Program on Yale

Last night my parents took me to the program on Yale way down in Miami. We grossly misjudged the amount of time it would take to get there and thus arrived an hour early. But that’s pretty okay, because the talk was at a museum, so we just sort of wandered around until we decided to go into the small auditorium there. It was freezing in there, and I wanted to sit in the back, which wasn’t far away enough. By the time the thing started, the auditorium was packed. It was kind of scary. I didn’t know anybody there (it was really far away, after all), but almost everybody looked like someone I knew.

Anyway, the guy was very talkative, and he discussed all sorts of things. I don’t remember anything he said. He basically did everything in his power to make the school sound like a place you would really, really want to go to. After about an hour and a half, it was over, and I had in mind some advantages and disadvantages of applying to and attending the school.

Bad things about Yale:

• $45,000/year
• Pickiest university in the Ivy League
• Requires an ACT score or 3 SAT II scores, neither of which I have (yet)
• Have to take 36 classes in 4 years

Good things about Yale:

• Well known and highly regarded
• Small classes
• Jobs on campus
• Financial aid?
• Official color is blue

The big thing about Yale is that last year they accepted a scant 8.6% of applicants, an all-time low. If I happen to apply, and I’m in the unlucky 91.4%, I’ll have wasted my time and energy, and because Yale is such a good school, I’ll have to settle for second best.

Remember that Ask Jordon thing? Neither do I!

b-dizzle: ok, my question is if i know i guy like totally likes me and i kinda like him but i dont know him that well, what should i do?

Get to know him better. Ask him to hang out with you?

Here are population clocks for every country in the world. They show the current population, along with a guess of who has just been born and who has just died.

Unless you know everything about Leonardo da Vinci, you might enjoy reading 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Leonardo da Vinci.

One year ago: “I don’t really care if it’s your ‘sweet sixteen’ or ‘sour seventeen’ or ‘fairly good-tasting fifteen.’”
Two years ago: “I’ve never golfed before. I hope I don’t poke an eye out or anything.”

But it’s near New York, so that’s cool

Yesterday I finally registered to take the 4-hour “drug and alcohol” course that you have to pass before you can get your learner’s permit. This is actually the first step I’ve taken toward getting my permit. It’s not a milestone; it’s more like a footstone. There are 5,280 feet in a mile. Why? I don’t know. Go metric. (By the way, I put “drug and alcohol” in quotation marks because everyone always talks about “drugs and alcohol” as if alcohol isn’t a drug. It is a drug just the same as the illegal ones, as anyone who’s been addicted to it or simply hung over can tell you.)

My friend Kevin’s in Spain. I decided to call him the other day at a time that we had agreed on. I was prepared to ask for him in Spanish. His aunt picked up. “Yes?” she said in Spanish. “Can I talk to Kevin?” I said. “Who are you?” she asked. I said I was Kevin’s friend, Jordon. Then she said something that I didn’t understand. I didn’t say anything; instead I got really nervous and just hung up. Kevin e-mailed us to say that his aunt told him about the situation. I asked him to apologize on my behalf. We’ll have to call him again soon.

Ever since taking the PSAT and the SAT in the past months, I’ve been getting tons of mail from colleges. Most of them are little ones that I’d never heard of. None of the names really jumped out at me. Their letters come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from simple brochures to large packets of information. They do everything in their ability to stand out; a few have included informational CD-ROMs. (I don’t remember which, though. I must have gotten hundreds of these things already.)

So you can imagine my surprise when, a few weeks ago, I got a tiny, black-and-white postcard from New Haven, CT. That’s right: Yale University. What the heck, everybody? I didn’t think Ivy League schools needed to advertise. The postcard says (in Comic Sans) that the Associate Director of Admissions is holding a “Program on Yale” in Miami tomorrow night. He’s going to talk about “academic programs, campus life, admission, and financial aid.” Interesting, I say. I might as well go because I’ll kick myself if I end up not going. It’s not like I’d have a chance at getting accepted to America’s second most prestigious university (even if I wanted to live all up there), but I might as well get used to the idea that I’m going to have to go to some college.

