Stream of consciousness IV

It’s dark out. I’ve been sitting here at the computer for a while — in fact, pretty much all day. I’m on spring break right now, and I’m trying to enjoy it. Sure, I have lots of calculus homework to do, but I want to wait. I’m looking forward to staying up late over the following week to watch The Daily Show and Colbert, neither of which I’ve seen in months. What can I say? I go to bed early because I wake up early. I don’t want to wake up early, but I do. I woke up exceptionally early this morning — 6:30, to be in fact. I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t. I must have thought it was a Friday (when I wake up at 6:30 to go to work), but more likely the dust in my room was irritating my nose.

I haven’t really done much today at all, as I said. I did trick out Ubuntu quite a bit, though, by adding a new login window and splash screen. Some people may wonder why it matters, but I did it to go with the theme that I’ve made up, which is predominantly blue. I hope soon to get to the point that working at Ubuntu becomes transparent — i.e., I don’t use it, thinking, “Hey, this is Ubuntu instead of Windows, which is what I’m used to.” That probably won’t happen soon, though, because I read somewhere that it can take a year or more for someone to know the ins and outs of a particular operating system. Oh well. I’m enjoying the Linux experience.

And as my mind inevitably turns to the future, I’m thinking about what kind of laptop to get. Obviously, one that runs Linux, as the main reason (or one of the main reasons) I switched to Linux was for the cost (usually free). It’s my understanding that laptops with Linux preinstalled (they do exist, keep reading) are cheaper than equivalent laptops with Windows. Actually, they may not be, but with Windows you have to pay for a lot of the software, but on Linux it’s mostly free. Besides that, I really don’t know how the cost figures into things — or, rather, how things are figured into the cost. I need to do my homework when it comes to hardware and stuff. I just found out recently that this computer is, by the standards of March 31, 2007, slow and old.

Anyway, when researching laptops with Ubuntu pre-installed, System76 immediately emerged as the definitive leader. They apparently have great customer support and are determined to help you when you buy from them (or even when you don’t). Plus, they have guaranteed hardware support, which is a must when Linux hardware support is kind of patchy and unpredictable. Supposedly, System76 laptops come with Wi-Fi working out of the box, which is pretty neat because I think there’s a wireless Internet connection thingy in my house.

I want a laptop that won’t get outdated quickly and that looks slick. Obviously, affordability is important too. My friend Brian says he just got a laptop from System76, so I have to check it out for myself to see what I could be getting. He said he got the cheapest one, which does look pretty cheap. I’d like something a little nicer and sturdier with plenty of room on the screen to see stuff (a big screen, I mean). And I don’t want their expensive white one that looks like a Mac. I think a white laptop would just get dirty and ugly over time. Besides that, I don’t want people to think of me as an artsy, turtleneck-wearing, cappuccino-drinking Mac user if they see me with such a laptop. I am incapable of being that smug, and I know more about computers than that. (But I still don’t know a lot.)

Speaking of knowing or not knowing a lot about computers, my latest Greasemonkey user script is a masterpiece, and I anticipate it becoming a big hit. It’s gotten about 75 installs in the past 24 hours. It’s called Google Search Counter, and it is intended to satisfy an idle curiosity I’ve had for a long time. How many Google searches do I perform a day? In the 24 hours since I’ve been using the script, I’ve made 50 searches, and that’s just the main web search (which is all it counts, for now at least). I plan to have it count how many searches I do throughout the whole of next month. It should be interesting to see.

For nerds only: HTML Tags Illustrated.

What happen!

Yesterday at school there was a bomb threat. We had one about two years ago, and it was of course an empty threat, as they always are. But the thing is, you can’t just ignore it in case there actually is a bomb. With that logic in mind, we evacuated.

We went to the football field — the bleachers, to be specific. And all we could do was wait. That’s the thing about bomb threats — you just wait and try to keep cool. I mean, literally. It was a little after noon and it was pretty sweltering outside. But the whole thing was over sooner that I thought. In fact, only about a half an hour had elapsed. Actually, I don’t know how long it was, but it wasn’t too terribly long. We were able to get back to class, and the people who were in lunch at the time got extra lunch. Lucky them.

