2008: The Year in Review

Another year has slipped behind us. It seems like only yesterday that we rang in 2008, and here it's about to be 2009. At the end of every year I'd always like to say it's been a good year, but it never really has. There's always the world situation to consider, and that's never very rosy. Despite that good triumphed over evil, I can't help but be reminded about how bad 2008 has been if you have money or a house. But as someone who doesn't have much money or a house, it was pretty okay. Here, in bulleted list form, is what went down in '08.

• January 1 - After watching the Florida Gators lose their bowl game to Michigan, I have dinner at my friend Mark's house.
• January 4 - A new article at TWoS: Free Your Computer with Linux.
• January 6 - My suitemates and I go on a Geocaching mini-adventure.
• January 7 - The first day of my second semester of college.
• January 15 - I go to a lecture by Jack Kevorkian.
• January 17 - Cameron, Adam, and I visit our other suitemate in the hospital.
• January 17 - I make a new friend and get the idea to start an Esperanto club with her.
• January 29 - I vote for the first time ever in my life.
• February 8 - I hand over control of flipacoin.net, the oldest part of TWoS, to a new owner.
• February 12 - I go to Free Pancake Day at IHOP with my sister and our friend.
• February 16-17 - Our new suitemate Evan treats us to some revelry in his native Tampa, and we spend the night at his house.
• February 20 - I watch a lunar eclipse with my friends.
• February 29 - I document the leap day by taking photos throughout the day.
• February 29 - Evan puts a kiddie pool in the bathroom, fills it with hot water from the shower, and invites his friends. We have a pool party in our dorm.
• March 4 - My not-yet-formed Esperanto club is mentioned in my local paper.
• March 13 - While on spring break, my friends and I visit the old high school.
• March 20 - I go to a pretty awesome orchestra concert.
• March 21 - I go on a non-date. We go to dinner with one of her friends and then see Kimya Dawson with some more of her friends.
• April 3 - I volunteer at Lifeapalooza, Get Carded's end-of-year event.
• April 5 - I go tubing on the Ichetucknee with friends and friends' friends.
• April 6 - TWoS turns 5 years old.
• April 11 - I'm Get Carded's Volunteer of the Year.
• April 12 - I go to the spring football game.
• April 12 - I get inducted into Phi Eta Sigma honor society.
• April 18 - Ask... date... ugh.
• April 30 - Agh... again...
• May 2 - I come home from my first year of college.
• May 9-11 - Family vacation at the family vacation spot.
• May 18 - I discover that I closed my window on a snake several days before. Awesome!
• May 26 - I go canoeing with my friends on Memorial Day.
• May 31 - My grandmother finds an old Hanoverian coin and gives it to me.
• June 3 - I visit my old high school again and find out that this site is censored there.
• June 4 - I go to the Rapids Water Park with some friends.
• June 14 - I create a family genealogy page.
• June 21-22 - I read a whole book (George Orwell's Animal Farm) in Esperanto.
• July 4 - I hang out at my friend Nick's house for a barbecue and other fun.
• July 9 - Nick and I get together at my house to jam.
• July 12 - I invite my friends to a barbecue restaurant for my birthday.
• July 13 - My 19th birthday.
• July 19 - I see The Dark Knight at midnight with my friends. It's a big deal to everyone.
• July 28 - It's official: I'm farsighted.
• August 16 - I go to South Beach with Nick and TJ.
• August 21 - I move back to Hume Hall for a second year.
• August 24 - I go to the Student Honors Organization's beginning-of-the-year barbecue (I sure have been doing a lot of barbecue-related things) with friends new and old.
• August 25 - On my way to my first class of my second year of college, a Christian guy encounters me, and I handle the situation well.
• September 5 - I visit the Alligator's office to talk about the possibility of being an editorial columnist.
• September 9 - My friend Mark and I teach people Esperanto phrases outside the student union, and I get interviewed by a journalism student.
• September 17 - I interview for the webmaster job at the Dean of Students Office... and I get the job.
• September 19 - I find out that the faculty at my high school read my blog for at least a year and cited it in meetings.
• September 26 - I write a letter to a Marine in Iraq.
• October 6 - My first day on the job.
• October 9 - The journalism student's article about me and my Esperanto club is published in the Alligator.
• October 16 - For the Esperanto club's first event, I give a presentation introducing the language to people who are interested.
• October 24 - I participate in an unsuccessful attempt to break the world record for the largest water balloon fight.
• October 28 - 1,000th post.
• November 4 - I voted!
• November 11 - I go to Lake Wauburg with my friends. I have a wonderful time.
• November 21 - I go to a volleyball game with some of the same friends.
• November 26-28 - I spend Thanksgiving at my grandparents' house.
• December 3 - I participate in an unsuccessful attempt to break the world record for the largest human green ribbon.
• December 4 - I go to another orchestra concert with my friends Mark and Andy.
• December 5 - The Esperanto club's end-of-semester event, Esperanto-Vespermanĝo (Esperanto Dinner).
• December 9 - I wake up sick and late for class for the first time ever.
• December 19 - I return home to my newly semi-redecorated room.
• December 25 - I spend Christmas at home with family and friends.

