Not just any old pen

I hate cheap pens. One time, during back-to-school shopping, we (I won’t blame anyone in particular) bought the cheapest pens you can possibly buy. They were so cheap that they came in a plastic bag instead of a box. The barrels were uniformly ugly and were still rough from being die-cast. The caps, which were also ugly, were too small; they would bulge and crack if you tried to put them on the pen. The ink was weak and it probably ran out quickly (though I never brought myself to use one for that long).

Then, one day in November, I found a pen in the house. It was a Pilot pen, a real pen. Amazing! It was a clicky pen with a smooth grip. The ink was so dark, bold, and permanent, the flow so smooth. If anyone could fall in love with a fairly affordable pen, I did so. I began using them exclusively.

This, my friends, is the Pilot G2. I’d highly recommend it to anyone who’s tired of dull pens. As I’ve said, they’re superior in many respects. The only things that get me are the price (US $1.98 per pen, rather pricey) and the amount of ink they use (you’ll get roughly two weeks out of each one).

Today my dad bought a giant pack of them (he likes them too). I was expecting him to divvy up the pens 50/50, but instead he gave me only a few. Oh well, I’ll just steal them from around the house as I need them, which shouldn’t be within six weeks. That’s how I found my first G2, anyway.

Today is the last day of February. As we all know, sometimes this month has a 29th day. But have you ever heard of February 30? This unusual date has occurred three times in particular places. The best known February 30 occurred in Sweden in 1712 to fix a particularly messy calendar problem. Wikipedia fills us in on the other occurrences, which took place in the Soviet Union in 1930 and 1931, when that country adopted a revolutionary calendar.

If you think being born on February 29 is bad, imagine never being able to celebrate your birthday again, as erstwhile comrades born on February 30, 1930, or February 30, 1931, might conceivably have to go through! Though I guess they’d now refer to their birthdates in terms of the Gregorian calendar. Still, it’s an interesting thought.

Mixed signals

It’s my considered opinion that all politicians are liars and thieves. It’s part of their job (how else could they get elected?). With local elections coming up, I’ve found further evidence to support this.

About a week ago my sister brought a sign like the one above into the house. Apparently Anita Cruz (don’t we all? I haven’t been on one since two years ago, and that was only a gambling ship that goes out for the day. I’d been to Mexico and the Bahamas before that, though, and my parents just took one to Jamaica last year) is running for the City Commission. My sister said she had found the sign planted in the yard and assumed it was put there without permission. But when my dad saw it, he said that Ms. I Need a Cruise herself asked to place it there. He said that she’s a good person, and that she’s “not a politician” but a resident of the community who understands what’s going on, etc., etc.

Of course, I didn’t buy any of it. I was shocked, appalled, and dismayed. I wanted to tear my hair out and cry. It was so disgusting. A politician going out of her way to look like she cares about the people! Nothing could be further from the truth. Who would actually fall for it?

As I was pondering this at my favorite thinking spot (my computer, which is also my favorite spot for everything else), a monstrous SUV roared into the driveway, almost crushing our Volkswagen New Beetle (okay, a slight exaggeration, but we do have a Bug). She dove out the door on a bungee cord, nearly breaking her ankle, to mingle with the commoners, I guess. Namely my dad, who was working on something with the garage door open.

Previously, she had asked to put a sign in the yard, and my dad said yes. This time, she noticed that there was only one sign rather than the two she had installed (the other was inside; my sister had brought it in). He told her that he had allowed her to put in one sign. She apologized, I guess, and, with her oxygen tanks and team of Sherpas, proceeded to hike toward the running board of her tank, which had actually started to pull small dogs into its orbit.

So, let’s review. I Need a Cruise, who claims not to be a politician, asks potential voter to place a sign in the yard. He says yes. She puts in two signs. My sister is justified in taking down the other one.

And my parents are still going to vote for her. You can almost hear me shuddering, can’t you? Ah well, I guess everyone does that sort of thing. It was just a little misunderstanding. That said, she doesn’t sound so horrible, and I guess I would vote for her too. Maybe.

The FCAT, the state standardized test, is tomorrow and Tuesday. It will be my second and (I do believe) last time taking the test. Thank goodness. It’s pretty easy, though.

