Halloween yesterday, this morning, and tonight

Happy Halloween, kids! Last night I went to a youth group Halloween party. (In early documents it was referred to as a "masquerade ball," but then they lightened up to "masquerade party.") And yes, I was dressed as a doctor. It was kind of dumb, but wearing the cool doctor hat was all worth it. Tonight I'm going to a party at my friend Sean's house, and maybe I'll even do a little trick-or-treating. Too bad there's school tomorrow.

This Halloween is a pretty cool one because here in the US, it's the longest day of the year (25 hours long). That's because this morning Daylight Saving Time ended, causing the clocks to go back an hour to where they belong; thus, after 1:59 Eastern Daylight Time came 1:00 Eastern Standard Time. I wonder how 24-hour TV stations (aren't they all now?) deal with that problem. Maybe they make the most of it by selling extra infomercial space. I also wonder about the ones that don't run infomercials in the wee hours (if there is such an animal). "Coming up at 1:00, it's Such-and-Such-a-Show, followed by Some Other Show at 1:30; then at 1:00..." But hey, at least we all got the opportunity for an extra hour of sleep.

As I said yesterday, I'm going to free up some space on my computer by converting old BMP images (think MS Paint) to PNGs and burning them to CDs or something. The conversion will be handled by the fabulous command-line program PNGOUT (which, by the way, can work with files in any directory, contrary to what I had thought - pity it's so poorly documented). Since it's going to be a gargantuan task, I'll write a batch file (*.bat) to do all (or part) of the work at once. Actually, I've already hacked up a small one just to try it out, and it works quite nicely. In the spirit of Halloween, I called it eekitsa.bat. This'll certainly take the strain out of handling PNGOUT, which only accepts one file at a time. I have hundreds of BMPs for it to handle!

Be a stingy webmaster (or: Save the bytes!)

Killerest. App. Ever.

Of course, we all know that the PNG image format is generally superior to GIF, the format it was designed to be generally superior to. (Can you say "lossless image compression"?) But the superiority of PNG is an idea that's only recently occurred to me because in the past, I just didn't care and was not enough in the know to use PNG images correctly. In fact, you'll find mostly GIFs (plus the occasional JPEG) in the Archives until some of the very recent entries. But I know better now, as you may be able to see on this newly redesigned site. The only images used throughout the site are the image of the clouds behind "The World of Stuff.com" up there and the XML button to the right. (The XML button is a 180-byte GIF; I'll explain why it's not a PNG shortly). Anyway, I decided to use the PNG format for the cloud image due to the better quality for a smaller file size.

But it wasn't enough. Photoshop, my favorite image editing program, is notorious for its poor PNG compression. Even though the file sizes are still usually smaller than GIFs, I knew they could be smaller. So I got PNGOUT, a command line utility that can not only reduce the file size of PNG images without touching the image quality, but also convert most types of JPEG, GIF, BMP and TGA images and convert them to PNGs. (I had to brush up on my DOS command skills - i.e., re-learn them). It's ideal to use on your web page's images because large files mean more bandwidth and storage, and that can equate to more money. For example, before I fed the cloud image into PNGOUT, it was 12,170 bytes. The optimized image, which is now on the site, is 11,230 bytes - with 940 bytes saved, it's a 7.7% reduction in size. That may not sound like much, but consider this: now I'll pull a number out of the air and guesstimate that this image is downloaded about 50 times a day. That equates to 47,000 bytes saved every day. And assuming a steady rate of traffic, the absence of those 940 little bytes would save 17,155,000 bytes (about 16.4 KB) each year. That doesn't even take storage space into account.

I can put PNGOUT to use in another way: optimizing files for long-term storage. My computer has only 19% free space, you see, so I need to get rid of some things. Among the most likely candidates are old MS Paint drawings I used to make years ago. Since I can't stand to let them go, I think I'll burn them to CDs or use some other storage medium. Of course, we all know that BMP files, used by Paint, take up huge amounts of space. So, before burning, I'll run those old images into PNGOUT. I've played with a few already and have received fantastic, unbelievable results. For example, one image that is 405,118 bytes as a BMP became a PNG that was only 11,130 bytes - a mere 2.2% of the original size!

An unrealistic (but really cool) example of PNG's superior compression is an 4,096x4,096-pixel image containing 16 million colors. In an uncompressed format - BMP, say - it would be a whopping 48 MB in size. In PNG format it's only 58.4 KB (and I actually managed to knock it down to 56 using PNGOUT).

I'll definitely be using PNGOUT more from now on. But I'd say the only thing that's keeping it from being the Killerest. App. Ever. is that you can really, only enter one image at a time, and I think it has to be in the same folder as the program. Download PNGOUT (available for Windows and Linux).

Oh, right, why the XML button isn't a PNG: unlike webmasters who always use PNG instead of GIF (and there are some), I believe in using the right tool for the job. The XML button is 180 bytes as a GIF. I cannot produce a PNG image of comparable size. PNGOUT converted it to a PNG with something like 206 bytes. Again, a) it all adds up, and 2) I'm cheap.

Coming to the U.S. in 2006, it's... digital television! Or, if you prefer snappy abbreviations, DTV! This (sound warning) government web site has information on this upcoming standard that's being forced by law upon the nation. No more analog TV signals for you. You'll either buy a converter box for your old relic of a TV or watch your favorite programs in stunningly crisp 16:9 widescreen with Dolby 5.1 surround sound. Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit; the picture quality will be better, but widescreen and surround sound are optional. And yeah, I will like it.