I plan to ring in the new year at my friend Nick's. As you can see, I tend to go to his house on holidays. It's like the Holiday Inn or something. But I know I'll have a good time there.

A year ago, I asked (or, rather, you asked),

Where do I see myself at the end of 2008? I'm glad you asked. I don't really know, actually.... I'll still be in college, hopefully, and I'll probably be working on that computer science major. I hope to be in a relationship, or at least to have been in a relationship. Actually, just to be dating would be nice. We'll just have to see, I guess.

This wasn't the year. All I can say is maybe next year.

Anyway, have a great New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. May you keep your new year's resolutions all year, and may 2009 be a world of good stuff.

Oh, and one more thing: a site called Change.org is collecting ideas to submit to the Obama administration. Anyone can register at the site and vote ideas up in various categories. The first round of voting ends tonight. Please vote in favor of citizens' funding of the nation's elections, net neutrality, and teaching Esperanto in schools. I'm very pleased to see how well that last one is doing.

More things that have nothing to do with each other

Last time on The World of Stuff: I was looking for a way to notify readers of new blog posts by e-mail. In an update to the post, I mentioned a WordPress plugin called Subscribe2. At first I thought it wouldn't meet my needs, but I've figured out how to make it work. The plugin automatically generates the subscription/unsubscription form on a WordPress page. This is what I didn't like. But then I realized I could just copy the form manually and put it on the sidebar.

Subscribe2 is probably better than RSS-to-e-mail (or RSS-to-email) services because it can send out e-mails right after every post is posted. Plus, there's no third party involved to collect addresses and send out notifications. Just me with your e-mail addresses, and you can trust me. The only minor downside is that I'll get an e-mail for every post I write. That's not too much of a problem because I can just have Thunderbird delete them automatically. [Update Wed Dec 31, 2008 11:48 UTC -5: By default, a single message is sent with the recipients in the Bcc: field, and the admin's address in the To: field. If you set the number of recipients per e-mail to 1, each recipient's address will be in the To: field, and you won't get a copy of the notifications.] So anyway, you'll be able to subscribe by e-mail soon. Yay.

I've been to the movies twice since I've been home for the break. I saw Yes Man last week. It was actually pretty good — vintage Jim Carrey — and might be characterized by some as "cute." And yesterday I saw Valkyrie, the true story of Tom Cruise as a one-eyed Nazi who tries to kill Adolf Hitler. I had never heard of the actual story, but if it's anything like the movie, it's pretty interesting. Despite that you know the ending (because Hitler wasn't assassinated), there's still a good deal of suspense. Oh, and Terence Stamp is in both movies. Not that I knew who he was before IMDbing them.

I've had another what-the-heck moment. Actually, it happened a few months ago. There's a Norman Rockwell calendar on the fridge, featuring one picture each month from the prolific artist. Several of his earlier works are included, each with copyright notices like "Copyright 1917" or "Copyright 1921" along with the name of the alleged copyright holder. What's wrong with this picture? Nothing published before 1923 is still copyrighted in the United States. Plus, Bridgeman v. Corel sets down that faithful photographs of two-dimensional works that are in the public domain are themselves in the public domain. The copyright holder of Norman Rockwell's post-1922 works is claiming exclusive rights to art that belongs to everyone.

(Something I learned while I was looking that up: Only works created by humans are eligible for copyright. So paintings by animals and the computer-generated gobbledygook in spam e-mails are in the public domain. All right!)

