Archive - May 2004

Today is Memorial Day, during which we as Americans remember those who have died to protect our freedom. We also go shopping, relax at the beach, and have barbecues because we get the day off. But really, Memorial Day is about memoria... memor... remembering. So here's to them.

Today is also May 31, and I hate the sound of that date. It sounds so fake and foreign. May 31. May 31. May thirty-first. The thirty-first of May. It just doesn't sound right. You might as well say February 30 or something. You would think that May, having such a short name, would have only 30 days. I don't even think it deserves this extra day; it doesn't have enough letters. Maybe it's actually June 1 already, and May 31 is some secret government plot to... I don't know, but give me a few minutes and I'll come up with a conspiracy theory.

The artist M.C. Escher had a fondness for creating optical illusions. One of his most famous works is Relativity, in which people defy gravity by standing, sitting, and walking with gravity pulling in different directions. Though this is impossible in real life, the image has been recreated in LEGO bricks. Have a look.

One year ago today, my friends and I graduated from St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic School. I had gone there for nine years; a few people in my class had been going there for 10 or even 11 years. Naturally, it was tough for everyone to say goodbye to such a tight class. I was asked to give a speech, though I was repeatedly reminded that I was not the valedictorian. (They didn't even have a valedictorian, and even if they did, I wouldn't have been it.) It was hard to bring a hammer down on decade-long friendships with a brief address, so I got help from a friend at the last minute (actually, the day before the ceremony). Here, in annotated form, is the speech I gave one year ago today.

We were all wearing caps and gowns that night. One thing I remember particularly about giving the speech is that I had a great time trying to look down to read it without my cap falling off my head.

Here's a list of last words of famous people. It includes last words that are famous ("And you, Brutus?" -Julius Caesar), cynical ("Last words are for fools who haven't said enough!" -Karl Marx), ironic ("Born in a hotel room - and God damn it - died in a hotel room." -Eugene O'Neill), and just plain funny ("Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something." -Pancho Villa). And who could forget the words of wisdom that hotel chain founder Conrad Hilton offered on his deathbed: "Leave the shower curtain on the inside of the tub."

I went to see The Day After Tomorrow (starring Dennis Quaid) last night with my sister and her friends. I don't follow the movies a whole lot, but I think it's the first major disaster flick to be released after 9/11. In the movie, global warming causes gigantic waves flood New York and then freeze, burying skyscrapers in ice. The Empire State Building (once again the tallest building in New York) starts to tip and then freezes. [Update Sat May 30, 2004 02:21 UTC: Upon seeing the movie a second time, I realized that the building doesn't actually tip, though the camera angles and sound effects make it seem as though it does.] You couldn't have done that kind of stuff two years ago, or maybe even last year, even though the events depicted in the film cannot take place as quickly as they do.

The film, in fact, is intended to teach a lesson (even though some may argue that it doesn't do a good job of it). That lesson, stated toward the end of the movie, is that mankind cannot go on irresponsibly using up Earth's natural resources. According to IMDb's trivia page for the movie, "[Writer and director] Roland Emmerich, out of his own pocket, paid $200,000 [U.S.] to make the production 'carbon-neutral' - the first of its kind in Hollywood - all carbon dioxide emitted by the production is offset by the planting of trees, and investments in renewable energy." How very nice; if only they could do that for more movies. But in any case, it was a good film, and I'm going to see it again with my own friends tonight.

"Aliens took my homework!" Here are some tips on how to fake UFO photos.

A few days ago, a student survey was handed out at school during lunch. The questions were mainly like "Do you have pride in your school?", "How many sports events have you been to?", and stuff like that. However, there was one question toward the end that was set to answer the nagging issue of what to call our school's mascot. Our sports teams are named the Golden Tornadoes, you see, so the choices were Master of Disaster, Spinner, and Mista Twista, and Mister Twister. There was also an option to write in your own suggestion. My friend Mark wrote "Fatty McFatFat." Me, I chose Spinner. It was the least dumb of the four, in my opinion.

The results were in today. Out of 150 surveys taken, the winning name, with 70 votes, was... Roast Beef. To tell you the truth, I really like it; I just wonder if the school will be willing to accept it. (However, it would be even funnier if they went with the name that was allegedly second place: Captain Queer.) I wonder if anyone will confess to rigging it.

Here's a history of the paper clip and a gallery of early examples. It just goes to show that there's more to this office staple (ha ha) than meets the eye.

