liek, omgz, only 74 days til my birthday!!!

This is how the world works:

You are born. You go to school. You move away and go to school some more. You get married and maybe have kids. You work for a few decades and then you die.

That’s just the way things happen. It doesn’t matter if you want to do it, or if you want to skip or rearrange the steps. As the robots say, “YOU HAVE TO GO TO COL-LEGE.” (Robots know that syllables break at double letters.) It may seem like I’m trivializing the whole thing (going to college, I mean), but it’s anything but trivial to me. Over the past few days or weeks — I don’t know — I’ve become increasingly and consumingly worried about money. I’m trying not to spend any money from now until indefinitely. It’s all going into the bank, where I can’t touch it until I’m 18 (a few months from now). College costs a hell of a lot of money. I’m fortunate to be smart and poor enough to have tuition paid for, but more basic needs such as food and shelter are still up to me.

I’ve been consumed by thoughts of living in college an an aglet budget. An aglet is the little thing on the end of a shoestring that holds it together. And here I find myself being (arguably) funny again, after having spent much of the day moping. I guess this is really why I keep blogging. Anyway, if you can still take me seriously, I more and more frequently see scenes of the college life that awaits me: sharing a bedroom with a stranger, dining at Taco Bell, probably having to juggle school and a job, walking down sidewalks to get from place to place, and maybe hitching the bus — which, I think, is free for students. It won’t get me to my aunt in Columbia County, though.

It really is strange. I live a comfortable life, and I don’t have to worry about much. But soon, I will, so I’m getting an early start. I would probably be much more comfortable with this whole thing if I knew what I was going to do with my life. Everyone I know either has great career goals or is at least going to college in exotic and interesting places, but I have neither of those things, and they’re in no position to be able to sympathize. Having career goals might even give me motivation to go to college. But as things are, I don’t want to go because it seems like some huge, life-altering, pocket-draining thing I just have to do for no reason. And anyway, no subject in school has ever struck me as being particularly interesting, which means that I’ll probably resign myself to a job that I don’t care about and live out my days toiling away in misery.

I just wish I had someone to love and understand me. It’s what I’ve always wanted, but it’s times like this that I could really use it the most.

Stop laughing. I’m sad, okay?

Nara Dreamland was a theme park in Japan that was like a rip-off of Disneyland. Some parts were pretty similar, aside from the fact that nobody went there and it looked abandoned.

Another do-nothing day

Grad Bash was fun, and I actually had a chance to do it again… sort of. My physics teacher had scheduled a completely non-educational trip to Islands of Adventure for Thursday. That’s one of the two parks at Universal Orlando, which is where I went for Grad Bash last weekend. I didn’t really want to go on the physics trip, which, unlike Grad Bash, was open to any student who wanted to go. “but justin or whutevr youre name is,” some people said, “y dont u wan’t to go on the trip its gonna b alot of fun im going they’re 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111one” I didn’t want to go for several reasons, the main one being that I had just been there and had pretty much done all I wanted to do. I didn’t want to have to wake up extra-early and sit on a bus for hours and hours and hours; I was tired of that. Another factor was money. Last and least, I didn’t want to miss a whole day of school because I’m going for four years of perfect attendance.

There were other field trips going on Thursday. The marine biology classes were going to the Miami Seaquarium (not pronounced “sea-aquarium”), and I believe other students were free to go along. An American government class was going to Pompano Beach’s city hall. That left… not a lot of people. It seemed like half the people were gone. It was a really pointless day because most teachers don’t bother trying to get things done if half of the class isn’t there. My physics teacher left K’NEX for us to make rollercoasters with; we had been studying roller coaster physics the day before. Of course, nobody actually made a roller coaster. Andrew and I made a bridge, while Nick and Devin made a Ferris wheel. Ivan made a robot. Oh, that crazy Ivan.

Today was the drumline competition that our school hosted. I had been looking forward to hearing Nick, Mark, and the rest of our band’s drumline play, but I wasn’t really keen on sitting outside in the sun for four hours. When I got there this afternoon, there was virtually nobody to be found besides the drumline themselves. None of the other schools had shown up, and there wasn’t much of an audience either. Eventually, out of the three or four who were supposed to show, one (our rivals, Blanche Ely High) actually came. So the competition began in the hot sun. The Ely drumline played, and then the Pompano drumline played. That was round one. After two more rounds, it became clear that neither school had a big advantage over the other. Ely had several more people, so they had a better sound. Pompano had some interesting theatrics, such as people playing each other’s drums while lying on the ground.

