Will be blind, but now I see

I always worried about this day. Now it has come. Well, it hasn’t quite. But I can tell it’s coming now.

Yesterday, after a routine checkup, the ophthalmologist or optometrist or whoever (I like optometrist better because it’s easier to spell) told me I was slightly farsighted, more so in one eye than the other. She said I still had 20/20 vision and didn’t need nerd goggles glasses, but she wrote me a prescription anyway in case I needed to get them during my time away at school. She said that if I did need glasses, it would be for reading and stuff only.

But wow. I had 20/15 vision until a few years ago. Soon, I might need glasses. “O, how the mighty have fallen,” said my sister, who has worn glasses or contacts since the age of seven. More like, “O, how the young have aged.” Well, I’m 19, but lots and lots of people my age wear glasses part-time or full-time, so I guess it would be okay. I’d have to get used to being a glasses-wearing person, I guess. But this is just mental preparation.

My eyes can’t be that bad yet. If I hadn’t gone to the optometrist or whatever yesterday, I never would have known that I was farsighted. I don’t have trouble seeing anything. People still rely on me to read tiny print for them. Although I am a little worried, I’m okay for now. And I never wanted to be an astronaut anyway.

I enjoy reading MySpace bulletins. Yes, I lampoon them, but I read some of them. I like the insights they provide. Sometimes, people use them to anonymously say things they’d like to say to people but can’t. (I just split an infinitive there. I’m finally realizing that it’s okay.) Although I haven’t lived as much as some of my friends who have done it, and even though some of the people I’m addressing will never read this, I do have a few things to say.

1. Are you sure that’s what you want?
2. Thank you for understanding.
3. I’m glad you’ve found a place where you’re happy.
4. I wish you would get along.
5. You don’t know how much I’ve learned from you.
6. I’d be so happy if you did.
7. You could have at least shown some courtesy.
8. Can I use your advice on you?
9. She’s not what you think.
10. I wish we could hang out more.
11. Thanks for giving me a chance.
12. I’m afraid you mean more to me than I mean to you.
13. Why don’t you say something?
14. I wonder how things would have been.

(Also, I realize that I could say some of these to people’s faces, but it’s more fun this way.)

Here are some great examples of “3-D” street art. You’ve probably seen a few of them before, but not all of them.

Amid all the controversy about waterboarding as a form of torture, Christopher Hitchens to see what it was all about by getting waterboarded himself. Here’s the video.

The 10 Strangest Will Bequests Ever.

Ten times better

In October 2003, I “suddenly became obsessed with the metric system,” as I put it at the time. I mentioned plans for writing an article called “The Metric System: Ten Times Better or Inching Toward a Metric America.” Well, that didn’t happen. A fragmentary draft exists on my computer, last modified on October 19, 2003:

Convincing, ain’t it?

As I may have mentioned, my parents have had our house for sale for almost a year now. On Saturday, we had a small garage sale. This is kind of a big deal because the only other garage sale we’ve ever had (as long as I’ve been around) was before we moved into our current house. It’s a way of having less stuff to move. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to sell, mainly because I threw/gave away a lot of my stuff before heading off to college last year. The stuff I have left I want to keep, give away, or sell for a reasonable amount of money. I can’t think of anything that I’d want to unload for a token price. Here are some things I actually have in my room:

• A metal detector
• Records
• 400+ issues of National Geographic Magazine
• A sledgehammer
• A lava lamp
• An inflatable pool raft
• World War II ration stamps
• An old lady wig
• A snapshot of an old Irish man playing the accordion (thanks, Luke)
• An uncut sheet of $1 bills
• A large stuffed penguin wearing a Santa Claus hat

…and much more. Man, I have a lot of stuff. But the garage sale didn’t do very well, from what I hear. (I was asleep during much of it.)

Here in the United States, we’re lucky to have some freedom. The same can’t be said of the Top Five Most Censored Countries in the World. (Disclaimer: I am friends with the author.)

This is actually interesting, with nice pictures: 10 Very Rare Clouds.

One Post Wonder is a blog that features old blogs that have only one post. It would be funny if it were itself a one-post wonder, but it’s not.