Today my Spanish class took a field trip to Mr. L@tin Grill, a local Mexican/Spanish restaurant (and yes, the "@" is part of the name). We pre-ordered our food last week so they would know how much stuff to make (some other Spanish classes came along; the total was about a busful of people). There's this one dish called ropa vieja (literally, "old clothes") that consists of some kinda beef, but it didn't sound too appealing to me, so I ordered a beef quesadilla instead. I think it's better to go the safe route than eat a dish called "old clothes."

The restaurant was really nice. Unlike most restaurants that specialize in Hispanic cuisine, it was kind of classy (and I don't mean that in a bad way). There were a bar and a lot of tables. I bet it's pretty crowded in the evenings, but we picked the time to go: lunch time. I didn't see a single soul at the place besides our party and the staff. Their aforelinked web site says that they're even open for breakfast. The place must be a ghost town that early in the morning. But anyway, they had some nice pottery on shelves on the walls, and some speakers and decorative lighting around. It's a slightly higher-end sort of place.

I won't name names, but my friend who sat next to me had the worst table manners I had ever seen in my life. Heck, he didn't have them at all. Luckily, the rest of the people I sat with and I chose a table all the way in the back, which was the table he drifted to as well (darn the extra seat!). He's lucky the teachers didn't catch him back there flinging food at people, mutilating his ropa vieja, and hitting on the waitress (not only that, but he exclaimed "I didn't know you spoke Spanish!" to the poor lady when she spoke a smattering while pouring him a drink).

Oh, and the food was good too, though I should have ordered a burrito rather than a quesadilla. The burritos were huge and they looked really good.

Merriam-Webster has compiled its 2004 Top Ten Favorite Words list from submissions made by thousands of linguaphiles. Here's the list, which consists of the words they received most often (click each for its definition):

I really like the number one word, "defenestration." According to Merriam-Webster, it means "a throwing of a person or thing out of a window." It and its verb forms could be very useful: "Watch it, or I'll defenestrate you!" In fact, the aforementioned friend of mine said today that he once defenestrated my friend Mark during a class. I'll have to tell them both that there's a word for that. I bet Mark would get a kick out of saying to people, "I've been defenestrated. Have you?"

On Sunday I told you that I had started working on my project for Global Studies in which I have to make up a country. Well, making up a country isn't as easy as I thought it would be, especially because it has to be realistic. I've decided to name my country Recenia. (Although the word "recent" is in there, as in "recently made up," I wasn't thinking about that. The name just came to me, so I used it.) Recenia is notable because it's a rather large island in the North Atlantic. However, I afflicted it with the "small-former-British-colony-that-achieved-independence-several-decades-ago-but-still-has-close-ties-to-the-Crown-and-puts-the-Queen-on-its-money" cliché. (Hey, clichés are realism.) I've also decided that I will write the history of the country before doing much else, like detailing the government, economic status, etc., etc. That way I can sort of open up a window to see what sort of place the country is like. I think it will be a nation based mainly on tourism, manufacturing, and trade, having perhaps limited agriculture and only one major natural resource. I haven't decided what that will be yet. But trade will definitely be a big thing, because it is smack in the middle of the North Atlantic and all.

And speaking of countries, the good old CIA publishes (in print and online) the World Factbook, which has a lot of information on, um, real countries.

I hate to be talking about school on a Sunday, but here goes. Mr. Firestone, my Global Studies teacher, became notorious last semester for the final exam he gave. All his students, save for three, failed it. Everyone I've talked to said that they studied and that the test was much too hard. (Mr. Firestone, however, maintains that they failed because they didn't study.) But now I finally have evidence that he is afraid to see his students fail.

See, in lieu of a mid-term exam this semester, he had us do a project on a European country, detailing every detail about said country, such as population, history, culture, and so forth. That wasn't very hard; all the information you needed was sitting right out there on the Information Superhighway, being hit repeatedly by large trucks. Now Mr. Firestone has announced that our final exam will be another country project, but we get to make up the country. One of the only requirements is that it must be an island nation. Never mind having to look for statistics; everything you need is in your head, and you just have to sort it out to make sense. Here, in detail, is the information on the project:

This could be my big break as an author. I've thought about how authors and filmmakers become rich, and I was enlightened thus: the books and movies that people go bananas about are completely unrealistic (mainly fantasy or sci-fi) but are realistically detailed. Think Harry Potter, Star Wars, and The Lord of the Rings. HP author J.K. Rowling is the richest woman in Britain, I believe. She literally went from rags to riches by simply having an imagination. George Lucas has a hunk of cash as well. And I bet J.R.R. Tolkein's family are gazillionaires. (A lesson: if you don't like your relatives, don't write fantasy novels.) I could write a book or two about adventures in whatever I decide to name my country, have it hit the bestseller lists internationally, sell the movie rights, and get filthy stinking rich!

