Whose Line

Last month I described a Youth Group “Comedy Nite” in the style of Whose Line Is It Anyway? that was to take place April 10. Well, it took place! And it was pretty good, too. Lots of fun was had by all, and even though there were a dull moments (most notably, the anti-climactic finale: a game of Irish Drinking Song that broke down repeatedly because SOMEBODY!!!!! didn’t know how the song was supposed to go), they didn’t overshadow the funny parts after all. As I said, some games were bad, some were good. I assume that next time we do this (I don’t know when it will be), we’ll keep the good games, ditch the bad ones, and try out new ones in the same vein as the good ones. If that makes any sense.

Yellow Chicken: Have you thought of Podcasting your posts?

The thought has never once crossed my mind — until I read your e-mail, of course. I was going to say that I don’t even own a ‘Pod, but I realized that it’s not necessary to have one. Anyway, it’s not the best idea. What am I going to do, just read everything I post? It would be about as pointless as books on tape. Anyway, I don’t have a good choice of audio format. Any audio file the length of a post is bound to be too expensive when it comes to bandwidth and storage. And finally, few people read this; imagine how few would actually take the time to listen to it.

That said, I may consider it in the future. You never know with these things.

Have you ever expressed an interest in philosophy but never felt like reading those big, boring books by the philosophers? Squashed Philosophers may be just the thing for you. The site offers condensed versions of philosophy’s most influential documents. It also tells the percent to which each work has been “squashed,” and about how long it takes to read. From Plato’s Republic (12%, 61 min.), to Hitler’s Mein Kampf (6%, 31 min.), you can catch up on what the site describes as “[t]he books which defined the way The West thinks now.” Interestingly enough, my history teacher was just lecturing today on Machiavelli’s The Prince (24%, 31 min.). I’ll have to tell her that we can go a little more in depth with it at this site.

In a similar vein, here’s an explanation of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in words of four letters or less. But Squashed Philosophers has that one too: at 8% of the original, you can read it in 20 minutes.

Here comes the moon

Yesterday my sister and our friend Kevin (an avid Stuffer), and I were able to witness a partial solar eclipse in the backyard. How, you ask? As the eclipse began, the clouds which had hung around all day finally cleared, so the weather was no longer really an issue. But the solar filters, as I said yesterday, did not arrive on time. Last night the company apologized, citing weather difficulties, and offered to refund the purchase. What good sports! The company was Draco Productions, and we had ordered their Baader solar filters.

Anyway, I had read that you could use a blank CD-R as a makeshift solar filter (and I had seen a photo as evidence). So that was our plan: to observe the sun through blank CDs. Kids, don’t try this at home! It was hard to get a clear view as certain parts of the CD made the image blurry; other parts, however, showed a clear image. Either way, we looked at the sun for too long and ended up getting headaches, not to mention annoying afterimages (and probably retinal damage). Photographing through the CD-R was nightmarish as well because even through two discs, the brightness of the sun washed out the chunk of the sun that was missing. The result: an image that looked almost exactly like a regular picture of the sun.

This was all going on while the eclipse was beginning. Time was running out before the eclipse’s peak at approximately 6:20 P.M. It occurred to me that a pinhole projector would be a good way to view and photograph the eclipse. One of the simplest pinhole methods is poking a pinhole in a piece of paper and projecting the sun’s image through it onto another piece of paper. So we tried this. We were not amused by the tiny crescent sun that appeared on the piece of paper only if you held the sheets at the correct angle. It was better than looking at the sun through a CD, but then I had a better idea.

Using multiple pinholes is a clever way to project more than one image of the sun. You can even spell out the location and date in pinholes so they appear in your images of the eclipse. We got a piece of thin cardboard and, using a pin that just happened to be lying around, I attempted to poke out “8-Apr-05″. It was only about 10 minutes till the peak of the eclipse. We made it in time (though the pin did not exactly survive). The image that follows was taken at 6:16 P.M., just a few minutes before the moon obscured the sun the most it was going to.