My brain is behind the times

I played baseball with my some of my friends again yesterday. They’ve really been getting into it lately. Even though my friend Nick wants to start a league or something, we still didn’t have enough people to play a game, so we were just hitting the ball around. I got a left-handed glove, so I, too, have made an investment in this whole baseball thing. When I started using it, I was pleasantly surprised at how far I could throw with my better arm.

But it wasn’t all baseball yesterday. There was a rather menacing storm heading in our general direction, so we got kicked out of the baseball field. After hanging out at Nick’s house for a while, where we played MarioKart Wii. I only had a hard time because I was using the Wii Wheel; it’s so hard to steer with that thing. Otherwise, I could have pwned all y’all. I pronounce it with the “p.”

After that, we spent about a million years at Chili’s. because the people we were going to meet decided they would take forever to get ready. We actually waited about an hour and 20 minutes for them to show up. Lots of tortilla chips were consumed in the meantime. Despite my initial reservations, I ordered the Smokehouse Bacon Triple-the-Cheese Big Mouth Burger. That’s a lot of words to describe a bacon cheeseburger with extra cheese. The long name makes you sound like a fatty if you order it. But I ordered it just the same, and you know what? It was delicious.

After dinner, we ended up at the beach. This happens fairly often. There’s not much else to do, but the beach is free. Well, I think it’s “closed” at night, but that doesn’t stop people from going there and doing… whatever. Usually, the beach is fiercely windy at night, but last night it was perfectly calm. There weren’t even any waves. I could hardly believe it. I mean, they were about two inches high and formed about four feet from the shore. Agh. I still think in English units. American schools, businesses, and media: please start using the metric system exclusively. Thank you.

Ah, comic books. They’re full of action, drama, adventure, and excitement… usually. Check out The 10 Comics No Kid Ever Wanted.

“Happy Birthday to You” is probably the world’s most popular song. A subsidiary of Time Warner owns the copyright and makes millions of dollars a year from it. But the song’s history is rather convoluted, and in a new scholarly article, “Copyright and the World’s Most Popular Song,” Robert Brauneis finds that “Happy Birthday to You” is probably not still covered by copyright. It’s a long read, but if you’re interested in this sort of thing, it’s worth it.

In Wired, security expert Bruce Schneier explains the faults of Microsoft’s proposal for a system that would require electronic devices to obey the commands of people in their vicinity.

Ever wonder?

Although I’ve had several friends write guest posts for this blog, I’ve only written one guest post for another blog. I had won a contest over at Nothing Important and had this entry posted on March 6, 2006. Since it’s not available there anymore, and because I don’t have anything to say today, here it is for your enjoyment.

There’s something I don’t quite get: cable channels.

I’m pretty young (16), so I’ve grown up watching cable TV. It’s always seemed that there was a channel for everything: the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, Arts & Entertainment (A&E), Animal Planet, the Learning Channel (TLC), Food Network, Game Show Network (GSN), the Travel Channel, Home & Garden Television (HGTV), ad nauseam. (These channels and many more are staples of satellite TV as well.)

There’s only one way I can explain the multiplicity of very specific channels. It must have had its roots in the days before cable, when everyone watched the big three networks (CBS, NBC, and ABC) and had to put up with — ugh — variety in programming. Then new technology came along. “Honey, guess what? We’re getting the Underwater Basket Weaving Channel!”

Fast forward to the present. Apparently the cable networks’ business models are failing, or maybe they just want to spice things up. Why else would they seem to be exchanging programs and losing their narrow focus? The other day I was watching an episode about food on the History Channel’s show “Modern Marvels,” in which they usually look at technology and stuff. What the heck, everybody?

Take Game Show Network as another example. I think they finally realized that not everyone wants to watch game shows, so they shortened their name to GSN and adopted the tagline, “The network for games.” Now anything vaguely game-related can find its way into the programming block. They have a new show called “Anything to Win,” which actually is about (in)famous people who will do anything to get ahead. Games? Not in the case of Johnnie Cochran and the other folks featured.