Antarctic Slang. “Waitaminute,” I hear you say. “Slang in Antarctica?” Why certainly. A few scientists and military folk live there, and it’s a unique place, so you can bet they have their own lexicon. Be sure to check out the rest of the site, The Seventh Continent, with lots of information and photos from the desolate and rightly ignored continent.

Orphan of culture

On Thursday I had to go to a school assembly about Black History Month. It was the general student body’s first glimpse at our new auditorium. The building, which probably should have been finished along with the rest of the campus last year, only seats half the school, so there were two assemblies.

Anyway, you might say it was a celebration of black history, pride, spirituality, and/or community. But I say it was an all-black talent show, and I should know because I was there. There was music, dancing, poetry, and the like. But first, the ROTC (a.k.a. the Nazi Youth) marched up and barked this cute little chant about how “black history is everyone’s history” and all that.

Most of the people participating were girls, so of course, their friends were all shouting their names when they got up on stage (you know how it is). And line after line of several poems was met with “mm-hmm”s from the audience. It was that sort of thing for about an hour. Oh, and there were also religious songs. Yes, you heard right, folks. Overtly Christian songs at an assembly that, as the Hitler Youth shouted, was supposed to “celebrate diversity.” I expressed my feelings about all this to my friends sitting next to me: “I feel like I’m in Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1960s, and I’ve just walked into the wrong church.” (I’m going to hell for that one. Sincerest apologies to Southern Baptists, etc.) After being angry and confused by this show of black unity, I quickly became bored.

And I thought about things. The blacks — well, all minorities, I guess — have got it together. They have to. They’re a minority. You know what I mean. If whites do that sort of thing they’re labeled as white supremacists. Because since whites are majority, they — we — don’t need to be organized. I mean, take some of those poems — “We have risen up,” etc., etc. — replace “black” with “white,” and see how fast a guy with a uniform and a walkie-talkie confronts you. You’re not allowed to do that stuff if your race or color is more than 50% of the population.

I thought about my history. Isn’t there anyone I could identify with? Even a lot of my white friends have some sort of community. One of them is Irish. And I don’t mean a wee bit Irish, mind you, but actually 100% of Irish ancestry (correct me if I’m wrong, Sean). He may actually be able to apply for Irish citizenship. And of course, his family has some Irish pals and they all get together and sing and drink and do other Irish things. I have two friends (they’re related) who go to Canada frequently to visit their French-speaking relatives. Do I go to or get visitors from other countries? No, I’m a cultureless American.

I don’t have a race (just say “white race” and aforementioned uniformed guy will be there in no time) and I don’t have an ethnicity. Actually, I’d say that I’m one-fourth Croatian and Hungarian (20 bucks to anyone who can find those countries on a map) and one-eighth German, Irish, English, and Scottish. How can I have ethnic pride? (“We’ve got a guy here who’s proud to be German, over.”)

I’m nothing but a white mutt. I have no culture. None of my ethnicities — if you could call them that — have restaurants around here. And even if they did, could I just walk into an Irish place, and me, with a funny eastern European last name, say yeah, my great-granddaddy, who I never knew, was Irish? Could I sing side by side with them about the struggle of the Irish people? At least red hair runs in the family, so maybe future generations would be able to pull it off. “My great-great-granddaddy…”. Well, maybe not.

I left the assembly feeling rather depressed. When I say nobody knows how I feel, I can really mean it. I can’t go crash with my Croatian/Hungarian/English/German/Irish/Scottish buddies. I can’t celebrate my European heritage. I don’t belong to a community. I’m an orphan of culture. According to the Junior SS, black history is everyone’s history, and the one race is the human race. So why can’t I identify with anyone?

Eureka! Quesca!

I finally finished tinkering with the blog after upgrading to the new version of WordPress, version 1.5.

Before (and, for what it’s worth, after) the upgrade I had been receiving some comment spam. I thought about downloading a plugin for WordPress that would generate a CAPTCHA test (you know, one of those images with a number or code that you have to retype so they know you’re a human and not a computer) that a user would have to pass for their comment to appear. And I was going to, too, were it not for:

1. WordPress 1.5′s seemingly okay controls over comment spam, and
2. A fabulous idea I hit upon while editing these files to make the blog layout smooth again.