Don’t you just love sunsets? Since the sun is always setting somewhere, Eternal Sunset allows you to view a live sunset thanks to the miracle of webcams.

Do you chew on ice cubes? You’re not alone. Apparently there’s a whole bulletin board on the topic.

Two years ago: “I may spend a lot of time on the Internet, but I do not live in MyFlorida.com.”

The incredible disappearing rights

I weep for the future.

I don’t talk politics much here. In my 2004 election coverage, I tried to give equal time to both candidates. But as I watched the news on election night — as the votes came in — I had a bad feeling that the election was going to go the wrong way. My suspicions were confirmed.

First, let us remember these simple words:

That’s the first amendment to the United States Constitution. The first. The foremost. Numero uno. I think there’s a reason they made it first. It’s the very foundation of the freedoms that people sing about in jingoistic country-pop tunes.

Here’s another sampling of that thing we call the Constitution:

It’s the fourth amendment. You know, the one that gives you privacy. Remember that thing, privacy? It’s so overrated, isn’t it?

Like it or not, we’re losing these freedoms every day. Some of it is in the name of corporate interests. Take network neutrality, for example. Net neutrality ensures that every Internet user has free and equal access to public content. As basic as it may sound, this right is being challenged in Washington. The companies that you and I pay to get Internet access want to take more control over what we see and what we pay more to see. In effect, they would control the flow of information into our homes, all in the name of the almighty dollar.

Let’s think about the effects that this might have. What if you had to pay extra to be able to go to small web sites such as this? What if you were strapped for cash and weren’t able to afford a “premium,” all-inclusive Internet plan? Would this great big Internet of ours be a better place if you were no longer able to view my opinions and those of your ISP side by side? Not at all. What if you wanted to use a search engine other than the one owned by your ISP? Better go make yourself a sandwich while the page loads. Free speech wouldn’t be so free. Open discussion on, say, Usenet? Forget about it. Equality on the Internet would be lying murdered in the street, blood dripping away into the sewer drain.

But there’s an even bigger threat, and this is what I’m really getting at. The government has been using the threat of terrorism as an excuse to curtail people’s civil liberties. They’re making our country safe, right? Maybe! But are they making you, as an individual, any safer? You may say, “It doesn’t matter if the NSA looks at my phone records. I have nothing to hide!” You may not have anything to hide… right now. But what if they made it so that you did? What if they changed the definition of the “enemy” to anyone who didn’t like what the government was doing. What? Your friend went to a peace rally last week? We see that you’ve called her since then — twice! We’re taking you in for questioning.

Oh no, but the government wouldn’t abuse its powers like that, you may say. Oh really? It is a fact that they are already spying on millions of Americans, maybe even you. They can find out what books you’ve checked out at a library. They can look through your luggage for no reason because no one is standing up to stop them. So where are they going to draw the line for themselves? If they’ve taken “security” measures this far, who’s going to stop them from going further? Doesn’t it bother you the least bit that Uncle Sam is setting himself up to be Big Brother? It may not happen tomorrow. It may not happen this year. But at the rate things are going, eventually everything will be in place for the United States of America to be a fascist police state.

Am I blowing things out of proportion? No. Don’t think it can’t happen here. Good governments go bad everywhere, and bad governments can get even worse before they weaken and fall. You may know that I read blogs that report the news. And the headlines show that our freedoms are being chipped away every day. Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court are working to take over our lives constantly. How often do I read a news story relating to more lost liberties? Every zarking day. I’ll prove it to you. I’ll collect every such news story I find for a month. On July 26, I will post here to show you how fast your rights are going down the toilet.

Here’s an example for today! What happens when the government breaks the law by spying on American citizens without a court order? Here’s what they’re doing to fix that problem: they want to write it into law so it’s not illegal anymore. Problem solved! (Except for that pesky Bill of Rights thing.) Yes, things like this are happening every day.

Is the threat of terrorism so great that no one can be safe from the watchful eyes of the feds? I don’t know which is worse: being brought to a sudden, unexpected death by foreign terrorists or to a slow, painful death by the elected leaders of our own country.