By the way, what’s the Discovery Channel supposed to be about, anyway? Discovering things? I always thought it was about science. I guess not, since they’ve spun off the Science Channel. Now all they show on the Discovery Channel (and TLC, and HGTV) are shows about remodeling houses. And probably makeover shows; I don’t really know.

I expect all of the aforementioned cable networks to merge into the Everything Channel next spring. Till then, here’s a fun game to try: Cover up the corner of your screen and try to guess what channel you’re watching. I’m sure if you played it years ago, you’d find it harder now than it was then.

I could probably think of a few more examples of cable channels losing their focuses, but I really don’t watch that much TV. So, while you’re watching a show about the history of the food eaten by traveling hairstylists and interior designers on the Underwater Basket Weaving Channel, I’ll be checking my e-mail.

Have a song stuck in your head? Use The Song Tapper to tap out the melody with your spacebar, and see if you get a match with their database of songs.

If you’re like me, there are a lot of things you need to do, and you need to be nagged about them before you do them. That’s where www.hassleme.co.uk comes in. Just tell the site what to hassle you about, and they’ll send you an e-mail reminding you at specified intervals.

I’d like to thank Jeff/Danny for letting me write on his blog. If you enjoyed this post (that is, if it didn’t make you jump out a window), you may be interested in reading my own site, www.theworldofstuff.com, where I chatter on and on like this all the time, except it’s usually about my own life.

Baseball in July

Last week, I played something resembling baseball with some of my friends. We didn’t have enough people for a game, so we had a home run derby instead. We had such a good time with that that we decided to play some more baseball yesterday. We were going to play at a park that had baseball fields, but people were using them, so we went to another baseball field instead.

There were only five of us playing, so we took turns hitting. I was relegated to the outfield most of the time, where I had to throw and catch right-handed because nobody had a left-handed baseball glove. Since there were only as many as two of us out there at any given time, we didn’t try very hard to catch any fly balls. We had 10 of them, anyway. But I did manage to make a pretty nice catch while I was running to my right and stretching my left arm over to my right side. (A right-handed player throws with his right hand and catches with his left, so this makes sense. Right-handed baseball gloves go on the left hand.)

We were out there for a few hours, after which I was sunburned like whoa. I didn’t really notice it at the time, but my farmer’s tan has gotten a lot worse, and it hurts. I wonder how people manage not to have farmer’s tans. To mitigate this situation, I think I would either have to spend all my time tanning or stop going outside. Guess which one I would prefer. But wikiHow makes it sound so easy.

After that, we went to my house to cool down. Some of us swam in the pool. After that, we visited Kim on the job; she’s a hostess at Bonefish Mac’s. There was hardly anyone there, which I guess would be expected for a Sunday night, but I don’t go to restaurants on Sunday nights very often, so I’m not sure. Apparently, no one else goes either. But the food was good. After that, we tried to decide whose house we should go to, and it turned out that my house was the only option. We rented Waiting… and Hot Fuzz and watched them at my house. It was about 12:45 in the morning when we were done, which was fortunate for me because I could just fall into bed when the others left.

My friend Nick wants us to play baseball again on Thursday. I’m looking forward to it. I was going to include a cheesy baseball-themed metaphor to go here, but I can’t think of one. Imagine your favorite here!

Take this brief quiz to find out your News IQ. How much do you know about current events? I scored in the 83rd percentile.

Some people have had their cars for a long time. Matteo Ferrari re-creates old photographs of folks posing with their well-loved cars.

How much do you know about Benjamin Franklin? Here are 9 Things You Didn’t Know About Benjamin Franklin.

Stream of consciousness VI

I feel like writing stream-of-consciousness today. It Is That Kind Of Day.

I did get to see The Dark Knight at midnight on opening day. I had been concerned because I was going with a group of people who had tickets to a different showing than I did. They were at the same time, but at different screens. I couldn’t find anyone to trade tickets with, so I resigned myself to seeing the movie without the company of most of them. I was with this guy Tyler, who went to my high school for a semester. I had a class with him. Some of my other friends apparently did too because he has now reappeared in the group of friends.