I just wonder if you'll still be able to pick up broadcast stations with an antenna. I guess not. Goodbye, free TV channels.

Masquerade ball

Tomorrow night my church's youth group is having a masquerade ball (because "costume party" just wouldn't do it). Today, I was busy doing nothing when my friends Mike and Mandi stopped by. Mike lives in the neighborhood and he and Mandi are good buds. They said they were on their way to the neighborhood supermarket and invited me to come along, so I did. I thought they were buying stuff for the party tomorrow night, but they were actually just going to make a pizza to eat this afternoon. So we bought the necessary ingredients, and, on the way back to Mike's, my sister came along with us.

We pretty much ate pizza and prepared for tomorrow's party. Somebody got the clever idea (from a magazine) of filling cupcakes with strawberry jelly, so they "bleed" when you bite into them. Mike and Mandi asked me to try the first one they had made. Surprisingly, it was good. You might not think that strawberry jelly tastes good in a chocolate cupcake, but you'd be wrong. We also had some fun with decorating the cupcakes. Each one had a different design or message in the icing on top. I just wrote random stuff like "EGGS," "EAT BEEF," and "BEATLES." But as the tube of fine icing got low, it became harder to write so finely, thus forcing me to reduce a cupcake's message of "DON'T TURN AROUND" to simply "DON'T TURN." And with little icing left it was coming out thick, so it looked kind of like "DONUT IVAN" if you just glanced at it.

After all the pizza-eating and cupcake-decorating, we went to the park across the street from Mike's house and played volleyball, which, as we got more exhausted, broke further and further down into simply a game of ball. I'm tired as heck, and as I type this sentence it's 9:39 P.M. local time, which is around when I go to bed on a school night. All that physical activity wore me out, but I'd do it again.

Yesterday I got my navy blue Firefox t-shirt in the mail (Firefox, of course, being my new favorite browser). I'm actually wearing it right now. You'll recall that I ordered it several days ago when I contributed to the fund to place a full-page ad for Firefox in the New York Times. The names of the contributors will be included in the ad. That campaign, a resounding success, ended today. It reached its ten-day goal of 2,500 names in only 16 hours, and ended up receiving contributions from over 10,000 donors. No word yet on when the ad will run except that it will be in November or December; it's cheaper to be flexible.

Now, speaking of that recent post, I'd really like to buy a TV-B-Gone before the FCC makes them illegal or they sell out again (whichever comes first!). Tomorrow, I hope. It's late...

Actually, it's not late, but it feels like it. What a day.

Election 2004: Part 2

This is the second in an I guess three-part series on the U.S. Presidential election. (Previous installment.)

The election is only a week away. Actually, some states have opened the polls early. Early voting seems to be catching on; it's an attractive alternative to waiting in long lines on one night. In fact, my parents have both voted already. For whom they voted I'm not sure, but I could probably guess. Judging by the lawn signs that the neighbors have up, my neighborhood seems to be going for Bush. I haven't actually even seen Kerry signs in the neighborhood until today, when a total of three of them appeared on two trees.

In the news, John Kerry has been deemed to be excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church due to heresy. (Heresy results in automatic excommunication.) This follows a lawsuit filed against him in an ecclesiastical court. Kerry claims that he does not personally support abortion but that he does favor a woman's right to choose. Being excommunicated from the Church, he cannot technically receive Communion, though he allegedly still does so. Excommunication, however, does not have to be permanent; it can be terminated by repentance, confession, and absolution.

The Electoral College is the body that actually votes for the President. The number of each state's electors is equal to the number of representatives it has in Congress, which is partially based on the state's population. Since each state's electors vote for whichever candidate received the majority popular vote, it basically exists as a formality; once the votes are counted, we can predict how the Electoral College will vote with almost absolute certainty. Eager to see who would win if the votes were tallied today? The guy from electoral-vote.com is tracking the latest polls every day to determine just that. Today the site predicts Bush will receive 285 electoral votes and Kerry 247. A candidate needs 270 votes to win. If neither candidate gets 270 votes, then Congress makes the decision. It's a pretty sticky process, but that's government for you. By the way, the guy running the site is remaining anonymous due to repeated attacks on his server.

I'm getting very tired of all the mudslinging between the liberals and the conservatives. An intelligent discussion is fine, like the ones I often have with my classmates, but this distortion of the facts in TV commercials and whatnot are becoming annoying rather than amusing. I can't wait till it's all over. Will George W. "Oopsie-I-guess-there-were-no-WMDs-after-all-sorry-about-that" Bush continue to lead the electoral college prediction, or will John "You-can-only-rely-on-me-to-be-inconsistent" Kerry emerge victorious? We'll soon find out...

Getting ahead of the spammers

Who doesn't hate spam, and what more can be said about it anyway? Fortunately, I rarely get spam, but that's mainly because I have measures in place to prevent spambots and other e-mail sucking programs from getting my address.

First of all, my e-mail address is contained within an image throughout this site, rather than within a mailto: link. Current software can't read images, so it's a good idea to do the same if you have your own site. You may wish to obfuscate your addy in another way, like with JavaScript or simply by typing your e-mail address in a way that only humans can read and understand, like this:

and so on.

Second, I'm wary of who I give my e-mail address to. I mean, I'll give it to my friend in class if he, she, or it wants to write me, but when I sign up for this or register for that, I can never be too careful. Sometimes I use the excellent Mailinator service to provide a quick dummy address (and if the site is smart enough to reject mailinator.com addresses, I use dodgeit instead). And BugMeNot comes in handy when I don't wish to register at all.