That reminds me... what should I name my country? I was considering "Slovekia"; there's a bit of backstory behind that one, originating with my middle school history teacher. Instead of referring to the eastern European nation of Slovakia by its proper name, she would mangle it into "Slovekia" (perhaps an amalgam of Slovakia and Slovenia). Last July I declared my bedroom to be the sovereign nation of Slovekia. (I was that bored.) I designed a flag and coat of arms and wrote a national anthem. I was working on the official web site (which I planned to add to The World of Stuff), but after about a month of Slovekia's "independence," I called it quits and rejoined the United States. However, some micronations fare better. I'll be writing more about this project over the next few weeks.

It's kind of a morbid subject, but here are lists of famous people by cause of death. Included are assassinations, suicides, choking deaths, motorcycle deaths, volcano deaths, skiing deaths, and many more; don't forget people who died with tortoises on their heads.

Last night my church youth group had a lock-in at the parish hall. It was our second lock-in; the first was in June 2002. During that lock-in, we stayed up late, played music and games, watched movies, and threw gummy bears all over the place. They stuck to everything: the walls, the ceiling, the floor. It was terribl...y funny. We had to clean it up, though.

This lock-in wasn't much different, except that gummy bears were banned from the event. We stayed up late, played music and games, watched movies, and threw candy corn all over the place. A lot of it stuck to the floor and people's sleeping bags. Everybody had to clean it up. Actually, I got off the hook because I didn't throw any.

And I think some of the gummy bears are still there...

There are a lot of crazy things that people try to sell on eBay; recently I've heard of an air guitar and the state of West Virginia being auctioned. Now there's this: George Washington Autographed Dollar Bill !!!!

Shipping and handling really is US $1,500 (plus $2 for optional insurance and sales tax of 6.5% in California). As of posting, the 7-day listing had 4 days and 7 hours left, with no bids other than the starting bid of $100.

I had a friend place an order for a yearbook for me the other day. You have to order them (and pay) in advance because they mail them to you in August, long after the school year has ended. I think it's so they can get the graduation pictures in there. I also think it's really stupid. No one can sign it. It's awful. You're only getting half the picture with an unsigned yearbook.

Having nothing to do this evening, I decided to look through all my old yearbooks. There's this grotto under my bed where I keep them and some other stuff. I can hardly get my arm through, and I definitely can't see while I'm doing it, so it took a little while to get them all out. I went to the same school for nine years, from kindergarten to eighth grade. I had just gone through my eighth grade (2002-2003) yearbook the other day, so I started with the seventh grade book and ran backwards in time. God, how depressing. First you read the stuff written in the cover, the messages like "H.A.G.S." ("Have a good summer") and "K.I.T." ("Keep in touch"), and the stuff your teachers wrote, like how they're going to miss your fabulous work over the summer, and that you'll be good in whatever you do in life and all that. And you see all the collages showing how much fun you had with your old pals. You go further back, and people write their phone numbers, expecting you to call over the summer, but nobody did that anyway. Or, at least, I didn't. It was just tradition. On your class's page, you see you and your friends, maybe some people you don't remember very well, grow younger and younger. You go back till the covers are filled simply with names, written in pencil or even crayon. Finally, the only message is from your teacher, who writes the same teacherly stuff, and you see yourself in there, or a child who looks like yourself, and you see all the pictures of how the school used to look, waaay back when, a time you don't really remember. You see the eighth graders of when you were in kindergarten, and half of them look older than you are now, even though they shouldn't. It's a psychological thing, I guess. But mostly, looking through those old books, you see yourself.