Anyway, this isn't the first time that a company has tried to exercise control over works that are probably in the public domain. I mentioned seemingly recently the case of "Happy Birthday to You," which makes Time Warner millions each year. And remember that "This Land" video of Bush and Kerry from 2004 and how JibJab, the creators of the video, got sued by the copyright holder of "This Land Is Your Land"? In defending JibJab, the venerable Electronic Frontier Foundation discovered that the song has been in the public domain for decades, yet JibJab still had to pay up, I think.

Is there any whistleblowing blog that calls out corporations for claiming copyright over public domain works? I would like to see one if there is. But hopefully there aren't enough cases to warrant creating a whole blog.

'Tis the season: Patron Who Complained About Indiana Library Nativity Faces Retaliation. What was it doing there anyway?

Things that have nothing to do with each other

RSS is a great way to keep track of your favorite web sites, but a lot of people (probably the majority) don't know what it is or don't want to get a feed reader. In fact, I bet most of you just go to the main page of this site every once in a while and read the last few posts there. If that's you, this question is not for you. This is for the bloggers.

I'm looking for a good RSS-to-e-mail service that readers of this site can use. Here are the features I have to have, in no particular order:

• E-mails can be sent shortly after items are posted.
• Users don't have to create an account.
• Good privacy policy.
• No ads in the e-mails.
• Free.

FeedBurner, while popular, fails on the first point; it only sends a "daily digest" during a two-hour window that you specify. Also, I assume the feed link in each e-mail is to their special FeedBurner feed. I would want to keep things simple and publicize only my official WordPress-generated feeds. RSSFWD fails on the second and third points; the privacy policy link is a 404. Other services I've found have similar problems or whatever. Any help, anyone?

[Edit Sat Dec 27, 2008 22:05 EST (UTC -5): There's this WordPress plugin called Subscribe2 that looks pretty amazing (Joshua apparently uses it), but it requires setting up a WordPress page for the subscription form. I want to have the form on the sidebar, i.e., on every page of the site. Plus, this whole site isn't generated by WordPress, so a plugin is out.]

I'm still following electoral-vote.com because the 2008 elections aren't over. The Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken was so close that it's still being decided. But anyway, the Votemaster has published a spreadsheet of state-by-state election results (available on his Data Galore) page. As a statistics junkie, I was especially interested in seeing how much of the vote each candidate got in each state. (For the purposes of presidential elections, the District of Columbia is a state.)

States that went the most for Obama:

1. District of Columbia (92.46%)
2. Hawaii (71.85%)
3. Vermont (67.46%)
4. Rhode Island (63.13%)
5. New York (62.80%)

States that went the most for McCain:

1. Oklahoma (65.65%)
2. Wyoming (64.78%)
3. Utah (62.58%)
4. Idaho (61.53%)
5. Alabama (60.32%)

States that went the most for Nader:

1. Maine (1.45%)
2. North Dakota (1.32%)
3. Arkansas (1.19%)
4. Connecticut (1.16%)
5. Alaska (1.16%)

States that went the most for Barr:

1. Indiana (1.06%)
2. Georgia (0.73%)
3. Utah (0.73%)
4. Idaho (0.72%)
5. Texas (0.69%)

States that went the most for Baldwin:

1. Utah (1.26%)
2. Idaho (0.56%)
3. Alaska (0.51%)
4. South Dakota (0.50%)
5. Wyoming (0.47%)

States that went the most for McKinney:

1. Louisiana (0.47%)
2. Maine (0.40%)
3. West Virginia (0.33%)
4. Arkansas (0.32%)
5. California (0.29%)

States that went the most for others:

1. Montana (2.17%)
2. Oregon (0.74%)
3. Nevada (0.65%)
4. Wyoming (0.60%)
5. Vermont (0.59%)

These figures don't include states where the candidates weren't on the ballot. For example, Chuck Baldwin and Cynthia McKinney weren't on the ballot in Montana but were eligible as write-in candidates there, which probably accounts for the high percentage of "other" votes there. Obama and McCain were the only candidates on the ballot in every state, so the statistics for the other candidates might be kind of meaningless as some of their votes inevitably fall in "other." Aww.

Here are 10 Fascinating Last Pictures Taken of or by certain people. They're pretty fascinating. The subjects are familiar, but the photos aren't commonly seen.

Here's a case for the textbooks: a woman can't recognize people's voices except for Sean Connery's.