Today I was wondering, what if people phoned in bomb threats every day? They’d have to investigate everything each time. That would include searching the entire school and catching whoever made the call. Things would definitely be inconvenient, but they would just have to go through with the rigmarole every time. And they would probably install metal detectors and infringe upon our rights. It wouldn’t be fun.

Toward the end of the day today, there was another bomb threat. Yes, two bomb threats in two days. We went to the field as usual and again didn’t stay outside for very long, although in the intervening time it had gotten cloudy and started to drizzle lightly. I treated this one with less wariness. Maybe I’m building up a false sense of security, but two bomb threats in two days? Come on. If the rumors are to be believed, these bomb threats were called in by different people. I wonder if we’ll ever know the facts behind them.

I completely and utterly forgot that today and tomorrow are the days when we vote for prom king and queen. There are a lot of people vying for the top honors, including lots of underdogs in both categories, I understand. I believe my friends Andrew and Justin are both running for prom king, but my sister informs me that Justin wasn’t on the ballot. That saves me a lot of agony about deciding whom to vote for. My plan was to vote for one of them but not tell anybody who.

Now you can test to see if a web site is blocked by the “Great Firewall of China.” I’m pleased to say that The World of Stuff is not censored in China.

That’s me!

While I’ve been on vacation, it’s an all-Ask Jordon post coming your way.

Person! ^.^: What is the air speed velocity of an un-laiden swallow?

What do you mean, an African or a European swallow?

billybob jo: what are some other names for tornados

Cyclones. Tornadoes (with an “e”). Whirlwinds. Waterspouts, if they’re over water. And… gosh. Oh, twisters, like another movie that I never saw. That’s all I can think of without having to cheat and look up answers somewhere else. (And if “cyclone” is debatable, blame it on my old school, whose sports teams were called the Cyclones and whose actual mascot resembled a tornado.)

Peter: Question 1/2: How do you track visitors/hits nowadays?

AWStats, a log file analyzer. My web host provides it readily, so there was no complicated setup. It has its advantages and disadvantages compared to eXTReMe Tracking, which I used to use. The main difference is that the former tracks statistics related to your whole site, while the latter keeps tabs on individual pages. In any case, it’s nice to see your log files broken down and explained meaningfully.

Peter: Question 2/2: What do you think of lernu (en.lernu.net)

I never used lernu! much for learning Esperanto, but I still have it in the Esperanto folder of my bookmarks. I’m not really sure how good it is, although I believe it has a number of texts you can read, and you can get a definition of any word just by clicking on it. If I recall, it even breaks down words into their roots and affixes, which is quite awesome. I’ve heard some good things about the site in general, but I can’t say much about it myself.

Peter: Question 3/2: What do you believe are the major benefits of Ubuntu over Mac OSX or Windows XP?

Now that I’ve been using Ubuntu for over a month, I’ve been able to see some advantages and disadvantages when comparing it to Windows XP. (I can’t really compare OS X to anything because I have little experience with it.) Of course, it can be frustrating when you’re getting to learn a new operating system that does things a bit differently from what you’re used to.

But to answer your question, I’d say that the major benefit is the software updates that come frequently. Unlike some operating systems I could mention, you don’t wait five years for the next version, which doesn’t even turn out to be much better than the last. A new version comes every six months, and besides that, the various packages or components of the operating system and its programs are being updated all the time for stability, security, and of course, killer features. As long as you use the software that’s in the repositories, you’re pretty much guaranteed to have the latest, greatest versions available… as long as you install the updates, that is.

But with Ubuntu, you don’t have to be afraid to install updates, like with a certain other OS I could mention. That’s because Ubuntu is freely distributable and free of charge, so there is no licensing key to share illegally. As a result, Ubuntu doesn’t use its update mechanism to hound you about using unauthorized (unpaid-for) copies of its software. And as far as I can tell, Ubuntu doesn’t bludgeon you over the head by automatically installing the updates you’re trying to put off because they serve only to rat you out for copying someone’s licensing key.