Anyway, while we were in line, he encountered this girl who he apparently knew well. They ribbed each other mercilessly, and he kept asking me why he was putting up with it. I wondered too; he’s not the kind of guy who just takes that sort of thing. It was later made known to me by other people that they had dated and that all sorts of drama had recently unfolded. Maybe that’s why, when I was sitting between them before the movie started and they were trying to challenge each other to name the last time the other had lied to them, Tyler insisted that I switch seats with him and allow him to whisper something in her ear.

So, he puts up with her verbal abuse because he still has feelings for her? That would be my guess, but I don’t know. I do know that she took a liking to me; she said so. I was pleased by that. But whatever.

Anyway, the movie was really good. This was only the second time I had seen a movie premiere (well, not premiere, but opening) at midnight. The first time was last year when I saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The Dark Knight was really epic. But unlike my previous midnight film experience, I was pretty tired by the end of it. I even managed to miss part of a pivotal scene somehow. But I was still impressed by Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker. Posthumous Oscar? I would recommend it. Get on that, Academy.

I should be leaving for my second year of college in about a month. I’m looking forward to it in a way. I’m going to have a cool roommate. Plus, I’ll be able to get to an ATM and eat at Taco Bell whenever I want. As for the classes, eh. Oh, and also, I may have a chance with Number 6 (this one). I remember her hinting that she might want to hang out in the fall. I hope she remembers that too.

Current Music: Kaiser Chiefs – Employment. My dad caught an interview with them on NPR a few years ago and got the album. I like it too. Before this, I was listening to “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” which seems to be my stream-of-consciousness-writing-enducer.

Well, it looks like it’s time to return to being bored. Here are some links.

Have movies been getting longer recently? I can’t remember the last time I went to see a movie that was just the standard 90 minutes in length. A survey of IMDb’s top movies by decade suggests that movies have been getting longer over the course of decades, but I’d be interesting in analyzing all major feature films from the past, say, 20 years for a more thorough analysis.

The BBC reports that the oldest recording of computer-generated music has been discovered. It dates back to 1951. Read and listen.

Dumpster diving sounds like a good idea to save some money. Too bad there’s such a stigma associated with it. We should just get people to throw away less stuff.

The wide world of sports

Yesterday my friend Nick asked if I wanted to join him and some of our other friends for lunch. I went along, knowing full well how plans can grow and change. After lunch, we played airsoft at a park in my neighborhood. Then we went to Mark’s local park, where there was enough room to play baseball. Actually, since we didn’t have enough people for that, we had a home run derby. I think it was my first time playing baseball of any kind. I swung at every pitch, so I didn’t last very long. I didn’t hit any either. After taking a break at Mark’s house, we had played football and then had pizza. Then we played poker. (Texas hold ‘em, of course. That variant is so popular that it’s annoying. What happened to old five card draw?) So yeah, it was a pretty busy day yesterday. What started as lunch outing became a fun day out.

Tonight’s plans: going to see The Dark Knight at midnight. Of course, advance tickets will be necessary. But I just found out: everybody has them except me, and their tickets are for a screen that’s now sold out! Awesome! I just got a ticket for the other showing, which I hope to exchange with another moviegoer who’s willing to help me out. Surely there’ll be measures in place to prevent theater-hopping.

I’m a college student, and the purpose of college is to prepare one for a job. Therefore, I’m being prepared for a job. I’ve decided that working on software would be pretty cool, so that’s what I’m studying. Whenever I mention this, the Bill Gates comparisons fly. I don’t want to be the next Bill Gates. I believe in free software, which gives users essential freedoms, while Microsoft believes that they should have total control over the users of their software. Microsoft and most other software companies write non-free software. I find this practice to be unethical. So I need to know: where can I get a job developing free software? I know they exist. The Free Software Foundation even lists a few. But are they more widespread than that (perhaps under the name “open source”)? Are there other free software jobs that I’m not thinking of? I don’t want to be a sysadmin.

Here are 10 bizarre species names. They’re pretty bizarre.

Another list: the Top Tourist Spots Americans Can’t Visit. I haven’t visited any of them because I can’t.