Christmas '08

So this is Christmas, and what have you done? We started by opening gifts. My grandparents are staying over too, so they were there for the opening of the presents. I got another Florida Gators shirt. (Everyone gave each other Gators everything.) I also got a Swiss Army knife, a real Victorinox. I remember saying that I wanted one, but I don't remember where or when. Those parents are good. Now I have knives, screwdrivers, a bottle opener, a can opener, a wire bender, a wire stripper, tweezers, a toothpick, scissors, and other things I can't identify handy at all times.

(There's a short manual, but it doesn't explain what everything is. I had to look up online that the thing that looks like a tiny blade with a hole in it is a reamer with a sewing eye and that the thing that looks like a hook is a hook. Then I had to look up that a reamer is "a tool used in machining to make existing holes dimensionally more accurate and to improve surface finish." Now I can improve holes and sew with the same tool!)

But seriously, this thing will be handy. I always need something sharp to open letters or boxes that I, a college student, eagerly await, and my scissors just don't cut it. (Har har.) I already used the Swiss Army knife scissors to cut the tag off my new Gators shirt. Full circle?? Of course, it's also occasionally useful to have a screwdriver, Phillips or flat. Also, every once in a blue moon, I need a bottle opener... because I like my soda that way.

Also, I got $20 in Taco Bell Bucks. I didn't even know there was such a thing, but I'm glad there is.

For dinner, we had over not only relatives but also friends of the family. I'd never spent Christmas with friends, but it was nice. We had a good time. We kids ate outside. Oh yes: we ate Christmas dinner outside in the beautiful Florida weather. Be jealous.

If Christmas is all about giving, then I'm in the Christmas spirit. I made a donation to Wikipedia the other day. They're trying to raise US$6,000,000, so I figured I'd do my small part. Of my 670 posts since 2005, 431 contain a link to Wikipedia. For the more mathematically inclined, that is 64.3%. Frankly, I'm surprised it's not more. I go to Wikipedia every day for all kinds of information (today I learned that Switzerland does have an army and that they're issued Swiss Army knives), so I know it would be a good thing to give back. Also, the fact that Wikipedia is free to redistribute means that the knowledge it provides can go a long way.

Also, I just realized that I've accidentally introduced CrossBrowserTesting.com twice. I explained the concept of the site the day before yesterday, but I had forgotten that I had already explained and linked to it on Thanksgiving. Is the holiday season really that long? Oh well. You're welcome for the publicity, CrossBrowserTesting.com.

And now, here are some links that aren't Christmas-related but happen to be presidential:

Here are some details about what life will be like for the new US President.

Collected from Google Maps Street View, it's a gallery of other 1600 Pennsylvania Avenues throughout the United States.

Almost Christmas

I'm a webmaster. When I'm designing web pages, it's often useful to see how they look in different browsers and on different operating systems. But at work, I'm just one guy with IE 7 and Firefox 3 on Windows XP. What am I to do? Browsershots is a great service if you want screenshots of your page in different browsers. But what if you need to interact with your pages on different platforms?

Enter CrossBrowserTesting.com. The site gives you access to various Windows, Mac, and Linux boxes so you can do your thing. It's kind of slow because you've got this stuff going back and forth over a network, but it's pretty indispensable if you need to see how your web pages behave, which is often the case. It's free to create an account and use the service; unless you buy credits, you're limited to 5 minutes at a time, and paying customers get to skip ahead of you. In spite of that, there usually isn't much of a wait. Sometimes there's none.

The site requires Java, which shouldn't be a problem for most people. By default, you connect to their computers via a Java applet. They also let you use your own VNC client, in which case they just give you the IP address and a password. You'll still need to have Java, though. I know, it's kind of lame. (I should add that Vinagre, the default VNC client in Ubuntu, is pleasantly easy to use. I had never needed to use it before.)

So CrossBrowserTesting.com went swimmingly on Windows at work, but on Ubuntu at home, the Java applet would cause Firefox to use 100% of the CPU and hang. It turned out that many, but not all, Java applets were doing this. I found out that it was a problem with the Java plugin that Firefox was using. With the version of Sun Java in Ubuntu 8.10 (Java 6 Update 10), there are two browser plugins: the regular one and the "next-generation" one, which fixes some bugs. The regular one is used by default, but the next-gen one is supposed to work a lot better.

So how do you switch between them? Here's what I did. Your mileage may vary. No warranty, etc.