I think if you follow those two simple steps, you may be able to live a spam-free lifestyle. Of course, nothing is guaranteed, so don't take that statement as guaranteed. But it should limit the amount of spam you get, especially if you've recently set up your e-mail address. (If you've had your address for a long time and you're inundated with spam, it may be too late.)

Those two little tips, however, are defensive tactics. If you're really in the know, you may be able to make some offensive strategies work for you. I made Make Your Own Spam Bait (please don't look, it's old!) for that purpose. That method involved generating random fake addresses with JavaScript and then pasting them onto your site, thus wasting spammers resources ever so slightly by sending bounced e-mails. But I've got a better solution now, one that I actually care enough about to use on this site. Instead of boring, static fake addresses than never change (unless I change them myself), I have randomly generated e-mail addresses at the bottom of each page, including this'n. Go ahead, take a look. I'll be waiting here.

Back? Okay, good. If you were particularly attentive, you probably noticed that there's another link after the e-mail addresses. It takes you to a list of 1,000 randomly generated e-mail addresses. If you reload the page (which I know you will not do because you care about not overloading the server and wasting my bandwidth), you'll get 1,000 more. Feel free to use it if you want; it's not my solution. It involves PHP, in case you're wondering. If you don't like big scary acronyms, you can just link to the page on your own site; spammers will find it that way too.

I've been thinking about using even cleverer methods to annoy spammers, like this one: Cookie Jar. This PHP script determines a visitor's IP address and the current date. It then encodes it into a string of (seemingly) random numbers and makes that string an e-mail address at your domain. If you get all the e-mail for your domain, and a spammer sends mail to this address, you'll get it and it'll be addressed to the random string of characters. Simply use the script to decode the string, and you'll find the bot's IP address and the date of their little visit. Unfortunately, due to dynamic IP addresses it's becoming harder and harder to ban users by IP, and it's also tough to file a complaint to their ISP (or so I've heard). So that one appears to be out for me.

Perhaps a better spambot trap is Honeypot, by the same guy who wrote Cookie Jar. Honeypot, also a PHP script, generates a page that's pretty much completely random: random text filled with random e-mail addresses in random places. There are also random links that run the script again, but they're too cleverly disguised for that to be determined by the bot. Basically, the bot will have no way of knowing that each page (and address) is garbage, so it'll keep coming back for more (as opposed to saying to itself, "Hey, this looks pretty fishy to me... who puts 1,000 e-mail addresses on one page?"). This sounds pretty enticing to try, but it could be a real drain on the server if a spambot actually hit it, following every link on every page. I'll think about it a bit, though - I'm more likely to implement this than Cookie Jar.

For more information on spam and what to do about it, check out Randy Cassingham's Spam Primer.

Tonight I registered to take Health class online. I was supposed to take it next semester, but since I've decided to take Algebra II next semester, I had to bump a class off my schedule. And what better class to bump off than the one that everyone hates? It really does seem like everybody's taking Health online; some people I've talked to said it was pretty easy. Good to know I won't be alone with that. I chose to start taking it next month, which may be too close for me to prepare for it mentally, but since my sister's taking it then also, I might as well.

I've been slightly worried about how much more work I'm going to have to do with this taking an extra class and all, but I figure that if anyone can take Health online, then so can I.

Sunny Sunday

Well, it's a beautiful Sunday morning and I want you all to know that I'm still alive. I just haven't had anything interesting to say over the past few days. But I'll try now.

Yesterday I threw together the new Christmas layout for the site. It's pretty early, you say? Yeah, I agree. I made last year's layout on October 26, and I made this year's on October 23. Ah well, I was bored and I just needed something to do. It won't be too fancy or anything, but if you liked last year's layout, you'll like this new one even more, and if you hated last year's layout (more likely), you'll hate this one even less.

Hmm, what else... I just (as I was typing this) received a call from Mark, the drummer in our band, saying that he wouldn't be able to come over to practice today but that he could host the practice at his place. So we're going to try to get over there this afternoon. That should be fun.

Oh yeah, Halloween is coming. I've decided to be a doctor for Halloween. Yeah. A doctor. Not a psychopathic, deranged doctor with bloody, unsterilized instruments, just... a doctor. I don't know, it struck me as funny when I was browsing the costume catalog. So I got the costume and tried it on. It's pretty comfortable. I may look like a weirdo, but at least I'll feel all right about it.

Well, that's about all from me for now. In the meantime, check out this page about the Boston Molasses Disaster of January 15, 1919.

Institute of International Studies

My school likes to pride itself in diversity, the omnipresent PC buzzword of the decade. It's almost justified by the fact that the school is officially known as Pompano Beach High School Institute of International Studies. A prominent feature of the new campus (completed last year) is the forest of flagpoles showcasing some of the various countries represented in the student body and faculty. One day last year while enjoying my lunch outside, my knowledge of the world's flags set me up for a wonderful treat: the flag of Ecuador (or Columbia, I figured, as the two are virtually identical) was flying upside-down.

A few days ago I was flipping through last year's yearbook yet again. (It arrived in August, so it's not that old.) I came across a photo of the flag poles which I had seen before but had not paid a whole lot of attention to. This time, however, I caught a certain detail right away: the same flag was upside-down! Sure enough, on page 34 of the 2004 yearbook, you can see it plain as day.

To the right is the flag of Ecuador as correctly seen. I've concluded that it's Ecuador because Columbia's flag, though it has the same design, would not be as long if both flags were the same height. Ecuador's flag can sometimes be found with the national coat of arms in the center (probably to distinguish it from Columbia's flag), but this one is plain.

