HP at CES

PR vs. Reality. No word on what Dr. Dre, U2 guitar player The Edge, Alicia Keys, or Toby Keith (who?) have to offer on the topic, but it should be noted that Dre is 50 cent's producer.

seeking book

I've a vague memory of a book I read back in primary school - that would be twenty years ago plus change - which I am having trouble recalling useful details of, such as author or title. If you can help, I'd appreciate it. The book concerns a school kid who wins a prize, in a quiz if I recall correctly. The prize is a trip into space. Events in the book include hanging out with the guy who first landed on Mars (I think; hopefully this isn't a confusion with a William Gibson short story), where he met some sort of alien life form; travelling around the far side of the moon, getting refuelled from "the Hipparchus Launcher" - a maglev railgun used to hurl cargo into lunar orbit - and finding an abandoned canister with a skull and crossbones on it floating out in space. If any of this rings a bell with you, lemme know. The only useful phrase from the book I can remember is "Hipparchus Launcher" and that's drawing a blank on Amazon and Google, which is hardly surprising for a book that's over twenty years old and probably not up there with the classics of SciFi.

coding amusement redux

Just noticed that one of my modules has a constant named ENH defined. I guess it's returned if something doesn't particularly matter - if ( is_thing_working() == ENH ) { print "aw, who cares?\n" } or something.