loving, Linux-leaning, Microsoft-loathing geeks. Hmmm, sounds like me.

Not that Nitrozac and Snaggy are totally one-eyed. They still have a dig at Apple and Macintosh owners along the way. Unlike quite a lot of cartoons about tech, these two also see the more human side, just as likely to make a joke about your cat's relationship to you and the computer as poke fun at LARTing end-users or pointy-headed bosses. Their cartoons are more about living with technology than working with it.

The book reproduces a couple of hundred of 'The Joy of Tech' cartoons from their website, in improved colour and resolution. There are also a small number that are original for the book and some funny marginalia in a couple of spots. It also has the matching JoyPoll and a short comment about the cartoon in a 'JoyWorld' section at the back of the book.

I find a fairly large number of the cartoons repeatedly funny and most of the rest worth a chuckle. These two have a good eye for the whimsical, ironic and downright funny side to a wired in, geek life. They even manage to get in a sly reference to Slashdot with a fake O'Reilly book, "Trolling In a Nutshell" with a troll wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with "FIRST POST" on the cover and an Introduction by 'Anonymous Coward.' There's even a couple of margin cartoons of CmdrTaco and CowboyNeal, just for the Slashdot readers who'd like to know what those two should look like.

Oh, that reminds me. The book has a very Wozniak foreword (by Steve himself) and an introduction by David Pogue that is nowhere near as good as the book (I'm sorry David, but any self-respecting geek [male or female] would rather do almost anything than edit the Windows registry, starting with install a decent operating system and working all the way through to changing jobs -- heck, I'd rather sleep with Jobs.)

The book is broken up into various sections, each with a theme. It starts with "Boot-Up" and continues with "4nim4l cr4ck3rs" (most about cats), the whimsical "Geek Love", "Hacks and Cracks" (I loved the couple who want to buy a house within 50 metres of a war-chalked wall), "Techie-daze," "How about them *nix" (featuring the luscious 'Linux Lass'), "The Joy of Mac," "Who do you want to poke fun at today?" (you'll enjoy the 'Stress Relief Dartboard'), "Sci-Fi The Comic Frontier," and "Do You think I'm Xexy" before finishing with "The World According to Geek" (with 'The Lord of The Root - One Geek To Rule Them All', the two good-looking woman who don't shy away from maths and the Barbie 'DotCom Rescue' CD-ROM game).

If you go to Joy Of Tech you can grab a copy from the authors that has been signed (you even get a chance to ask for a custom inscription) and for an extra fee Nitrozac will even bless your book and attach a lucky sticker. You could go to the O'Reilly page, but since they don't have example cartoons and I don't imagine a cartoon book will ever have errata there isn't much point.

It's not easy to review a cartoon book. Suffice to say that I found the 'toons in this book to be a good variety from amusing through to funny with some that are just a little too true to make me do more than groan. If you've never come across this pair (and they've been slashdotted at least once) then check out the site and if you like the last few examples then the book will not disappoint. Hang on a second, just let me do up my collar - OK, flame away.

You can purchase The Best of the Joy of Tech (and just maybe a used copy of Bride of the Bastard Operator from Hell) from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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Two Funnies: BotBOFH and Joy of Tech More

Two Funnies: BotBOFH and Joy of Tech

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  • Or... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by baudilus ( 665036 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @02:41PM (#9021236)
    Or you can just head over to TechComedy.com [techcomedy.com]. I prefer my Techie humour online, not in books...

    • Re:Or... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by anonicon ( 215837 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @02:47PM (#9021302)
      What, your car, local transit system and beach have Wi-Fi installed for your online comic pleasure? That's when I really DIG having a book in hand instead of two in the bush.

      Myself, for truly seminal works like The LOTR, the BOFH series and "If Chins Could Kill," no less than supremely processed and artificially colored books will do. :-D

      • Re:Or... (Score:3, Informative)

        by Trigun ( 685027 )
        No, but my office has a high speed laser and crates of paper.
      • Well, I drive to work and I don't go to the beach. I'm also not dumb enough to try to read books while I'm driving. It turns out that whenever I have time to read books I also have internet access, so one must have precedence...
      • What, your car,

        Car?

        local transit system

        Surprisingly, yes. (It doesn't seem to be intended for public use, though.)

        and beach have Wi-Fi installed

        I can walk up and down the beach and get shitloads of 802.11b signal.
      • What, your car, local transit system and beach...

        hey, don't forget the poo room!
    • Yeah, tech humor is usually out of date by the time books are on the shelves anyway.
      - Funny V2.03 Rev C
    • "error: site suspended
      This website has been suspended. If you are the owner please contact the billing department or submit a support ticket for more information."

      HILARIOUS!!!

    • Re:Or... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Trixter ( 9555 )
      Sorry, reading posts of whiny tech support personnel is not my idea of humor. Hoo hoo, look at the frustrated tech support d00d "tell off" the stupid customer! Hee hee, those customers are such morons.

      Yeah, sorry. I've got better things to read.

  • BOFH... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    has gone way downhill. It was funny the first few times around but now it just seems cliche and stupid.

