Free calls

Every time the Internet telephony network Skype rolls out a new service or feature, it's hard to imagine how they could possibly get any better. In the latest beta version of Skype, you can send text messages from your computer, though for US phones it costs €0.09 ($0.1157) per message. (Is that good? Bad? I don't know. But it's a lot to spend on sending characters over a network.) The other day, Skype announced that calls from the US or Canada to any US or Canadian landline or cell phone would be absolutely free until at least the end of the year. Now that's quite a big thing. I can now make calls to the cell phones of my friends across town or to a payphone in a desolate village in, say, the Yukon. And it won't cost me a thing.

I tried it out yesterday by calling my mom's cell phone as she was coming home from work. The sound quality was very good, perhaps better than if I had used a phone. (That's probably because the sound, though low in quality, isn't coming out of a tinny speaker but rather from my pretty decent headphones.) I found out after I hung up that I had been charged on my account. Apparently other people were having similar difficulties. It seems that Skype was or is having problems recognizing some US and Canadian IP addresses. They say they've pretty much fixed it now, so I'm pretty much waiting for a good reason to call someone. Not only will Skype now save us money, but it will also change the way I make calls -- no longer will long-distance calls be off-limits or, at best, a rare treat.

I have a feeling that Skype won't be able to take this service away after the end of the year; it will be too popular among (US and Canadian) users while leaving the competition scrambling to keep up.

Since it's almost the end of the school year, it's time for the annual underclassman award ceremony. It's tomorrow, in fact, and I received a semi-fancy-looking invitation today. I wonder what award(s) I'll get. They had better be good ones, because I'm going to have to miss my last class of the day, American History. We're having our final exam in that class tomorrow; it will be harder than the quizzes but easier than the tests, so it'll probably be about as hard as a test in any other class. Since I can't do it during the actual class period, I'm going to do it in first block because we're not doing anything in that class (Programming) anyway.

Escher for Real has photos of models of M.C. Escher's impossible figures -- but you have to look at the models from a certain angle for the illusion to take effect.

With Flood maps, you can see what it would look like if the sea level were to rise. (It's yet another utility that makes use of Google Maps.)

Two years ago: "At the end, the youth group leader gave me the 'Bowling Baryshnikov' award for 'Most Unique Form.'"