I’ve got time for trivialities

I went home this weekend. As with many things, it got me thinking.

At the risk of being really cheesy, let me mention that Wiktionary defines “home” as:

One’s own dwelling place; the house or structure in which one lives; especially the house in which one lives with his family; the habitual abode of one’s family; also, one’s birthplace.

That’s the first definition of ten just for the noun. It’s not helpful.

I believe it was Maniac Magee who said, “Home is where you sleep.” Now that’s more like it.

Why all this philosophizing, you may ask? I’ve noticed that some of my friends consider their homes to be their apartments here in College Town, USA, rather than the houses where they grew up, where their parents live, and where they go for holidays. I also caught an article in Unofficial College Newspaper last week that warned of the “Garden State moment” when you realize that “the house you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore.”

Oh, Jordan, you say, isn’t Garden State a great movie? I loveeeeeeeeeee it, just like I love drawing out silent letters! Less than three hundred thirty-three thousand three hundred thirty-three. Yeah, well, I haven’t seen more than, like, five minutes of it. I know, what a horrible person I am for never going out to the video store and renting your favorite movie, or for never consciously trying to find it on TV and taking a break from everything else in my life for two hours to watch it. Sue me.

Um, anyway, I hadn’t been home for three months (my trip to Europe wasn’t even that long), and I found myself stumbling around a bit, trying to remember how each door opened, where some things were, and the like. I’d still call the house my home—I did feel at home there, and I highly doubt I’ll be living in this apartment after I graduate—but I couldn’t help but wonder when the Garden State moment would come. Hopefully, it won’t be until after I graduate. By that time, I hope to have a full-time job, a non-student apartment, a live-in girlfriend, and other things that can be described by hyphenated adjectives.

Need some dummy text for some sort of design? Check out the Dummy Text Generator. I’ve featured a similar site previously (December 23, 2003), but this one has more texts to choose from (including the opening of The Metamorphosis) and uses JavaScript magic so there’s no waiting for new pages to load.

How to Bind a Paper Without Staples. I’ve already used this technique successfully, but only with scissors (instead of ripping the paper).

Things I’m thankful for

I have a roof over my head. I have shoes on my feet. I have plenty of clothes. I’m not starving. I’m in good health. I’ve never broken any bones. I’ve never had the measles, polio, or rubella. I’ve never gotten the flu.

I’ve gone to decent schools, where I’ve gotten a good education. I have a great job to pay for my schooling, with the help of scholarships and my parents. In fact, I’m in the black.

I had wonderful experiences in Europe this summer. I got to bond with my travel buddy, and with Esperanto, I met family members I otherwise wouldn’t have known about and made a lot of new friends. And I didn’t get robbed.

There are a lot of things I don’t have to worry about. They make the things I do worry about seem trivial by comparison.

When I had to reinstall my operating system, it went pretty smoothly. My bus ride to and from campus isn’t too long. I don’t have a lab this semester, and I have no classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’ve managed to control my weight. This blog seems to have quite a few readers now. And I have a pool at home.

I have good friends, people I can talk to about anything. You know who you are. I have a good family; they’re always there for me. My parents aren’t divorced, and no one in my family is mentally unstable. And I’m enjoying the company of my family today.

I guess I have it better than most people, and that is something to be thankful for. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

And now, some useful graphs, both via waxy.org:

How safe is the HPV vaccine Gardasil? Is it as dangerous as the disease it aims to prevent? Find out.

The Billion Dollar Gram: It’s hard to visualize billions of dollars, so this graph compares some billion- and trillion-dollar values that are often bandied about.

Thanksgiving Eve

‘Twas the day before Thanksgiving, and all through the university, people started putting up Christmas decorations and saying “’tis” and “’twas” a lot.

On Monday, I and some other folks from Get Carded (the student organ donor awareness group I’m a part of) went to some sorority houses to talk briefly about the benefits of organ donation. I had never wandered around Sorority Row, which is actually more of a neighborhood than a row, so it was all new to me. Also, I didn’t know that sororities (and probably also fraternities) allow just about anyone to come in and make an announcement during their weekly dinner. Yay for captive audiences.

Right after that, I accompanied my co-workers, Bonnie and Mark, to Wal-Mart Walmart to buy some toys for a needy child (and a gift card for his parents), as we had decided to do last week. A little boy is going to be very happy with the new toy trucks he asked for.

