SATurday

Yesterday my sister and I took the SAT. We took the test at Cardinal Gibbons High School, my sister’s favorite school that she’d never been to, because she got to pick. I didn’t make a big deal out of the test, really. I guess that’s because they’ve drilled so much practice into our heads over the years. So I wasn’t really nervous or anything.

It’s a good thing that they started with the essay portion first, because if it were last, I wouldn’t have been able to think straight. You probably wouldn’t either if you had been taking a test for almost five hours. Of the writing, reading, and math portions, I think I did best on the writing. Reading was pretty good except that I didn’t know many of the vocabulary words (in spite of the fact that I’ve been fed a steady stream of SAT-level words in English classes for the past three years). And in math, I felt a few things that I should have known slipping away from me… mainly basic things from Algebra I and geometry.

Because the results of this test will influence how colleges think of me, and because I want to do the best I can, I’m considering taking the test again at some future date when I’ll have improved my math skills. I guess I should decide about that and register as soon as possible.

I have about two weeks to decide what to do for the school Valentine’s Day dance. I want to go with someone, but not just anyone. Having considered my option(s), I may just go by myself. That’s because every girl I ever get interested in is somehow taken, and I’m not interested in any non-taken girls right now. Besides, the proceeds from the dance will support my class, and that’s good. So, either I fall in love within the next two weeks (which is improbable, but not impossible), or I go by myself.

Read some Chuck Norris Facts, like these:

• In an average living room there are 1,242 objects Chuck Norris could use to kill you, including the room itself.
• Chuck Norris can win a game of Connect Four in only three moves.
• Police label anyone attacking Chuck Norris as a Code 45-11…. a suicide.

HappyNews.com is a news site where all the news is happy. I’d imagine they don’t update the site very often. But it seems that there has to be a bias on their choice of political stories such as this one: Greenspan’s Fed Chief Reign Comes to Close. How many people would call that happy? How many people would call it sad?

Two years ago: “I tried learning Esperanto to fill this need, but I was too – dare I say – lazy to get past the words for ‘here,’ ‘there,’ ‘this,’ ‘that,’ etc.”

Another show

The school’s annual variety show was last night. Unlike last year, I was in the audience. Ever since auditions began a few weeks or moths ago, some people had asked if I was going to be in it. One person suggested that I do stand-up comedy. “What would I say?” I asked. “The things you normally say,” he replied.

I figured that if I was going to do anything, I would play a song. But I couldn’t do it myself — I’m not that good. I think that in a talent show, the more people who are playing with you, the less talented each individual member needs to be. That’s not to say that we should have competitions of people who just picked up a guitar for the first time a half an hour ago. But if there are a lot of instruments at once, someone else can cover up your mistakes.

I couldn’t think of a song, anyway, so here I sat in the audience. Even though there were a lot of people there, I could hardly find any of my friends to sit with; they were either part of the show or simply not there. I did manage to find one friend, namely Sacha. We lucked out by finding two seats in the second row. Before the show started, he showed me his awesome Sidekick thing. He was checking out MySpace, instant messaging people, and talking to people on the phone. Yeah, well it may be old to you, but it’s relatively new to me, okay?

The show seemed to be shorter than last time, but it was still pretty long (a little under two hours). There were monologues, a skit, some rapping (do they still say that?), and dance-type movements. (Among the latter, and not on the program for the show, were a middle-aged woman and an older man dancing around the stage to country music. Sacha thought that that was so adorable and said it’s how he wanted to be like when he grows up.) And of course, there was music. My friend Andrew (with whom I played in the show last year) did a song with some guys I knew. Once I heard them, I knew that I had to be in the show next year. But I’ve got a whole year to think of what to play and who to play it with.

Tomorrow morning I’m taking the SAT, so I have to get a lot of sleep. Good night, readers, and wish me luck.

Things That Don’t Exist.

Like music? Try Lyricsfly.

Two years ago: “Well, you don’t go swimming in sidewalks, there, pilgrim.”

Victory over sanity

Ah, it’s almost love, and spring is in the air. The bees are chirping, the birds are buzzing. The grass in the flowers sparkles against midnight sun. And Valentine’s Day is coming up.