I see myself, anyway. I also see memories of teachers I had. With the yearbooks, I can see the teachers turn back in time, some of them maybe getting a little younger looking and having bigger hair. Some of them you never had, but they get younger too. And some of them look exactly the same nine years earlier. Looking at each class's pages, there are pictures of you and your friends doing work, or maybe posing for the camera near the playground. I always said I was never in those pictures, but I actually was. There was one in seventh grade where I was standing in the background talking to my friend Sean. In second grade I was almost in dead center of one of those photos, turned around in my desk to face the camera with a toothy grin. The date on the chalkboard, next to my smiling teacher, was March 13, 1997. And then when you see those sorts of photos, the ones that really capture who you are rather than who you would be if you wore nice clothes all the time, that's when you just sort of break down.

You see this cute little kid, this child with all the world going his way, this child whose parents and teachers have great expectations for him. He had just met the friends he would stick together with for nine years. And he doesn't have a care in the world, no projects due, no parties to go to, just being with his best friends in the whole wide world, very serious about his recess games. That's his own little world, all he knows. Over time, his present-day counterpart knows, what that little kid will go through: the hard times, the good times, more hard times, gradually becoming exposed to the cold, cruel, lifeless world. And the black-and-white reproduction of this child, a moment in time, in front of the plain, washed out background, stares back at the him of ten years hence, wondering who this big kid is, this mediocre kid whose parents and teachers had the highest expectations of him but turned out that he could be just anybody. The young he does not know what will become of himself, but the old he does, and that's why he begins to fill with sadness.

I shall regale you with a joke that my English teacher once told.

From their very beginnings in 1957 until their final tour in 1966, the members of the Beatles were almost always clean shaven. However, after their final concert in August 1966, bassist Paul McCartney injured his upper lip in a go-cart accident. To hide his swollen lip, he grew a moustache that could cover it up. The other Beatles and even some of their personal assistants soon adopted the style, which became known as the "Sgt. Pepper moustache," after the album whose cover would display the band with their new moustaches. The Beatles Moustache Index attempts to chronicle the facial hair of the Beatles from 1966 till their last photo session in 1969.

How do people find The World of Stuff? According to my makeshift access logs, these are the latest 20 queries on major search engines (most recent first) that led web surfers to this site.

1. jesus praying in the garden stickers
2. picture american keyboard layout
3. garbaeg e-mail+keep away
4. dvorak coat of arms
5. hristo shopov photos
6. armenian independence
7. armenian independence day
8. armenian independence
9. the world of stuff
10. Broward County Sheriff Badges
11. armenian independence
12. book "the gizmo" 1975
13. photo keyboard layout
14. jumpdrives
15. world stuff
16. reptile birthday plates
17. dvorak coat of arms
18. the periodic table of elements non-metal black shining solid
19. passion of the christ moms stuff
20. stereotype lazy mexican photo beach

I wrote about The Passion of the Christ months ago, but the mention is still bringing traffic. I don't remember ever writing about reptile birthday plates (#16) or lazy Mexicans on beaches (#20). Oops, now I did. Darn, I spoiled it.

Check out guimp, which claims to be the world's smallest website. The claim probably true in at least one respect: each page of the site is squeezed into an 18x18 pixel box (smaller than a fingernail on most screen resolutions). In the Flash section of the site, you can play old video games, which are also smushed into the tiny space. Pac-Man and Pong are addictive, but don't strain your eyes.

On Friday night I went bowling with some members of the church youth group. The people I was with managed to squeeze almost three whole games into two hours. I didn't really feel like bowling at first. I only bowled one frame (both gutter balls) during the first game. The second game I didn't play at all. The third game, I decided to play, and in nine frames I scored a two-digit number which I will not reveal here. I've never been very good (I can't do that foot thing), but it was all right. At the end, the youth group leader gave me the "Bowling Baryshnikov" award for "Most Unique Form." During the third game I had tossed the ball and turned only to slip on the wooden floor. My friend Nick got the "Most Dangerous with a 16 lb. Object" award.

As I mentioned in the last post, Hank, the creator of Where's George?, paid me a visit on Saturday while he was in my neck of the woods. I invited my friend Kevin over to see him, and my sister's friend Casey came also. They're both WG users like I am. Hank is a cool guy. We talked about all sorts of things, such as how big WG's sister site Where's Willy? is, trademarking the Where's George? name, and patenting the process that makes the web sites work. But we also chatted about other things, like school and how my Italian greyhound is different from his. (He was amused by my dog's playful growling.) When he said he had to be on his way, we took a few pictures, including this one:

Studying another language? Studying your own language? At the Verbix web site you can conjugate verbs in 117 languages. The site also has shareware and freeware conjugation programs for Windows.