I think my professors should get into the spirit of the season by canceling classes the day before Thanksgiving. I mean planning not to have class in the first place. I e-mailed all of my professors last week, and they all said they would hold class as usual. On Monday, two of them changed their minds after finding out how many students were going to be there. Meanwhile, I had already made plans to get picked up on Wednesday afternoon. Le sigh…

Anyway, in a little while I’m going to my grandparents’, where I’ll be spending the holiday. I’ll get home either late Thursday night or on Friday.

Here’s a pair of Ask Jordon questions from my friend Justin.

Justin: Would you be willing to go on (another) expansive trip throughout Europe? I wish to backpack around the Mediterranean.

Not for a while. Though I had a blast this summer, my bank account also had a blast. As in, it, like, blew up. Okay, that didn’t work. I spent a lot of money is the point.

Also Justin: Would you consider telling Luke that I miss our friendship?

Sure. Luke, Justin misses your friendship.

Kind of cool, kind of creepy: a piano that “talks” by playing a bunch of notes that are extracted from a recording of human speech. (Via J-Walk Blog)

Every Beatles fan must hear this: analyses of the multitrack tapes of “She’s Leaving Home,” “A Day in the Life,” and “Come Together.” They’re originally segments from a BBC radio program(me). Hear different tracks isolated and even some stuff that didn’t make the final mixes.

Appreciation

All is quiet on the World of Stuff front. Okay, I guess you guys don’t think polished writing about potentially lethal fast-food menu items is very much worth commenting on. Noted. I never know which posts are going to be snoozers and which aren’t.

This past week at work, there was a sort of appreciation week going on. People were getting appreciated left and right. Even we, the humble IT workers way back in the corner of the building got some love. On Thursday, I got a half-dozen homemade blueberry muffins from a student group whose web site I run. And on Friday, we had a Thanksgiving feast for lunch. During the meal, we were asked to select a needy child to buy Christmas gifts for, and my IT co-workers and I decided to provide for a two-year-old boy who wanted some toy trucks.

Yes, ’tis the season to ask your professors if they’re holding class the day before Thanksgiving (and of course, they all are). The student body voted last year to make the day before Thanksgiving a university holiday, but it won’t go into effect for a few years because they draw up each year’s calendar far in advance.

How Races and Religions Match in Online Dating. (Via waxy.org)

A Google employee realized that many people don’t know what a browser is even though they spend a lot of time using one. To that end, he created a short video with an explanation. (Via Lifehacker)

Playing Russian roulette with the Black Jack Taco?

Recently, I was enjoying lunch at Taco Bell with a friend when she pointed out that the food I was eating wasn’t particularly healthy. Normally, that wouldn’t put me off too much—I knew where we were, after all—but I heard her out.

I was eating the new Black Jack Taco, which is a standard taco but with pepper jack sauce and a black (or very dark blue) shell. She said that there must have been a lot of food coloring in the shell and that it was carcinogenic—as in, cancer-causing.

Pish-posh, I said. It wasn’t like I was eating a lot of them. I had only had this exotic taco a few times.

It didn’t matter, she said. Even if you’ve only had it once, you’re not off the hook. If you’re unlucky, you could end up getting cancer from one drag of a cigarette, a single sunburn—or, apparently, a black taco.

Could it be true? And if so, how could the FDA allow such a thing?

I decided to find out what kind of dye was used in the Black Jack Taco and whether it was dangerous at all. But Taco Bell apparently had other ideas. Their list of ingredients of ingredients only mentions regular taco shells, not the dyes they use for some menu items:

Corn, Vegetable Oil (May Contain One Or All Of The Following: Soybean, Corn, Or Cottonseed Oil), Oat Fiber, TBHQ (Used As A Preservative).

A handy tooltip reveals that TBHQ is tertiary butylhydroquinone, but you probably knew that already. Wikipedia says it in fact may cause cancer in large amounts, but that wasn’t what I was trying to find out here.

Their Black Jack Taco page isn’t helpful either; it just gives nutrition facts and allergen information. (The taco doesn’t contain wheat. Yay?) Google searches turn up nothing but puzzled reviews and people saying, “It’s dye, right?”

I guess there’s no way to know what sort of food coloring is used without asking Taco Bell themselves. I could try, but it would probably be off the menu by the time they got back to me. In fact, it might already be off the menu now. Their special offers don’t stick around very long.