Yes, I’ve heard vague, murky reports that this holiday of February 14th, sometimes abbreviated down to “V-Day” (not to be confused with V-J Day or V-E Day) is actually getting closer. My first thought was “So early?”, but there are other holidays that take the cake. Even National Geographic has gotten into it for their February issue. They have an interesting article about love that I actually read. It says that brain scans of people in love look a lot like those of people who are mentally ill. There really isn’t much of a difference, as I see it, except more people probably enjoy being in love.

A few weeks ago, my friend Gilbert told me that after school on December 15, he had overheard some girl talking about me, apparently to some other girl. “Smart” and “cute” were the words being used. He didn’t know who she was; the only physical description was that she was short with brown hair. Of course, we can narrow down a few more things: she must know me, and Gilbert must not know her. That still leaves a lot of possibilities. So far, I’ve been able to think of four girls, with a pretty good reason for each, but Gilbert knows all of them (well, he only knows the name of one of them, not her personally).

What’s kind of remarkable is that I’ve never been (knowingly) liked by a girl before. (I know, can you believe it?) It’s an amazing feeling. (Wow, I’m a total loser.) It’s kind of a drag to know that sum grrl thinks your a hott boi, but you have no idea who she is. In fact, that’s probably the most bittersweet thing that could possibly happen to me. What’s worse is that I’ll never be able to find out. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

On Monday, Student Government decided to play matchmaker by giving us some questionnaires (just like last year). The idea is that you’re supposed to fill out details about yourself, and then when they send the questionnaires back wherever they came from, some computer reads the forms to see who at the school is the most compatible with who. And so it’s a Valentine’s Day tie-in. And of course, you have to pay to get your results. Now imagine some girl opening her results to find Jordon Kalilich on the top of her list. She’d probably crawl off to her bathtub and slit her throat. But maybe not if she were a short brunette. Maybe not.

Some reports of Valentine’s-related events are murkier than others. I know, it’s hard to get more unclear than saying that some short brunette said I was cute. But then there are some that are just as unbelievable. For example, I think that the school is having a Valentine’s Day dance, and I’m assuming that it will be on the school grounds because I seem to understand that tickets are ten times less than they usually cost. Now if I could find someone to go with, that would really be something. It really would. I swear. I remember when I asked Nacole out and she said yes. Things ended up differently than I had planned, but during the rush of it all, I felt like the happiest guy in the world. I felt unstoppable. I have never felt better about the world and myself before or since. I mean that. Love really is like insanity, but it’s insanity that people generally like.

Apparently, the Beatles’ producer, George Martin, was knighted in 2004, and so he received his own coat of arms. If you’re reasonably familiar with the Beatles, it’s a work of heraldic brilliance. In fact, 54 cool points to anyone who understands the significance of the zebra.

I generally don’t take online quizzes, but I couldn’t pass up “What is your perfect major?” Here are my results:

That sounds about right, especially the part about math.

Not a Bloggie finalist!

During the nomination period for the 2006 Weblog Awards several days ago, I posted a message at the top of this site urging visitors to nominate The World of Stuff for all of the categories for which it was eligible. The finalists have finally been posted, and alas, I’m not among them. I’ll tell you what blogs are among them, though: Slashdot (2 nominations), PostSecret (5 nominations), Photojunkie (2 nominations), Waiter Rant, Dooce (3 nominations), Lifehacker (3 nominations), Daily Dose of Imagery, Kottke.org, Engadget (2 nominations), Boing Boing (3 nominations), We Make Money Not Art, Daily Kos, Fark (2 nominations), Whedonesque, Go Fug Yourself (3 nominations), Wonkette, 456 Berea Street, Gizmodo, Digg, and Overheard in New York (2 nominations).

I’ve heard of all of those nominees before, and some have won Bloggies in the past. Because they’re all more popular than this site, they get more nominations, so sites like this never get considered, even for the “Best Kept Secret” category. I’d attribute this to poor planning on my part, if only because my first instinct is to blame myself. I should have coordinated some kind of mass nomination in which I could count on the votes of all of my readers and even some non-readers. After all, I’m obsessed with winning, and so I can’t afford to lose or else I’ll have a nervous breakdown or something.

