ZOMG XKCD

I heart xkcd. It could quite possibly be the webcomic to end all webcomics. I have this comic taped to my door. But I can’t even remember how I found out about xkcd—probably between reading Slashdot comments and… adjusting my pocket protector or something. Snort. No, it was actually probably from my friends, a lot of whom read the comic. It’s also practically a requirement for being a computer science major.

Anyway, xkcd mastermind Randall Munroe criticized the Dvorak keyboard layout in a recent comic and linked to my very own The Dvorak Keyboard and You in a follow-up blag post. It’s so satisfying to see “xkcd linked here” on my Incoming Links (pictured above). This probably the best or most awesome publicity my site has ever gotten. So, when do the geeky girls start flocking to me?

Sheesh, I’m kidding.

I myself used to draw a lot of cartoons, some on paper, others on my computer. I drew stick figure comics with a friend. Weird superheroes too. I also had a whole series going that I did in MS Paint. No one has ever seen it. The characters were various flowers (with names like Flo Wer) and a rock. I don’t remember too much about it, except that one time they got abducted by aliens.

I have a few examples of my work handy. This was supposed to be for my church youth group’s newsletter in 2003:

I did another one, also intended for the newsletter, that had two kids taking a test. One says to the other, “What’s the answer to the one that says ‘Name’?” What a gem, I tell you.

And are beepers and pagers the same thing? I still don’t know.

What do you do when you’re trying to play Mozart on the guitar but you fail epically? Record one note at a time and splice the whole thing together. (Via J-Walk Blog)

Oh, those news anchors: What News Anchors Do During Commercial Breaks. (Via The Presurfer)

Someone found out about every street in the world and made a list of the ten most amazing ones: Top 10 Most Amazing Streets in the World. (Via The Presurfer)

Tubin’

This week, I helped out with Florida Free Culture‘s “Free Your PC” event, in which volunteers installed antivirus software and free software on people’s computers. It was pretty satisfying to spread some free software love by installing Audacity, the GIMP, OpenOffice.org, and other programs for people who needed them. “But Jordon,” you ask, “why not tell people to download this software themselves? It’s all available on the Internet anyway.” The antivirus was our main draw, and people went for the other software because we were already installing stuff for them anyway. Plus, it was a great chance to explain our philosophy. Also, a lot of people don’t know how to install software or use Google or anything like that. Don’t hate.

On Thursday night, I wrote an eight-page research paper. I started around 10 or 10:30 and finished at 4 in the morning. Then I learned that I can function pretty well for a whole day on just three-and-a-half hours of sleep. But I wouldn’t do it all the time. Oh, no. I love me some good sleep. Also, procrastination is bad. Don’t do it, kids.

The people on the floor of my dorm are a pretty tight bunch. Roxy recently planned a two-day celebration for her birthday. Yesterday was part one. A lot of us went to Leonardo’s 706, a restaurant I had actually been to with my dad when I was 9 or 10 or 11. I didn’t remember much of it except what I wrote in my journal, which was that they had “the best darn garlic rolls in town” or something else a 9-, 10-, or 11-year-old would say. They still have the rolls, it seems, but I didn’t order any. Also, I was the only one who didn’t get a personal pizza. “What did you get, Jordon?” This pasta thing. I don’t like pizza that much.

Today, we went tubing at Ichetucknee Springs State Park. I went with other friends about a year ago, and the weather was similar this time: cold and cloudy with some rain. It was still fun, though.

In response to the recent “three strikes” laws against illegal file-sharing that certain countries have passed, the excellent music download site Jamendo is offering a “three thanks” campaign to promote its free and legal music downloads.

I’ve probably talked with my friend Luke or someone about the idea of microcredit, or making providing small loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries to help them (and their countries) succeed. Through Kiva, you can make small investments in these up-and-coming enterprises. (Via Dinosaur Comics)

If you agree that digital cameras are cool, you might want to read 8 Pioneering Moments in Digital Photography. (Via The Presurfer)

Just say no

Here in Gainesville, a debate is raging. On Tuesday, voters will decide whether to pass Charter Amendment 1, which would end the city’s prevention of discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Unfortunately, some people still aren’t aware of the fact that our sexual orientation and gender identity come from within us and aren’t choices. Some still aren’t aware of the tremendous suffering that many people go through due to exclusion and outright hatred from others.