Click to enlarge

Assuming I’m here in south Florida my whole life, the next solar eclipse I’ll be able to see will be on August 21, 2017. I seriously think I should make plans to go to an area where the eclipse will be total. According to various sources, a total solar eclipse will come right this way on August 12, 2045. The period of totality (when the moon totally blocks the sun) will be six minutes and six seconds, which is very long for an eclipse. The location of the longest totality will be just off the coast of south Florida, so if I’m on land it’ll be about that long too. (The eclipse’s track can be viewed here; click on the map 2041-2060 eclipses to see it.) I’ll be 56 years old then.

Not all Ask Jordon questions I get actually make sense. Here are some I’ve received lately that I can’t answer.

Patrick: How much would a Shawn Marion authentic jersey w/ autograph be worth

I have no idea. Try eBay.

Mike L: why did you choose #23

Sorry, but if I knew what you were talking about, I’d let you know.

Sarah: How does Hinduism affect the lives of people in India?

Courtney: How does hinduisum affect the lives of people in India?

Wow, and sent within a minute of each other, no less. I would venture to guess that this is of my friends who has write a paper or something.

Kriz: is there a site where images are already together with alt codes?

Images and alt codes? I don’t see the connection.

Speaking of eclipses as we just were a moment ago, AstroMeeting is a site with a lot of celestial photos, including (but not limited to) eclipses. Here’s one of my favorite pictures and how it was taken.

CPR

Yesterday I did it. I got certified in CPR! As I said earlier, I needed the certification to pass my health class that I’m taking online.

My mom found this place that was giving a class nearby. My sister and her friend came along because they’re both taking the class too. The place was sort of in the part of town that I never happen to be in. We walked into a small room that appeared to be a waiting room. There was a guestbook to sign in. It seemed like a funeral home in those respects. But no, it turned out that was the room. That was where we were going to learn CPR. To make a long story short, it was a lot easier than I thought they would make it, which just goes to show that anyone can be certified in CPR.

And it’s only a matter of minutes till the partial solar eclipse I wrote about a few weeks ago begins. I foolishly, foolishly, foolishly decided to wait until Monday night to order the solar filters, so they’re not here yet and won’t arrive on time. But on the bright side (if you could call it that), the weather is not cooperating, so at least I won’t be the only one who can’t see the eclipse.

Of course, I am hoping to catch a glimpse of the celestial event, which begins here at 5:21 P.M. EDT (16:21 EST, World of Stuff time) and peaks at 6:20 EDT, about an hour later. The sun will be setting, and by the time it’s over at 7:14 EDT, the sun will be at an altitude of only 5°. It’s been cloudy and miserable all day, but hopefully the clouds will thin out enough for me to see the sun reasonably without a special filter. The sun can get huge when it sets, too, so that could help. But in any case, my camera won’t be good enough to photograph the sun at a reasonable size.

The next solar eclipse I’ll be able to see from here will be the much-anticipated total eclipse of Monday, August 21, 2017. It will pass over the whole continental United States. Maybe I’ll book a hotel in a town that lies in the path of totality. I think that years and years ago, some guy booked a place in Times Square for December 31, 1999 to January 1, 2000, and ended up getting the room free due to his impeccable planning. Maybe I’d get a discount for booking twelve years in advance. Who knows? Anyway, in twelve years I’ll be twelve years smarter, my camera will be twelve years better, and my solar filters will have arrived by then.

Wait! The sun is out! The skies (in that direction, at least) are clear. Looking through a blank CD-R or two makes a nifty solar filter (I tried it). I’ll see how it turns out, and maybe even get pictures!!!!!1one Squee!! Let the eclipse begin!

Somebody set up us the bomb

Last semester the school set into place an emergency plan for when bad things (shootings, gas leaks, bomb threats, etc.) occur. We had a practice evacuation in December, complete with paramedics on the scene and students from the health class practicing CPR on others who volunteered to be unconscious. In my post, I jokingly remarked that “[t]he semester ends next week, so if there’s a gas leak in second block today, tomorrow, Monday, or Tuesday, we’ll be safe and know exactly what to do.”