This mistake not only passed over everyone who was involved in hoisting the flag and everyone who saw it that day, but also the photographer and the editors of the yearbook - perhaps everyone at school but me. So there you have it. A school so proud of its "diversity" can't tell that it's flying a country's flag upside-down, and no one notices anyway.

By the way, if this leaks out to the administration of the school, I'd just like to point out that this was basically an isolated incident (I thought I caught a glimpse of the Brazilian flag flying upside-down but couldn't confirm it later) and that everyone makes mistakes, especially flagrant ones that are liable to upset and outrage the student body and the entire community.

Update Thu Oct 21, 2004 21:05 EDT (UTC -4): I've talked to my pal Gilbert, who is Colombian and knows the Colombian flag when he sees it. In an instant messenger conversation with him, he affirmed: "it's colombia. ecuador has an emblem." I thought it sometimes didn't have the emblem, but he said it always does. He went on to add, "i spoke with mr. king [an assistant principal]. many of us colombians were angry, but all they did was change the flag." I have indeed noticed that it isn't there any more.

Again, the only difference between the Colombian and Ecuadorian flags (barring the coat of arms on the Ecuadorian flag) is their length-to-height ratios: Ecuador's is 1:2, while Colombia's is 2:3. If we assume that the flags have the same height, only their lengths should be different. Furthermore, if we specify this height to be the approximate height of the upside-down flag in the photograph, a simple superimposition of the two flags over the photo should provide a clear answer. And it does:

I think that just about closes the case right there. It looks like Gilbert corrected me in several respects: a) the flag is that of Colombia, b) all Ecuadorian flags have the coat of arms, c) people noticed that the flag was upside-down, and d) it happened more than once.

More than once, you say? How do I figure, you say? I'd like to point out an interesting observation here: Gilbert said he complained to Mr. King, an assistant principal. This year is Mr. King's first year; therefore, the problem probably occurred this year. But the picture was taken last year, so it had to also have happened then.

But these nitpickings shouldn't get in the way of what I was originally trying to point out: my school flew a country's flag upside-down. And now I know that they didn't just do it once, but at least twice! And people got mad! So they "fixed" the problem by replacing it with another country's flag - most likely one they'd be more familiar with so as not to hoist it upside-down! I feel that this is more incriminating than my original accusation, which wasn't very correct. This corrected version proves that Pompano Beach High School isn't as good as they should be when it comes to international studies.

Setting the New York Times on "Fire"

Lately, it seems, just about every other post I've made has been about the Firefox browser, which I now prefer to Internet Explorer. Well, here's another Firefox post, just to keep things fresh.

Spread Firefox, the site of Firefox's grassroots marketing campaign, is planning to print a full-page ad in the New York Times. The paper is read across the US and has a daily circulation of over 1.1 million, making it a perfect target for the first such advertisement of this type. However, it also costs a lot of money, which the Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit organization that develops Firefox, doesn't really have. The solution? Solicit donations on Spread Firefox and publish the name of everyone who donates. Yesterday the site announced the campaign, and seventeen hours later they had achieved their 10-day goal of 2,500 names! As of posting, the site claims to have 3,791 names.

Yours truly has contributed at the student rate of $10 (US), though he's not sure he can get away with this because he used his dad's credit card and billing information (with said parental unit's permission, of course). I also seized the opportunity to buy a Firefox t-shirt that I'd had my eye on for a while. Yeah, I know, I'm a nerd. But instead of a clash of the titans, the new Browser wars are being waged between David and Goliath - and I'm rooting for ol' Davey-boy. Firefox is better anyway, but if you've frequented this site for more than four seconds you should know that already.

The design of the ad and when it will run has not yet been announced (regarding the latter, it's cheaper to be flexible), but it should be published around the time Firefox 1.0 is released: November 9.

Do you hate television? Wired News is reporting about a new product called TV-B-Gone, a new remote control that can turn off just about any TV. It beams 209 "off" signals used by different brands of TVs, the most common first. If you're tired of TVs defeating conversation at restaurants or feel perversely pleased at the thought of shutting off all the TVs in the electronics department, the TV-B-Gone is apparently for you.

The official TV-B-Gone site is currently down due to Slashdotting, but hopefully it will recover soon. Then I'd like to see how much it costs, because if it's not too pricey (which it probably is), it would make a great addition to my Christmas list which I thankfully haven't started writing yet.

Oh yeah, you can also use it to turn TVs on.

Election 2004: Part 1

Though the last thing you want to read about here and I want to write about here is politics, this post is intended to be the first in a short series devoted to the U.S. Presidential election.

Whether Americans realize it or not, the election effects the whole world because the actions of America affect the world, and the President has a significant hand in the actions of America. Many people have been saying that this is the most important election in a while. I do believe they said the same thing in 2000 and for each election before that, but this one is probably more important due to new, global issues such as terrorism and Iraq.

The competition is getting ugly too - I would say it's somewhere between "fierce" and "gruesome" and - I'm just referring to the candidates' supporters. The Halloween costume stores are selling Bush and Kerry masks. Political bumper stickers are as ubiquitous as American flag-themed ones in the months following the 9/11 attacks (and they seem to be on the rebound due to the election, particularly with the right-wing crowd). Due to this subject's dominating the news, I've had some opportunities to hone my political bias-detecting abilities that others show off so well.