  • damn you slashdot! (Score:5, Funny)

    by ErichTheWebGuy ( 745925 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @02:44PM (#9021272) Homepage
    that's all I need is another good read while i'm trying to get some work done... grrrrr

  • Check Out the Original (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 30, 2004 @02:52PM (#9021365)
    http://bofh.ntk.net/Bastard.html [ntk.net]
  • So now they're threatening physical violence and homicide if I don't agree with them? This place is becomming more and more like Jim Jones' People's Church...

    I've got to break loose before they start asking for money, and brainwashing hordes of readers to think exactly like each other, and to shut down any discension. Oy, my mind is already starting to get numb!

  • shameless plug and a question... (Score:5, Informative)

    by BobWeiner ( 83404 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @03:07PM (#9021521) Homepage Journal
    I really enjoy both BoFH and JoT... both are fine reads online -- will have to check out the print editions to see for myself...

    Hoping that one day I'll get my 'toon, the PC Weenies [pcweenies.com] in print. Speaking of which, any good resources out there for struggling web cartoonists with regards to getting print editions made?

    • Re:shameless plug and a question... (Score:4, Informative)

      by nobby ( 6911 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @04:58PM (#9022690)
      You could try self-publishing. Look up 'Xerox Docutech' and find someone locally that has one. These are an industrial 600dpi (from memory) laser printer designed for bulk printing - they may have higher resolutions now. You can easily print a run of 50 or 100 on these (which is not economical to do on an offset press due to the startup costs) but get the cover offset printed.

      Layout the material at something like 7.5x9" (about the size of a computer manual) rather than A4. The book will be a much more sensible size in a bookshelf and the you need to guillotine it anyway to avoid the edges looking rough.

      If you need gray scales in your cartoons, render them as error diffusion dithers in a high resolution (i.e. 600dpi) one-bit bitmap. Halftones tend to look rough when rendered on laser printers. Diffusion dithers get better fidelity at a given resolution and don't look so rough.

      You will need to fiddle with the gray scale of the image before converting to a dithered bitmap. The printer will tend to fill in dark areas as solids due to flaring (the toner gets slightly squashed out during fusing). You will need to experiment with this to see to get the image right.

      Find a laser-friendly matt art paper of 100-120gsm weight from a wholesale paper merchant. It will look considerably better than ordinary photocopy paper. As I mentioned before, get the cover done on card (250-300gsm) on an offset press. This will be expensive but the plates will be re-useable for later runs if the book is successful.

      This won't be cheap but it will be economical for a short run to test the waters. The only fixed startup costs are for the platemaking for the cover. Modern PC's have enough juice to edit large bitmap images and any imaging program will be able to do the tone adjustment and conversion to dithered images. Splash out for a used copy of Pagemaker on Ebay if you need to do the layout work. This will cost less than the plates for a colour cover. Don't try to do it on Word.

  • This is a great book! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Muda69 ( 718162 )
    Anyone that has ever worked on the Helpdesk or in the computer field in general should buy this book. It brings to life all of the things you wished you could do and wished you could say to users but never did.
  • (after an hour looking for conn problem)... what sort of modem do you have ma'am? Modem. You don't know? ;p

  • Great review, but a 7 rating? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Snaggy ( 140728 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @03:57PM (#9022025) Homepage
    Thanks for the great review honestpuck, much appreciated. :-) ..but I can't figure out why we got a 7 rating. That's outta 7, right? ;)
  • The order is all wacky, but here is a tase for those who don't want to get the dead tree version.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/odds/bofh/ [theregister.co.uk]

  • One day the system up and crashed, I did answer, "May I have your user name... Thanks... Yes we are experiencing difficulties and are working to repair it, have a nice day" click.
    lather, rince, repeat (234 times)

    Another day...
    "Do you have biometric authentication?"
    "This is dialup, no, bye" click

    "I had smoke coming out of my computer, is that bad?"
    "yes, it's dead, bye" click

    "I just got the internet and I was wondering where all the porn is at"
    "It's 2/3rds of the internet, just search on google..."

  • Open Source Fiction? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by osewa77 ( 603622 ) <naijasms@NOspaM.gmail.com> on Friday April 30, 2004 @06:06PM (#9023364) Homepage
    Since most of us on this site like "open" and "freedom" so much, the Salon article about Open Source Fiction [salon.com] might be interesting reading.
    _____________
    coming soon: geek hangout at this url [afriguru.com]
  • hang on a minute.. how did he manage to get laid? This is obviously a fantasy book. :)

  • Funny job posting! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I found this job posting for a Software Developer on Craigslist even funnier... what I found to be especially funny is this part of the job description in the PHYSICAL DEMANDS section.

    "While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to stand; walk; sit; use hands to finger, handle, or feel; reach with hands and arms; climb or balance; stoop, kneel, or crouch; and talk or hear. The employee must regularly lift and/or move up to 10 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by th

  • Bah (Score:2)

    by Trogre ( 513942 )
    Give me User Friendly [userfriendly.org] any day.

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