On Tuesday, when we got into third block (a.k.a. third hour or third period), we were supposed to start reading. It’s for our little thing called Tornado Time Out for Reading (our mascot is a golden tornado). We have to read for 20 minutes during a different class each day. On Monday it’s fourth block, going down to Thursday, first block. (We have four blocks a day and four days a week. Ain’t it grand?) Anyway, my teacher, who is a stickler for everything, insisted we get out a book to read even though the principal hadn’t made the announcement like he should have. So we were a few minutes to our reading when the P.A. came on. It was the principal. What we expected to hear was, “Attention students and staff, it is now Tornado Time Out for Reading, enjoy the next 20 minutes.” What we heard was, “Attention, we are under a full lockdown, Code Black, bomb threat.”

A real bomb threat! Public schools everywhere (especially the worse ones) seem to get them all the time. Coming from a private school last year, I had the preconceived notion that bomb threat = empty threat. (I do, however, recall a bomb threat at my old school, but I don’t remember when, how, where, or if it actually happened.) People obviously weren’t scared — there was no real immediate threat, like when there’s a gas leak — so I found no reason to be either. Notwithstanding the many bomb threats that occur in every school district each year, I’ve never heard of a bomb blowing up a school.

I must admit I was a bit panicked when I packed my stuff into my backpack (didn’t want to leave my borrowed calculator in smithereens), but I cooled down a bit as the school filed out of the building and, each class (supposed to be) following its teacher, went to the bleachers on the football field. After all, it did take a while. Due to the arrangement of the demolished former campus, the present campus, and the all-the-while football field, it’s not the shortest of walks from school to field. And there are a lot of people, to boot.

Anyway, we were on the bleachers and everyone seemed to be collected. Some people had brought their lunch, because there was a lunch period going on at the time. I didn’t see anyone eating, though, but I did have a piece of a chocolate bar that a girl from my class offered me. We passed the time wondering if this was a real bomb threat and not a drill, and at the very notion of how silly bomb threats are. I mean, if you’re going to plant a bomb (which actually seem to be present in approximately nil cases), why warn people that it’s going to go off? I guess the aim is not to kill, but to scare. Because you never have a bomb anyway!

Anyway, my main concern at this point was that the evacuation was going to cut time out of lunch. Just as I asked for the time from someone, an assistant principal handed the principal, who was standing in front of the bleachers, a megaphone. He went to turn it on. The siren rang.

Ha ha. He probably has difficulty turning his computer on.

Anyway, he got it to work and said that he thanked us for our cooperation, and that everything was safe, we could go back to class, lunch people could go back to lunch, etc., etc. What’s more, our lunch would be pushed back 10 minutes but no time would be taken from it. So pretty much everyone was happy in the end.

I didn’t hear any stories right away about who made the threat, but on the way home from school, my sister said it was someone at a nearby school. Probably just wanted to cause a little scare. Figures.

List of words meaning outsider, foreigner, or “not one of us.” Some are offensive; some are not. My favorite: Newbie – Internet culture.

Two years of stuff!

Wow… I can’t really believe it’s been two years since I launched The World of Stuff. That’s right, TWoS is two years old today. Originally just a central location for my random pages (a.k.a. stuff), it has evolved into full-fledged personal homepage complete with blog.

And what a year it has been. TWoS got a redesign in October, so it now looks cooler (though I’m not sure how cool it is because I’ve never seen a site designed quite like this one; I have nothing to judge it by). In November I posted away from home for the first time (it was during Programming class at school). This may seem trivial to others, and it does to me now, but keep in mind I was blogging primitively — just editing and uploading files — at that point. In January I upgraded the blog to WordPress (actually, since I had always done all the dirty work by hand, there was nothing to upgrade from).

But most importantly, during this past year — more specifically, the past few months — I’ve gotten to know you, the reader, better, as you are now able to post comments. Since January this blog has been more than a one-way street. It’s now a two-way street, so mind your country’s rule of the road. I’d like to thank the regular readers (you know who you are!), the first-time stumbler-uponers, and even the people who visit and read occasionally. In other words, thank you everybody! (But especially my loyal Stuffers.)

