Specifications

26 | august 2008 www.linuxjournal.com
Mon Dieu, François! I realize it’s a warm day outside,
but it is positively freezing in here. Our guests will
need coats, in August, no less. What are all these
portable air conditioners doing here? Is that frost I see
on the windows? François! I shudder—make that
shiver—to think what this possibly could be about.
Yes, this issue’s theme is Cool Projects, but nowhere
did it say frozen. And, when our editors said cool, I
think they meant it in the sense of “really interesting
and exciting”. Never mind. Our guests will be here
momentarily, and I don’t think they are dressed for
this. Quickly, run to Diane’s Manteaux de Cuir across
the street and beg her to provide us with some coats
for tonight. Vite! Our guests are arriving as we speak.
Welcome, everyone, to a very chilly Chez Marcel.
Please pardon the cold. My faithful waiter has once
again taken a simple idea to its amusing, if somewhat
outrageous, extreme. Nevertheless, he will return
shortly with warm coats for all. In the meantime,
please take your tables and make yourselves comfort-
able. Ah, François, you have returned with Diane.
Thank you, Diane, for your help. While everyone slips
into their coats, perhaps François can fetch the wine.
There’s a case of 2004 Bodegas Muga Reserva from
Spain in the lower level of the cellar’s east wing.
As François already has set the stage for us,
we’re going to explore some Linux coolness. The
symbol of Linux coolness is, of course, the penguin.
Tux, the Linux mascot (designed by Larry Ewing), is a
penguin, and penguins show up pretty much every-
where you turn in the Linux world. In fact, you can’t
go near a Linux system, magazine, T-shirt, mouse
pad, coffee mug or book, without running into
some kind of penguin. That’s okay for most people,
because, well, penguins are cute.
Ah, François, you have returned. Please, pour for
our guests. Enjoy the wine, mes amis. This Spanish
beauty is very rich, very complex, yet fresh tasting
and well balanced. Hmm...make sure you fill my
glass as well, François.
The first item on tonight’s menu is Matthew
Miller’s IceBreaker (Figure 1). The premise is similar
to events you see every day in the news. A bunch
of penguins need to be captured and sent off to
Finland. They are all on an iceberg in Antarctica, in
an area where global warming hasn’t yet started
breaking the ice. Penguins, as it turns out, need to
travel with ice or they just won’t behave. The ques-
tion becomes, “How much ice?”
Figure 1. In IceBreaker , you must send your penguins pack-
ing to Finland with as little ice as possible.
As you can imagine, shipping penguins to
Finland is expensive, so the order of the day is small
ice chunks. When you left-click on the iceberg, a
line is drawn across it, separating the two areas of
ice. If a penguin hits the line as it is being drawn,
your cut effectively is halted. A right-click changes
the direction of the cut from horizontal to vertical
(or vice versa). To clear an iceberg and move on,
you need to clear at least 80% of the ice. Should
you manage the job, another penguin is added and
you get to start over on the next level.
The more penguins you add, the more complicat-
ed it becomes, as they bounce frantically across the
ice field. On the off chance that you find this all too
simple, there’s a menu of options where you can
change the difficulty level. Click MENU on the lower
Cool as Ice!
No one will argue that there are different levels of cool. But nothing,
and I mean nothing, says cool like a penguin. And some snow. And
some ice. Oh, and the Antarctic. That’s as cool as it gets.
COOKING WITH LINUX
COLUMNS
MARCEL GAGNÉ
Penguins and
Linus Torvalds
Responsible for this whole penguin mania is Linus Torvalds, the
Linux kernel’s creator. When asked what he envisioned for a mas-
cot, Linus replied, “You should be imagining a slightly overweight
penguin, sitting down after having gorged itself, and having just
burped. It’s sitting there with a beatific smile—the world is a good
place to be when you have just eaten a few gallons of raw fish
and you can feel another burp coming.”