After a short while, the judges judged that Pompano had the better drumline. We beat the 50-50 odds to become number one. But apparently there’s this rule that if the school that hosts the competition wins, the second-place school gets the actual prize. Hence, the prize went to Ely. We did get a plaque, though, and there were some festivities on the field, with the drumline doing some victory… drumming. They were really getting into it, and the small audience had now moved from the bleachers to the field, where they helped the drumline enjoy their bittersweet victory. After a while, several of the Ely drummers came up and asked if they could join in. Before you knew it, the rival drumlines were in a circle, Tornado and Tiger next to each other, playing together in harmony (inasmuch as drum beats can be harmonic). There’s probably a nice moral to this story, but I can’t be bothered with finding out what it is.

Here’s a visual comparison of all known bodies in the solar system larger than 200 miles in diameter. The image is about 1 MB in size.

Grad Bash

On Saturday, I went to Grad Bash. If you don’t know what Grad Bash is, think of it as Grad Nite, but at Universal Studios. If you don’t know what Grad Nite is, it’s a nite where they open Disney(land | World) to all the grads. It seems that most schools go to Grad Nite, but Universal has offered Grad Bash as an alternative. If you don’t know what Universal Studios is, it’s a theme park. Actually, Grad Nite occurs in both theme parks at the Universal Orlando Resort, of which one is Universal Studios. But it’s common to refer to both of them as “Universal Studios,” considering that Islands of Adventure, the other park, opened only recently, and so they didn’t need to have a vague name that would encompass both parks and whatever else they have on site. I don’t know about hotels. Disney World is like a sovereign nation, what with all its territory, but Universal is smack in the middle of Orlando, so it doesn’t have that much land. Dueling Dragons is right next to a gas station and across the street from a school, for crying out loud. But anyway…

I woke up at 6:00 in the morning on Saturday, I guess in anticipation of going on the trip. Several of my friends were going to be there, so I knew I would have a pretty good time. The bus left from school a little after 1:00 in the afternoon. The ride was pretty long, but the conversation made it go by faster. We made a rest stop on one of the uniform rest stops they have on Florida’s Turnpike, and for a moment, while everybody I was with had gone off in different directions, I walked about, looking for a familiar face in the crowd of weary travelers. And then I saw Gisela from the office, and she saw me. It was a very weird encounter, considering that we were hours away from South Florida and had been traveling in different directions. She said that she was getting back from a meeting that had kept her from being in the office the day before and that another familiar face from work was with her.

After what seemed like forever, we were finally at Universal. After what seemed like slightly less than forever but still a long time, we parked. It was very odd that they didn’t follow Disney’s lead by trying very hard to hide the inner workings of the park from us. We parked in a lot behind some of the main attractions at Universal Studios. I could see the New York facade from the side. We then were guided toward what seemed to be a warehouse and had to walk through metal detectors. It seemed a bit excessive, but since the recent shooting at Virginia Tech, everyone wants to kill everybody everywhere. Or, at least, that’s what I’ve been led to believe.

We were greeted by a party. That’s right: a Grad Bash pre-party. I had heard about this pre-party, and I wasn’t sure what it was going to be like. They had closed off the entire park except for a small section, probably to create the illusion that the place was really crowded. There was a stage set up and some no-name nobody singing other people’s hip-hop hits. There were people on stilts throwing out garish necklaces like it was Mardi Gras. (That was the theme, I think.) But the best good part was the free food. There were hamburgers, hot dogs, and macaroni and cheese free for the taking, not to mention chips and soda. I should add that the mac and cheese was actually good. As for the hamburgers, eh. But they had a fine selection of condiments.

By this time, I had formed a group that would remain unchanging. The people I hung out with were Justin, Megan, Michelle, Val, Baba, Kerliza, and Jennifer. It was fitting that we stuck together for Grad Bash because I had known all of them since, at the latest, the beginning of 10th grade… except for one person who I was never terribly familiar with. I’ll let you guess who!