Actually, it’s not just me. When you submit nominations for the Bloggies, you have to nominate at least a few sites — not just one. For many readers, this is the only blog they read, and I guess I’m kind of honored by that. But seriously, the blogosphere is the wave of the future, man. The blogosphere serves as a barrier between Internet users who know the meaning of the terms “podcasting,” “TrackBacks,” and “Web 2.0,” and the users who only go online to check their Hotmail on — gasp — IE. In short, the world of blogs is cool. I’m surprised some of you folks don’t read other blogs. There are better ones than this one, seriously. Hey, wait, maybe that’s why this site didn’t get nom…

Oh, anyway, I have an aggressively tongue-in-cheek plan to prevent this tragedy from occurring next year. The parts of the plan are as follows:

• Get linked to the aforementioned sites somehow.
• Sell out in style by charging my own high rates for advertising.
• Write about politics, because I know that “touchy” matters such as that would definitely not spiral downward into flaming.
• Get myself a cool job that allows me to blog and pass it off as work.
• Redesign the site to validate as proper XHTML and show up nicely on mobile/handheld devices.
• Make even more use of unordered lists. (Check!)
• Sell TWoS merchandise?
• Become popular.

If I can accomplish all those things in a year’s time, I’m sure I’ll be a shoo-in at the Bloggies next year. In conclusion: podcasting, TrackBacks, and Web 2.0.

As you may remember, my colorfully boisterous AP European History teacher (and also my World History teacher from last year), Mrs. Vazquez, had to leave and was replaced by the more demure Mr. Miller. A while back, Luke shot an e-mail to Mrs. Vazquez, who is now in Puerto Rico:

Mrs. Vazquez just sent back this reply:

The rest of her e-mail consists of statements that may be taken as threats toward national and school authority figures. Anyway, it’s good to know that Mrs. V. is alive and well and acting like her usual self.

Feeling down? According to scientific (?) research, the Monday nearest January 24 is the most depressing day of the year. And since today is Monday, January 23, the most depressing day of the year is today. It’s a little late now, but try using that excuse next year (on Monday, January 22, 2007) if you feel like moping around and doing nothing.

College students do the darnedest things. On the Glasgow Underground, it takes 55 seconds for the train to go from Buchanan St. to the next station, St. Enoch. Is it possible to get off at Buchanan St. and make it to St. Enoch in time to catch the very same train? Watch The Subway Challenge and find out. (Note: The video is available in WMV and MP4 formats, but Firefox wouldn’t open them correctly. I had to use IE for them to work.)

One year ago: “Although I don’t like my World History teacher very much, she has her good points. For example, she believes that her students should learn.”
Two years ago: “And last week I passed by him in a hallway, he said, ‘Hey Kalilich! In just two weeks, you’ll be in my class! Muhahahaha!’”

Morality without religion

Yesterday my aunt came to visit from upstate. On the kitchen table last night, I noticed a book that I had remembered seeing at her house: an old book called “Man’s Religions.” Overnight that book has crept next to my computer desk. Now, how and why is it here, I wonder, and not back at my aunt’s house a number of hours away?

I tend to suspect things of people (almost to the point of paranoia), and I’ve been wrong about suspicions before, but there’s no alternate explanation for how this one book from a loaded bookshelf in a small house outside an obscure town far, far away from here landed within my eyesight just days after I avowed my atheism. The idea is that I’m supposed to pick up the book out of curiosity and wind up picking a new religion for myself.

See, there’s a prevailing belief in the United States that if you adhere to some religion (except for paganism/Wicca, Satanism, and possibly Islam), then you’re an okay guy/gal. Otherwise, you supposedly can’t be a good person. After “coming out” about my atheism, I’ve met with this reaction from a few friends (okay, one), and the argument was something like this: “You need to have some religion because otherwise, everyone would go around doing immoral things with no fear of punishment.”