I was editing the comments form so that the name and comment fields would be required, but not the e-mail or URL fields. I assumed that one of the magnets in a blog that draws comment spam (besides bloglike keywords) is the presence of a form with input boxes called “name,” “email,” etc. Would spamming scripts know what to do with a field that, in the internal workings of the page, is referred to as “heyMyNameIsDave”?

So, I thought, a CAPTCHA script tells a human and a computer apart by generating a random number (or word, or mish-mash of letters and numbers) and encode it in an image so that a program theoretically can’t read it. But would a program designed to spam be able to answer a simple question? For example, “What is two plus two?” Well, yes, they could be programmed to recognize such simple questions, but why would they?

So, the easiest and most obvious way of keeping comment spam from reaching me is to pose a question that anyone can answer. (I’ll probably use “What is two plus two?”) Make it a required field, just like the name and the comment, so when the form is submitted, the script will check to make sure the value of heyMyNameIsDave is 4. If not, then the script dies and outputs a simple message to go back and answer the question.

This has the advantages of a CAPTCHA (not likely to be read by computers; easily answered by humans) without the disadvantages (large, slow scripts; incompatibility with blind or visually impaired users who use a screen reader).

Even though I’m sure someone has thought of this before, I shall christen it myself. I’ll call it… quesca (question spam programs can’t answer). Well, we’ll see about that as soon as I put a quesca in the comment form.

[Edit -- Mar 21, 2005 21:43 EST: I thought it would be a good idea to include here the code I used to make this highly effective method possible. So, copied directly from a later post, here it is.

First, add this to your /wordpress/wp-content/themes/[name of theme]/comments.php file after the comments textarea:

<p>2 + 2 = <input type="text" name="heyMyNameIsDave" size="1" maxlength="1" />
<span style="font-size: 8.5pt">(Enter the correct answer. This is a simple <a href="/archives/2005/02/23/eureka-quesca/">quesca</a> test to make sure you're a human being and not a spamming robot.)</span></p>

Now go to /wordpress/wp-comments-post.php. Right under these lines:

$comment_author = $_POST['author'];
$comment_author_email = $_POST['email'];
$comment_author_url = $_POST['url'];
$comment_content = $_POST['comment'];

add this line:

$heyMyNameIsDave = $_POST['heyMyNameIsDave'];

And after these lines:

if ( get_settings('require_name_email') && ('' == $comment_author_email || '' == $comment_author) )
die( __('Error: please fill the required fields (name, email).') );

add these:

if ('4' != $heyMyNameIsDave)
die( __('Error: please enter answer the question after the comment field correctly.') );

If you know how the code works, it should be pretty easy to configure it to your liking. All it does is create another field and doesn’t post the comment if the field doesn’t have the correct value.]

Make your own tiny pixel font online! I haven’t really tried it yet, but it looks cool.

Free Mojtaba and Arash!

I recently made a passing mention to the small but growing problem of people getting fired for blogging. Anyone who’s ever lost their job knows how harsh that can be.

Now, can you imagine being arrested for blogging? And being sentenced to prison for 14 years?

That, my friends, is exactly what has happened to Arash Sigarchi. He and Mojtaba Saminejad, another Iranian blogger, are under fire from the Iranian government for indulging in the basic human right of free speech that I and hopefully all of you enjoy. The latter has been released from prison but still faces charges.

So, throughout the world, February 22 has been declared “Free Mojtaba and Arash Day” by the Committee to Protect Bloggers. The committee is made up of fired bloggers. After all, who would be more passionate about organizing for bloggers’ rights? You can read all about the developments concerning these two men on the web site (which, after all, is a blog).

I hope you’ll join me in hoping that Mojtaba and Arash are freed. And please let no one be unaware of this. Tell everyone you know. Tell people you don’t know! Their imprisonment could set a serious precedent among countries that rule their people with a heavy hand.

The Beeb has a good story: Global Blogger Action Day Called.

On the home front… For those wondering why The World of Stuff (well, the main page and blog, at least) was down for something like 20 hours, you’ll now find out. Yesterday morning I had some time to kill, so I thought I’d upgrade my WordPress installation from 1.2.2 to the new version 1.5. Sounds easy, right?