First, I deleted the symbolic link I created about a year ago:

cd ~/.mozilla/plugins
rm libjavaplugin_oji.so

As per this comment on the bug, I created a symbolic link to the new plugin in the same folder:

ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.10/jre/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so

But it didn't work; both the old and new plugins were listed in about:plugins. So I followed the instructions of another comment:

sudo rm /etc/alternatives/xulrunner-1.9-javaplugin.so
sudo rm /etc/alternatives/xulrunner-javaplugin.so
sudo rm /etc/alternatives/firefox-javaplugin.so
sudo rm /etc/alternatives/mozilla-javaplugin.so
sudo rm /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.0.4/plugins/libjavaplugin.so
sudo rm /usr/lib/xulrunner/libjavaplugin.so
sudo rm /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/libjavaplugin.so
sudo rm /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin.so
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so /etc/alternatives/xulrunner-1.9-javaplugin.so
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so /etc/alternatives/xulrunner-javaplugin.so
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so /etc/alternatives/firefox-javaplugin.so
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so /etc/alternatives/mozilla-javaplugin.so
sudo ln -s /etc/alternatives/xulrunner-1.9-javaplugin.so /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.0.4/plugins/libjavaplugin.so
sudo ln -s /etc/alternatives/xulrunner-javaplugin.so /usr/lib/xulrunner/libjavaplugin.so
sudo ln -s /etc/alternatives/firefox-javaplugin.so /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/libjavaplugin.so
sudo ln -s /etc/alternatives/mozilla-javaplugin.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin.so

The author provides these commands as a shell script (I found it easier just to run them one by one) and notes, "Don't worry if you get an error message saying that something can't be deleted." (Not all of the files to be deleted existed for me.) Anyway, I did all those things and sho' 'nuff, Java was working fine on CrossBrowserTesting.com and other sites. Yay.

Okay, that was boring. Here's something a little more exciting. I just found out my grades for this semester: three A's and two B+'s. It's better than last time, and it brings my GPA up ever so slightly (about one hundredth of a grade point). I had already found out (or could guess) the grades for several of my classes, but my Indian Ocean class I had no idea about: part of the grade was a paper, which of course would be graded subjectively. Fortunately, I got an A. Thanks, prof. I'll give you a good rating on Gator Ratings, a new site that a computer science student recently started.

Also, Where's George?, a site I used to be heavily involved with, turns 10 years old today. I can't believe it. That means I've been a member for almost nine years, which is crazy nuts. I haven't done much in the past few years, though. Hardly anything, in fact. Still, the site is an interesting idea: enter the serial numbers of your US currency to track them as they go. The idea just got boring for me after a while, but it's still cool when I think about it. (Also, when the forums were changed from WWWBoard to vBulletin, things were never the same.)

Although World War II ended in 1945, several Japanese soldiers held out from surrendering for various reasons: either they were really, really convinced that they shouldn't surrender, or they weren't aware that the war had ended. The last ones surrendered in 1974.

Extreme room makeover

My ride was going to leave this morning, so I had signed up to check out of my dorm room at the earliest opportunity: 9:20 AM. Later, I found out that this wasn't early enough for them, and they absolutely wouldn't wait an hour for me. I found out about this yesterday, when it was too late for me to change my scheduled check-out time. It was night, and I was waiting for my RA to come around so I could explain my dilemma and ask him to check me out early. But he didn't show for hours and hours. Finally, I found another RA who I knew who gladly checked me out and agreed to tell my own RA that I had left early.

So I spent the night at my sister's; I'm glad the buses run that late. And in the morning, long before 9:20, our ride came, and we were on the road. Someone else who came along was Michael, who played Sherlock Holmes in a video I was asked to be in a few years ago. We'd seen each other every so often since then. That reminds me, I want to watch the movie again. I got a copy of it eventually, and it's pretty good.

Anyway, I am home for the holidays. I had been looking forward to see how my parents redid my room. They were going to surprise me because they know how my room always collected dust and made me feel sick, but they decided to tell me last week. It basically looks exactly like they said it would. There's new carpet, drapes instead of blinds, and new paint on the walls. They asked me what I wanted to do with my entire bookshelf's worth of National Geographics, a collection I'd accumulated a few years ago (partly seen here). I asked them to put the magazines in boxes and put my actual books back on my bookshelf. Not only did they do that, but they put my amp there too. What a nice use of space.

So, everything's good. My room smells like paint, which is nice. The walls are nice and clean. So are the shelves in my closet. It will probably never be this clean again.