That reminds me that there comes a point when news ceases to be news and becomes grossly slanted for the satisfaction of its viewers/readers/listeners who have decided they would rather feel good about the news they hear than actually be informed. Such news, I suppose, could be labeled entertainment. To me, though, it's far from entertaining. My family recently got an XM Satellite Radio unit for the house. Though my parents have set it on weird music all the time, I've found that the list of stations includes "America Left" and "America Right" - disgusting. Isn't that just what America needs, another hammer or other type of tool wedging apart the rift that already divides the country politically? XM does, however, offer actual news stations like radio versions of cable news channels (though some of them walk the fine line between news and lies).

With that sort of contemplation out of the way, here's a bite-sized helping of political linkage.

According to a very unscientific and actually quite funny survey, 63.6% of people named George Bush plan on voting for John Kerry. Another 27.3% plan to vote for Bush, and 9.1% are undecided. Of an equal-sized sample of John Kerrys, 45.5% intend to vote for Kerry, 36.4% will vote for Bush, and the remaining 18.2% do not know. Additionally, 100% of people named Britney Spears plan on voting for Kerry. Call me an insane raving lunatic, but what are the odds that more than one person would be named Britney Spears? Or is there only one? Maybe one of her fans can enlighten me, with the other providing supporting details.

How would you like to trade votes with someone else? VotePair is trying to do just that. Why, you ask? Due to the system of the electoral college (which formally elects the President), certain states are more important than others. Certain states will definitely hand their votes to Bush and others will definitely vote for Kerry. But it's the "swing states" - those in which the majority of people may end up voting either way. The slightest majority in the popular vote will cause all of the electoral votes to go that way (in theory, at least). The candidates concentrate on campaigning the swing states, which they may or may not end up winning.

Anyway, VotePair intends to defeat George W. Bush in his bid for re-election by uniting Democrats and third-party supporters. Specifically, they pair Democrats in safe states with third-party voters in swing states and have them trade votes. That way, the Democrats could tip the scales toward Kerry in swing states while still showing support for third-party candidates in the swing states, which aren't as critical in determining the outcome.

Only two more weeks and, assuming there are no problems, we'll see who will win the Battle Royale - or, rather, the Battle Presidentiale.

Whining about whining

I'm sick and tired of people moaning about how much Americans eat and how unhealthy all the food is. You don't have to eat everything someone in front of you, you know. Try not eating the whole thing if it's worrying you to death. And all that about all the sugar and fat and salt in foods. Unless someone daily ties you up, drags you to McDonald's, and shoves burgers and french fries down your throat, you really shouldn't complain. If you think food is unhealthy, eat healthy foods. So instead of buying fattening foods, buy leaves and make a salad. And don't complain about fattening dressings when there are plenty of dressings that are low in fat. You don't even need dressing at all! I wish people would get that straight. If you don't like what you eat, change it. If you don't like what other people are eating, don't eat what they're eating.

Another one I hear a lot is about the Interstate System (or any other freeway system if you live outside the US). People are always whining about how you never see anything on the Interstates and how much nicer it would be if you could. Hello there - the Interstate System was devised (all Douglas Adams references aside) to get you from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible. It was the brainchild of President Eisenhower, who, as a young man, spent something like one or two months on the road for a coast-to-coast trip. I'm sure he saw a lot of scenery. If you want to use them, there are other road systems just waiting for you! To wit, the U.S. Highway System - you know, as in US 1, US 101, and all of them in between. You can see towns on those roads. Of course, you'll have to do a lot of stopping and starting (making for a higher risk of accidents), but scenery comes at that price.

Here I am complaining about people who complain, so what does that make me?

A new World

This new design for The World of Stuff has been about a month in the making, but it must have been more than that since it seems like so much longer. I had been kicking the idea about my head for a long time, but the single event that really prompted this redesign was my adoption of Mozilla Firefox as my main browser. Firefox rendered the old design horribly, so instead of fixing the layout for non-IE browsers, I decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to start from scratch.

Aside from the visual differences which you can see here, there are a few differences in terms of content of the site - basically, I've thinned out the dumb stuff. Here's what you won't find any more:

• Links, which has been with us since almost the beginning. The list of some of my favorite sites was probably rather out of date, and I figured most people wouldn't care about them anyway.
• Downloads. Come on.
• The much hyped (by me) Bill Factor Project, which was removed because a) Firefox rendered it really really bad, and b) it was a dumb idea anyway. And the only hits it got were from people asking search engines whether it's illegal to write on money.
• February 29, 2004: A Photo Essay. Nothing but a drain on bandwidth.
• If I forgot something else, I'll add it here.

That said, here are some features (?) of the new site plus other things of which you should take note.

• This new layout is very flexible. It should stretch to fit your screen resolution, whether you're on 400x300 or 1600x1200. No more tiny little column for you big-resolution people.
• Pages with the World of Stuff header should load faster now, seeing as there are fewer images.
• You know how each entry has a link that says "permanent link to this entry"? Well, those permanent links were no longer permanent. Due to a rather problem that's too complicated for me to explain, I had to change all of them. Old URLs in the format of http://www.theworldofstuff.com/
  archives/200304.html#200304062213 are now formatted as http://www.theworldofstuff.com/
  archives/200304.html#d062213. Note that in the part after the "#" the month and date (200304) has been replaced with the letter "d." Why d? It's not entirely arbitrary. It could stand for "date" or something, because the next two letters still signify the date of the post (in this example, 06 is the date - the sixth day of April, 2003). Please update your bookmarks and links accordingly.
• Make Your Own Spam Bait is a rather obscure section of the site that once again avoided the axe; in fact, its spirit lives on. At the bottom of each page you'll see five randomly generated fake e-mail addresses, with a link to a page that offers 1,000 more. These are for e-mail harvesting robots to pick up, 'cause who likes them?
• The date for all posts starting with this one shall be in my local time zone, which is right now Eastern Daylight Time (UTC -4). I made the decision to switch from UTC to local time due to ambiguity over words such as "today," "tomorrow," "this morning," and what have you. Henceforth, "today" refers to my local day (as opposed to the UTC day) and all the others apply accordingly.