I went into the school's new library again yesterday to take a student survey. Supposedly they have you take it every year, or every few years, or once in a blue moon or something. This was supposedly the first year they had it online. Unfortunately, using a Mac was inevitable (as they have no PCs), but it wasn't so bad. For most questions in the survey, the options were Strongly Agree, Agree, Undecided/Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree, and Don't Know. The thing was filled with questions like "Is your school clean?", "Do people bring drugs to your school?", "Is there an adult you can talk to?", and that kind of stuff. I think my favorite was "I am responsible for what I learn." I checked "Agree" for that one, but I don't even understand it. You're not really responsible for what you learn in school, are you? That's mandated by the state.

One of my favorite sites in the whole wide web is Where's George?, a site that allows you to track where your banknotes go after you spend them. (It's for U.S. money only. There is a Canadian sister site, though.) Anyway, I used to be something of a "star" at the site. I'm a veteran user (joined in February 2000), and I (used to) post a lot on the message boards. I was also very enthusiastic about (obsessed with) the site. I still like it these days, but I'm not really as obsessed. In August 2002, when Hank, the creator and webmaster of the site, asked for volunteers to help answer e-mails he received about the site, I pitched in to help. In doing so I joined (and coined the name of) Team AQUA (Associate Question Answerers). Several other knowledgeable users and I answer questions people have and stuff like that. As part of Team AQUA, I am granted an elevated status on the site, and I sort of frequently have to talk to Hank about stuff (like asking to bug him if this happens, or telling him that that isn't working... things like that).

Last night I got an e-mail from Hank saying that he was going to be on the road and passing by my city on Saturday (tomorrow) morning. He wanted to know if he could stop by to say hello! I went crazy. I asked my folks, who said it was okay, and I told him he could come over. I haven't met in person very many users of the site, let alone the webmaster himself, so I'm excited. I just don't know what to say to him, though. It's kind of like having God come over (not that Hank is God, though some Where's George? users would beg to differ). What I mean is, what do you say when this mysterious guy who created everything, this guy who you talk to to receive terse but wise answers - they are similar in that sense - wants to drop by your house? I don't know what I'll say to him, but I invited my friend Kevin, who lives a few blocks from me, to come over and see the great Hank too. I got Kevin started on the site, and though he isn't an active user, I'm sure he'd like to meet Hank.

What comes to mind when you think of 1981? Sandra Day O'Connor? Indiana Jones? Pac-Man? In 2001, Google acquired an archive of 800,000,000 Usenet postings dating back to May 11, 1981. Here's a list of notable posts, including the first mentions of Microsoft (May 1981), Michael Jordan (February 1983), Bill Clinton (July 1984), a search engine (March 1988), AOL (September 1989), the World Wide Web (August 1991), Britney Spears (May 1993), the Taliban (February 1995), and eBay (September 1995). Usenet sure is full of history.

Today I had my first real visit to the school's new library. It's loaded with all sorts of "Tech-no-lo-gy"™, like laptop computers with wireless Internet access. There's a projector on the ceiling (you know, for hooking up to your computer so you can display PowerPoint presentations - what else?), and there's this gigantic screen for it that comes down with the touch of a button. I had been in there briefly before, but today was the first time I noticed the humongous world map on the wall and the twenty-four clocks displaying the time in different cities. Oh, and there are books, too! The place is really cool, mostly.

Today I also found the reason it's not as cool as it could be. The aforementioned laptops are all Macs. You know, dear reader, that I don't like Macs. I'm a Macophobe if there ever was one. The one-button thingy never really did it for me. That, and it's just like Windows except everything's upside-down or backwards. What sort of mean trick are they trying to pull? Anyway, I finally got to using one a little bit, but I borrowed it from someone else rather than checking one out myself. That's probably a no-no, but to me it's an I-don't-care-care.

My English class was taking a trip to the library, you see. (The teacher, whom I've talked about before, always makes fun of how people mispronounce the word "library." He'll always say, "We're goin' down to the lahh-berry.") We were supposed be in groups researching the places Odysseus probably traveled to in the Odyssey and what those places are like now. Naturally, though we tried, my group didn't do much at all. This one guy put his JumpDrive in his computer. I saw that he had MP3s saved on it. He actually went and played his MP3s on the computer. And he didn't have any headphones, either, kids. He turned up the volume on that computer, and nobody even noticed!