I notice that there are some textbooks I didn't sell last year. I'm going to put those on the market now. Also, I'm not sure what to do with 425 National Geographics. (Yes, I insist on italics.) Nobody wants to buy all of them, but some people want them for free. I'm thinking of giving them away at this point, but I'd really like to make a buck... which is probably the most somebody would pay for these. I could try selling them individually or in small groups, and I'd probably earn a pretty penny eventually, but it would just be too much work. What should I do with these things?

Oops! Read about the Top 10 Most Expensive Accidents in History.

Here are 50 facts you might not know about Barack Obama. They're fun facts.

Find out How 10 Famous Technology Products Got Their Names.

End of fall

A few weeks ago (Thursday, the 4th, to be exact), I went with my friends Mark and Andy to an orchestra concert. Yes, I could have mentioned it earlier, but I forgot. Apparently I am all about going to orchestra concerts and then forgetting them and then writing about them later. Anyway, this performance was very good. It was of Dvořák's New World. I had never heard it, but they did a good job. After an intermission, they played Respighi's Pines of Rome, which was about half as long. I liked the end. It was really loud.

Oh, and exams. Yes. They were pretty intense. I had to write a paper that I really should have started writing months ago. I think I'll still do okay, though. And what else? An exam in my Indian Ocean class, a programming project. It's all over now. I'm done. Actually, I have to tie some loose ends like picking up my project grade for tech writing and returning some books to the library. I also decided to work today and tomorrow to make up for time I missed when I was sick last week.

Anyway, I'll be out of here on Friday, and I'm looking forward to it. My parents told me last week that they were redecorating my room to make it less allergenic for me. Whenever I'm home, I end up feeling sick because the place is just a trap for dust. I don't know what it is, but hopefully a change of carpet will do the trick. They put in drapes too because they know how much I don't like being woken up by the sun in the morning. I can't wait to see what they've done. I bet it looks pretty awesome.

Phun photo of the day: Horse gets head stuck in tree.

From Wales: E-mail error ends up on road sign.

And now, some science: Ten things you don't know about black holes.

This is why I'm hot

I am sick. It started with a tickle in my throat on Monday. But on Tuesday morning I got a rude awakening - or, shall I say, a rude non-awakening.

During the second half of this semester in my tech writing class, we've been solely working on this big project. We were split into groups and we had to pretend to be architecture/engineering/construction firms. We were proposing designs to an expansion to the campus gym, a project that is really going to happen. (Real-world applicability.) My group and I had been getting together a lot, most recently Monday night, to practice for our 30-minute oral presentation that we would give on Tuesday.

So Tuesday morning, my alarm goes off at 7:30, which gives me a lot of time to prepare because class is at 8:30. I have to wear a dress shirt and slacks, borrowed from one of my teammates and my roommate, respectively (I really didn't think I would need that stuff in college). So I allowed myself time to get prettied up. Great. But I shut off my alarm and remain in bed because I want just a few more minutes. Next thing I know, it's 8:50. I do a double-take at the clock to make sure. Yes, for the first time in history, Jordon has overslept - and he's sick, and it's the worst day ever to oversleep.

I have text messages from the owner of the dress shirt asking if I'm awake and telling me I need to hurry. I get to class as fast as I can, and fortunately, I get there before we're due for our presentation. I'm much more relaxed, and I nail it. The profs even gave me an award. Apparently they thought my presentation on technology was the best technology section out of all the presentations. That's kind of funny because the technology plan really should be boring stuff like ventilation and phone networks and stuff, but my group leader told me just to come up with random stuff, so I talked about exercise bikes with TV screens, touchless bathrooms (the all-motion-activated bathroom is my dream), and the like.

Anyway, I'm still sick. I've been having a miserable week, and I didn't even sleep last night for more than an hour. But anyway, I must depart because it's finals week and I have a lot of stuff going on: two exams, a paper, and a project coming up in the next few days.

Full circle, gaining momentum

I spent some time planning an end-of-semester/Zamenhof Day event for my Esperanto club. The usual Zamenhof Day celebration is to have a dinner on December 15. Since that day falls during final exams, and because adulation of the creator of Esperanto is increasingly unfashionable, I decided we should have a general Esperanto-Vespermanĝo (Esperanto Dinner) at a local restaurant on Friday night. Most of the actual "planning" was trying to get local Esperantists to come, but none of the ones I contacted were able to.