And, well, have fun! And be sure to shoot me an e-mail if you encounter a problem or a broken link.

Exclusive sneak peek of the new WoS layout

Forgive me, reader, for I have sinned. It's been about four days since my last post. I've been spending a lot of my free time finishing up the new design for this site. Even though a few old pages are getting the axe, it's still taking a while to apply it to each page and convert the poorly written HTML therein to well-formed XHTML 1.0. Here's a sneak peek of what the new site will look like. As you can see, it's a step up from what I have here now. My sister says it looks "the same", but only the basic layout is similar to what's here now. And sure, most of the colors are reused from the present layout, but that's because I like the colors. It's just that on the new site, they're used in different proportions. And, well, there's no white. White is the sign of lack of creativity. Of course, since the basic arrangement of everything is about the same, you could say that it shows a lack of creativity too. And I'd say you're right, because I'm not creative. If I had been creative when I was making the design, it would look something like this. I need a better example, though. One that makes cool-looking buttons out of CSS. I can't think of any right now, or how/why I might use them.

Mid-term exams have also been eating my time. On Tuesday I had programming and biology exams. I didn't even know we were going to have a test in programming, but I did well on it anyway. (It was so short, the teacher graded it in class.) I got a 97%.

Wednesday was the PSAT. I'd never taken a test that had you fill out your religion. It was optional, but I decided to fill it in because I had skipped out on giving my e-mail address and Social Security number. There was also a section to fill in what your major in college will be. Undecided, baby! As for the actual test, it was not that bad. In the math section they had the occasional polynomial question and other things I learned about but don't remember. It really makes me wonder why they teach junk like that. You can pull a 30-year-old off the street and he/she/it won't even know what a polynomial is, even if they learned about them in high school.

Anyhow, Thursday I had exams in psychology and geometry. In the former, we did a paper in lieu of an exam. That's the great thing about my teacher, Mr. Firestone. He'll never give another paper-and-pencil exam in any of his classes as long as he lives because of last year's first semester final exam, which everyone but three people failed ("because they were the only ones who studied," he maintains). Deep down, he hates to see everyone fail, even though on the outside he emits a cruel little chuckle at the thought.

Almost everyone who's been around the virtual block a few times has heard the story about the whale carcass that washed up on a beach and was removed with dynamite. But not everyone knows that this strange event actually did happen. It was November 12, 1970, and the beach was near Florence, Oregon. The Oregon State Highway Division decided against burying or cutting up the whale in favor of blowing it up into pieces that would be eaten by seagulls. As a result of the explosion, chunks of whale meat rained on spectators standing 400 m away, and one large piece damaged a car. Find out more - and see the original news segment showing the blast - at The Infamous Exploding Whale. Paul Linnman, the reporter who famously covered the story, went on to retell it, along with many others he's experienced, in his book The Exploding Whale and Other Remarkable Stories from the Evening News.

got number two pencils?

It's that time of year again. Mid-term exams are tomorrow and Thursday. It doesn't seem like a whole quarter has already passed when I consider that a quarter is half a semester. That means my time with the classes I have now is halfway over, and 25% of my sophomore year is gone. On Wednesday I have to take the PSAT, which of course stands for the Preliminary SAT, which of course stands for the Scholastic Assessment Test, which of course is your ticket to college. Horrible that they should start me worrying about colleges. I'm distressed enough worrying about what socks to wear every morning. But the aforelinked page, which is the official site of the PSAT, gives these almost comforting words of wisdom: "You should definitely take the PSAT/NMSQT in your junior year. Many students benefit by taking it earlier, typically in their sophomore year.... If you take it earlier, recognize that the PSAT/NMSQT is a junior-level test, so don't get discouraged if your score is low." [Emphasis in original.]

Today I had to play my guitar for my programming class (backstory). I brought the guitar up to the third-floor classroom a few minutes before the first bell. The door was locked, so I left it outside. When I came back along with the hordes of other people making their way to their first classes, I was only slightly surprised to see my teacher at his desk... trying... to play it. We had a little exchange about how it has twelve strings instead of six; it's a topic I have to deal with a lot when I take it beyond the confines of my room.

Anyway, I was prepared to play two songs: Elvis Presley's hit "Don't Be Cruel" and "Chains," an obscure cover song from the Beatles' first album. I picked out two just in case the teacher wanted me to play two, which I was sure he would because he's like that. I was right. As I sang and played, the class either ignored me or just watched with amusement. In other words, it wasn't that bad. I don't think I'll get any kind of extra credit, but I hope I do.