But what can we do? Where are the riots in the streets? Oh yeah: nobody gives a crap. So here’s a message to everybody that doesn’t realize this already: America as we know it — the land of the free — is dying, and it’s all because home of the brave is now a den of cowards who want to feel safe by accepting unquestionably everything the government does. It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee, Mrs. Bueller. It’s time to think for yourself. Liberate your mind from these arbitrary concepts like “patriotism.” No institution automatically deserves respect; it must be earned, and right now the government isn’t living up to its mission statement. So, if you haven’t been able to see it, it’s about time that you open your eyes to the evil that your government is doing — and will continue doing — to you.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I should probably go to the library and get Nineteen Eighty-Four while I still can. On second thought, I should probably avoid the library and buy it.

(I’m sure that once the comments come rolling in, I’ll remember why I never write about politics.)

From YouTube: Superman Leaves Physics 140 Class at University of Michigan. I doubt college is that exciting all the time.

Google News Cloud is a pretty nifty tool for viewing the most popular keywords in the news and seeing how they tie together.

One year ago: “I did it. I’m one of them.”
Two years ago: “Seeing as it’s black and in a black case, it probably won’t stand the heat very well.” And: “Man, am I stupid. I actually thought that those morons were going to come to this stupid thing.”

¿Puedo hablar con Kevin?

On Friday night, my sister hosted a dinner for Lisa, Kevin, and Nathalie. It was a goodbye dinner of sorts. Kevin was to leave for Spain and France, and Lisa was going to Washington. Me, I’m not going anywhere in particular. It’s going to be another normal summer. My last normal summer, I guess.

After dinner, Kevin and I got to talking about colleges and things of that nature. I told him that I still didn’t have any idea where I wanted to go. I’ve had the University of Florida in mind because it’s arguably the best public school in the state, and due to costs I may be limited to public, in-state schools.

(Derail: Remember my geometry teacher, Miss Cale? The one who took me to the math competition? The one I played miniature golf with multiple times? The one who gave me advice about colleges? My sister and Lisa saw her working at Offerdahl’s this past week. Are you surprised to see a former teacher working at a restaurant? Neither am I. Anyway, Miss Cale was talking to my sister about all sorts of things. “What’s your brother’s name? Billy?” she asked. She also asked my sister about what college she wanted to go to, and she said maybe UF also, to which Miss Cale replied disappointedly, “You can do better than that.”)

Anyway, Kevin told me that the Princeton Review‘s web site has a service that recommends colleges based on your abilities, interests, and desires. I tried it out, and it gave me some results. Maybe I should look into the schools they’ve recommended. Maybe I should think about a major. That would probably be better. However, Kevin said that if I’m undecided, I should go to a very general university with a lot of good departments.

Kevin left yesterday. He gave us the phone number of his aunt and uncle’s home in Spain so we could call him with Skype. I went ahead and bought $10 in SkypeOut credit so we’d be able to talk to him for 7 hours rather than 8 minutes. I’ll probably have to remember the phone-related phrases I learned in Spanish III last year because his aunt and uncle don’t speak English. ¡Ay, caramba!

Gadgets, Now and Then: Part 1 and Part 2. It’s interesting to compare yesterday’s technology to that of today. We’ve really gone far.

Here’s an educational bit on filler words like “um” or “uh.” Basically, we say these little things to assert that it is our turn to speak.

Two years ago: “I think my friends and I are going to die of the heat out there.”

Cleaning up some more

Hi, it’s me again. Today I worked some more on cleaning my room. It’s kind of sad that it’s been taking me this long to do it, but it’s also sad that I have to throw my childhood away. Each little knick-knack I find has a memory attached to it, and when I unearth each one do I realize how those experiences have shaped me today. I’ve found that I’m more like I was back then than I had thought. For example, in ninth grade, which ended two years ago, I was a bit intimidated by a big scary high school; I was still very much the schoolboy used to wearing short haircuts and crisp uniforms at little St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic School.