In other words, I like Ubuntu because it is free (as in speech and also as in beer) and because it has an active developer base that’s constantly coming out with better versions of software (usually free also) that are made easily available for you.

Have a look at the stories behind lots of famous logos.

This is a fascinating read: A Brief History of the Calendar.

Getaway

Arriving at school this morning, I saw a flier for a missing person, and the name was familiar. That’s never good. I recognized her name and photo immediately. She’s in the class where I’m a teacher’s aide, and I had noticed that she had been absent two days in a row after having perfect attendance last quarter. Immediately, I heard that her friend was missing too. That’s a bit more comforting because it’s not likely that they were kidnapped together; instead, they probably ran off in a Thelma and Louise style. I’ve never seen that movie. It’ll be interesting to see how this develops. I hope they return home safely and soon.

I’m going on vacation this weekend. Yeah, I know, it’s weird. I don’t think I’ve ever been on vacation in the month of March. But my great-aunt’s condo in lovely Ft. Pierce is free for the weekend, so I guess my parents decided to spring for it. We’re going, and my grandparents are coming along too. It should be nice to escape the pressures of daily life. Not that daily life pressures me much on the weekends, but…

My friend Luke brought his guitar to school today so Tyler could change the strings. The three of us all have calculus class together with Mr. Gates. Before class, Luke and I were talking guitars, and Luke told me that Mr. Gates played classical guitar and sang. If you know Mr. Gates, you would find this fact very odd, as he is the most serious, straight-laced, professional teacher you will ever meet, and to many people, he doesn’t exactly seem like the kind of person who “has a life” (as they say). If you play the guitar, you are likely to have a life. (Though the converse of this statement is not true, the contrapositive is.)

So, before class started, Tyler was playing Luke’s guitar. When Mr. Gates came in, some people asked him if he knew how to play. He said that he used to play. Then we asked him if he wanted to play for us, and he said something along the lines of “Most definitely not.” He explained that he used to play the guitar a bit when he was our age, “but then the rigors of life set in.”

As we grow up, life becomes more rigorous. Actually, that doesn’t always hold true. It’s more like a bell curve, I think. But at this stage in the game of life, things are getting more complicated. I have quite a few hobbies and interests. Will I, like Mr. Gates, have to shelve them once I grow into adulthood? How can I avoid becoming a boring adult? How can I balance my emerging adult self and my inner child? I have no idea. I just hope that the conditions will be favorable for me to keep what’s near to me dear to me.

What if Mr. Gates continued playing the guitar? What would he be like today? I bet anything he’d be a more fun person, and maybe someone with a little more wonder and appreciation for everyday life. Which is not to say that he hasn’t got a lot of wonder and appreciation already, but… well, he’s… I don’t know. The intellectual musings break down here.

On YouTube: Here’s a Canadian news report about a revolutionary new phenomenon known as “Internet.”

Here are some famous sounds used in songs.

#792

A few months ago, my dog, who has never really been housebroken, started making a mess on the carpet in my dad’s “office” — where his computer and all his computer-related stuff are. (Now that he’s gotten Linux on his computer, I’ve made it my main computer also.) We no longer trust the dog enough to let him roam free while no one’s home, but we’ve had to put up with the unpleasant smell of the carpet. Since it was old anyway, my parents decided to get new carpet and repaint the room while they were at it. Over the course of a few days, we moved all the stuff to other parts of the house.

So, over the weekend, I was kind of disconnected from the world. I could have used the other computer, and that’s what I did end up doing for some things, but I want to immerse myself in Linux as much as possible, and that means making a Linux desktop my main computer before I go off into the world and get a laptop of my own. It’s good to be back, though, and I see that I haven’t missed much.