As we all know, Amazon.com is the top retail site on the web. Millions of people registered at Amazon keep profiles and wishlists. But what about Jeff Bezos (right), the founder of Amazon? Presumably in the spirit of "keeping it real," Bezos has his own Amazon profile. complete with his wishlist and reviews of products he's bought. The guy has 21 items on his wishlist. Among them are these: Harold and Maude on DVD ($11.24, with 63 used and new from $9.89), an album called Chutes Too Narrow ($13.49, with 51 used and new from $11.42), and Virtual Apollo: A Pictorial Essay of the Engineering and Construction of the Apollo Command and Service Modules (Apogee Books Space Series) ($13.97, with 19 used and new from $11.18). The man's a billionaire, but he can't spare ten bucks to buy a DVD, CD, or book. And eight of the 21 items on his list have been discontinued.

Mumtaztic challenge

This post comes to you after a number of hours of working on updating this site's layout. I might be done by now if I decided to leave the HTML code in old posts as it is. See, for the past, oh, 5 years, I've been writing HTML that's not "standards-compliant," you see. There's this body that determines Web standards for us, you see, and if what they say is right, future browsers and other applications will not be able to read malformed HTML correctly. So I've got to change it. It also helps in producing (more or less) uniform appearance and function between today's browsers. So that's what I'm doing. Replacing every bad HTML tag I've written since April 2003 and making it all better. I'm also replacing absolute links with relative links, just because they take up less space and make pages load (very, very slightly) faster. But moving right along...

Last Wednesday in programming class, the teacher, Mr. Mumtaz, told us that for our mid-term project we had to create an online-store-type interface. He also said that we each had to sell something different. Some people claimed cars, software, skateboards, and chickens, but I wanted to sell backscratchers. It didn't take me long after this to realize that it was a stupid, stupid idea - I would have to illustrate and describe 20 different backscratchers that I would offer "for sale." So, I asked Mr. Mumtaz if I could change it. I told him I wanted to change it to guitars. He seemed like he needed some convincing. I told him that I play the guitar and I know about guitars, so I should sell guitars.

He told me I could sell guitars if he gave me 20 push-ups.

Mr. Mumtaz is one of those people who are always either very serious or very joking, but you can never tell which.

Then someone told me to offer him money instead. So I talked about how nice his watch was and offered him $10 instead of the physical labor. But since I didn't have the money on me, he said no. I would have to bring in my guitar and sing a song for the class. I figured he was kidding, but you cannot tell with this man. There's no "Haha, just kidding" with him. Rather, it's "Bring your guitar to school tomorrow."

Needless to say, I didn't bring my guitar on Thursday, the last day of the week, and unfortunately he remembered about the "promise" that I made. So tomorrow I'm obligated to bring a guitar to my computer programming class and sing a song. I don't know what Mr. Mumtaz will do to me otherwise. He's really serious.

I've decided that I'll bring my 12-string acoustic guitar because I'd have a good time trying to get my amp up to the third-floor classroom. It's just occurred to me that I will get a number of strange looks from the school administration, if one of them catches me, which is likely. What will I say? My programming teacher wanted me to bring my guitar to class? Who is going to believe that? I don't know, but I'll have to bring the instrument up to the classroom before the bell rings, if they let me. In large crowds the guitar case could act as a bludgeon.

I also don't know what song I'll play. It should be a rather obscure song, so that I don't get saddled with a nickname ("Hey Elvis, help me out with this code"; "Hey Beatles, come see me at my desk right now"). It should also be one I already know, considering I have to play it tomorrow, and easy to play, because that acoustic guitar has a wide neck. I'll just have to act cool and wow the class (and more importantly, Mr. Mumtaz, so he can shut up).

For those bored of backwards typing: it's Upside-Down Typing. Rather hard to read if you ask me, but it's a novel idea.

Raindrops keep fallin' on my head...

Well, I went to my school's Homecoming Game yesterday. (It was an American football game, not football/soccer, just so there's no confusion on that point.) I didn't spend much time watching the game; rather, I was hanging out with friends high up in the stands (not unlike how we spent the pep rally). During the last few minutes of the game, we were in the lead, but then opposing team scored a touchdown and got ahead. To add insult to injury, it started raining, and an unseasonably cold wind blew with it. Some people left, for by this time the outcome was clear. Our team lost, but played a good game. Our team played a good game, but lost.

During the game, school pride (in the form of blue and yellow hair spray and face paint) rubbed off on everyone I was with. I was the unwilling recipient of some blue hair spray, and later I was tricked into picking up a yellow face paint bottle that didn't have paint just inside. At the end of the game, "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" was our theme of the night, but unlike in the lyrics of the song, we were not particularly optimistic.

On this date in 1940, John Lennon was born. He liked to say that he was born during a Nazi air raid, but I believe there was a lull in the bombing that particular night. He may not have come into this world with a bang, but along with the rest of the Beatles, he greatly influenced popular culture. Here's some speculation on what he might be like today had he not been murdered in 1980. And didja know they renamed his hometown's airport after him? Liverpool John Lennon Airport: "Above Us Only Sky."

Benjamin Franklin was a man of many wise words. In fact, we still quote some of them today. Here's a list of some Franklin quotations.

Picture

I got my school picture back yesterday, only 16 days after it was taken. I think that's some kind of record. I guess they've gone digital, which would explain the relatively low quality of the larger photos. Not that they're bad, they just seem not as good as in the past. Or maybe I'm just imagining it. I don't know.

As for the picture itself, I don't like it. It's really annoying. The photographer didn't adjust the camera to compensate for my height, so my head is a little high up in the picture. At least I didn't blink or sneeze or anything.

Homecoming Week is over. Wednesday was Triplets Day, where you were supposed to dress like two other people. Hardly anyone did that, though. Thursday was Spirit Day or something like that, where each class was to wear a different color. The sophomore color was white, so I surprised all, including myself, by wearing a shirt that was white.