The folks who got this amendment on the ballot say it’s to keep men from claiming a female gender identity so they can go into women’s restrooms and assault women. Sounds pretty tenuous, doesn’t it? A fellow student points out that one of the pro-1 advertisements is self-defeating. It uses actual security camera footage of a man entering a women’s restroom to spy on a woman. The ad doesn’t mention that the perpetrator didn’t actually claim to be transgendered. The real message here is that unsavory types will do what they can to go after women whether it’s legal or not.

Actually, early voting has been going on, so I’ve already voted no on 1. The anti-1 group was providing rides from campus to the city’s early voting location, so I took advantage of that on Friday. On the way to the polls and back, I met a number of kind folks who were in favor of civil rights for LGBT individuals. I just hope these people outnumber the others. We’ll find out on Tuesday.

Yesterday was a nice day, so I went out and took some panoramic photos around campus. My magnum opus was a photo of the football stadium, which I’ve uploaded to Wikimedia Commons for use on Wikipedia.

When you search for other people’s names on the Internet, you can find out a lot about them. Today, while I was Googling my name, I found out something about myself.

In my junior year of high school, I was told that, based on my PSAT score, I had been recognized as a National Merit Scholarship Semifinalist. But my school never contacted me about any further developments, so I never had a chance to win the scholarship. Even so, I mentioned my National Merit Semifinalist status on this blog (multiple times, actually) and even in my resume. Thanks to Google, I’ve unearthed an issue of my high school’s newsletter that says I was recognized as a Commended Student by the program. The National Merit people say:

Commended Students are named on the basis of a nationally applied Selection Index score that may vary from year to year and is below the level required for participants to be named Semifinalists in their respective states. … Commended Students do not continue in the competition for National Merit® Scholarships …

Funny that the school administration was reading this blog the whole time but never bothered to correct me.

The length of each dashed line on each road in the United States is mandated by the federal government. How long are those lines, anyway? The answer may surprise you. (Via J-Walk Blog)

I’ve always thought about doing this, but I’m afraid I’d creep myself out: Sleep Talking on the Mic. (Via waxy.org)

Since Google sends its Street View cam out to so many places, there’s a good chance that it’ll capture lots of crazy moments. (Via The Presurfer)

Computers ‘n’ sports

As you may know, I’m the webmaster for the Dean of Students Office at my university. This week, I got a bit more experience with running a web server. The techie higher-ups wanted to move the website from a server at the DSO office (redundancy, anyone?) to a new server that they could have physical access to. Which isn’t a bad idea, really, as they know more about this kind of stuff than I do.

Also, the old server runs Mac OS X 10.3 (redundancy, anyone?). That in itself is a reason to move. Do I really need fancy graphics on a web server? Think of how much more RAM and how many more CPU cycles the server software would have if windows didn’t slither away as I minimized them. Do I need a graphical interface at all? And who thought shipping servers with GarageBand was a good idea? Why?

Anyway, the techie higher-ups gave me some pointers on moving the web site to the new server, which runs FreeBSD, a free operating system that deservedly enjoys wide usage among servers (including the one that brought you this page). In short, I learned a bit more about transferring and manipulating files via the command line in a Unix-like environment. It was a bit odd at first because I wasn’t sure how much the guys would let me do with their machine. But before long, my co-worker Mark and I were editing configuration files, adding users, and changing the system’s time zone.

And so the switch to the new server was made. A real test came yesterday when the formatting of the site started displaying incorrectly for some people. Internet Explorer 6, which some people unfortunately still use, was displaying pages on the new server wrong. For the technical types who are curious, I pinned it down to an XML declaration I had removed from the site on the new server because it conflicted with PHP’s short opening tag syntax. (Yeah, you know PHP’s short opening tag syntax, right?) So I edited php.ini to turn off short opening tags and added the line back, and IE 6 was placated.

For those of you who like sports, I saw Tim Tebow today. Who is Tim Tebow? He’s possibly one of the greatest college football players of all time, having won the coveted Heisman Trophy between leading the Florida Gators to two national championships, all before his senior year. Men want to be him; women want to be with him. And probably vice versa in some cases. I wouldn’t doubt it.