I’ll ask my religious readers to consider the following: would you rather do good things for the hope of spiritual reward or simply for the sake of doing good things? Obviously, the humbler and more sensible choice is the latter. If you say, “I hope I get into heaven now that I’ve helped that person, ’cause it wouldn’t be in my best interest to burn for all eternity,” then you’re not being good for the right reasons. In order to be a truly good person, you should make common-sense morals, which can exist independently of religion, a part of your natural thought process: “Ah, I feel better knowing that that person has benefited from my help. I’ve done what I had to offer, and I’ve made someone else happy.”

You still may be thinking that it can’t possibly work, that people can’t be good without religion. To that I reply: look around you! Your friends, family members, classmates, or co-workers may have been raised atheists, and you might not know it. In fact, 15% of Americans were atheists in 2001 (1), and there are likely more than that who are afraid to admit it to anyone. Why would they be afraid? Because prejudice against atheists (as determined by approval of a hypothetical “well-qualified presidential candidate who happened to be…”) was as widespread in 1999 as that against blacks in 1959, and it was more prevalent in 1999 than that against Jews and women in 1937 (2).

And still, these American atheists, closeted or outspoken, recent “converts” or lifelong nonbelievers, are all around you, and the majority fit perfectly well into mainstream society so as to pass by unnoticed. They and I can live morally, without needing to appease some higher power, by exercising self-improvement and compassion toward others. It’s a logical course of action because it makes the world a better place for us all. So, as for that old book sitting near my desk, I’m not going to pick it up because I know that I don’t need it.

I’ve been continuing to try out more Firefox extensions. I’ve tried out a few, and here are the new ones I’m using now:

• Fasterfox can speed up browsing using several methods. It can preload links on a page so that they’re already cached when you click on them. I haven’t really noticed a difference in speed, but it puts a timer in the status bar, so maybe I could do some empirical comparisons.
• IE Tab can load Internet Explorer inside Firefox. This could be useful for me when I’m designing web pages, so that I don’t need to have two browser windows open. You can also have it automatically load certain sites (such as Windows Update) in IE.
• Restart Firefox creates a menu item that closes and restarts the browser, so you only need to do it with one click. You need to restart Firefox for any extensions and themes to take effect, so this came in handy quickly.
• Sort Extensions and Themes alphabetizes the lists of extensions and themes you have installed. (Kind of sad how I now have extensions for managing extensions, huh?)
• ViewMyCurrency dynamically converts currency on web pages to the currency of your choice, and it allows for you to plug in numbers for manual conversion if you need to.

Also, I was getting bored with Firefox’s default theme, so I decided to delve into the world of themes. I was looking for something sleek and silvery with a splash of color. After trying out several themes and finding one thing wrong with each of them, I came across Noia eXtreme, which is apparently the most popular theme (besides the default one). It looks really slick and feels very comfortable to use. If you’re looking for a good theme, I recommend it.

In case you somehow missed this story yesterday, a whale was spotted swimming down the Thames through London.

In other news, it’s been discovered that one in twelve Irishmen are descendents of a medieval Irish warlord. I’ve got some Irish in me, so it’s possible that I could be a descendent of “Niall of the Nine Hostages” as well.

It kind of makes me sad

As of yesterday, it’s now a new semester with almost all new classes. So it’s time to compare my predictions from the other day with how my new classes actually are.

First block, Programming II, is taught by Mr. Mumtaz, whom I had for Programming I. We got right into things yesterday by learning basic things about databases and linking them to programs. The classroom is about half-full, and there are actually students in Programming II, III, and IV (which just goes to show that Web Design, the other option, is much more popular). Today we didn’t work much because we listened to some people talk for some school “technology fair.” There were a manager from BellSouth, a programmer who had started a local computer business, a professor from DeVry University, staff artists from the newspaper, a guy who designed TV spots, and a guy who worked for a security camera company. Whether their presentations in class comprised the entire technology fair remains to be seen.

Second block is still AP Euro, a class I’ve already had during the last semester. So, we’re continuing our study of the history of Europe. Right now we’re on the Industrial Revolution and how it created the gritty, impoverished working class. It kind of makes me sad thinking about all those people who suffered at the hands of the greedy bourgeois factory owners, who essentially became the new nobles. The working class themselves became the new peasants. (The old nobles and peasants just kind of faded away, I guess.) And it kind of makes me bored having to hear about obscure and not-so-obscure theorists who all wrote their own books about how they could improve the situation for the workers (or for the bourgeoisie).

