Esperanto in the USA

Last year, just before Andy and I left for our European vacation, Andy made a quick trip to St. Louis for Esperanto-USA‘s national congress (convention). At the time, I said,

Although he makes spontaneous trips like that all the time, I wasn’t ready to take a plane trip halfway across the country on a few days’ notice. He called me a few times and seemed to be having a good time. I wish I could have been there. Maybe we can go together next year with some more planning.

Well, with a little more planning, we’re going. This year’s congress is in Washington, DC, which I first visited only a few months ago with some other friends. There were piles of snow everywhere then, and now it’s probably as hot as it is here, so that should be interesting. Oh, and I have my own camera this time!

I’m in Gainesville, and Andy is in South Florida, but isn’t stopping us from traveling together. Tomorrow, Andy’s taking a flight that goes from Fort Lauderdale to Jacksonville and then to Baltimore. I’m going to get on the plane in Jacksonville. Andy’s dad is going to pick us up in Baltimore and take us to Bethesda, Maryland, where the congress actually is. We’ll be staying with friends of Andy’s dad. On the way home, Andy and I (and Andy’s dad’s car) are taking the Auto Train from Lorton, Virginia, to Sanford, Florida, overnight. From there we’ll drive back to Gainesville, hopefully in time for my class.

It’s funny. I never used to consider myself a big traveler. Before last year, I had only flown in an airplane twice. Tomorrow I’ll have flown five times in 369 days!

Anyway, when we’re not traveling, we’ll be checking out the sights in Washington and spending time with some cool Esperantists from throughout the country. I expect to have a good time and do a lot of interesting stuff. I’ll be sure to write all about it when I get back.

Wired presents: science! How to Make a Solar Cell with Donuts and Tea.

Attack of the parasites!

A few months ago, my sooth-seeking friend Andy took in a stray cat. He named him Tucker and kept him in his bedroom in our apartment. I would go in once in a while and see Tucker there. He was affectionate but unfortunately never very healthy. After about a month, Andy and his vet decided to let Tucker go to the great scratching post in the sky.

Three weeks later, Andy and his friend Scott, who was visiting, discovered that Tucker had left something to remember him by: fleas.

They took swift action, vacuuming and flea-bombing Andy’s room and the living room. They asked if they should do my room too. I said not to worry about it. Mistake of the Century. Shortly after that, I said:

Andy and Scott left on Wednesday, and I’ve been alone in the apartment. It hasn’t been so great, but not for the reasons I would have expected. I’ll go into that later.

I was left to fend off the fleas by myself. On Thursday afternoon, I went to the front office to ask for pest control to come, and I was told that they only come on Thursdays and that I had just missed them. Andy, who took responsibility for the whole situation, gave the office a call and got the pest control people to maybe come on Monday.

It was a long weekend. I called a vet’s office, and they said to put Borax onto the carpet and vacuum a week later, but I couldn’t find Borax at the grocery store. (Is that something you can get at the grocery store? I don’t want to waste my time again.) I did buy some insecticide for fleas, and it seemed to get rid of them after a few days of spraying. I also did some vacuuming to (hopefully) get rid of the flea eggs.

I don’t like spraying chemicals all over the place. It’s not due so much to my concern for the environment as it is to my tendency to accidentally spray myself (which did happen, as usual). So I made a flea trap by setting a bowl of soapy water on the floor and angling a desk lamp over it. Fleas are attracted to heat (this ordeal has made me a damn flea expert), so they jump toward the light bulb and fall into the water, where they get stuck. It’s also a fire hazard, so don’t try this at home. I won’t do it again.

Needless to say in a world where “yes” means “maybe” and “maybe” means “no,” pest control didn’t come on Monday. They called me on Tuesday and asked if the whole place had been vacuumed up because apparently they wouldn’t even come if it weren’t. I said no and asked them to come on Wednesday. They didn’t. They were definitely supposed to come on Thursday, as usual, but they didn’t even appear then. They finally showed up on Friday, but by then they could tell I had already gotten rid of the fleas, so they didn’t do anything.

(Before you say anything: no money was lost here. The management of my apartment complex hires said company to do free pest control work for residents. We had considered hiring another company, but it would have been too expensive.)

I haven’t seen any fleas in five days, so I think they’re gone for now. Then again, they hid for at least three weeks, between the time Tucker died and the time anyone noticed them. Hopefully they’re not like an STD that pops up from time to time and can never go away. I’ll have to do some more vacuuming.

This is why software is awesome. Someone wrote a Python script that does some time-stretching and -compressing on a song to change the beat. The result: everything swings. Sample tracks include “Every Breath You Take,” “Enter Sandman,” “Around the World,” and “Don’t Stop Believin’.” (Via waxy.org)

Here’s a breakdown of cable subscription fees by network, showing how much you’re paying for channels you don’t watch. (Via The Consumerist)

American kids don’t have a monopoly on stupidity: 10% of British children surveyed thought that the Queen invented the telephone. Some also thought that Luke Skywalker was the first person on the moon and that Isaac Newton discovered fire.