Anyway, he was on the North Lawn of the Reitz Union, where some girls were talking to him. I think they wanted to take their pictures with him. It’s about the fifth time I’ve seen him around campus, but I never say anything to him. All I would really say is, “Hi, Tim Tebow, you’re a great football player,” but he’s heard it all before. Still, whenever I see him, it brightens my day. Squee?

Audiobooks are awesome. Last month, I pointed out a collection of ridiculous soundbites from Barack Obama’s autobiography, as read by the author. Well, it turns out that Bill O’Reilly wrote a novel and narrated the audiobook version himself. Why should you listen to these clips? Because you want to hear Bill O’Reilly describe various sexual acts, or just to hear him say, “I wish I were a lesbian.” (Via waxy.org)

Fifty years ago, Buddy Holly died. Yeah, the guy mentioned the Weezer song. Anyway, he had a popular song called “Peggy Sue,” which was apparently based on a real person.

Those of you in North America will probably find this familiar: Please stand by. (Via waxy.org)

Spring broken

Spring break was fun even though I was sick for a few days. On Tuesday night, I went out on my dad’s boat, which was fun. I miss the ocean sometimes, so it was good to be back. Toward the end of the week, I hung out with Nick, Mike, and TJ more. We ate at a lot of restaurants, and I discovered that Hooters has delicious chicken wings. I wish I had hung out with more people and eaten more wings, but spring break must come to an end.

And so it did. After over a week away from school, I was actually… ugh… missing it. I mean, it’s good to be back to being (supposedly) productive. People are counting down the weeks until the semester ends. (I think it’s five or six? Oh no, I’m a bad college student because I don’t know!)

Also, everybody got a haircut during spring break. Seriously, lots of people. I was going to get one myself, but I ended up not feeling like it. What is it about going home that makes college students want to cut their hair? I don’t know about anyone else, but when I go home to get a haircut, my parents pay for it. And they know how much to tip.

Speaking of other people, I’ve decided to bridge the gap between The World of Stuff and a little web site you may have heard of known as Facebook. Some of my friends read this blog religiously, and some stop by once in a while, but a lot of them aren’t blog-reading types. Still others don’t know I have a blog at all. I think my friends and acquaintances would like my blog. How do I show it to them?

As it happens, Facebook allows you to import RSS feed items as “notes,” which are what it calls blog-post-type things. Facebook will check back on the feed every few hours and post any new items as your notes. You can’t edit them, though. To maintain control over my posts and keep comments in one place, I disabled commenting on my notes and imported a custom RSS feed (created with the help of Feed Wrangler) that just shows the auto-generated summary for each post followed by a link to the full post. Welcome, new readers who I’m already friends with!

A blog with tips on spotting Canadians: How to Spot a Canadian. (Via The Presurfer)

One year in the past, I discovered I could take 10 five-year-olds in a fight. Now I’ve found out how many ninety-year-olds I could take in a fight with this quiz called “How Many 90 Year Olds Could You Take in a Fight?” at howmany90yearoldscouldyoutakeinafight.com. Turns out I could take 14 ninety-year-olds in a fight. (Via The Presurfer)

I sometimes enjoy listening to Internet radio stations or radio stations on the Internet. So I was pretty pleased when my friend TJ told me about Split Infinity Radio, which apparently features DJs who work from their homes and pick a wide variety of tunes to spin. It’s fun to tune in and see what they’ve got going.

Look around you

No posts in six days. That must mean I’m having fun, right? The answer is yes!

Actually, I got sick this week, and that was annoying… you know, because I was at home on spring break and all. But I passed the time with… panoramic photography.

See, I’d long missed putting together panoramas easily with a certain program that I no longer find ethical to use because it’s not free as in freedom. I was wondering what was free but also very easy to use. There’s Hugin, which runs on Linux, but from what I had seen, it couldn’t stitch panoramas automatically. You had to choose a lot of corresponding points between images for it to put them together.

Actually, it turns out that Hugin can work with programs that pick points automatically, which makes the task of stitching panoramas much easier. It’s not quite as easy as giving a program some images and telling it to go ahead, but it’s close. I just downloaded Hugin and Autopano-SIFT (both available from Ubuntu‘s software repositories) and made sure that they would work together, and then everything was ready.

