Dinner

I had a physics exam on Monday. Exams aren't fun, but Monday exams are especially unfun. Especially when they're one hour during the day instead of two hours at night. For the previous exams, I had studied for several days beforehand and got a 7/10 each time, beating the class average of 5.5. But when an exam is on a Monday, you have a weekend to study beforehand. Weekend? Study? That didn't really, um, happen. I studied for an hour or two on Sunday night and another hour on Monday morning. I figured I would be happy to get a to get a 5 or a 6. To my surprise, I knew how to answer 6 of the questions, a figure in line with my previous exams. I made semi-intelligent guesses on the rest.

I got a 9. Apparently I am a good guesser. Now if I can keep my homework and quiz grades where they are, I need a 16/20 on the final to get an A in the class. (Yes, I do keep a spreadsheet to calculate my physics grade. Why do you ask?) But it turns out that even the professors think the class is too hard; they just announced that they'll be adjusting the grading scale to make it easier.

Overall, the Esperanto Club is going pretty well. Our last meeting, on Monday, was a bust because even fewer people showed up than normal. We have one more meeting this semester, and then it'll be time for our extra-special end-of-semester event. Many Esperantists celebrate December 15 as the birthday of L.L. Zamenhof, the originator of Esperanto. We're going to have a general Esperanto-themed celebration at a laid-back restaurant-type place. I'm calling it Esperanto-Vespermanĝo (Esperanto Dinner), which kind of rhymes. If you happen to be around, you're welcome to come.

Where: Tim & Terry's Music & More, 1419 NW 1st Ave, Gainesville, Florida, USA
When: Friday, December 5, 2008, 8:00 PM

I was thinking that my Esperanto students (and I) would benefit from meeting and talking to a real Esperanto speaker. I've e-mailed about 30 members of Esperanto-USA in the southeastern US, and not one has said they'll be able to attend. They're all either too busy, too far away, too old, or something. One person in Miami asked if I knew his friend, so-and-so. The name didn't ring a bell, but I looked him up on Facebook and I realized that I have a class with him and he lives in my dorm. Too weird. I'll have to see if he's interested in Esperanto.

The first stereophonic record was released in 1957. Here's one of the very first stereo discs for your probably illegal downloading pleasure.

A Parallax Optical Illusion with CSS! This only works if your window manager dynamically redraws windows as you resize them (it probably does, and if it doesn't, you'll know).

It's funny how different social networks are popular in different countries. What is up with that? Anyway, here's a pretty up-to-date Map of Social Networks' Popularity Around the World. Apparently the good old USA is the only country where MySpace is the most popular. And I'm surprised that Facebook is so popular in the Middle East. I didn't know if they were even into that whole social networking thing at all.