Anyway, when they let everyone loose throughout Universal Studios, we started to go on the rides. We hit upon most of the favorites while noting that many of the rides involve some perfectly ordinary excursion that goes terribly awry and eventually involves ferocious beasts, explosions, and/or a 100-foot drop. While it’s fun to go on those rides, it gets kind of annoying when every ride follows this formula. One ride that I remember as being particularly awesome was the Back to the Future ride. Unfortunately, during my pre-trip Wikipedia researching, I found out that the ride, which had been open since 1991, closed a scant three weeks before our visit. The De Lorean, along with the train from the third movie, were on display, and the De Lorean looked pretty fake. It looked like the lettering on the tires was painted on. I’m glad I didn’t realize that when I was younger, or it would have spoiled the magic. Justin and I, however, were terribly upset about seeing the ride closed.

The great thing about Grad Bash is that you get to wander freely between both Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. Normally, this isn’t possible, but they opened up a passageway between the parks (and closed the regular entrances/exits) so that it would be. At first, the passageway consisted of a series of gates, which were opened in stages. At the first gate, a huge crowd of people had formed, waiting to get to Islands. After the gate opened, there was a stampede, during which my group struggled to stay together. The same thing happened with the other gates. But eventually, we were in, and we found that this hidden passageway opened right into Seuss Landing, the Dr. Seuss-themed section of Islands of Adventure. Everybody stampeded through there too. We went right to Dueling Dragons, the twin roller coasters that are so popular that there’s room for a really, really long line. It’s that popular.

I had noticed on the way in that Dueling Dragons is at the edge of the whole place, and is in fact bordering a gas station, as I mentioned. I was also the one to notice that there is a high school across the street from the roller coaster. It turns out that it has an extensive Wikipedia article, which mentions that “[s]tudents can actually hear screaming roller coaster riders through the windows of some of the classrooms on campus.” I wondered how many students would play hooky to go across the street. Probably not many because tickets might be expensive, but it would be worth it. And that’s what I thought as I was riding the roller coaster. It’s really cool. I’m not sure which of the two tracks I prefer. I like them both. They are roller coasters, after all. You can’t be too picky with them.

As for the other rides, I won’t bore you much with the details because I’d already been on all of them except one. (The exception was One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. It’s like the Dumbo ride at Disney. What? When everyone in the park is your age, and other people are riding that ride, it’s okay.) Oh, and I could also mention in this short paragraph that My Chemical Romance was playing at Grad Bash. I don’t listen to them, and I didn’t decide to start right then.

After a while of going around on rides and taking some time out to eat (I had Dippin’ Dots for the first time — yeah, I know, I’m a big loser), it was getting to be around 1:00 in the morning, which was when, we believed, we would have to meet by the Hulk (the other roller coaster) and leave. So we waited, and we waited, and we waited. We could have gone on the Hulk at this point, but I didn’t really feel like it because I was feeling both hungry and full at the same time. It’s an odd feeling. Anyway, we soon (or, rather, not soon) found out that we would instead be meeting at 2:00, so we remained sitting on the bridge that the roller coaster goes under while people walked by.

Eventually, we saw a crowd gathering, and it was getting close to 2:00, so we went there to find some people from our class. As we left through yet another random gate, we saw that the various schools’ buses were placed in impromptu sections: A, B, C, and D. My school’s buses were in section D. We soon discovered that the progression from section to section was linear, so D was the last. I thought it would be funny if our bus was the very last one in the last section. It was, and it wasn’t very funny. We were tired and had to walk a long way.

We got back on the bus. It took off, they turned off the lights, and we fell asleep. Actually, I just rested. Resting is where you close your eyes but don’t fall unconscious, so it happens in real time and seems agonizingly slow. Meanwhile, you can hear everything that’s going on, and you “wake up” feeling somewhat, but not completely, rested. I rested until we got to a rest stop, the irony of which I now realize. It was about 4:30, and I called home to let my parents know we would be getting back to school a little later than the planned time of 5:00. I was less able to rest during the second part of the trip home, and toward the very end, I just kept my eyes open to see what everything looked like at 5:30 in the morning. We got back to school at 6:00 — 24 hours after I had last slept.