Actually, I spent much of my weekend (and last week) toiling away at the Greasemonkey user script I’m most proud of. Before I go any further, I should mention to the uninitiated that Greasemonkey is an extension for Firefox (you know, the browser) that allows you to run bits of JavaScript called “user scripts” that change the look and/or behavior of web pages. Anyway, my favorite user script out of the ones I’ve written is Myspace Ignore Bulletins, which allows you to set specific friends whose bulletins you want to blacklist or whitelist. I’ve spent much of the past week improving it, and I’m satisfied with the results.

The script grew out of a need, as all of mine do, and it was simple enough at first. I wanted to be some people’s friends on MySpace but didn’t want to read the zillions of stupid bulletins they would post every day. Rather than ignoring bulletins altogether, I decided to write a quick and dirty little script to hide the bulletins from users that I would specify in the code. Figuring that others could also benefit from it, I uploaded it to userscripts.org, a repository of, well, user scripts. For such a not-very-popular script, I got a lot of comments on it, some of which clamored for the ability to see only bulletins from the users you’d blocked or the ability to see only bulletins from users you specify.

Realizing that these people were asking for the same thing, I figured out how to integrate that functionality into the existing script so that you could toggle between blacklisting and whitelisting with just a click. That was last week. I uploaded the new version of the script and got some more downloads. But I wasn’t satisfied yet because you still had to tweak the code in order to add or remove friends from the list. So I came up with a visual interface for adding or removing friends right on the bulletin listing page. It’s nothing fancy — just a textbox with the user IDs in it — but I think it will help for people who don’t know enough JavaScript to alter a little bit of the code. As it happened, just before uploading the improved version, I got a comment from a user who liked the script but had to ask “the Unix nerd I married” for help with configuring it. This new version of MySpace Ignore Bulletins goes out to her and everyone else who wants to block MySpace bulletins from certain users or show bulletins only from certain users and doesn’t want or know how to edit the actual code.

So yeah. If you like MySpace bulletins but don’t like some of them (and you use Firefox), do check out the fruit of my labor, MySpace Ignore Bulletins.

Turns out that the annoying Nokia ringtone comes from an old Spanish guitar piece. Here’s a page with some more info and an excerpt from the original work.

Are you not a big fan of facts? Do you see reality as having a liberal bias? Then Conservapedia is the web site for you. It’s like Wikipedia, but instead of aiming for a neutral point of view, it aims to be biased! (See also: A (Conservative) People’s History of New York City.)

Exams, etc.

Mid-term exams were this week. I think I got an A on all of them except for Calculus. I’m not so sure about that one. The test was pretty hard, so a B sounds reasonable. That’s not so important, though. What’s more important is the grade for the quarter. I had had a B for most (if not all) of this quarter until this week, when a last-minute test and the grading of a huge assignment (which I did well on) caused my class grade to swell from an 86 to a 91. In a class where my grades often fluctuate (usually in a downward direction) by fractions of a percent, it was a surprising change. I ended up with an A after all.

Speaking of things that have to do with that, I got an e-mail from UF (the college I’m going to go to) about my application to their Honors Program. I had applied without really knowing what was involved, but I figured… well, I really don’t know what I was thinking. I was invited to apply because not everyone can apply. And yesterday I got an e-mail saying that I got in. Still, I want to know: What’s the catch? I know I’ll have to take at least one honors class per semester and maybe I can live in the honors dorm, but what’s the catch? I thought I heard that you have to do a research paper every month or something. Can anyone tell me the sucky things you have to do in the UF Honors Program, if there are any? Surely there must be some.

The non-lurkers of this blog might have already realized that the quesca (QUEstion Spam programs Can’t Answer) that has appeared in the comment form for over two years is now gone. That’s because I’ve found out about more ingenious solutions that don’t require people to consciously prove that they aren’t robots. The not-so-secret secret lies in the differences in which people and programs look at the comment form.

First of all, a program will look at a form and, if it has input fields with promising names, fill it out. A handy trick is to change at least one of the names and make sure that filling out that field is required. I changed name of the field “author” to “personWhosWritingThis” — it makes sense to a human but is probably meaningless to spambots who are looking for commonly used names like “author.” Having changed that field’s name, I created a new field called “author” which you won’t see (except in the unlikely case that your browser doesn’t recognize CSS). You won’t see it, but the robots will because it’s as clear as day in the code. So when the form is processed, it will check to see if the “author” field was filled out. If it was, the submission is blocked and no comment is posted.