As for the restaurant, I chose Tim and Terry's, which is casual and has live music. We ate outside (pretty much the only place to eat) and chatted for a while about Esperanto and general topics. I already knew it was a cool place to hang out because the student freethought organization has had several get-togethers there. In fact, it was at Gator Freethought's January outing that I came up with the idea to start the Esperanto club. In December, I came back with an actual club. Full circle.

Of course, we took the obligatory group photo:

From left to right, that's Andy (Vice President), Enrique, George, Dan (Secretary), me (President), Mark (Treasurer), and I'm pretty sure his name is Trevor. I was kind of surprised by who turned out and who didn't. These people only went to a few meetings, while the people who went to more meetings didn't show up. One of the usual guys passed up the Vespermanĝo to go to a ballet... with a girl... who already had a boyfriend. Clearly there is room for improvement here.

For a while now, Mark has been planning to go backpacking through Europe over the summer. When our club got off the ground, he decided that he could learn Esperanto to get around and get some free lodging. Andy wants to join him, and he's extended his invitation to me and everyone else in the club. How could I pass this up? I've always kind of wanted to go to Europe. There are so many things to do and people to meet. Maybe I'd even have a fling. Fine, probably not!

Anyway, it's a lot to think about. Going to Europe for the summer means I wouldn't be able to keep my job (unless they held it for me special?). I would also spend a lot of money, free lodging or no. And how would I blog? (Yes, I thought about this.) I would have to just hit up an Internet cafe or a host's computer every few days. It's doable. And it would make this blog much more exciting: The World of Stuff, Live from Europe!

I ran the whole idea by my parents, and they were supportive. I could not be much more surprised. Don't be surprised if I evaporate out of the plans. Remember when I wanted to go to Honduras? I've also wanted to go to Canada and New York (shocking, the latter, isn't it?). It never happens.

Remember in my last post when I said that a local TV station covered our organ donation event? Watch their piece on YouTube. That's me standing behind the girl in the opening shot.

A creepy argument for banning subliminal messages: WTF, Broccoli?

For those who still don't realize what's wrong with the RIAA and MPAA's bullying tactics, here's an extended metaphor that kind of works: If the MPAA Did Handbags.

Life

Have you ever been in a situation that could either bring you either untold amounts of joy or more misery? A situation you weren't quite in control of? It probably made you feel like you were hanging in the balance, caught between extremes and not being able to choose which way to go. What can you do in a situation like that? Besides feeling a little excited by the possibilities, I think all you can do is hope for the best... or try to nudge things in your favor.

Today was an interesting day. If you've been reading for a while, you know that I volunteer for Get Carded, which gives out organ donor cards on campus. Our big event of the fall semester was today. I didn't even know about it until a few weeks ago, but I guess I'm not quite in the loop since I don't have a chairmanship/chairship/chair/whatever. Well, I do have a chair. I'm sitting in it.

But anyway, it was called the Festival of Life, and the main thing was that we were trying to break the world record for largest human green ribbon, green being the color for organ donation (also cerebral palsy, lymphoma, HIV testing, bipolar disorder, Lyme disease, celiac disease, hemochromatosis, environmentalism, the earthquake in China, farm families, peace, missing children, the genocide in Darfur, the Jena Six, music education in Hispanic communities, street urchins in the former Soviet Union, and maybe other causes).

We spent hours getting ready: setting up the tent, putting posters all over campus, blowing up green balloons for the people in the human ribbon to hold, and more. Volunteers came and went because they had to go to work or class. Fortunately, I was able to make it for the actual event at 1 PM (with the added bonus of not having to sit through a physics lecture). We definitely didn't expect to break the record of 689 people... and we didn't. We probably didn't have more than 50. But we did get people interested in organ donation. Free pizza helped too.

There were a couple of journalists and TV news crews there. This evening, I saw the piece that WUFT (which, as a university-run TV station, is located several yards from where we were standing) put together. They didn't interview me or anything, but it was nice to see that some other people were interviewed. And, of course, it was all for a good cause.

I guess I haven't been to YouTube in a while. Remember when I said that the 16:9 aspect ratio was becoming more popular for video? YouTube has now made it the aspect ratio for their player. Fortunately, existing 4:3 videos aren't cropped or stretched or anything nasty.

Donald Knuth collects photos of diamond-shaped signs. Also, ten cool points to those of you who have heard of Donald Knuth.

Finally, here are 9 Brain Habits You Didn't Realize You Had. The most visible color is chartreuse? That's one of those tidbits I think I'll remember for the rest of my life. I've even had a chance to bring it up in conversation already.