I've been nervous all day. After leaving the library we were told to go to our next classes even though the bell hadn't rung yet. But as I was loitering around with a few people in an alcove near our next class, I wasn't so sure of what I had heard. I thought that maybe everyone else had gone back to the classroom for the remaining few minutes of the period, and only I and the slackers I happened to be with weren't there. Even after I was (nearly) assured that everyone had headed to their next class early, the rest of the day I was all nerves. My eye even twitched, which is something it never does. For the rest of the day it seemed like it was one thing after another; everybody was asking me to buy their lunch for them or bring them their cookie from that table back there, and then I had a pop quiz in one of my classes. Even though I think I did well on it, it was still unexpected. The day was insane. When I was doing my homework I felt like chucking my pen across the room, but I contained myself.

(As a side note, my writing may seem unusually informal today. That's because I have to read The Catcher in the Rye for English, and it's written in very informal speech. It's a good book, if you really want to know. I was actually reading it today while I was waiting for about five hours for my sister to get off the lousy computer. I was that much into the darn book. I mean it.)

This is something I might try one of these days. It's a method of approximating the speed of light using marshmallows, a ruler, and a microwave. It seems very interesting, especially because you can eat the marshmallows when you're done.

Every once in a while, you come across an idea so ingenious that you could kick yourself for letting someone else get away with thinking of it. Well, here you go: the world's only professional turtle artist. I'm not talking about someone who paints turtles; this is a turtle that paints! Actually, the turtle's owner kind of sets out some paint on a canvas and has the turtle crawl over it. But whatever. The paintings are fabulous. Koopa, said turtle, has painted 100 works since beginning his career last year. The turtle's owner sells them on eBay and donates the proceeds to help turtles and tortoises in distress. Koopa is trying to set a record in 2004 by having his paintings hang in all 50 U.S. states. He's got 30 so far. Go, Koopa, go! (As for me, I think I could have a promising career as an abstract painter. If a reptile can become an acclaimed artist, so can I.)

Here's a list of sites in the rare .int domain. .int is reserved for international, intergovernmental organizations (such as UNESCO and NATO), but a few others have managed to slip in, like The World Alliance of YMCAs and this awesome site that allows you to send a fax from the Internet.

My mom still gets mad at me when I say "shut up." Even to the dog. It's said by many that "shut up" is "not nice" or, by those who can't count, a "bad word." But why do we think it that way? After all, a word or phrase is only as bad as what we make of it.

I think back in the 1800s, it was common to say things like "My poor tabby-cat is shut up in that box." They would say "shut up" as a sort of idiom, like we might say "locked up" today. Surely prisoners who are "locked up" aren't sitting on the ceilings of their cells! Why is "shut up" considered any different? As the prisoners are locked up in their cells, the cat is simply shut up in the box.

To use some "nicer" synonyms, telling someone to "shut up" is the same as telling them to "can it," "zip it," "button it," or even "shut it," and therefore should not be considered offensive. If you're telling someone to "shut it," you're telling them to shut their mouth. If you tell them to "shut up," you're telling them to shut their mouth up. They're exactly the same thing. So if you still think saying "shut up" is "not nice," shut up!

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii was a Russian who developed an early form of color photography around 1905. His camera took three images, each with a different colored filter, in rapid succession. They were developed as glass plates. When the three plates were held in front of each other and the correct light, a full-color image was projected. Prokudin-Gorskii was commissioned by the czar to document the Russian Empire, and he did so from 1909 to 1915, taking many color photographs of people, places, and things.

The Library of Congress ended up purchasing many of the plates, and last year it opened an online exhibition entitled The Empire That Was Russia: The Prokudin-Gorskii Photographic Record Recreated. For each image in the exibition, the three colored plates were digitally scanned and combined to create a full-color JPEG, which was then retouched to minimize the effects that aging had made on the glass. The result is a series of 120 spectacular images that will make you say "I can't believe these were taken before World War I." At another site you can view nearly 2,000 Prokudin-Gorskii images, and though they are smaller and unretouched, they're just as captivating.

Who is this fine young gentleman? There is sufficient evidence to prove that this image is the earliest known portrait of US President Abraham Lincoln.