There was also a pep rally in the afternoon to conclude Homecoming Week. For some reason they felt the need to have it outdoors, so that's what we had to put up with. It was your typical pep rally, but it actually succeeded in rallying my pep. That was because I was sitting way up high in the stands (away from authority and cheerleaders) with a bunch of friends whom I never get to see all at once. We had quite an opportunity to socialize because during about half of the pep rally, nothing happened. All they did was play loud music on some giant speakers. This was after the football teams, cheerleaders, and band had all done their things, and they apparently just needed to kill time because the pep rally was supposed to run till dismissal. Since it was a windy afternoon, a couple of my friends unstrung some cheap plastic leis and held them in the wind (those things get to be very long when you stretch them out). What a sight it was to see them lose their grip! Not only are unstrung plastic leis long, they'll also carry quite a distance if you let them escape in moderate wind from a moderate elevation; it's an impressive sight. A couple of the leis made it far onto the football field, and another almost got the principal. When school finally ended, I was sunburned, but it was worth the fun. It was one pep rally I actually liked.

I'm going to the Homecoming Game tonight; it'll be my first school football game of the year. You're probably wondering if I'll be going to the Homecoming Dance, which is pretty much what this week has been leading up to. The answer is a zuquardic "no."

zuquardic (zu quar' dic) adj. Of or pertaining to a feeling of ill will toward boring social events, esp. those which require dressing up. "You're probably wondering if I'll be going to the Homecoming Dance ... The answer is a zuquardic 'no.'" --Kalilich.

The badge is back

Yesterday I finally got my ID badge for school. Yes, it's a sad fact that a staff member may stop you in the hallway and need to ask who you are and whether or not you're a sleazy, stalking, 40-year-old-but-looks-really-young axe/gun/knife/toothpick/squirt gun murderer. So we have to wear these ID badges. I think it's just an excuse for the teachers and other staff to bust people who would otherwise never do anything wrong for not wearing it. Last year, in fact, I forgot my ID badge at home and had to go back and get it. I ended up being late - er, "tardy" - but my "tardy" was excused. And, as it happens, they had one of their unreasonable searches and seizures - I mean, random ID badge checks - that day.

I think it is for that reason rather than "safety" because it took them eight weeks to get people's photos taken and to give them the ID badges (and some people still haven't had their pictures taken). Last year it took only three. Apparently, safety is no longer a concern.

My picture, seen here, is actually pretty good, despite what my scanner thinks. For me, looking back at my scan of last year's photo is a testament to the horrible quality of my scanner. Having had the old ID badge until recently, I remember in my mind what the photo looks like, and the scan does it no justice. And it makes me look really scary. This scan more closely resembles the actual photo, except that in the original, the flesh tones are handled quite nicely. I'm not that pale (or yellow) in real life, and neither is my hair.

But like I said, it took a long time for them to get the ID badges out. My picture was taken quite a few weeks ago. When I sat for it, I tried to go for my most unsmiling look ever. It worked so well (?) that I broke the camera. After the guy fixed it, he took it again, and I was on my merry way.

Anyhow, this week is Homecoming Week at school. Yesterday was Jersey Day, so some people, including some of the staff, wore sports jerseys. Today was Wacky Tacky Day, and many people wore wacky and/or tacky outfits. I didn't. But tomorrow and Thursday the infamous dunk tank will be out during lunch, and once again I shall try valiantly to sink the principal... if he's willing to be sunk, that is. My throwing's still not great, though. Maybe I'll try the "just press the button and run like L" approach.

The Devil's Dictionary, published in 1911, is a classic work of cynicism. It has little or nothing to do with the Devil, but instead looks at everyday and not-so-everyday things in alphabetical order, like a dictionary. The old-fashioned writing is somewhat dull and dry and really hard to understand at times, but it does have its moments.

Goofing with Google

Last week on the Google Blog, Google posted a printable version of the "GLAT" - the Google Labs Aptitude Test. It's basically an übergeek test with some really tough math. If you mail it in and score well enough, they'll contact you about a job. (They only want the smartest people, you know.) So I figured, what the heck? I'll just fill it out with random nonsense and see what they have to say (if anything). They're a bunch of fun folks (the unofficial Google corporate motto is "Don't be evil"), so I think they'd get a kick out of it. Here's what I filled out for page 1, page 2, page 3, and page 4. I plan on mailing it in tomorrow. I'm in the process of coloring the entire envelope with a yellow highlighter. That ought to get them to notice it!

The deadline for entries to the Everyman Photo Contest was today. The annual online amateur photo contest accepts two entries per person. These are mine:

"Night Life"
Category: Macro/Abstract

This is a 15-second exposure that I took at Universal Studios on September 11. Sometimes being shaky with the camera can lead to wonderful results.

"Self, Half-Exposed"
Category: People/Portrait

I like time exposures, as you can see. This one, a self-portrait, is a 30-second exposure. I feel it's not as likely to win anything, but I needed another one to submit.

All of the entries will be made available for viewing on November 1 (or only some, if there are too many to post online), and the results will be announced December 1. Wish me luck!

Not long ago, AOL users were the butt of "stupid Internet user" jokes. But now, as alternate browsers like Firefox are gaining in popularity, users of Internet Explorer, which has long been the most popular browser, are becoming targets - for the jokes of their more Web-savvy counterparts, at least. In fact, no less an authority than John C. Dvorak has posted a short list of "You might be an IE user if..." jokes.

Whew! Looks like I switched to Firefox just in time. Windows users next?