This seems pretty simple, and it would make an awesome project. How to Build Hover Shoes. Caveat: there’s soldering involved.

The Proto-World of Stuff

For the past five years, this blog has served as my personal journal, among other things. But I’ve been writing in journal-like settings for longer than that. Probably starting around first or second grade, I would have to write about a certain topic each day in a “journal.” The golden age of the journal seemed to be around third grade, which is when I would have to write about things like “How I’d get my cat down from a 10 ft. tree” (February 19, 1998), “My Amazing Machine” (March 30, 1998), and “I Like Being a Boy Because”:

I was pretty bent on preserving those editions of “Jordon’s Journal,” judging by the handwritten alphabetical index of titles I added to the end of each volume. But over the years, my elementary and junior high teachers required less and less journaling. I must have found the practice interesting enough that I decided to keep a real journal for myself.

The book itself is a small notebook that, as I recall, had come pre-packaged with a larger one that I used for school. I had previously used this small notebook as a stick-figure flipbook, but I covered the front cover with paper, leaving a window for the words “The Stick Flipbook,” so it would read:

In the first entry, written on the evening of Wednesday, February 24, 1999, I briefly described a few things that had happened that day, including my first encounter with the 50 State Quarters series. I wrote that I had argued with my sister and my friend Sean, and that my friend Reid was “his usual.” Such is the exciting life of a nine-year-old. Other entries were equally banal. “Dear Journal,” began an entry written three days later,

I wrote about everything interesting that happened, including field trips. (“Dear Journal, I went to the Seaquarium yesterday and found that Flipper is still alive.”) Soon, I was writing mainly about interesting things and ignoring the boring days. I would bring my journal on every family trip and chronicle it in detail. The most significant of these was a two-week car trip to Pittsburgh that July, which remains the longest vacation I’ve ever been on in terms of time as well as distance traveled… probably.

For the duration of the trip, I had Pennsylvania-mania (a term that, while cheesy, cannot be found in the journal). I would write a Pennsylvania-themed trivia question at the bottom of each odd-numbered page and the answer on each even page. I would keep track of our mileage between stops and some of the places at which we ate each day, as well as all the things we did and what time we entered each new state. A typical entry:

The answer is the Pennsylvania Turnpike. At the end of the trip, I had gathered these fun facts:

• We drove 3,353 miles.
• I estimated that we used 134 gallons of gas. I wonder where I came up with the figure of 25 MPG. I probably asked my dad.
• We saw 72 deer. That’s kind of a big deal since we don’t have them in South Florida.
• We used 10 rolls of film. I estimated this to be 240 pictures.
• We drove through the states of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Maryland.

In 2000, I wrote about a cruise to Cozumel in March-April and a trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains in October. I also wrote about starting junior high school, mentioning my 22-year-old homeroom teacher, who was “SO HOT!!!” (I’m not going to lie. She was an attractive woman. She probably still is. And dang if I’m not almost as old now as she was then.) I also wrote about the antics of my science teacher, Mr. Tuttle:

There were more excursions to write about in 2001. I covered a trip up the east coast of Florida in April and a wedding in Charleston, South Carolina, in June. I recorded the last entry in the journal on pages 72-74 on Saturday, August 4, 2001. I described my experience at summer camp up to that point and my attempt to start a band with my friends:

Days later, almost on a whim, I would get my first guitar. It was a pivotal moment that helped shape the person I am today. And only 20 months later, I started The World of Stuff and took up journaling again, this time for the world.

And today, I am a Macho Nacho.

19

I’m 19 years old today. This is my last year as a nominal teenager. Next year, I’ll be “in my twenties.” That’s frightening. But for now, I am still someone with “teen” in his age.

You know how, whenever it’s your birthday, you remark that you don’t look or feel any older? I sometimes do. But yesterday, I looked in the mirror and saw that I did look a year older. It occurred to me that Brendan Leonard and his friends were 19 when they produced and starred in The Brendan Leonard Show, which I watched avidly when I was 13 and 14. Now I look almost as old as they did then.

