Shelley does the call as the nerds strut their stuff... And declares a winner:
Although, without further ado, Mark Chu-Carrol hands-down wins the nerd-off (in my humble opinion of course). For one, his CURRENT picture trumps PZ's old one, and he reads programming language books for fun and has 30 tinwhistles which he plays. Come on guys, NO ONE can beat that. Mark, for those about to derive, I salute you!
Not so fast. Mark's moves were impressive, but my motto is "Never give up, never surrender!" So, where's APL on the list of programming languages Mark knows? And I've got some nerd pictures here:
Me in Year 5. In a special nerd class.
Compare with this picture of Tara.
Year 10.
I have a TECO manual on my bookshelf. TECO
That's a picture of Thor the Warrior from the arcade game Gauntlet. I won this T shirt in a contest to design a level for Gauntlet II. I believe it was the most diabolical level in Gauntlet II.
Given the above it is a mystery how this managed to happen. Compare with PZ's wedding pic.
Oh yeah, and I've obsessively updated the Nerd Score Table.
Where's your list of programming languages? Assembly isn't a language, but I assume you've done your share of assembly coding? How about that wonderful derivative of lithp known as Scheme? Now there's a nerd language with virtually no practical purpose other than to make undergraduate computer science students miserable (this I know from experience).
Tim. Congrats on the high score. The others never had a chance once you entered.
By the way I can't figure the pics. You head hair in the your younger days??? A nerd god should have grown up without hair.
Where are the double lense magnified specs by the way? A nerd god would wear those as a fashion statement. You're letting the side down if you've sneakily wearing contacts, buddy... get with the latest nerd fashion statement.
The scary thing is I scored hight too, which has depressed the hell out of me.
My kid picture is *totally* nerdier than yours. :)
The Galaxy Quest quote alone earns you extra nerd points.
my comments are (a) if you have a partner, you exhibit too much "humanity" to be a nerd; and (b) if you want to win a nerd contest, then you aren't nerdy enough (sort of how the slashdot cognescenti govern what is "cool" -- i.e. if you want to plug your project there, forget it, because wanting to be on slashdot automatically disqualifies you in a sort of "nerd catch-22."
I still cannot believe how much you looked like a girl in year 10. It's mind boggling!
Unless...
Ben, I've written programs in APL, Java, SNOBOL, FORTRAN, C, C++, Miranda, Haskell, sh, csh, Tcl, Javascript, DIBOL, Pascal, Modula-2, Perl, python, Postscript, GLSL, Forth, TeX, BASIC, Lisp, elisp, Scheme, PLANNER, Prolog, SIMSCRIPT.
Haven't done anything in assembler for years -- I did use PDP-11, Z80, 8086 and of course HP-25.
I actually used Scheme to program a couple of plugins for the Gimp.
Yes, definitely too much of a glamour girl in year 10 to qualify for nerd status, regardless of what calculator you were using.
Tara's picture wins hands down. Sorry.
Wow, you made a level for Gauntlet 2? Which one was it???
"Tara's picture wins hands down. Sorry."
Gotta disagree with you there. She's clearly in bed in the chicken pox in that photo so it shouldn't count. Plus she's totally smokin' today. I think T.L. wins that round.
My guantlet II level forced you to, well, run the gauntlet. There were lots of demon and lobber generators where you couldn't shoot them so you had to run down long corridors getting blasted by demons and lobbers.
You wrote *that* level? You bastard! I blew about a day getting through that level when I was about ten (and very bored).