Is this heaven? No, it’s The Brendan Leonard Show

The summer of 2003 was kind of rough for me. I was getting ready to start high school, and I needed some way to cope with all the stress. I found comfort in two ways: by taking up blogging, and by watching The Brendan Leonard Show on ABC Family.

For several years, this kid named Brendan Leonard and his buddies had been producing a silly little TV show that was broadcast on Chicago-area cable access. In May of 2003, when Brendan was 19, ABC Family picked up The Brendan Leonard Show for national broadcast while allowing him to retain total control over the show’s production.

The show applied silliness and surreal humor to real and imagined situations, with Brendan’s friends and family members making regular appearances. Some episodes had a plot or theme; others just consisted of Brendan and pals horsing around the way 19-year-old guys do. Some episodes were made up of sketches or vignettes; others consisted of single takes, with the screen freezing before commercial breaks and unfreezing after as proof to the viewer. Each episode’s soundtrack consisted of indie rock tunes from the “band of the day.” There was nothing else like it on TV.

I mentioned BLS quite a few times during the early days of this blog. (Here was the first mention.) A reference to the show even made its way into the local newspaper article about me and the site. So, when the show ended in October 2003, I was sad to see it go. (I even tried to start a campaign to send spatulas to the network, referencing a classic sketch about clever uses for them.) Later, new episodes appeared on the Web under a different name (ABC owning the rights to the original), but it just wasn’t the same.

During that summer, the show had developed a small cult following. Fans clamored for a DVD release, but to no avail. So you can imagine how surprised I was when Brendan Leonard recently started uploading clips from the show on YouTube. Here are some of my favorites out of the ones that have been posted so far:

• Brendan hears an ice cream truck coming and tries to borrow enough money from his friends before it gets away. The sketch consists of a single take.
• Brendan and friends take a yoga class that devolves into madness. There are a lot of great lines (and facial expressions) in this one; I could still remember some of them after seven years.
• The gang spoof those morning shows on network TV with a show-within-a-show. In this clip, you can also see BLS‘s super-cool opening credit sequence.
• Brendan and pals discover random objects in the bushes and try to find out what they can do with them.
• To promote the show Switched, ABC Family has swapped one of Brendan’s friends with a girl from Texas. The rest of the guys assume their boy-band alter-egos and record a ridiculous song about her.

I think those clips make a good introduction to the show. You can check out more on The Brendan Leonard Show‘s YouTube channel.

By the way, the title of this post is a quote from a portion of the “Under the Bushes” sketch that hasn’t been posted yet. Soon enough, I hope…

The wanderer

A year from now, I will have graduated from college. I’ve mentioned the sort of career I think I want to get into, but lately I’ve been trying to figure out just where I want plant my roots… or some other sort of ridiculous tree analogy.

I go to school in North Florida (Gainesville, specifically), and my home is in South Florida. At first glance, it might seem like a good idea to move back to South Florida, but that wouldn’t be a good option for me. My parents have put the house up for sale again; they plan to move to some rural part of North Florida.

As I see it, here are my options:

1. I could move back to South Florida, but I’d have to have my own place. It’s expensive to live there, so I don’t know if I’d be able to afford it.
2. I could move in with my parents in the countryside of North Florida, assuming they move there within a year.
3. I could stay here in Gainesville, where I’m currently studying. I’ve thought about this option the most, actually. I was thinking I could try to move up from my current job at the university. One of the guys who once had my job as a student now works above me.
4. I could move somewhere else entirely, but it can’t be someplace where it snows. I don’t play those games.

Another wrinkle is that I don’t know how to drive a car and I don’t have time to learn. Unlike most teenagers, I was never very interested in learning to drive, so I didn’t. Even now, the only time I feel like I should get my driver’s license is when I’m home visiting my friends and they have to chauffeur me around everywhere.

I definitely can get by without a car for as long as I’m a student, but after that, who knows? That’s the only reason I can think of to learn to drive. I’d just have to make sure I could afford it. Cars are expensive; gas is expensive; insurance is expensive; maintenance is expensive; other things I haven’t thought of are expensive. And I’d have to find time to learn.

Some other reasons not to drive: I’m terrified of getting into an accident; most cars are bad for the environment; the cars that are better for the environment are really expensive; I have poor hand-eye coordination. Did I mention I’m terrified of getting into an accident?

Other options include public transportation, which completely sucks almost everywhere in this land of ours, and riding a bike car magnet everywhere.

So, I’d have to live in a city that’s warm, good for walking, and (of course) inexpensive to live in. I’m asking for the impossible… OR AM I?? Your thoughts, as always, are welcome.

An article explaining how scientific knowledge can be forgotten: “Scott and Scurvy.” (Via waxy.org)

In American buildings, exit signs say “EXIT.” In most of the rest of the world, they have of a person running toward a door. Read about the international war over exit signs. (Via J-Walk Blog)

The sensational student-semester

In the spring, I took a class called Introduction to Software Engineering. The main assignment over the course of the semester was a group project to design, create, and present a software application. Sound like fun?