Secondly, spambots tend to post comments more quickly than actual human beings, so if you set a speed limit for posting comments, you can catch submissions that are coming in at an inhuman rate. In the comment form, there is now a hidden field (not hidden with CSS like the previous example, but actually input type="hidden") that contains the Unix timestamp from the time the page loaded. When the form is submitted, the time is checked again. If the comment form submission comes only a few seconds after the page loaded, we can be fairly sure that it was a spambot at work. Again, the would-be commenter is greeted with an error message, and their comment is not processed. But just in case it was a real person, the error message tells non-robots to go back and submit the form again after a few moments.

Odds are, you won’t encounter either of these checks, and that’s just the idea. Together, they keep the spam at bay just as well as the quesca did, but with an added bonus of convenience for human readers. Having to prove that you’re human whenever you submit a form is a constant reminder that our future in the War on Spam is bleak. It will probably be a never-ending battle, but at least I have the upper hand this time. (And if you’re interested in learning how to do this for your own blog, this article has more detailed instructions. Or, if you want, I could show you my code.)

It seems that not many people understand DRM. Here’s How to Explain DRM to Your Dad.

On Google Video: Some guys from the British TV show Top Gear go to America and infuriate some rednecks.

Thought I’d something more to say

Ah yes, Daylight Saving Time has kicked in, and earlier than usual to boot. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: I don’t think it’s worth all the inconvenience. If it was introduced to help farmers, why don’t they just change the time they wake up? And does it really save energy? It doesn’t seem like it, especially because we have all sorts of electronic devices that run twenty-four hours a day (like the TVs in many people’s houses). All it really seems to do is take away an hour of sleep from millions of people (many of whom, I’m sure, are still feeling the effect) and then give it back to them in October. Why bother with all the hassle?

Speaking of clocks jumping around, there’s apparently been a problem with my dad’s computer ever since he installed Ubuntu Linux alongside Windows last month. It’s a minor problem, but an annoying one: the system clock would be five hours ahead of the actual time (now four since we’re on DST). Obviously, it’s easy to change the time settings in Windows and declare “Mission Accomplished,” but then if you log into Ubuntu, the time is then five (now four) hours behind what it should be. Obviously this has to do with one of the systems failing to take into account the difference between the CPU time (local time) and UTC (or taking it into account twice). However, I couldn’t fix it until I asked for help on the Ubuntu Forums, where I got the answer. After setting Ubuntu’s clock to display the right time, I entered the following command in the terminal:

and changed UTC=yes to UTC=no. Then Windows and Ubuntu both displayed the proper local time.

So, how is that Linux thingy going, anyway? Pretty well, I have to say. It’s a good chance to have a desktop that’s actually organized. My Windows desktop is cluttered with shortcuts that I can’t bring myself to touch. Important folders are strewn about all over the place. It’s a mess. By switching to an entirely different OS, I’ve given myself a chance to start anew and make things organized. My important folders are now in the /home folder, where they’re easily accessed. My desktop has nothing on it; instead I’ve placed launchers (shortcuts) for frequently used programs onto the GNOME Panel (taskbar). (That said, does anyone know of a good desktop widget engine for GNOME that actually has a decent variety of widgets that are actively maintained and easy to install? Thought not.)

I’ve also started to delve into different themes to change the look of the OS. Ubuntu comes with quite a few themes, which, it turns out, consist of different parts that you can mix and match. Themes (or parts of themes) are easy to download and use. I use the controls from Clearlooks (a pleasant blue), the window border of Chiro (nice and shiny), and the icons from Human (Ubuntu’s default theme). Configuring systemwide fonts is a separate affair, but it’s not difficult to do at all. I decided to change the default font for applications to one that’s narrower; the space wasted by Ubuntu’s wide default font was getting to me, and I’m glad that I can change it easily.