And than influence never goes away. I still know many of the friends I made in grade school, and my best friends from back then are still more or less my best friends today. Forget high school: the best friendships come early. You learn from them. Your teachers, too. They don’t just teach you things from a book. They teach you life skills. (Or at least note-taking skills. Thanks, Mrs. Albert!) You may not fully realize it — I don’t fully realize it — but you can tell it’s there. It’s accepted that your early influences shape who you are to at least some extent. The only reason we’re not more aware of it is that you can’t clone yourself, treat each of your clones differently, and see what happens.

So, as I throw away many of my old possessions, I realize that even though they may depart from my life and go to sit in a landfill for the next 700 years, the memories will always be there, and they’ll live on in the kind of person that I am. The biggest influence, I’d say, are your parents. Compared to some other people’s parents, mine are great. They do all kinds of good things for me, and they trust me enough to think for myself. Let’s savor this rare moment of non-angst with a virtual group hug. Come on, everybody, don’t be shy.

Speaking of cleaning out junk, it’s a great thing that most gift cards these days don’t expire. You can use them even if you’ve left them sitting around for two to four years. They’re the gifts that keep on giving!

I’ve also been working on flipacoin.net. I haven’t actually added any new coins yet, but I have reworked the main page so that it shows the countries in alphabetical order and indicates how many coins each country has in a very Web 2.0 way. There’s no Ajax or anything, though; why would I need it? Anyway, I also converted all the GIFs on the site to PNG format, which immediately reduced my storage costs for that site by 15%. Thanks, PNGs!

Here’s an article that addresses the latest controversy in the scientific community: did a Big Bang happen start the universe, or did many Big Bangs happen before it? On a similar note, Stephen Hawking, the smartest guy in the world, has put forth the idea that an extremely large number of Big Bangs happened at the same time, most of which faded away immediately, leaving the universe we live in today.

What if laws were editable by anyone, like in a wiki? Wikocracy is a wiki that explores the possibility. At the site, you and other users can edit the text of many federal and state laws. What does the voice of the people really say? It’s interesting to see.

One year ago: “I’ve decided that I’m going to skip, run, bike, stretch, situp, pushup, and dumbell lift for 40 minutes each day together.”
Two years ago: “Personally, I would like to leave at least two or three Presidents on our seven denominations of currency, and devote the rest of the bills to significant writers, inventors, and the like.”

It was white wine

As part of my quest to have lucid dreams, I’ve been trying to remember more of my dreams. It’s been about two weeks since I started recording my dreams. I’ve succeeded in remembering at least something from my dreams every night, ranging from a single image or idea to a long, complex experience in an alternate reality.

Probably the most interesting dream was the one I remembered from two nights ago. In this dream, my parents were occupied with long-term remodeling projects, so they had some other man and woman watch me and my sister at a different house. These surrogate parents were the meanest people I had ever known. They threatened me with a water gun when I did the slightest thing they didn’t like. (At least, I thought it was a water gun.) They were really out to ruin my life; they were planning to transfer my sister and me from Pompano High to Smithfield High (which, fortunately, isn’t real). Life was pretty miserable.

In an attempt to escape from this cruel reality, I would play a game with my sister and my friend Nick. Nick played the king and the executioner. I was the prince, and my sister was the executioner’s daughter. But of course, the moment we got home, all the fun would cease. So at nights I would go to my old Catholic school, which was suddenly in a single, large, old building, like the White House. I would hang out with all my friends from there and drink wine and smoke cigarettes. I would also spend time with the principal, the school’s only nun (who isn’t the principal in real life).

There was this one time that my sister and I were hanging out with my friend Kevin at Target. (We actually went there yesterday! Creepy, huh?) We were talking about how bad it would be if my parents saw me as a drinker and a smoker. Even though we didn’t live in the same house at the time, I’m sure they wouldn’t have liked it. Suddenly, my mom passed by, but she didn’t seem to notice us. We marvelled at how close of a call it was.

It was a pretty weird and unsettling dream. Hopefully once I’m able to control my dreams, I can have fun with those and take them in whatever direction I want them to go. Even without being lucid, remembering your dreams can give you some interesting ideas. For example, “The Executioner’s Daughter” would be a great title for a song. I’ve already started writing it, in fact. It’s a ballad. (And yes, I know it’s already the title of a book.)