Third block is Pre-Calculus. We’re going over basic material right now, and though I was rusty at first, I’m glad we’re going over it. I’d been told that Mr. Gates was boring, and he might just be. I guess it’s hard for me to tell. The way he speaks sounds like he tries to make things interesting, but it fails on many people. If he is in fact boring, it’s in an entertaining way (à la many or all of Ben Stein‘s acting roles).

I have B lunch, which is in the middle of third block. Yesterday I remembered what I like about B lunch: nothing. I was practically the last person to get lunch, thanks to taking the wrong way down the stairs. I fared better today, though. I’ve also realized that I can’t really bring a healthy snack to lunch without having to carry it all the way, so I just might do without it if I can.

Anyway, back to third block. (See how annoying that is?) I guess I’ll get better at math. I really need to improve in time for the SAT. Luckily, we’re doing a bit of SAT practice in class, and on today’s bit, I got all of the questions right. They were easier than I thought they’d be, actually.

Moving along to fourth block, I have American History Honors. The teacher, as I expected, is Mr. Weigel. It turns out that he seems to be a pretty swell guy. He’s young, cool, and rather understanding on most fronts (though very tough on the ones that really matter, such as cheating). In those ways, I guess he’s like the Mr. Firestone for the new generation. Today he started by asking for gossip about the other teachers and asked for our opinions on which were good and bad. Later, he was going over what it means to be American and, conversely, what it means to be un-American. To him, un-Americanness includes trying to kill the President, committing treason, being a communist, desecrating the flag, and refusing the draft. I would beg to differ on the last two points, and maybe on being a communist. But this is not a political blog, so I won’t dwell on that.

All in all, this semester is off to a good start.

One Ask Jordon today.

Peter: Do you use PHP includes on your site? If so, have you ever had problems with includes withen folder directories? If so, how did you resolve this?

Yes, I use them, and the trick to fixing them relies on the issue between absolute and relative paths. If you use absolute paths, you should be able to use the same paths in any document. However, relative paths are shorter. If the page is in the main directory (which is the location of header.html), I simply refer to the file as “header.html”; in other directories, I refer to it as “../header.html” (perhaps only one leading period is necessary; it may depend on how much of a difference there is between the two directories).

Here’s a large animated GIF showing the evolution of the Latin alphabet.

Here’s a video that showcases computer magic (Quicktime, sound) used in commercials. If you saw a few of the finished products, you might never guess that they were created digitally. Snappy soundtrack, too.

The eve of a new semester

The new semester begins tomorrow. Instead of having to put up with the usual four-day week and worry about four new classes, I only have to put up with a two-day week and worry about two new classes. That’s good, but nobody seems to understand how good it is to me. Apparently I’m the only person who gets nervous about having new classes. Anyway, here’s my schedule. I don’t have to worry about the first two because Programming I was easy, and I’ve already been in AP Euro this past semester.

1. Programming II
2. AP European History
3. Pre-Calculus
4. American History Honors

Programming II is taught by Mr. Mumtaz, who also teaches Programming I. (Hi Mr. Mumtaz, if you still read this.) I had Programming I the first semester of last year, so it’s been an entire year since I’ve had that class. I haven’t touched programming much during that time, although I have installed Visual Studio .NET on my own computer and hammered out a few things. It might be hard to remember some of the syntax and stuff, but I guess there will be some sort of refresher, and I can probably get back into thinking like a programmer pretty easily.

AP Euro continues as usual. We had to read a chapter over the long weekend. I read it today. I think there’s going to be a test on it tomorrow.

I’m pretty sure that for Pre-Calculus I’ll have Mr. Gates, because he seems to teach all the higher-level math classes. Everyone says he’s boring, but I don’t know. He kind of seems that way — I’ve heard him talk — but I guess it’s hard to be exciting if you’re talking about math. I haven’t been in a math class since the end of last semester, so I’m pretty rusty. I have a feeling I’ll be really bad at first, but I shouldn’t feel that way. I hope I can at least get to the level of the SAT before I take it on January 28. That’s what I need to focus on.