I got home, had a little bit to eat, and did something very unusual: I slept. I just can’t sleep unless it’s nighttime — I can’t even remember the last time I had a nap — but I had to make an exception in this case. I slept for two hours and continued to have half-an-hour to two-hour naps till the early afternoon. I was really tired, but it was worth it.

Remember Mozilla’s successful community-driven campaign to get a Firefox ad printed in the New York Times? A more ambitious project called Tux 500 is being mounted by a group of Linux users; their goal is to have a Linux-sponsored car at the Indianapolis 500. They say: “If less than 1% of the Linux community donates $1, this will happen… will you do your part?” I’m willing to do my part, and I figured that others would too if only they knew about it. With that in mind, I submitted the story to Slashdot, but apparently it’s not going to get posted. It’s a shame, though. I hope it gets heavily Dugg. They want to raise at least $350,000 by May 21.

Gloomy soul? Not really

So senior week is over. For “Opposite Day” on Wednesday, I actually dressed emo. For this once-in-a-lifetime stunt, I borrowed my sister’s shirt, pins, and wristband. She’s not emo, but she probably could be if she wanted I also wore eyeliner. Though this picture doesn’t do it justice, the effect was priceless. (As you can see, we have to wear ID badges for security blah blah blah. If I were a real emo kid, I just wouldn’t have worn it. Actually, I wouldn’t have worn it if I were most anyone else. But I am me.)

I got some interesting reactions. Some people said that I had the look for being emo and should dress like that more often. Others said I never should look like that again. Personally, I don’t think it was really comfortable. I’m not really one to conform to a particular style; I just wear whatever’s comfortable, and I don’t really see the point in wearing pins and black clothes all the time. But it was worth it to make my friend Gilbert’s photoshopped emo Jordon picture a reality:

Other people did some crazy stuff that day. Ed (yes, that Ed) dressed as a farmer. Andrew, who’s usually into metal and stuff, wore a suit and fedora. Tyler wore a red dress, and actually didn’t get in trouble. It was definitely my favorite day of Senior Week, although the next day was interesting. You were supposed to dress up as a character from a cartoon, although some people dressed as non-cartoon characters. For example, Justin, Mark, and I dressed as our characters from Beowulf: The Movie and Beowulf 2: This Time It’s Personal.

I’ve been eagerly anticipating the new version of Ubuntu, which came out yesterday. I started upgrading immediately, and it really was quite simple. The downloading of the files was estimated to take a few hours, which was fine by me, but what I hadn’t counted on was that about a million people were going to be downloading those files at the same time. The downloading continued late into the night, and the process still wasn’t done this morning because a dialog box had come up and paused the upgrade process. So I let it finish, but I had to leave for work before it could finish. When I got back home this afternoon, there was another dialog box waiting for me, so I clicked it, and the upgrade was soon finished — all I had to do was reboot.

So, yeah, it took about 23 hours, but that’s only because the server was hammered and because I couldn’t supervise the computer during that whole time. If I could do it again, I would have started early on a weekend morning and monitored it periodically throughout the day. Then it would have gone faster. But I’m pleased to say that apparently nothing got borked up in the upgrade process, so things have been smooth. The new feature I’m enjoying the most are the desktop effects, where windows wobble when you move them, and your virtual desktops appear on a cube. I’m just testing it out, and if I don’t like them, I’ll turn them off. But it was very handy that Ubuntu automatically downloaded the necessary drivers to make the 3D acceleration stuff work. 15 cool points to Ubuntu. Here’s a video (not by me) of these effects in action.

At this point I’d like to mention that my friend Luke can provide those of you in South Florida with CDs of many Linux distributions, including the new Ubuntu 7.04, for a small fee or a blank CD-R. Just leave a comment, and he’ll probably read it and hook you up. Everybody say “Thanks, Luke!”

I’m really excited because tomorrow is Grad Bash, which is like Grad Nite but at Universal Studios. SOME of my friends didn’t want to go, but I’m glad some of them did because I’m sure we’ll have an awesome time. We leave tomorrow afternoon and come back early Sunday morning.

Corey Andrew of Jersey City, New Jersey, decided to write to Army recruiter Sgt. Marcia Ramode about joining the Army. She welcomed his application until she found out that he was gay. It turned out that he was just trying to see what kind of reaction he would get simply by revealing to a military recruiter that he was gay. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a good one. Hey, come on, guys. This is, what, 2007, and we’re still treating people like this?