I had dinner with some friends last night. I chose Smokey Bones, which is a barbecue place, but a nice one. I don’t even like ribs or anything, but they have good burgers and steaks and things of that nature. Unlike last year, more people were able to come than I expected, so it was nice to see everybody. After that, I stopped over at Gerri‘s luau-themed party for a little while, but then I decided to go home.

My birthday has been pretty much like a typical Sunday except that my grandparents are here. After brunch, we went to a bookstore, which was convenient for me because I got a Barnes and Noble gift card for my birthday. I bought a book about the history of Fermat’s Last Theorem. It should be interesting, but I wish I could understand the proof.

Plans for tonight: dinner at home with the fam. They really are the best gift of all. That and money.

Similar to the Doomsday Clock maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the ACLU has its own Surveillance Society Clock going. Both are currently at five minutes to midnight.

What would you do if you had 1,500 Xbox hard drives? The correct answer is to stack them and play hard drive dominoes. It’s absolutely mesmerizing. I bet they’d all be broken after that, though. Those things are fragile.

You know those t-shirts that say “I’m big in Japan”? Mark Rowswell of Toronto is big in China. Millions of people there know and love him because he can speak Chinese more skillfully than many of them. Yet at home, he’s just an ordinary guy.

Reflections of a future former 18-year-old

My birthday is on Sunday. I’ll be 19. I don’t really want to talk about being 19 right now. Since this is probably the last post I’ll write while I’m 18, I thought I’d talk about what it’s like to be 18.

In a way, it owns. You can do lots of cool stuff when you’re 18. Here’s one of the less appreciated ones. Right around my birthday last year, I switched banks and got a checking account. I have a check card. It’s a debit card that you can use wherever credit cards are accepted. What’s that? You take Visa? Here you go! No APR or bills or anything like that. Yesterday, I used “online banking” to transfer money from my savings to my checking account. Then I paid for my web hosting online with my debit card. Convenient!

Maybe you can have a checking account at any age, but I couldn’t have one until I was 18. I couldn’t even touch my savings until then. I think.

Voting is another thing I can do now that I’ve turned 18. In January, I voted for the first time. That was kind of cool. I’ve been following the presidential election pretty closely with sites like Electoral-vote.com. This race seems like it’ll be one for the ages. I plan to vote for Barack Obama in spite of his recent move toward the center. I like most of his ideas (and those of the Democratic Party in general). I feel kind of bad about perpetuating the two-party system, but if I didn’t like the Democrats’ plans for the country, I wouldn’t be one. I am compassionate, and I value freedom. I just wish the Dems in Congress weren’t a bunch of spineless wimps who turn to Jell-O when a Republican breathes on them. Hopefully Obama can provide a positive example for them when he’s President.

Things that aren’t cool about turning 18: (1) the specter of forced military service (dudes only), and (2) aging. Oh yes. It is at the age of 18 that I have begun to become aware of my own mortality. Last summer, I had an eye exam. My vision used to be above average, but now it’s only average. Oh, I know, what a big tragedy. But nothing like this had ever happened to me, so you can bet I was a little concerned. And then, of course, I listened to music through my headphones too much, and now my ears have a vague aching that won’t go away. When I was recording stuff with my friend Nick the other day, it was the first time I had used headphones since I realized I should stop. My ears hurt more after that, but now they’re back to “normal.” Senses, as they say, fail.

Although the thought that I’ll never be 18 again has struck me somewhat (unlike in past years), I am still pretty young. Most of my biography has yet to be written. I feel like this the year when I’ll start to have crazy times in college (which is not to say that my first year wasn’t fun). I’d better start hanging out with high school girls before it gets too creepy and illegal.

We all have our quirks. i am neurotic. is a site collects them for all to see.

This wouldn’t be a blog if I didn’t link to a Japanese YouTube video of a cat playing with a theremin. You’re welcome.

Bacteria are handy little critters. Since they’re so abundant and they reproduce so quickly, scientists have been able to observe a major evolutionary shift after tens of thousands of generations of a certain strain. The change was testable because the scientists had saved some samples every 500 generations, allowing them to “replay” the evolution or to see if it could occur under different conditions. Scienterrific!