All you have to do is follow the instructions in Hugin’s Assistant tab. It will guess the focal length of your camera based on the EXIF data in the images or something like that. All I know is that it didn’t like photos I took with the camera sideways unless I stripped the images of their EXIF data and entered the focal length manually as three-quarters of the camera’s actual focal length as calculated by Hugin (due to the aspect ratio being the opposite and aw, you don’t really need to know this, do you).

Anyway, you load the images, then you and Hugin decide what the camera’s focal length is. Next, Autopano-SIFT picks points common to different images so Hugin knows how to stitch them. You’re then presented with a rough idea of how the panorama will look, and there you can set some parameters like the projection. That’s one thing that I don’t remember [non-free automatic panorama stitching program] being able to do.

It turns out that one projection is not suitable for all kinds of panoramas. For example, it’s common to see buildings looking very bendy, like in some of my previous panoramas, but they look much better if you can keep straight lines straight, as in this example. But that sort of projection isn’t always the best because the edges of the image get more distorted as the field of view gets wider. It’s a trade-off.

Finally, Hugin generates an image. I like that it’s an uncompressed TIFF with transparency around the panorama, as opposed to the aforementioned program which generated a (compressed) JPEG with black around the panorama.

Taking panoramic photos can be tricky, but with the right software, stitching images together doesn’t have to be a problem. As long as you do a good job of taking the pictures, you can get a pretty flawless panorama like this one I took of my backyard. It consists of 17 photos.

(Also: I finally upgraded WordPress today, so let me know if you notice anything funky with the blog. 2.7 is sexxay.)

I have lots of gift cards that I rarely get a chance to use, so this site might be handy: you can buy and sell gift cards at Plastic Jungle. (Via mcgees.org)

Fun project: a Scrabble Keyboard. And it’s for a Mac. Go figure. (Via The Presurfer)

You may have heard of Songsmith, Microsoft’s new program that generates backing music for melodies. (See a recent post where I link to Songsmith’s treatment of “Roxanne.”) But it turns out that the program can do more than that. Here, Songsmith plays melodies based on recent stock charts… descending melodies, of course. Funny in a seemingly inappropriate way. (Via waxy.org)

How to beat the Blues

Friday, 6:45 A.M. Place: my dorm room. My alarm is set for 8:00 A.M., the latest I can wake up without being late to class. Despite 8:00 being a long way off, I’m vaguely aware that it’s morning. I’m trying to get back to sleep because I’m going to leave for spring break in the afternoon. But the world has other plans.

A flash.

No. It can’t…

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

Ugh. Get out of bed. Remember the keys this time. Put on my sandals… but they’re already packed. I put on my tennis shoes without socks because I don’t have time to put on socks. Follow everyone down the stairs and outside. Ah dang, it’s cold. And now we wait.

I asked the RA, who was trying to keep warm by draping herself in a blanket, if it was a drill. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t have a fire drill before most people were awake, and she said she hadn’t heard about it, so it was probably a legitimate incident.

I was lucky last semester when a 7 A.M. fire alarm woke up almost everyone—I had just left for my dreaded first-period physics lab, and I wouldn’t have even known about it if everyone hadn’t complained about it for a week. That was the only time I was ever grateful to have a first-period physics lab. But this time, I wasn’t so lucky.

After about a half an hour, we were allowed back into the building, and I went back to bed and tried to sleep until my alarm went off. The day continued as usual, except I may have ducked out of my later, more boring classes early? That’s for you, the reader, to conclude. I got home in the evening.

So finally, I was home in South Florida with warm weather and my friends nearby. Yesterday my friend Nick invited me to a hockey game. Kind of an unusual thing, I guess, considering I’ve never been to one. (Unbelievably astute readers will remember that I won tickets to a hockey game in my freshman year of high school but gave them away.) But our friend Carly had two extra tickets, so we were invited. I had consciously chosen not to pack my sweaters, thinking I wouldn’t need them. And now I’d be going to a hockey game. Luckily, I had an old sweater at home.

Also, we had box seats. Pretty sweet, I know, but it wasn’t the first time. I am pretty sure we had box seats when I went to see the Dalai Lama at this same venue. Yeah, very strange, but apparently he was doing a tour. But yeah, box seats are great because they have free food in them, viz. Caesar salad, chicken wings, various pizzas, cookies, brownies, soda, and beer (for those over the age of 21 in our puritanical society).