In our last installment, I mentioned the idea of hosting a Skypecast. I hosted one today. It was to be an hour of conversation about the Beatles. I was expecting to talk to some lively fans about the music and the obscure facts behind the music. After a few minutes, two people joined: a Dutch guy who couldn’t use his microphone and a Japanese guy who didn’t want to. So I was basically text chatting with them. Then, after a half an hour, I ducked out of it. It was extremely boring. I guess in order to host a Skypecast, you need to be talkative and you need to be able to put up with people who don’t speak your language.

There’s a light bulb in Livermore, California, that’s been working since 1901. It’s called the Centennial Light.

ASCII art meets Google Maps in ASCII Maps. It’s much faster than Google Maps, but the detail is lacking.

One year ago: “Most of you probably don’t know me, and, if this is true, consider yourself lucky.”
Two years ago: “I was supposed to line my bird’s cage with that stuff.”

Stating point of view

Birthday greetings and a bottle of wine to Paul McCartney, who is sixty-four today. Though he’s not really losing his hair, it has been many years since the Beatles’ song “When I’m Sixty-Four” was released on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. Thirty-nine years later, Sir Paul hasn’t needed to scrimp or save. Linda and Heather have fed him, and he’s probably stayed out till quarter to three on many an occasion. Who could ask for more? This is precisely what I mean to say: we’re all older too, but we still need you, Paul. Every Vera, Chuck, and Dave would agree.

One of the newer features in Skype is the ability to participate in Skypecasts, which are basically huge conference calls (of up to 100 people) that are organized in advance. Perusing the rather short list of upcoming Skypecasts, I’ve been disappointed to find that most of them are about boring topics like business, self-help, religion, learning English, and soccer. Surprisingly, there have been a few about Esperanto, of which I have a pretty good understanding. I joined one only to find that only two or three people were there; we were all dabblers who just wanted to hear the language being spoken. Another Skypecast had quite a few people going on in Esperanto about various things. I was pretty shy, and I dropped out after listening for a little while. I think I need to talk to a native English speaker who is also in the process of learning the language.

Anyway, I thought that I could start a Skypecast, but I can’t really think of a topic to talk about with random strangers scattered all over the globe. Actually, it doesn’t have to be a big discussion — Skypecasts have been likened to a call-in radio show because the host of the Skypecast can control whether the others are allowed to speak. Since it can also be used in this way, it would be interesting to deliver a comedy routine, with allowing a certain listener to speak being an analog to chatting it up with somebody in the first row of the audience. Does anyone have any interesting ideas for Skypecasts? Give me your answer: fill in a form. Er, post a comment. (Sorry if my lights have gone.)

Hey, maybe I could talk about the Beatles. I like them.

From the Wall Street Journal: Hollywood’s Take on the Internet Often Favors Fun Over Facts. It’s an article about how computers and the Internet have been portrayed in movies.

Here’s a list of the Top Ten Weirdest, Creepiest, Freakiest Children’s Television Shows, according to some blogger.

Two years ago: “It was described in the Warner Brothers sound effects library as ‘Man Being Eaten by Alligator.’”

The last few days have been slow

One of the things I love about Firefox is how customizable it is. You can download all kinds of extensions that put the power of browsing into your own hands. Greasemonkey is an extension that allows you to run bits of JavaScript called user scripts to alter the appearance/functionality of web sites.

Yesterday I was trying to watch a movie trailer on IMDb when I encountered an annoying commercial that you had to watch before the trailer started. I looked at the source code of the page and wondered whether I could write a Greasemonkey user script to skip the ads. I had already authored a script to skip the full-page ads on IMDb, but it was a slightly modified version of a script by someone else. The truth is, I know very little about JavaScript, but that only drove me to work harder toward my goal: to get rid of those stupid commercials.