Well, to make a long story short, WordPress 1.5 assembles pages very differently from 1.2.2. Whereas the older version uses a single file as a template upon which to build, the new version requires somewhere in the range of several to many. I had no idea of this and was generally confused about the non-workingness of several key pages (including the main page). Additionally, I had read that I could continue using the one file (all I supposedly had to do was change a line or two of code) but that was just plain bull. Or I messed something up. One of those two.

So, once I figured out what was wrong, I made a copy of the default template and edited it to match the look of TWoS — for the main page, at least. The archives and links to individual posts still look as though they want to use the default theme; that’s because I haven’t modified those files yet. But I will soon enough. The important thing is that I can still blog.

But while all this was going on (from yesterday morning around 10:00 or until last night around 9:00-ish), I had these messages on the main page of the site:

Then at about 9:00 last night, I deleted that page, to leave a bare 403 error page in its place. I fixed the index page this morning. Probably just so I can remember later, I took the file that was at /wordpress/index.php, copied it to /index.php, and edited the relative path to /wordpress/wp-blog-header.php so that it would display correctly.

Anyway, I’ll fix up the other pages, as I said, yadda yadda yadda.

I hope all that made sense; I’m listening to music (Current music: The Beatles – “It’s All Too Much”) right now because the computer’s being annoyingly loud.

On a similar note to the above story, be careful what you say online. No, really. Don’t even say any words like “bomb,” “kill,” or in this case, “murder.” It’s interesting to see how this story relates to the one above and could spark a fervent debate if this were the sort of place for it.

Attention Florida bloggers

Is anyone interested in creating/joining a South Florida bloggers directory? It would be a listing of bloggers sorted by county; in the least, we could have Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade (“South Florida”), and I guess the Treasure Coast, Southwest Florida (Naples/Ft. Myers area), and the Keys wouldn’t be out of the question, either.

Edit Sun Feb 20, 2005 10:19 EST: On second thought, covering the whole state of Florida wouldn’t be a bad idea. There would certainly be more support for the idea to get off the ground. But the main reason is that I’m going to college in-state in a few years, and I don’t want to have to leave the directory if it’s only for southern Florida. Gee, I’m selfish. Anyway, the site could be organized by region rather than county (there are 67 counties, after all).

Post a comment if you’re interested in this.

Such an endeavor would probably require having a database, but I don’t have any real experience with that. (WordPress runs on PHP and MySQL, so I’ve set up a process and a database, at least.) If others are interested, I’d be willing to get a domain and do the front-end design (i.e., not the database stuff). San Francisco Bay Area Webloggers seems to be a good model of the sort of thing I’m talking about.

This car is dedicated to…

Am I the only one who thinks that memorializing people on the rear windows of cars is getting a bit out of hand? The car is certainly not the most sacred of places; think of what could splatter all over your windows.

Besides that, there are safety issues involved in more elaborate cases. I know a lady whose son — a nice boy, don’t get me wrong — died about two years ago. She practically dedicated the whole back of her car to him. Aside from the ubiquitous name, dates, and message, a rather large color photograph emblazons the window. She even has a vanity license plate with his name. But I digress. It’s the picture on the window that bothers me. Now I don’t know how to drive (soon, okay?), but I’m pretty sure that you need to be able to see out of the rear window, or else it wouldn’t be there, would it?

And I’m sorry, but if I don’t know you at all, I can’t really care if someone close to you died. I can try, sure, but what would be the point? It seems to me that it’s just a way of asking for pity, which can only be advantageous when on the road: “Hey, I don’t think I’ll pass this guy, someone he knew just died.” Well, that probably wouldn’t deter me. But I guess I’m just cruel, heartless scum.

Yesterday I said that I received a notice of an overdue book from the school library. The notice said that there was a fine of $15 (an outrageous sum for a book only two weeks overdue; the public library charges only $0.10 per day).

I told my parents last night, and my mom flipped, while I became content with having to pay the fine. She decided to call the school to know why it was so much. And today, that she did. She found out that the school doesn’t charge for overdue books, and you can keep checking out a book indefinitely (well, till you graduate, at least). Then the “15.00″ I saw on the notice could not be any kind of fine; it’s the cost of the book, in case you lose it, I guess. So instead of plunking down fifteen simoleons on Monday, all I have to do is have it scanned again, and I’ll be on my way for another week.