Now available for download on microsoft.com: the Blue Screen of Death screen saver! Sorry, it’s for Windows only.

From Wikipedia: British words not widely used in the US and vice versa.

We didn’t start the fire

This semester, I have Mr. Mumtaz for two of my classes. These days, good old Room 319 has been really cold, and he’s been powerless to stop it. When the students complain about how cold it is, he has his line ready: “Because I’m the coolest teacher.” Incidentally, he uses a similar reply for when the classroom is too hot: “Because I’m the hottest teacher.” It makes me want to say, “Your classroom is really smelly,” so he can say that he’s the smelliest teacher.

Yesterday, early in the morning, the room was particularly cold, so I had my opportunity to use the joke on him as he sent me to his car to get his jacket. He didn’t fall for my bait, but he laughed (after I assured him that I was kidding about the room smelling bad). When I headed back to class from the parking lot, I did notice that it smelled kind of strange, and I mentioned it to Mr. Mumtaz (“It does smell kind of funny here after all”), but I didn’t think much of it after that.

About fifteen minutes later, as the school’s morning TV-type show was about to start, a school administrator came on the PA and announced a Code Orange — a general evacuation. It was not a drill, he said. Of course, I got very nervous. What could happen that would cause an evacuation? Obviously, if it wasn’t some kind of bomb threat (a Code Black), it would have to be a gas leak or something. (I had never even heard of the phenomenon known as the gas leak until going to a public school. Even now, the idea seems strange and foreign to me. But I did know that if it were a gas leak, things would not be pretty.)

We went to the football field as the emergency plans dictate. “We” meaning the entire school. Obviously, this took quite a while, and some people ended up getting separated from their classes. Each class is supposed to sit together on the bleachers, and the teachers are supposed to see to it that none of their students are missing. After a while of sitting around, the few students who had gone in separate directions returned to the fold. I was still pretty nervous because it’s never good when you have to evacuate a building. I wondered if they were going to tell us what it was all about. Eventually, they did.

Apparently, a teacher had smelled smoke, and at some point the decision was made to evacuate the whole building. The fire department came to check it out. They declared it was due to faulty wiring. Not long after the announcement, they declared Room 322 and the rest of the building to be safe. After we got back to the building, I saw exactly how close to this Room 322 I had been — I had actually been walking past it when I smelled something funny just about fifteen minutes before the Code Orange was given.

What would the Interstate Highway System look like if you drew it highly stylized like a subway map? Have a look and see for yourself.

Can’t decide where to go for lunch? Enter your US zip code and spin the Wheel of Food!

A legacy

On Thursday, during first period, when I’m a TA in Mr. Mumtaz’s class, Mr. Mumtaz received a visit from Mr. King, an assistant principal. Mr. King wanted to have maps made of the school auditorium and the gym so that people would know where the exits are, and so the authorities would know how to get in and stuff. I guess he figured it would be a good task for Mr. Mumtaz, a computer teacher who would have access to all kinds of advanced computer drawing tools for the latest in floor-plan-rendering technology.

Mr. Mumtaz said that he had the two best people for the job: me and Joe, another TA. So, early in the morning, the four of us set about to make some rough sketches of the gym and the auditorium. In the process of going around and finding the exits, Mr. King mentioned how audiences in either facility all tend to leave through a single exit, leading to a human traffic jam. So we went over possible ways to divide the sections of the seats so that an equal number of people would be assigned each exit. This would also come in handy in case of a “situation.” You have to consider these things when you’re an assistant-principal-type, you know.

When we got back to class, Joe and I opened up Microsoft Visio and got to work. Visio is a program to make diagrams and things. Mr. Mumtaz uses it for flowcharting in the programming classes, and, fortunately, we don’t have to do a lot of that. So neither of us was really familiar with the program, but we stumbled through it — actually, I should say Joe stumbled through it as he did most of the drawing — and managed to make something that looked good. I came up with color-coordinating the various sections and their respective exits, as well as drawing the arrows between.