Now go out and celebrate! Buy a cake or something! I’ll be here, as always, when you return.

Pulling through

I got my report card today; it’s the first comprehensive and official report of my grades since the beginning of the semester in January. This has been my hardest semester ever, but I have a feeling that it can only get harder from here. Life just gets more and more difficult, doesn’t it? I have a feeling I’ll never get another break. After all, being an adult is all about doing taxes and other monetary things. Not to mention making payments and never having money. (Just as I was writing that sentence: “Jordon, I got the payment for your records, it’s $29.76.”)

That reminds me, today in Health class (which I’m taking online) I had to do a lesson about balancing one’s checkbook. It reminded me how little of that stuff I know (and felt inclined to learn), how trickily vague or obscure the questions on the Health tests are, and how hard I’m going to have to try to pass the final exam. ‘Cause if I don’t get at least a 60%, I get no credit for the class, and I have to take it again (online or off I don’t know, so I’d better be careful). Oh, and besides that, I have to be certified in CPR by the time of the exam. We were supposed to schedule a class when the course started (January). Big, big oops. Like, to the max. I’m not even kidding this time. I hope I can squeak into any future class that’s not filled. It has to be within a month or something. ¡Ay!

NOTE TO SELF: SCHEDULE A CPR CLASS.

Actually, I’m going to try to do it right now.

Okay, now it’s later. We’re looking into classes. Glad I am getting that out of the way.

Oh, my grades. I managed to get straight A‘s (that’s what I have been trying to say this whole time) but not without considerable effort (i.e., more than usual). On my mid-term exams I got two B+’s (in History and Algebra) and two A’s (in Spanish and English). Funny, those grades correspond to which classes I like and which I don’t. Can you guess which are which?

This would be a cool skill to master: how to detect lies. But as the site warns, “Sometimes Ignorance is bliss; after gaining this knowledge, you may be hurt when it is obvious that someone is lying to you.”

Ultimately cool

Today I put Ultimate Cool Characters under the standard World of Stuff header. The page had previously had a separate design (black text on an ugly purple background). Why the change? The official reason is that I want to make the World of Stuff pages more uniform. (They have, after all, been mistaken for other people’s pages.) The unofficial reason, which is actually correct, is that it’s an attempt to get more hits for the main page by mooching off the immense popularity of Ultimate Cool Characters. Yes, kids, UCC is by far the most popular page at The World of Stuff. Let’s look at this cheesy graph!

The December 2004 spike for The Dvorak Keyboard and You (wow, that title sounds really corny now that I think about it) is attributed to a feature in the Australian press. I’m not sure what’s caused this impressive jump for UCC. But then again, maybe I do. Analysis of referrers to the page reveals that tons and tons of people every day want to know the alt code for a heart (as in the French playing card suit), and they find UCC via search engine queries for such. There are other reasons, too, I’m sure. But that’s the one I notice the most.

As for the design, optimizing the look of the page for multiple browsers wasn’t easy, and compromises had to be made. While I was polishing off the look of the revamped UCC in my native browser, Firefox, it occurred to me to check it in Internet Exploder. Sure enough, IE interpreted the code badly. After making a few changes, I figured it would look good and work well in both browsers. In the manner of Indiana Jones, I uploaded the new page, deleted the old index.html, and quickly renamed the new page index.html. Voila.

Next I plan to follow suit with The Dvorak Keyboard and You and that other page. Major changes to the design of flipacoin.net have not been planned.

Oh, and by the way… there is exactly one new character at Ultimate Cool Characters. It’s the pi symbol (π).

Looks like the Pontiff is dead. These were top stories on Yahoo! as of 4:16 EST (while I was writing this):

• Pope John Paul II dies
• Cardinals head to Vatican for conclave
• Pope preached back-to-basics conservatism
• Jerusalem hails Pope’s interfaith outreach
• Travel was hallmark of John Paul’s papacy
• Pope’s last days lifted image of Church
• Italy suspends all weekend sports events

Looking to the future as I always do, I wonder what the next pope will call himself. John Paul III would be pretty unoriginal. Maybe something like George Ringo. I dunno.