In my own defense, have a look at the notice as I received. (A thumbnail is above; click it to get a closer look.) There’s nothing explicitly saying “Cost: $15.00.” It’s just says “15.00.” Wouldn’t you mistake this for a notice of a fine as well?

Most people know that deja vu — or, as they say in France, déjà vu — is a phenomenon in which you feel that you have already experienced something that is happening for the first time. The Deja Vu Page contains information about deja vu and offers a very realistic demonstration.

Irrational exercise day

This morning at school I caught wind that it was “National Exercise Day or Week or Something” (I couldn’t find any information about it on the web) and that at 10:00, we were going to have to exercise. As 10:00 rolled around, I was in Spanish class hoping that no one would remember. After all, why would I want to exercise at school?

But a few minutes after ten, somebody noticed. And indeed, we heard feet stomping in adjacent classrooms. The teacher turned on the TV, and on one of the school channels they were showing little kids from elsewhere in the school district exercising. We were supposed to be exercising along. The teacher, who had had no clue about any of this, encouraged us to get up but didn’t really make us do it. But when she offered five points of extra credit on the quiz we were about to take, almost everyone got up — everyone except me and a few other of the top students.

The program ended with the kids’ school’s gym teacher saying thanks for whatever, and then some lady from the school board saying to exercise 30 minutes a day, three days a week. I wonder how many kids will actually start to exercise because they had to get up during class and do it for ten minutes?

Coincidentally, I started exercising a bit yesterday.

I’ll wait as you clean your monitor of the coffee or soft drink you just spewed.

Now, as I was saying, I really need to get in shape. I’m pretty sure that I’m overweight, according to my BMI. I just don’t know my height, which is a critical factor. If I’m as short as I measure myself, then my BMI is about 27.3 — pretty overweight. But if I’m as tall as people tell me I am, then it could be only 25.2, barely overweight. In any case, my heart rate is obscenely high, if that means anything. (It does.) I’ve measured it at various times to be in the neighborhood of 120 beats per minute (where 72 is ideal). It’s frightening how out of shape I am.

A few weeks ago I checked out Gandhi‘s An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth from the school library to work on a history paper about the man. At over 500 pages, a light read it is not. I wasn’t even halfway done today when I received a narrow slip of paper in the middle of class.

It was a notice. The book is two weeks overdue. That’ll be fifteen bucks, please.

My initial reaction was probably one of horror and shock. Fifteen dollars? I don’t have a job anymore! Where am I going to get that kind of money? (What am I saying? I have plenty saved. But still.) Then I thought of Gandhi’s principle of passive resistance. Well, that would work for a while. But I wouldn’t be able to graduate if I had a book overdue. The fine would be ghastly by then, anyway.

I may be able to check out the book again (for another whole week… woohoo). If not, then I think I’ll just plunk down the fifteen big ones, and in the true manner of my cocky history teacher, mutter, “What, my parents’ tax dollars aren’t enough for you people?” The key word, here, is “mutter.” On the way out the door. Perhaps walking very quickly.

Then I’ll have to check it out from a real library. But I don’t think they have it. If it comes to that, then I’ll just have to buy the thing and waste even more money. Nuts.

Place the State (sound warning): Drag and drop the U.S. state onto the map. How well do you know the states? My score was 96% (48 of 50), the average error was 2 miles, and my time was 230 seconds.

Everyday uses for math

In Algebra II, I sit behind this disgruntled kid who likes to make a fuss out of everything. He’s passed all the math classes he needs to have passed, and yet they’ve placed him in another math class anyway. I’ve had him with some other classes, and in every one, he has driven the teacher toward an early grave with his constant questions. But in this particular class, his nitpicks are more evident. One time we were doing a very easy word problem about using the length of a cheetah’s stride and its average speed to find how far it ran (or something like that). He just had to inquire, “Was the cheetah running?” Even worse, he meant it seriously. Or, at least, he didn’t seem to think it was funny.

He doesn’t seem to have friends (and probably wonders why), as I always see him in the minutes before school starts sitting outside at a table alone with his head down. (Morality Police take note: I intend to approach him and make conversation when it’s warmer.)