Senior week

That’s right, it’s senior week here at Pompano Beach High School. We’ve been here for four years, and this is what we’ve all been waiting for: to have a week named after us. This week, each day has a sort of theme, and the thing is that only the seniors participate. Well, yesterday was an exception to the rule because each class was supposed to wear its color for a “Spirit Day.” The senior class’s color is traditionally gold, which is pretty lame because nobody has gold (or yellow) clothes. Well, there’s a senior class t-shirt that’s gold, but I didn’t buy one because when they listed the seniors’ names on the back, they grossly misspelled my name. Seriously, it was ineffably and unforgivably misspelled. I’d like to have a word with the genius who was responsible for that one.

Today was College Day, where the seniors were supposed to “rep” their future colleges, as it were. I reluctantly wore the subtler of my two UF shirts. As I’ve said in the past, I don’t like participating in any unnecessary us-and-them type activities that only create hostility between people. Specifically, I don’t like being divisive by bragging about what college I’m going to give lots and lots of money to. (Note: this opinion will change, possibly soon. I just know it.)

What’s in store for the rest of the week? Tomorrow is Opposite Day… NOT! Actually, it is. Tomorrow is Opposite Day, when you’re encouraged to wear the opposite of the usual style. I think I’m actually going to do this one. I expect that a lot of people aren’t, though, because why would you have clothes in a style opposite of what you always wear? Most people would have to borrow clothes, which is what I’m doing. Then there are a few people who frequently wear a number of different styles. Those are people for whom Opposite Day doesn’t seem to apply.

Finally, on Thursday, you’re supposed to dress up like a cartoon character. No thanks.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot what senior week is all about. It leads up to Grad Bash at Universal Studios. And guess who actually decided to go? That’s right: me. It’s the kind of thing that a lot of my friends don’t care about, but fortunately, some of them do, or else I’d have no one to hang out with. It should be fun. We Floridians shouldn’t take the proximity of world-class theme parks for granted. I can’t imagine a school from, say, the Midwest, taking a bus ride to Universal. Well, I guess they have theme parks up there, so they probably go to those. Yeah.

If in doubt, Ask Jordon.

Peter: Can you tell me what my first comment was? And while you’re at it, what is my first Ask Jordon question? I’m curious.

Your first comment was on July 30, 2005. Your first Ask Jordon question was answered on January 13, 2006: “How did you get the code for http://www.theworldofstuff.com/blah? Is it a PHP version of Wpoison?”

Kayley: why cant people get along, especially GIRLS???

I tend to get along with almost everybody, and I’d say it’s because I’m pretty laid back and quiet, so I don’t really have much of a chance to disagree fiercely with anyone on anything. If I think someone’s annoying, I won’t tell them so, but I’ll just try to avoid them. I’d imagine that girls are more social than guys in general, so when something happens, they don’t try to work around it or stay cool, but they get confrontational trying to defend themselves. This is all speculation, of course. I could be wrong.

Tux: What do you plan on doing on April 19th?

Oh, I’ll tell you, anonymous 64-bit Linux user. Since I switched from Windows to Ubuntu Linux two months ago, I’ve been anticipating the upcoming release of Ubuntu 7.04, codenamed “Feisty Fawn,” which is due out on Thursday, April 19.

Among the new features in Feisty are better support for wireless networking (which will undoubtedly make my future Ubuntu laptop experiences easier), easy installation of proprietary codecs like MP3 (which should be handy if I come across some of the lesser-used media formats), and a few advanced desktop effects. The effects are from a program called Compiz, which basically allows you use your graphics card to its fullest potential by introducing realistic 3D effects to your desktop. I understand it’s not easy for n00bs like me to install, which is why I’ve shied away from it. (That, and this computer is kind of slow.) With Feisty, I’ll be able to try out a few of the effects just by clicking a checkbox, and if I don’t like them or they break my computer, I can turn them off easily too.

Upgrading to Feisty will be easy. It will appear as a software update, just like the other updates I get once in a while. I think all I’ll have to do is click to install it. Try upgrading to Vista that simply.

A photo gallery from Wired: The Evolution of the Computer Mouse.