In 1977, a man named Albert Kaplan purchased this early 1840s daguerreotype (an early type of photograph) from an art gallery in New York. Though the subject was not identified, Kaplan noticed that he bore a striking resemblance to Abraham Lincoln. After years of research with historians, plastic surgeons, and other experts, he now believes that this is the earliest known photograph of the slain president. It is believed that the photo was taken in 1840 or 1841, which would make Lincoln 31 or 32.

But even if the picture is not of Honest Abe, it's a captivating image nonetheless. There's a guy I know who's of Armenian descent. (Armenia is a tiny nation of the former USSR.) He's always said that Abraham Lincoln was Armenian. Now I actually believe him; he and the young Mr. Lincoln look remarkably alike!

More information about the picture can be found at lincolnportrait.com. You can also buy the photo, restored and framed (or unrestored and unframed), for a rather hefty price.

Today in English class I got a blue note. Blue notes (as I call them) are blue slips of paper that mysterious upperclassmen come in and give you. They mean you have to go somewhere, the somewhere indicated on the note. Sometimes you have to go immediately, and sometimes at the time indicated. I don't think blue notes are inherently bad; the green ones are, I think. Or maybe the pink ones. But no matter.

The pass said I was to go to the cafeteria at 2:15 PM. I knew what it was about. I had received straight A grades during the first marking period. After it had ended and I had been informed such, I was pulled out of class to go to an A Honor Roll pizza party of sorts. They gave me a certificate and I had to shake hands with the principal (errgh) and all the people who are right up there with him. Everybody who was there had to do that. There were about, I don't know, maybe 50 or 60 people. Or 40. I don't know.

After we went up to receive our certificates, pizza was served. Actually, they brought to everyone's tables while people were still being called up, which I thought was rather rude. The pizza was good though, so it was okay. It was Papa John's. I also had a caffeine-free Pepsi. Whoever bought the drinks must have been on a Pepsi kick because there were also cans of Pepsi Twist, Mountain Dew, and Mug, all of which are owned by Pepsi. Only I could have noticed that.

Today is the birthday of Dr. August Dvorak. Here's some information about the Dvorak keyboard (also known as the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard or the American Simplified Keyboard), an alternate standard typewriter/computer keyboard layout which he helped to design. I won't discuss the keyboard much here because everything you need to know about it is there. However, little is known about the good Dr. himself. Last year I scrounged up everything I knew about the guy to write an article about him at Wikipedia, the free online user-written encyclopedia. The following blurb is taken from the article:

Dr. August Dvorak (May 5, 1894 - October 10, 1975) was an educational psychologist and professor of education at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. He and his brother-in-law, Dr. William Dealey, are best known for creating the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard layout in the 1930s as a replacement for the QWERTY keyboard layout. In the 1940s, Dvorak designed keyboard layouts for people with the use of one hand. Dr. Dvorak, along with Dealey, Nellie Merrick, and Gertrude Ford, wrote the book Typewriting Behavior, which was published in 1936. The book, which has been out of print since then, is an in-depth report on the psychology and physiology of typing. Dr. Dvorak was distantly related to the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak.

Dr. Dvorak's work would have largely been forgotten if it were not for the computer making switching keyboard layouts easy. Users of the Dvorak keyboard such as myself make up only a tiny minority of computer and typewriter users. This should not be the case, for the Dvorak keyboard is far superior to the archaic QWERTY layout that people and businesses choose to be stuck with. I know because I've tried both. The computer age is here; it's not the 1800s anymore. Therefore, I hereby propose May 5, 2005, to be the first annual Dvorak Keyboard Day. Mark my words, I'll try to promote it as much as I can that day. If I can remember, that is.

Last week at school every student (and teacher, I think) received a JumpDrive™, a portable USB storage device manufactured by Lexar Media. Whether this was a marketing ploy by Lexar or a decision made by the school board is unknown to me, but I think eventually we're going to have to use them. Being a USB device, the JumpDrive makes use of the USB port, a little slot thingy that's probably on your computer and you don't know what it's for. You just stick the JumpDrive in there, and you can open files from (or save files to) it, just like you would with a floppy disk or a CD-RW. But the JumpDrive is much more convenient.