Tomorrow Daylight Saving Time begins. Since I can’t seem to change future blog timestamps without changing the past ones, TWoS will remain on Standard Time year-round. It is the standard, after all.

Want to own a piece of movie memorabilia? If you have a lot of money, ScreenUsed sells original movie (and TV) props and costumes. Kinda neat.

TheirSpace

Seems like a lot of my friends who don’t have real web sites are embarking on a mass exodus from LiveJournal to this newfangled thing called MySpace (yay for CamelCase!). The latter seems to be about the same as the former — a social network that revolves around blogging. But many people, it seems, have kept their LiveJournals and are using both. Anyhow, I guess I’m just observing that MySpace seems to be more in favor than LiveJournal. Is it because MySpace crams your blog entries, comments, friends, and personal info on one main page? Could be, whereas LiveJournal boringly divides them into different pages (except that the friends list on the user info page), and the blog is the main page. Who wants to read blog entries on the main page? (MySpace relegates them to permalinks, which are linked to on the user’s main page.) I’d say MySpace is a bit more interesting, perhaps only because LiveJournal is — dare I say it — blasé. That, and with MySpace you provide a photo of yourself, which is used as an avatar. LJ avatars are not restricted to self-portraits.

In any case, I don’t necessarily favor either of them, having forged my own little corner of the web here. I have no plans on getting into LJ or MySpace (I’d assume the abbreviation MS would be ambiguous). But I must say, it is kind of weird going MySpace-hopping to find that just about everyone I know has one. And the things they have to say! Lots more people are capable of producing angsty rantings and self-photography than I have been led to believe. (I, for the record, can’t get the hang of the former.) I found out that a guy I used to hang out with when we were nine and ten has come out as bi. He was always odd, that one… but whatever. [Sat Apr 02, 2005 12:38 EST: Okay, he's not bi. It was an inside joke. But how was I to know? There are all types at school.]

It’s been over four years now since we got a dog. Speck is his name. It was my dad’s idea. He managed to convince my mom. It was a surprise to my sister and me when we went to go get him. He’s a nasty little thing. He’ll bark the moment you sit down to watch TV and he’ll want to go outside right as you start making lunch. He frequently drives my parents insane. They often talk of getting rid of him, but they’re empty threats.

As I was writing this post my dad was yelling at the dog. Specifically, he was countering Speck’s “Bark! Bark!” with “Go sit in your chair!” (Speck’s recliner, formerly our recliner, is his favorite spot to rest.) At that moment I intervened, my reasoning being that he can hardly understand “off” (our equivalent of “down”), so how would he understand an entire English sentence? My dad fumingly explained that Speck usually does go to his chair when he tells him to, but I write it off as coincidence; no matter what you yell at him, Speck usually retires to his chair immediately after an unfruitful session of barking (a successful one is when he gets you to play with him).

My dad went through the usual “Stupid dog, why don’t we just get rid of him” spiel. I figure that if my dad (or my mom, who also uses that rant) wants to get rid of the dog, why, there’s a canal nearby. And my dad’s friends have guns. Or if we couldn’t put the little beast’s lights out (because of either moral objections, or those pesky laws…), we could at least make a buck giving him to someone else who would naively consider him cute. It would offset the costs associated with owning a dog, anyway.

The last thing ever written by the great John Lennon… What was it? More importantly, why would anyone really care? Well, the date was December 8, 1980. The last thing John Lennon wrote was an autograph (almost as a matter of course) made out to an employee at a recording studio. Fifteen minutes later, while walking home from the studio, he was murdered. It’s hard to believe that something like this — the last thing ever written by John Lennon — actually exists. Of all the many great things to flow from his mind to paper, to be in possession of the very last one is mind-boggling. Okay, it’s not particularly great in itself — it’s just an autograph with a doodle — but still.