Then and now

Sometimes I close my eyes and it’s 2003 again. The occupation of Iraq has begun. Wesley Clark and Howard Dean are running for president. “Weblogs” are gaining steam, and I’m writing my thoughts in The World of Stuff. The browser wars have come to an end. The Marlins are once again world champs. I am in 9th grade at Pompano Beach High School. It’s my first semester. My classes are Business Systems and Technology, Algebra I Honors, Drawing I, and Personal Fitness/Team Sports. I’m getting used to writing my name in the “sky” of the paper. I am crushing. More often than not, I eat lunch by myself. I always choose the line on the left. The place is falling apart. They’re painting the new building, and it’s almost done.

I open my eyes and it’s 2007. We’re in Iraq for the long haul. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are running for president. Blogs are a part of life, and I’m writing my thoughts in The World of Stuff. The browser wars are in full swing. I can’t remember who won the World Series last year. I am in 12th grade at Pompano Beach High School. It’s my last semester. My classes are “Research” (being a TA), AP Calculus BC, Physics Honors, and Programming III Honors. I can’t imagine writing my name on the first line. There’s no hope in sight. I eat lunch with Gilbert and his girlfriend. I always choose the third line from the left. The place has been broken in. The old campus is the new parking lot.

It’s interesting to see how far I’ve come and what has stayed the same. I’m in for a big surprise later this year when everything will change.

I had my first real experience with Windows Vista the other day, and I must say, I’m not very impressed. My dad got a new computer for my grandparents, who are still using Windows 98. Windows 98! They don’t even make spyware for Windows 98 anymore. My grandparents have had to make do with previous generations of WeatherBug and who knows what else whenever they middle click. Anyway, this new computer has Vista installed on it. Actually, you have to sit through the installation yourself. It took about an hour, during which time it BSoD‘d.

Eventually it was up, and, as you can expect, there was lots of “circusware” competing for the user’s attention. Mainly it was anti-virus stuff and other things you need to have. Adding to the clutter was the realistic-looking clock and calendar that sit on the desktop, a real perk for those who can’t get enough clocks and calendars on their desktop and taskbar. Not to mention the gallery of ever-changing stock photos. So I thought I’d try out Solitaire, which I had heard was revamped. It’s true; the actually redesigned the cards and everything, apparently taking a cue from solitaire programs like AisleRiot (which Linux users will be familiar with) by adding statistics, hints, and automatically flipping over a card when you move the card in front of it somewhere else.

So, what’s new with Vista? There are some attempts at security; for example, when you do something important, it’ll ask you to confirm it, which I suppose is a step in the right direction, but let’s see how quickly it’s compromised. (These things are bound to happen when you run as administrator all the time.) So what’s really new? Lots of eye candy. Eye candy itself is not a problem when it’s discreet; in fact, I think some visual embellishments can make the computer look more organic and therefore easier to interface with. (This is me speaking as a non-expert who has had limited contact with this fancy graphics stuff.) But eye candy is a problem when it’s the only new thing you’ve got. And that’s why I’m glad I’ve moved away from Windows. I wouldn’t want to pay all that money just for some fancy graphics.

The romance advice column, From Canada with Love, has been spun off as its own blog. That’s right, TWoS has its own spinoff. The form for submitting questions will still be found here, but the new address for the actual column is http://fromcanadawlove.blogspot.com/. And it probably won’t feature me, which is a relief because I really had no idea what I was doing dishing out love advice. Natasha has gotten one of her friends to provide a male viewpoint while she provides the female perspective of each question. It shall be cool.

Here are 25 words that make you look like an idiot when you mispronounce them. Included on the list is “foilage,” which I actually heard a newscaster on the radio say recently. (It’s “foliage.”)

The home stretch

There are about six weeks left of school, and then we graduate. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Well, it is for me. I’ve actually found myself kind of eager to get out of school, if only because I got used to relaxing during spring break. In fact, yes, that is the only reason. I really don’t want to move along, although I recognize (reluctantly) that time passes and people age.

Just before our spring break, my school received two bomb threats in two days. The school was abuzz with rumors about the identity or identities of the person or people who made the threats. Yesterday on the school’s morning TV show, the principal announced that a/the perpetrator had been arrested, and hearsay accounts confirmed this. I even heard the kid’s name, but it didn’t mean anything to me because I didn’t know who he was.

