Who is the author “JC Shakespeare”? | Hacker News Reader

Who is the author “JC Shakespeare”?

shkspr.mobi

88 pointszinekeller24 comments

Similarly, Google attributed an academic paper about the music of Herbert Howells to a scholar called Miss A Sabrinensis.

There is no such author, but Howells did write a work called Missa Sabrinensis (the Mass of the [River] Severn).

Darn, I was hoping that someone was going for an amalgamation of JC Denton and Shakespeare.

I was looking forward to reading the stories...

At least it waxed not soteriological.

> I was looking forward to reading the stories...

I'm not big into books

Your loss.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM91ud4W_y4

For those missing the reference

What good hath thy soldier when he may oft be ordered to terror

What a shame.

I laughed at the authors CS Salad, B Noodles and C Fajita -- Google in that case having parsed a cafeteria lunch menu.

See also excel and dates.

What the hell is yak-shaving? This is the second front page HN post where the author says that and I've never heard of it before.

https://americanexpress.io/yak-shaving/

Pretty much the first result on DDG...

But why do I suddenly desire to raise my credit my credit limit?

It’s when your yak’s hair is overgrown and you finally decide to do something about it.

Nice!

http://projects.csail.mit.edu/gsb/old-archive/gsb-archive/gs... — earliest internet mention (AFAIK), citing Carlin Vieri who coined the term (with this meaning).

https://seths.blog/2005/03/dont_shave_that/ — a good example (and where I first saw it), which actually involves shaving a yak.

So I can say stuff like I was yak shaving and bike shedding this one time... and only devs would know what I mean. Very amusing.

Sounds like it is easier to get wool from a bike, it sheds on its own.

My favorite example, from Malcolm in the Middle -

https://youtu.be/AbSehcT19u0

Wikipedia, or in this case wiktionary, is your friend: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving

You know when you’re trying to fix a bug so you open a debugger but the debugger doesn’t work so you try to edit the config to make it work but the file isn’t where you expect so you try to use find but … eventually you’re trying to shave a yak in order to fix the original bug.

I'm not sure I agree with these definitions in terms of how I've seen it used. To me people tend to use yak shaving to refer to a side distraction project that itself turns into a hairy time consuming affair that doesn't really justify the small benefit you would get from it with regard to the first project; rather than a distraction from a distraction from a distraction.

Something like you need a string function that doesn't seem to exist, and end up rewriting the string library.

The wiktionary link in a sibling comment covers both use cases: the dependency chain and the pointless activity.

I also learned Yak Shaving as a general "waste of time": you shave it, the hair is just going to grow back, so don't bother.

what I'm saying is, it's not a pointless activity, it's a great activity on its own merits, but it is work that doesn't accomplish the task you set out to do.

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