Yesterday, we finished, and Mr. King came in to have a look. He was very impressed, and surprisingly, he had only a few minor suggestions to make, which I implemented after he left. (I also hid our initials in each picture, but they might be too small to be seen in print.) Soon, our diagrams will be laminated and posted in the gym and the auditorium, and we’ll have left our mark on the school. It’s an obscure mark, to be sure, but it’s nice to know that I’ll have helped out the school in a small way.

I’m really glad I’m lazy about upgrading WordPress, which powers this blog. Version 2.1 came out recently, and I decided to wait for the bugfixes before upgrading from 2.0.4. Upgrading WordPress is a pretty painful process. It’s like pulling out all of your own teeth except two and putting in new ones by yourself with only an instruction manual as a guide. That’s the best analogy I can think of. But anyway, I even held off on upgrading to 2.1.1, and I’m glad I did: after a few days, WordPress developers had realized that a cracker had inserted malicious code into the files for that version. They quickly made version 2.1.2, which removes the added code, available.

How do you spell “definitely”? D-E-F-I-N-I-T-E-L-Y.

This is probably the worst car wreck I’ve ever seen (a picture of). Keep in mind that that’s just one car. It appears that only the driver’s seat, the dash, and the driver’s-side doors were left intact — luckily for the driver, who was unharmed.

In which little answering is actually accomplished

The Ask Jordon mailbag has been getting heavy over the past few weeks, so let’s bust it open and see what we’ve got. It’s time for an Ask Jordon Extravaganza.

Johnathan: Why did britney Spears shave her head bald?

This question arrived a few weeks ago, almost immediately after the big story broke. In fact, I got this e-mail even before my sister, who actually cares about what happens to famous people, found out that Britney Spears had shorn her locks. But, to answer your question, Jonathan, I’d say the answer is either “For attention” or “Who cares?”

Natasha Dean: Will i ever go out with jordan thundow

Another interesting one, considering this site already has a Natasha/Jordon thing going on. Nevertheless, this user comes from the UK, so it’s not my friend Natasha in some clever disguise.

Well, other Natasha, I don’t know this Jordan Thundow you speak of, so I can’t say for sure, but if you want a guy to go out with you, my best advice is to be direct. The reason my best advice sounds really bad and vague is because I have no experience in this field. Anyway, glad I could help. Next.

Wilhelm T. Grate: What can you tell me about paint thinner and thinning paint and whatnot?

Well, my friend Luke, I know very little about thinning paint. I assume you’d want to thin paint in order to chip it off or something, and in order to do that, it would be good to use paint thinner because you can be fairly certain that it is actually for thinning paint. Paint thinner is highly flammable, and it probably smells bad. That’s all I can tell you.

Peter: Three questions. Get ready. PS: This is not a question.

Okay.

Peter: Will you continue blogging when you’re in college?

As far as I can tell, yes. Just as I blogged to inform and entertain readers about the strange new experiences of high school almost four years ago, I think it’ll be fun and interesting to keep it up as I undertake the biggest thing that will ever have happened to me in my whole entire life.

Peter: C^i vi povias korekti la mia mala demando en Esperanto?

Jes, certe. Oni dirus “Ĉu vi povas ĝustigi mian malbonan demandon en Esperanto?” Vidu, ke mi uzis la akuzativon. Estas ofta eraro forlasi ĝin, sed ne forgesu. Fakte, post iom da tempo, vi verŝajne memoros bone, kaj ne plaĉos al vi la sono de ĝia misuzo.

Peter: Can you tell me what the other question I was going to ask you, because I forgot?

No, I don’t know what it was. Do you remember it now?

Wilhelm T. Grate: Is the Game of Life an application of fuzzy logic or just regular logic?

Well, Luke, it seems to be smooth rather than fuzzy, so I’d say it’s just regular type. Incidentally, Xlife blows my implementation of Life out of the water.

Political interference in science is not a good thing. Here’s an A to Z guide of examples of this phenomenon.

One of those cheesy articles that might actually be helpful: 10 Things You Shouldn’t Buy New.