As for my lunch: I finished the Black Jack Taco without much hesitation, but I haven’t touched one since.

And now, the links:

Clips from one episode of The Jay Leno Show raise the question: Is Jay Leno a corporate shill? (Via waxy.org)

Yet another interpretation of the Super Mario Bros. theme music, this time by a band called Gameboys. It’s very well done! (Via waxy.org)

Stream of consciousness VIII

Here’s something I haven’t done in a while. Streamed my consciousness out for all to see. Okay, it’s not true stream of consciousness because I’m not adding in stuff like gee I have to go to the bathroom every five seconds. I don’t have to go to the bathroom right now, but it’s an example.

On Sunday nights I tend to get philosophical. Earlier I was reminiscing a bit about the days when I used to jam with my friends. I don’t feel very comfortable as a musician, but with them, it was all right. I don’t know if I could ever meet people like that again. That’s why I’d like to get together with them and play some music once in a while.

I haven’t been playing much because my guitar is kind of shot. The frets are worn down. I do have others, but they’re… well, I’ll describe them. I have my first guitar, a Hohner (as in, the harmonica company) acoustic that I believe is 3/4 size and whose case cost more than the instrument itself. I have my DeArmond electric, a sort of a Les Paul copy that’s held up pretty well. I have my Epiphone Dot, which I’ve considered my primary guitar since I got it in March 2003. It’s the one that’s sounding pretty sad. Finally, I have a Carlo Robelli 12-string acoustic guitar, which sounds heavenly but is nearly impossible to play because it’s a 12-string acoustic guitar.

The suggestion I’ve gotten in the past is to sell some or all of those babies and buy a new one. But I’m not sure how much money I’d get for them, and they have a lot of sentimental (and practical, sometimes) value. Maybe I could buy one good acoustic or one good electric, but I don’t know. I also don’t know how much money I could sink into a new guitar considering I am a college student and all. Also, I don’t play nearly as often as I used to. Is it because I’m no longer interested or because I have a guitar that sounds like crap and is musically unviable? I’d like to think it’s the latter. (The poor Dot, by the way, is the only one I have at my apartment, a five-hour drive from my house.)

I don’t want to buy a new one, so I’ll probably do what I can to fix the Dot. All I can think of doing is changing the action because I don’t think that having the frets redone would be worth the money that’s been spent on it. It’s already had a costly repair a few years ago.

Speaking of things not working, I’ve mentioned that the memory card I bought for my camera in anticipation of my big European trip (you know, the one that broke during the trip)… umm… broke. It turned out that it worked in my dad’s camera, so I figured the issue was with the adapter that I used to fit it into my camera. Apparently that’s not the issue, I’ve found out after my dad bought two new adapters for me. The memory card and the camera just don’t get along. I’ll have to have the thing reformatted, I guess. Or buy a new one. Actually, I don’t want a new one because I’ve been locked into Sony (we’re talking Sony cameras and Memory Sticks here). I think I’ll just wait for my current camera to bite the dust, be it in one week or ten years, and then buy all new stuff. And no vendor lock-in this time.

From my dad’s camera, I did manage to get 10 photos that I thought were lost when the memory card crapped out. That brings my total number of photos taken during the trip to 4,012.

Creepy video of the day: Barack Obama’s Amazingly Consistent Smile. (Via The Presurfer)

Here’s an epic song directed at Lily Allen, who apparently has been concerned that file sharing will rob her of her income in the future. (Via waxy.org).

Sharing is caring, it can be fun

The World of Stuff’s first original video in almost three years is hardly original at all… but that’s okay!

Here’s the skinny: Copyright law gives you the exclusive rights to the works you create, as evidenced in the familiar phrase, “All rights reserved.” Creative Commons is an organization that provides various licenses that you can apply to your works if you only want “some rights reserved.” Some licenses allow commercial uses of the work, others allow creating derivative works, etc. The Attribution and Attribution-Share Alike licenses are the most permissive.

Jamendo, one of my favorite web sites, allows musicians to post their Creative Commons-licensed songs for people to download at no cost. And a lot of it is is good stuff. I’ve rolled a custom RSS feed that lists the latest albums uploaded to Jamendo under either the Creative Commons Attribution or Attribution-Share Alike license. It lets me stay on top of things.