This is a column about two friends giving advice on relationships. Natasha is Canadian and has lots of relationship experience. Jordon is American and doesn’t. Together, they bring you: From Canada with Love.

Kayley writes:

Natasha responds:

Jordon responds:

Read why the tilde character (~) should not be used in URLs at http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/tilde.html.

Threequel

Okay, guys, Beowulf 3 is definitely underway. We brought you Beowulf, and we brought you Beowulf 2, and it’s time to round out the trilogy. (By the way, if you didn’t see those two, I suggest that you watch them now as they are quite awesome, and you’ll be thanking me later.) A second sequel (that is, a sequel to the sequel) has been in the works since the first sequel (the sequel to the original) was in the works, so this has been a long time coming. It still might be a long time coming, but now I’ve actually had some time to think about what Beowulf 3 should have, and I feel that we’re ready.

The current plan for Beowulf 3, I think, is that it will follow the format of its predecessors by being both silly and epic at the same time (but mostly silly). If you’ve read the original Anglo-Saxon poem in your high school English class, it might have been divided into three parts (they cut out the juicy stuff), and that’s where our trilogy comes from. The third part, as we studied it, involved Beowulf, having been King of Geatland for 50 years, facing a dragon who has been awakened from his slumber while guarding a treasure that someone stole something from. And that’s about as much as I can give you at this point because there’s still a lot to discuss, although it seems to be in the process of being finalized. Hopefully, we’ll do the filming next weekend, and I expect to edit it throughout next week. But, of course, you have to be flexible with these things, so don’t be surprised if it comes out a little late.

On a totally unrelated note, the multi-protocol instant-messaging client Gaim, which I reviewed extensively last year, has changed its name. The reason sounds simple enough: AOL, the maker of AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), threatened legal action repeatedly over the use of three letters in the name of this third-party client. While keeping threats secret and trying to fight them off, the Gaim developers released only beta versions of their 2.0 branch for years — a detail which is causing Gaim users around the world who were mystified by the succession of seemingly stable “beta” releases to scratch their heads and say “Oooooh…” So, that’s all fine and good… except that Gaim was called “Gaim” before AOL Instant Messenger called itself “AIM.” But don’t try telling that to AOL, ’cause they’ve got a trademark to protect.

So, what did the Gaim developers secretly decide to change their project’s name to? Pidgin. Not pigeon, but pidgin. A pidgin, as Wikipedia says, is “any language created, usually spontaneously, out of two or more languages as a means of communication between speakers of different tongues, and usually a simplified form of one of the languages.” The connection here is that Gaim allows you to use multiple protocols with one buddy list — I use it for AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, and Jabber. Although the name sounds ridiculous, I’m sure I’ll get used to it, and I’m looking forward to the final release of Pidgin 2.0, which, they’ve finally announced, should be out before next week.

Over the years, I’ve gotten some relationship questions in the Ask Jordon mailbag that I haven’t felt qualified to answer because, well, I’ve never been in a relationship. Or on a date. But my Canadian friend Natasha has decided she’s willing to help tackle these weighty questions, and so I bring you From Canada with Love. See, it’s about love, and she’s from Canada. So, if you need any relationship advice, just send it to us, and we’ll answer it in a future blog post.

Check out The 25 Best Movie Posters Ever.

Time

So The World of Stuff is four years old today. It’s pretty odd when I think about it. If TWoS had been in high school when it started, it would have graduated right now. What started as a disorganized collection of random web pages has become a disorganized collection of random web pages with a blog and some readers. Note that I haven’t truly been blogging for four years; that would come later when I realized that I would need to have something that would keep people coming back. I guess it’s worked, because I’ve had a small but growing and fairly devoted following, and for your continued readership and support, I thank you.

It’s been a good year for TWoS. I’ve taken up writing Greasemonkey user scripts, shown you how to find the day of the week of a given date, re-released a video and brought you two new ones, and allowed you to give some Russian flavor to your text. It’s not much, all in all, but I think it’s quality stuff. I’m especially proud of the videos. I should add that Beowulf and Beowulf 2 come to you via the cooperation of my friends. Beowulf 3 is coming soon.