To be sure, the game was exciting too. The Florida Panthers took on the St. Louis Blues. I didn’t know any of the players, but the Panthers had this guy named Booth who was supposed to be good. Whenever he had the puck, the fans would yell his name, which is an unfortunate name to have if you’re a sports star whose fans shout your name. There were a lot of theatrics in the form of music, fog machines, and whatnot. The Panthers won 5-3.

Also, did you know that hockey teams have cheerleaders? The Panthers do, anyway. During the third period, a couple of them visited our booth to pose for pictures and sell Panthers cheerleader calendars. If I had had more than a dollar on me, I would have helped give financial support to those young women. But Nick and I had the satisfaction of having our picture taken with them.

Today we went to the beach. It was fun.

A Virgin Airlines passenger writes a letter to Richard Branson about the quality (and nature) of the food on his flight. Is it the world’s best passenger complaint letter? I don’t know, but I’m going to be flying with Virgin in June. I hope I don’t get hungry. (Via All About Me – And Then Some)

Woo

I’m going home for spring break tomorrow! So exciting! (Requisite Dinosaur Comics link goes here.) But seriously. I haven’t been home in two months, and it feels like such a long time. I can’t wait to see my parents (it’s my mom’s birthday tomorrow), sleep in my bed, chase the dog, and hang out with my friends. People have been asking me if I have any plans, and I’ve had to say that I didn’t, but now I do. On Sunday, I’m having lunch with some friends I haven’t seen in a long time.

Did I mention sleeping? Sleeping is the bomb. Sleeping rules the schools. It’s not that I’ve been particularly sleep-deprived lately, but catching up is always nice. But doing things is also nice. I was trying to think of what I did last year, and that’s where having a blog comes in handy. Let’s turn back time: first I visited my grandparents, then went home and visited my old high school, went to the beach and a pool hall, and then visited my aunt on the way back to school. Pretty eventful. Will Spring Break ’09 compare? Only time will tell!

Okay, real-life friends o’ mine: who’s going to be in South Florida this week? We should hang together, or most assuredly we shall hang separately. And that’s no fun.

In case of extreme boringness, I’ll be bringing a book and some magazines. I also did my first sudoku puzzle ever today, so I might get addicted to that. (“omg jordan u never did sudoku? what r u some FREAK??” Don’t get too worked up about it, dudes.) It’s funny, actually. The gorilla guerilla marketers for some college student website had placed their litter advertisements on the desks in one of my classes, and the ad basically consisted of a sudoku (something about keeping your brain sharp or something). I thought it was a lot more interesting than the class, and I finished it eventually.

Incidentally, you’d be surprised at how many instances of guerilla marketing you can find on a college campus. Or maybe you wouldn’t! Also, this might not have been guerilla marketing.

Man, being the President must be awesome. Barack Obama now has access to the presidential record collection. (Via J-Walk Blog)

From The Big Picture: spectacular aerial photos of London at night.

“Imagine, if you will, sitting down to your morning coffee, turning on your home computer to read the day’s newspaper.” Here’s a 1981 news report about an exciting (if slow and expensive) new service that several newspapers around the country were offering. (Via waxy.org)

Title that will make you want to read this

To no one’s surprise, the Unite Party basically swept the Student Government elections, winning the executive and treasurer tickets as well as 42 Student Senate seats. The Progress Party picked up 8 seats, while the Orange and Blue Party won none.

Also, 61% of students voted to ban SG funding for facilities that require biometric data for entry. Recently, the main student gym announced plans to install hand scanners at the entrance because they thought that showing your student ID card to an attendant would be too slow and inexpensive. In the fall elections, something like 84% of students expressed their disapproval of this incredible waste of money and arguable invasion of privacy in a non-binding referendum. This semester’s initiative is binding.

The turnout was 19%, which I think is considered high. Kind of a shame, if you ask me.

Um, what else? Spring break is in a week. Yay. Um, that’s it, I guess. Talk amongst yourselves.

Tupper’s self-referential formula is a certain formula whose graph looks like the formula itself. The Wikipedia article makes the rationale sound simple, but I still think it’s pretty wacky.

Bhutan, the quiet Himalayan kingdom that got television and the Internet at the same time, is now the world’s first non-smoking nation. (Via The Presurfer)

At howoldareyou.net, you can see pictures of people and guess how old they are. You can also submit a picture of yourself… if you dare to find out what people think. (Via Atheist Revolution)