After becoming familiar with IMDb’s code, all I pretty much did was look at various tutorials and scripts to see how to do what it was that I wanted. I noticed that if you aren’t running JavaScript for some reason, IMDb will play the trailer without the ad. All I had to do, then, was get rid of the iframe containing the ad and then delete the <noscript> tags that surrounded the code for the trailer. It took me a couple of hours, but I got a working version that I posted to userscripts.org. Later I found a problem: not all of IMDb’s trailers are preceded by ads, so my script was getting rid of legitimate trailers that had no commercials before them. Somehow I knew exactly how to fix that, so I quickly posted a revision. It’s all good now.

Here’s a link to the script’s page on userscripts.org. Or, if you want, here’s a direct link: IMDb No Ads Before Trailers. And to think I did this all by myself. I didn’t know I had it in me. I guess some basic programming knowledge and a slightly less than foggy understanding of JavaScript can go a long way.

If you find the comics page a little stale these days, check out some cool comics mashups at BetterComix. I seriously had to keep myself from laughing out loud at some of them.

Eighty people go into a Best Buy in New York dressed in blue polo shirts and khaki pants, just like the employees. Hilarity ensues.

Two years ago: “I hate when boring adults make web pages that they say were typed by their babies or pets.”

Señor pictures

Last week after returning from vacation, I got something in the mail. Apparently I was due to have my pictures taken for the yearbook. Next year’s yearbook. My senior yearbook.

At my school, it used to be that seniors had their pictures taken early in the school year, around September or October, just like the underclassmen, but since they had to dress up for the camera, they were scheduled to go in on the weekend rather than during class. That’s why I was wondering whether it was really necessary to have my picture taken so it would appear in a yearbook that I probably won’t see until, say, September 2007. (Instead of getting our yearbooks at the end of the school year, we get them at the beginning of the next year so they can go to press with photos of the spring sports, prom, and graduation.)

Anyway, this piece of mail told me that I was scheduled have my pictures taken at the school on Wednesday, June 14, at 11:15 A.M., that I should expect to be there for an hour, that the necessary clothing would be given (the tuxedo coat, shirt, and tie), and that the cost, to be paid at the time of sitting, was $0.00. It also said they’re not just taking yearbook photos, but other, non-yearbook photos as well, so it might be a good idea to bring some sort of prop (like your instrument if you’re in the band, a football if you’re on the football team, a calculator if you’re in the math club…). I didn’t want to, though. I just dressed up relatively nice and hoped that that would do. Oh, and I also made a pretty decent attempt to tame my hair. I can’t imagine having to do that every day.

I was expecting that there would be a lot of people there, but I figured that I would know at least some of them, so I would have someone to talk to while waiting in the long line to have my picture taken. So I got a ride to the school, went into the auditorium only to find… two people getting their pictures taken. Apparently the “appointments” were scheduled on an individual basis rather than making the A-L people go on this date and M-Z go on that date. I guess it’s a good idea, but it sort of made me feel as though I had been put on the spot. And, as it turned out, I did know Kyle, one of the people there, so we sort of said hi.

It wasn’t long before I had my pictures taken. First they did the non-yearbook ones. It was pretty crazy. Stand on this X, turn your body this way, turn your head that way, look another way, move that arm there, this one over here, do this with your hand, move your chin down, and down a little more, and smile. It was pretty annoying, but I guess they knew what they were doing. So after using about 11 different backdrops and 40,000 poses, it came time for me to take the yearbook photo. I got to put on the fancy outfit — well, maybe the top half of a tux isn’t exactly fancy. The guy taking those pictures had me move every which way also, but I guess it’s good that you have a choice of which photo you want to be published. I think you have a choice, anyway. I’d assume.

After that, I was free to go, but I had only been there for 20 minutes and it was going to be another 40 minutes before my ride came. So I just hung out outside the building when I saw Lacey. Her last name is slightly before mine in alphabetical order, so I knew that she was a little late. Then this other guy came who was after me in alphabetical order. I just sat in the back of the auditorium while they had their pictures taken. Then I talked to the other guy for a little while until my ride came. His name was Jordan, so that should be easy to remember. The whole experience was pretty strange. It was weird going to school during the summer and talking to acquaintances about how their summer was going rather than how it had gone. And, to tie things up in this little story, the photographers said I should be getting the proofs of the photos in two weeks. We’ll see how they turn out.