But remember, readers, that none of this would be possible without you because then I would have done all this work for nothing, and that would make me go insane. Something else that almost makes me go insane is trying to figure out exactly how many readers I have. Certain web-based feed aggregators will tell you how many people are subscribing to your feeds when they request them. Of course, it’s impossible to gauge readership accurately by this method, because not everybody uses a web-based aggregator to read blogs — I don’t — but the information is enticing nonetheless. For example, I know that this site has 5 readers using Google Reader, 5 reading with Bloglines, 1 with NewsGator, and 1 with Rojo. So, the question remains… who are you? If you rarely or never post comments, I’d like you to post a comment introducing yourself. It’s just one of those things that a blogger likes to know, especially a small-time blogger like me.

I’ve enjoyed maintaining The World of Stuff for the past four years, and I hope to do so for many more. Viva la Stuff!

Money

Going to college has been on my mind more and more lately. Of course, going to college is very expensive, so I’ve had that to think about as well. I’ve applied for some scholarships, but I haven’t heard back from any of them. Not yet, at least. And it’s only just occurring to me how breathtakingly expensive college is. It’s not even the cost of going to school that’s a lot of money; it’s the cost of living that’ll really get you. I was looking up how much it’s going to cost me to live in my dorm. Answer: about half my life’s savings per year, maybe closer to all of it. Even after moving out of the dorms, I do have to live somewhere.

Yesterday my future college’s web site told me that it was offering me money. It’ll take care of everything, provided that my parents pay their expected share (about half of the total). I’m supposed to chip in a few hundred bucks myself. The rest they’re offering me loans and work-study-program-type things for. Loans are bad because you have to pay them back, and the interest rates will make you miserable. Work-study-program-type things are bad because you have to work. Now I see why some people just eschew all this college business and enlist. It requires a lot less thinking. On the other hand, I’d rather be a bankrupt student in Florida than a ball of charred flesh in Iraq.

I don’t know where all the money is going to come from. Maybe I should have applied to BCC.

It used to be very fashionable for people to ask me to make a web site for them. One way or another, the deal would fall through, but I didn’t really mind. Now I’m doing a web site for a local pottery-painting place. I got the deal through a girl who works there and happens to know me from school. I’ve actually had this assignment for a while now, but since there was no deadline, I’ve only started it now, during spring break, when I actually have some time. And so, the work has begun, and I remember why I don’t mind having to design entire web sites very often.

Internet Explorer sucks. You test your page in Firefox, and it comes out exactly the way you expect. Then you look at it in IE and it’s misplaced or there’s too much space there, and you have no idea how to fix it. All right, I’ll admit that maybe I’m part of the problem here — I might know what I’m doing wrong if I fiddled with XHTML more often — but IE shouldn’t be rendering everything wrong in the first place. By the way, the IE I’m talking about is IE 6. I can’t download IE 7 because Microsoft won’t let you have it if they think you’re a pirate. But this site, which was painstakingly designed to render correctly in IE 6 and Firefox, looks fine in IE 7. Anyway, IE in general is a terrible browser that gets everything wrong. I would have saved so much time if I didn’t have to accommodate for IE. I would waste less time trying to guess what IE doesn’t like about my perfectly acceptable XHTML. In short, IE can kiss my leg.

Also, I found out an interesting thing yesterday. You know favicons, those little icons that appear when you view or bookmark pages? I always had a tough time making them because Photoshop (or, at least, the version I’ve used) doesn’t support images in the Windows icon format (.ico). For TWoS’s current favicon, I created a 16×16 image in Photoshop based on the site’s banner, converted it to the Windows 16-color palette, and redrew it pixel-by-pixel in an online icon-creating tool that would only allow you to use those colors. It wasn’t pleasant, and I think I had to start over a few times. Well, now that I’m on Linux and using the Gimp, it’s very convenient to know that the Gimp natively supports .ico files. For this site I’m working on, all I had to do was size their logo down to 16×16 and save it as an .ico file.

Am I getting paid for all this? Heck yes. I don’t know how much, and it doesn’t even really matter to me because any amount would just be a drop in the college bucket. But I’d like to be paid a lot anyway.

Here’s a doormat that features an ambigram. When it’s turned one way, it says “Come in,” but when you turn it the other way, it reads, “Go away.”