As for American History, I’m not sure which teacher I’m going to have, but I know that Luke from AP Euro is going to be in the class. From what I understand, this American History class is kind of intensive, but if I’m doing well in AP Euro, it shouldn’t be that much of a problem, I guess. Have I got a thing for history? I don’t know.

In other news, I decided the other day that I should write a book. See, Luke is writing a book that connects the songs of the Grateful Dead to Eastern religion philosophy. He’s using this self-publishing-type service. I figure I can probably work on a book of poems and short stories. So I’ve started it and I’ve been working on it over the past few days. I think it’s going to be pretty cool… if I ever finish it. Even though I’m going to use some material I’ve already written, I’ve got a lot more to write if I want to make a sizeable book.

In 1957, a brand new Plymouth Belvedere was buried in a time capsule in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Next year, in 2007, it will be unearthed.

With Smokers Brokers, you can invest money that you otherwise would have spent on cigarettes.

Kevin’s birthday

Today is Kevin’s birthday, so Kevin’s family treated us to a late lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe in Hollywood. I had a burger, of course, and it was pretty good. Kevin had to go to a job interview at Dunkin’ Donuts at 5:00, so Kevin took us home and then went off to his interview. A few minutes later, he came back — the interviewer wasn’t there, so he had to reschedule it. We hung out at some neighborhood parks and then went back to Kevin’s for cheesecake. I hope he enjoyed it. Inspired by my success, Kevin is going to start the No S Diet tomorrow. Good luck, Kevin, and happy 17th birthday.

Kevin, this link is just for you. It’s a video showing the inside and the outside of one of Japan’s bullet-type trains (Flash, sound). It’s amazing to see a train glide along smoothly at speeds up to 500 km/h.

Today America honors Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who worked to end racial segregation. If we don’t Remember Segregation (Flash), his legacy will be meaningless. Seeing a “segregated” web site such as that is pretty unnerving, and it just goes to show how much better things are thanks to King and other civil rights leaders.

One year ago: “Today my friend Kevin (who posts comments here as kevinkagy) treated my sister, our friends, and me to lunch at Benihana for his birthday (actually, I think his parents picked up the bill, but it was still nice of his folks).”

Old-fashioned spam

The other day I got a letter from the “Domain Registry of America.” It seemed like a domain name expiration notice. In fact, the letter inside was titled “Domain Name Expiration Notice.” But it couldn’t really be one, because I’d never heard of this company, neither of my domain names were close to expiring, and I always get those sorts of notices via e-mail.

It was actually an unsolicited offer to have my main domain, theworldofstuff.com, registered with this company the next time the registration needs to be renewed (which is not “soon,” as the letter says: I renew it once a year, and it expires six months from today). First they tell you how important it is not to have your domain name expire (and it is important if you want to keep it), and then they remind you that you don’t actually need to renew your domains with them. Then come the prices. Well, here’s the letter, and you can read it for yourself:

You saw those prices, right? How hard did you hit the floor? US$25 for a year, $40 for 2 years, and $80 for 5 years. If you have your own domain name, you’re smart enough not to fall for this. When did .com domains fall from $35/year? Five years ago? And here they are trying to make you pay $25. Well, here’s how much I pay for my domain every year: something like $7.45. I don’t know exactly. And DNS is $0.02/day, or $7.30/year. In the letter, DNS is included in the $25/year, but that’s still a lot of money.

How could they have gotten my information to send me this marketing sludge? Well, you can look up the contact information for any domain name, and you’ll probably be able to find it. I think there’s a way I can have my personal information kept private from those “whois” services, but it’s a convenience that costs extra.

And, in case anyone cares, Domain Registry of America’s return address is:

You Ask Jordon, and I, Jordon, will answer you.

crystal riley: will me and rennick be together forever?

Signs point to yes.

joan: what are good psat results

On the PSAT, they add up your scores on the reading, writing, and math sections to give you an index number. That number, multiplied by 10, is the score you would be expected to get on the SAT. So the real question here is “what are good sat results.” Unfortunately, I don’t know what SAT scores are considered good, but just do as well as possible.