First, it's very tiny. It's probably heavier than a floppy or a CD, but it takes up less desk/pocket space. As for storage, the JumpDrive beats the floppy hands down. The ones we received can hold a mere 64 MB, but a 90 mm floppy disk holds pithy 1.44 MB. According to the JumpDrive's box, having this gadget in your pocket is like having 44 floppies - not exactly a convenient or portable method of storage! Compared to a CD-R or a CD-RW, this JumpDrive does hold as much, but burning stuff onto CDs is very annoying, especially if it doesn't get burned right. And besides, Lexar makes JumpDrives that hold an entire gigabyte if you're willing to pay a bucket of money. The best thing about the gizmo is that it's PC and Mac compatible. Can't say that about a floppy! (Not that I'd actually debase myself by using a Mac, of course...)

We'll keep these JumpDrives until we graduate, and then we'll have to give them back or pay for a new one. I hope, over the three years I'll be having mine, that it won't become broken, stolen, lost, or worse - obsolete. I'm pretty sure they have to be hooked to our ID badges (which we have to wear at all time), because everyone's doing that. And nobody would wear their JumpDrive for no reason, trust me. Well, actually, you never know. Oh yeah, we might actually have to use these JumpDrive thingies. After all, we're now in a new school building that's full of "Tech-no-lo-gy"™. So I guess the school board has an excuse to make us use superfluous gadgetry.

Two weeks ago, Mr. Firestone, one of my wacky teachers (but wacky in a good way, of course), was sitting with my posse at lunch. (He usually does that now, and I don't know why. But he's entertaining to listen to.) He told me that on the last test we had taken in his class, the guy who sat next to me got an 80% on his test, "and he can't even spell eighty." There was no doubt that he was copying off my paper. So Mr. Firestone suggested that on the next test, I would mark down all the wrong answers, and then after he was finished I would redo the test with the right answers and hand it in. It was an ingenious plan! The test was last Friday. I worked according to the plan, and everything went smoothly. Well, almost everything.

The guy caught on to the fact that I was retaking the test, so I had to tell him something. I managed to make up this lie: I handed in my test to Mr. Firestone and he took one glance at it and told me to throw it out and start over, for it was that bad. The guy bought it, to my surprise. Maybe it's because I'm the best student and it would be expected that Mr. Firestone would show favoritism to me. But anyway, he didn't seem to be worried that he had copied his answers from a garbageworthy test. He should have been, though. Yesterday Mr. Firestone told me that he got a 0 on his test. (I, on the other hand, received an A.) Mission accomplished. So remember, kids: don't copy off other people's tests, because you never know when they might be collaborating with the teacher to make you look like a buffoon.

Though it's not in season, this list of 50 Things for Professors to Do on the First Day of Class is zany enough to merit a read.

May came and caught me off guard. But how could I be on guard when I wasn't expecting it? My thesis is this: It's never May.

Okay, in America, these holidays are usually observed in May, or at least printed on calendars: May Day (what the heck is that, anyway?); Cinco de Mayo, May 5 (which also happens to be August Dvorak's birthday; I'll talk about that in a few days); Mothers' Day, the second Sunday in May; and Memorial Day, the ultimate Monday of the month. And that's pretty much it. I challenge you to think of another one. Your friend's birthday doesn't count! (But it does seem that there are a lot of birthdays this time of year.) And what events happened, happen, or will happen in May? I've never heard of anything interesting going on during this month. May is simply boring. It seems to exist just to bridge a gap between April and June. Maybe today should be the 33rd day of April. But let's face it; everyone likes June. So maybe today's date should be June -29th.

Wow, that was a lame rant. I thought I'd be able to hold up my thesis much better. But anyway, I think I have found one of the most useful sites ever. Introducing... Mailinator. This would work well with BugMeNot.com, which I mentioned in my last post. The basic point of the site is that it instantly creates disposable e-mail addresses. No registering, no nothing.

Say, for example, you need to register at Site XYZ and you need to give them your e-mail address, which you must confirm in a confirmation e-mail that they will send. If you're wary of their ability to handle your real e-mail address responsibly, this is where Mailinator comes in. For the address, just type in any user name (up to 15 characters) @mailinator.com. For this example, let's say you picked TWoSreader@mailinator.com (ha). Submit the form, and later you can head on over to Mailinator and log into the e-mail inbox for TWoSreader. You will then be able to read the e-mail they've sent you and you can click the confirmation link. And if they sell the address to spammers? No worries, mate. All mail to the address is automatically deleted a few hours after it is received. See? No registering, no nothing. If I didn't explain that well, their site has a pretty good explanation.

So, as the Mailinator web site says, "Let 'em spam." I am eager to try it out.