Anyway, this isn’t so much about his character as it is his programming prowess. As I’ve said, I sit behind him, and every day instead of taking notes, he fiddles around on his graphing calculator, doing things beyond the wildest dreams of anyone still using a two-line-display scientific calculator (like me. Actually, I lost mine and am currently using one that I found.) Not only does he play games, but he also makes his own. As an aspiring computer programmer (I took my first programming class last semester), his slot machine game has fascinated me. Instead of fruits and things like that, it shows mathematical symbols. The actual machine is a line drawing (we’re talking about a monochrome display here) that he made himself. But the thing that impressed me most is that you can bet — and even win back — money with it.

So, you ask, can Mr. Aspiring Programmer match the challenge with a PC equivalent of said game? I think I probably could. I just haven’t been able to yet. Having not had the class in about eight weeks, I’ve become a little rusty. Also, I haven’t been able to install the program we use to make our programs yet. It’s prohibitively large; I’ll probably need a new hard drive in order to install it.

But till then, let me just add this idea to my imaginary checklist of programming projects to try before I’m in Programming II next school year (hopefully the first semester). They do games in that class, so maybe by having made a slot machine game I’ll have a head start.

Remember Ask Jordon?

Tom: Have you every played the board game Risk?

Nope.

Chase Taylor: What is the B major scale?

As far as I know, the chords of the B major scale are as follows.

I: B
ii: C#m/Dbm
iii: D#m/Ebm
IV: E
V: F#/Gb
vi: G#m/Abm
vii: A#dim/Bbdim

Someone please correct me if I’m wrong (I wouldn’t want to “cheat” by looking it up, but I’m pretty sure it’s right). For my chart of the chords of minor scales, which I’m also fairly sure is fairly right, see the Minor Scale Chart Thing.

Airports come and go. A lot of them are small and can only be described simply as airfields. Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields has photos of 1,239 abandoned or demolished airfields in all 50 United States. So odds are, if you live in the U.S., you can learn about some that are (or were) near you. The site provides an interesting trip to through the golden years of aviation.

Valentine’s Slay

It’s Valentine’s Day and, in fact, has been all day. Lust — I mean, love — is in the air. I could not possibly forget this. Never, ever. Not on Valentine’s Day at a high school.

This was my first Valentine’s Day spent at high school (last year it fell on a Saturday, and I ended up doing something actually productive); I had no idea how crazy people get on February 14 when there’s actual “love” going on. A girl I know got a hand-made valentine from her boyfriend… on retina-burning pink posterboard, complete with a teddy bear and probably some flowers and chocolates or something. Of course, there were balloons left and right. Even my English teacher got flowers during class.

And this week, the school is selling people their results of the personality/love test from several weeks ago. I, of course, being a sucker, went to buy my printout today.

“Kalilich,” I said — for that is my last name. “K-A-L,” I added, as I usually do to help people who might otherwise start looking among the C’s.

“Hmm…” or something to that effect, said the seniors at the desk. “Are you a sophomore?” they asked.

“Yeah,” I said. For I was, and still am to this day. And they were looking in the box that had the sophomores’ results.

After fruitless searching, one of them asked, “Who’s your third hour teacher?”

(She actually said “third block”; we call them blocks because here they’re much longer than an hour. But I’m going for the general idea here.)

My third hour/block was the class in which I had received the questionnaire in the first place. Seeing the connection, I answered: “Miss Grant.”

“Oh, another Grant,” she said to a supervisor standing nearby.

Apparently somebody didn’t hand in her class’s questionnaires, or something happened along the way, resulting not only in my not being able to receive my results and find out once and for all who I’m compatible with, but also some poor girls’ not knowing that I’m good for them. (This is all theoretical, of course.) So that sort of blew my Valentine’s Day to bits. Well, I had already been feeling down, so let’s just say it didn’t help any. My life is like an empty box of chocolates. I always know what I’m going to get: nothing.

At Tricks of the Trade, you can read a helpful tip for people in many professions. Recent entries include tricks for the chef, stage hand, farmer, corporate middle manager, and funeral celebrant. Even though you may have a boring life and/or job, you can still enjoy these tricks of various trades to see how professionals — and others (for example, I’ve never heard of a professional funeral celebrant) — manage to do what they do.