Stupid Computer Tricks: More like, dumb things people have done to screw up their computers.

Here’s a map of active hate groups in the US in 2004. Apparently there’s a chapter of the Jewish Defense League in Ft. Lauderdale.

One year ago: “Maybe I don’t have the best self-esteem, but at least I don’t slit my wrists or write poetry.”

Customization

As if you didn’t need another reason to use Firefox as your browser and Thunderbird as your e-mail client, I present to you… another reason: customization. Being able to customize your browser and e-mail client to suit your needs improves the Internet experience. These programs can be customized using extensions, which are easily downloadable and provide extra functionality. Now that everyone’s on the same page, I’d like to share the extensions I’ve downloaded recently (and there are quite a few).

Most of my Firefox customization as of late has been in the form of Greasemonkey user scripts. Greasemonkey is an extension that allows you to manage and use user scripts, which are basically mini-extensions written in JavaScript. I’ve downloaded a slew of these user scripts lately. Here are the more notable ones:

• Homestar-Fullon: Resizes the 800×600-optimized cartoons at Homestar Runner to fit the browser window.
• Linkify ting: Turns plain-text URLs on web pages into links.
• phpBB forum signature purger: Practically half of every thread on a phpBB forum consists of long-winded signatures. This gets rid of them all, making things much more legible.
• Currency Converter: Pretty nifty, but I’ll never use it much. I have it set to convert EUR to USD.
• Plus a bunch of scripts to make browsing MySpace easier.

Another extension I’ve recently downloaded is Book Burro, which compares the prices of books on several major sites. (I had originally downloaded it as a Greasemonkey user script, but it didn’t work.) No, this will probably never be useful to me, but I can still enjoy comparison window shopping. And it’s cool.

Today I decided that I would replace Awasu, the RSS reader I’ve been using for two years, with a Firefox extension. There were a few things wrong with Awasu. First, it uses Internet Explorer, which is not my primary browser, to display web pages in a frame. So, I couldn’t view the RSS feeds of my friends who have friends-only LiveJournals; I might have needed to be logged in to LJ on IE, but I’m not even sure if that would work. Second, the version of Awasu I had didn’t support Atom feeds, meaning several sites I would visit frequently were left out in the cold. I got around these problems with a clumsy solution — I would check my friends’ LiveJournals and sites without RSS feeds in the browser (IE, and later Firefox) while keeping up with the other sites in Awasu.

It sufficed for a while, but I decided it was time to integrate the whole RSS thing into my browser (and not use Firefox’s Live Bookmarks, a very light RSS feature built into the browser). I decided to go for Wizz RSS News Reader 2.0.6, which does support Atom feeds as well (apparently they don’t want to change the name). It can update certain feeds automatically, all at a specific interval that you choose from a list (various intervals from 10 minutes to 24 hours). Compare this to the free version of Awasu, which allowed you to update each feed at any interval, but with a minimum of 3 hours. However, Wizz counts from when you start the browser, whereas Awasu used absolute (system) time. So I guess I’ll check my blogs whenever I feel like it. I’ve tried that, and I like it better. Now I have a feed reader that works with all my blogs, including friends-only LJs, sites with only Atom feeds, and sites whose feeds I didn’t know existed until I decided to look for them today. It’s all good.

For Thunderbird I have one extension: MinimizeToTray. It pretty much does what it says, allowing you to minimize Thunderbird to the Windows system tray. It would be even cooler if the extension could have Thunderbird start in the tray when you start the computer. Unfortunately, in order to do that, you have to specify for Thunderbird to run in “turbo” mode, and MinimizeToTray disables turbo mode because they don’t get along nicely. So what I do is load Thunderbird manually once the computer starts, and then have it continue to run in the background, giving me a little reminder whenever it finds that I have mail.

Coming to you from Luke, who’s in my AP European History class, it’s a bit of Dinosaur Comics fan art. (Click the thumbnail to enlarge.) He sums up much of the history of Europe quite nicely.

Wikiquote has a list of mnemonics big enough to make your head explode.

Mood-News is a site that takes headlines from the BBC and automatically sorts them from good to bad. It’s a pretty long list, but you can filter it by keyword or subject.