Here’s an interactive periodic table (Flash). So, what’s your favorite element?

Here’s a very large list of freeware utilities for all your computing needs.

One year ago: “Oh, and by the way, your carpets hate you too.”
Two years ago: “They also like crafts and hand-painted wooden things, but I digress.”

Cleaning up

Though it’s almost summer, to me it’s time for spring cleaning. I’ve been told in very stern terms to clean my room and to have a plan for undertaking the effort. All of my various drawers are full of junk, so the excess junk is sitting on top of things, on the floor, and in the closet. I figured that my plan would be to empty out the drawers first so that I could have a place to put the other various things. Yesterday I started on the smallest drawer: the one in my desk above where the chair goes. Throwing away things, setting stuff aside to be recycled, and figuring out which things to save or give away took about an hour. I spent a lot of that time sneezing. I should probably do some more cleaning today; after all, the contents of the drawer that I haven’t thrown away are now also on the floor along with a rather large garbage can.

I also decided it would be a good idea to clean out my inbox, which had 99 e-mails in it, going back 18 months. For a long time on my QWERTY/Dvorak Comparison page I requested readers to write a program that would implement my scoring system. Among my many e-mails I finally rounded up all of those programs, which had been sent to me as long ago as January 2004 and as recently as last week. So now all of those programs are available for download. I haven’t run any of them except the C++ version, which is ready to go as an .exe. It’s simple and quite nice. Since I posted that request for programs, I actually learned how to program, so I could probably achieve what I had in mind with Visual Basic (the only language I know that well). Nobody likes Visual Basic, though, and the resulting program would probably be big and slow.

I did a few minor things, including small additions and corrections to “Click Here” Around the World, changing some links on The Dvorak Keyboard and You, and updating Dvorak Anywhere for really the first time since I first posted the page in November 2002 (before The World of Stuff even existed). I had previously written, “For the ultimate in portability, you could save this web page on a disk and take it with you anywhere you might need it.” Dated, huh? I changed “a disk” to “an external hard drive” to reflect the changing times. (Ironically, there sits before me a floppy disk I used in 2003 that was unearthed in my room yesterday.) By the way, that’s the reason the design of Dvorak Anywhere remains so spare, with only one image. It’s so you can save it easily.

What’s next? I’ve also received a lot of images of coins to be included on flipacoin.net over the past two years. Luckily, I made it easy to add new coins to the site — if I recall correctly. (Thanks, PHP!) The biggest task, then, is cropping the coin images and converting them to GIF format. (I should probably change them to PNGs, but then I’d have to do that for all of the images on the site. Ugh.) I’ll fit in the coin images that are of sufficiently good quality. In fact, that site could use a little bit of a redesign as well. I think I just need to get rid of the horizontal rules and the tables.

In conclusion, now is a good time to check out the rest of the site if you didn’t even know there was a rest of the site.

Tropical Depression One is now Tropical Storm Alberto (soon to be Hurricane Alberto, probably), and we’re at the very edge of its grasp. It’s been overcast and windy today, just like yesterday. The sky is solid gray. Luckily, there’s no lightning like there was yesterday. It looks like this is going to continue for a few days at most, and by then, Alberto will have passed by.

I’ve commented on the signs they have in airports that prohibit “making any jokes or statements regarding bombs.” Ah, First Amendment, what have they done to you? Anyway, apparently some improv comedians took note of those signs too; they reacted by dressing up like cops and keeping watch over a No Joking Zone in a public square. Amazingly, some people (hopefully only a few) bought it.

The Pak-Lite is a little LED flashlight that consists of little more than the 9-volt battery that powers it. I imagine it would be pretty handy, but with their prices ranging as high as $29.99, they seem pretty expensive for tiny flashlights. Oh well; that doesn’t stop me from wanting one anyway. It is hurricane season, after all, and who knows when we may need them?

One year ago: “As we embarked, it got unbelievably rainy. It turns out that we were being hit (though not directly) by Tropical Storm/Depression Arlene.”
Two years ago: “Included are lots of big words and numbers named after dead guys.”