Recently, an artist named Josh Woodward released an album called Breadcrumbs on Jamendo. He followed up by releasing an instrumental version with the vocal tracks removed. Both versions were released under the Creative Commons Attribution license. It wasn’t long before another artist named Sean Wright added his own vocals to one of Woodward’s songs, and released it on Jamendo under the Attribution-Share Alike license. This is the kind of stuff that gets me going!*

Both songs are really great,** so I wondered what it would sound like if I synchronized them. I spent much of Sunday working to share the result. Hence The World of Stuff’s latest video, Creative Commons in Action: Josh Woodward and Sean Wright. Have a listen! They sound even better together. The best part is that I didn’t need to seek anyone’s permission to make the video; the Creative Commons licenses already granted it.

Here’s a bit of a technical background for the curious. I haven’t really worked with editing video since I was just starting out with Linux almost three years ago. The truth is that video editing software is the last frontier that Linux has yet to conquer. For this video, I used Pitivi, which is finally pretty stable and lacking only video effects (in my opinion). In the past, I might have used Kdenlive, the only other working video editing program for Linux that I’ve encountered, but it’s a KDE application, and I use GNOME. Other Linux users will hopefully understand this.

Also, it’s interesting to note that the video was produced entirely with free software and free formats. I started with Ogg Vorbis versions of the two songs (licensed as CC-BY and CC-BY-SA), combined them in Audacity, and saved the result as FLAC audio. The visuals were created using the similarly-licensed album artwork and Bitstream Vera Sans in the GIMP before being saved in PNG format. The video itself was produced in Pitivi and saved as Ogg Theora/Vorbis. I’ve licensed it as CC-BY-SA, and it’s available on YouTube as… Flash. Yeah, I know. But I have the original file if you want.

Just today, Sean Wright released more songs based on Josh Woodward’s instrumental tracks. If you enjoyed “From Your Lips,” do check them out!

This post is already running long, but here are a few links:

An instructional video: How to Make Your Own Soda. (Via Lifehacker)

Here’s a map showing the distance to the nearest McDonald’s for every point in the contiguous United States. The “McFurthest Spot” is somewhere in South Dakota. It’s a 233-kilometer drive from there to the nearest Golden Arches. (Via J-Walk Blog)

* Not the only stuff that gets me going
** I like the original better

Wuffles

Seen in my apartment this week:

Reboot

My Halloween was good; thanks for asking. I went to my friend Andrea’s to watch the football game with her and some of her friends, and we hung out for a good while afterward. No one yelled at me for not wearing a costume! Now that’s what I call a good time.

I upgraded to the new version of Ubuntu on Sunday. I’m always a little wary of upgrading because there’s the possibility that something could go wrong and screw up your system. It never happens to me, though.

Well, it never did until this time.

To finish the installation, I rebooted. During the boot process, a certain daemon was being turned on and off in an infinite loop, and I had to kill the power to turn off the machine. I was able to get to a root terminal with networking in safe mode, and I made it to the login screen by booting with an older kernel, but I didn’t want to go farther than that.

I used an old live CD to get on the Internet and ask the Ubuntu Forums people (and anyone who saw my status on Facebook) for help. Ultimately, I decided to reinstall Ubuntu; I didn’t think I could diagnose the problem, and this would have been my fifth successful upgrade in a row, which any sensible person would tell you is too many.

So, I downloaded and burned a CD from the command line and then reinstalled Ubuntu from that. Next, I spent six hours trying to restore from a backup I had made the day before (back up regularly, and always before upgrading!). For six hours, tar was dominating my CPU without extracting anything from the archive I had made. It turned out that I had an option wrong. The main argument that tar takes isn’t the directory where you want the archive extracted; it’s the file(s) you want from the archive. Doesn’t explain why it would take so long to extract /, which wasn’t even in there, though.

Since I had backed up my home folder, all of my personal files and most of my settings remained intact, so it was a relatively painless process getting back up to speed. Now it’s almost like I had upgraded, except that I’m enjoying the benefits of a clean installation. This new version has some minor annoyances, but it’s a lot quicker to boot up (and shut down), and the new default icon theme is pretty slick.

Overall, I am pretty pleased. I just don’t want it to happen again. To that end, I created a separate /home partition during the installation. That means I’ll be able to do a clean install in the future without having to restore my home folder.

From Wired: Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine.

Hot dogs come in packs of 10, while hot dog buns come in packs of 8. Some guy got fed up with that decided to take matters into his own hands. (Via J-Walk Blog)