The class had four discussion sections, which made it only natural that each discussion section should correspond to a group. The groups were about evenly distributed, each one having 16 or 17 people. In my group, we spent several weeks hashing out ideas for what kind of program to make.

I would talk about the ongoing project to my friend Mark, who had taken the class previously. When he first heard about it, he was shocked. “Seventeen people? That’s going to be way too many. You need two or three people.” Or, you know, something like that. I’m not a journalist, jeez.

I wasn’t really sure what he meant. I figured that with a lot of work, two or three people could complete a project on the scale of what we were doing, but with more people on the team, it would be easier for everyone.

Our group eventually decided on an instant messaging application for Android phones. The app would be designed specifically for our fellow UF students; each user would see a map of the campus with their buddies’ current locations marked. Users would also be able to create and invite their friends to events, which would also be shown on the map. The name of the program: ChompChat. The alligator-themed wordplay is inescapable around here.

We basically split ourselves into two teams: the client team, which would make the actual ChompChat application, and the server team, which would be responsible for handling interactions between users. After a while, the server team got something that worked, and the client team got something that worked. The hard part was getting them to work together.

Some of our other assignments for the class involved reading Fred Brooks’ The Mythical Man-Month, a classic text of software engineering. The titular essay explains that people and time aren’t interchangeable. As more people join a project, proportionally less work gets done because the new members have to learn the ropes and each member has to communicate with more people to figure out what’s going on. It’s summed up as Brooks’ law:

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

In the meantime, I had a hard time finding a place for myself in the project. We were using Google Wave to communicate (we had several big Google fans in the group), and not everyone was in on every wave. We had our own Trac installation set up for us, but no one ever filed any tickets.

I got most of my information from our weekly class meetings, and even then, I couldn’t help but bounce around from subteam to subteam, looking for something to do as the strong-willed and more technically able actually did most of the work. It got to the point where I decided to hold off from the development lest Brooks’ law come into play. Other members of the group agreed that this was a good idea.

When it came time for the groups to present their software projects, we had just gotten the client and the server to communicate with each other. Chatting and creating events worked, but geolocation and the other features we had originally dreamed up for ChompChat were absent. I felt as though the ghost of Fred Brooks were there in the room, laughing to himself. Actually, I didn’t because he’s still alive. But whatever.

Fred Brooks was right. Mark was right. And everyone else came around. Toward the end of the semester, the professor took a poll of the class, and almost everybody agreed that the groups should have been smaller. Too bad it took so much manpower to figure that out.

Statistics reveal America’s “beer belly,” where bars outnumber grocery stores. (Via The Consumerist)

This might be fun if you like math: an inverse graphing calculator that produces the corresponding equation for a curve that you draw. (Via J-Walk Blog)

This 1995 Newsweek article reads like satire in 2010: “The Internet? Bah!” A Newsweek blogger provides a modern commentary and manages to get a word from the author.

Tour de Gainesville

Last weekend (as in, not yesterday), my friend Andy got a visit from his friend Scott. They first met up with me when I was down at home at the end of my spring-summer break. We went back up to Gainesville together; Andy wasn’t about to start classes like I was, but he wanted to show Scott the area.

After my first day of classes on Monday, the three of us watched Avatar at the apartment. We hooked up Andy’s gigantic stereo to the TV for a huge sound that was sure to annoy our neighbors (if they were even there for the summer, which I hope they weren’t).

I had been looking forward to seeing Avatar, but I was pretty disappointed by it. All the CGI got to be distracting, which I suppose was good because it distracted me from the predictable plot. The nickname “Pocahontas in Space” is well deserved. I might watch it again if I could see it on a huge screen in 3-D. Maaaaybe.

On Tuesday night, the three of us went to dinner at Satchel’s Pizza, a local restaurant that’s renowned for its eclectic atmosphere. The decor is eclectic, the pizza toppings are eclectic—even the plates are eclectic. In front of the restaurant is an old van that has a couple of tables in it. Eating in the van at Satchel’s can earn you some serious bragging rights. (Well, maybe not, but I like to brag about it anyway.) After dinner, we went to the junk shop out back and got some Satchel’s swag.

Andy and Scott left on Wednesday, and I’ve been alone in the apartment. It hasn’t been so great, but not for the reasons I would have expected. I’ll go into that later.

A star-studded Funny or Die video: Barack Obama gets a surprise visit from ex-presidents. (Via The Consumerist)

Here’s someone’s list of The 12 Biggest Ripoffs in America. And before you ask, college textbooks are indeed on the list. (Via The Presurfer)

From The Big Picture: aerial photos of New York and Las Vegas at night.

Summer bummer

My break between the spring and summer semesters is history. I did some stuff, took it easy, and then figured I would write about it once I got back to school. Well, I haven’t had time. I’ve just got a little bit of time here to squeeze in a quick post.

So, Thursday was my friend Nick’s much-anticipated 21st birthday. He and our friend TJ started out by shooting some golf, but they called it a day early because it was so hot out. After that, they picked me up, and we had lunch at Clamsters, a neighborhood place.

Next, we went to The Home Depot. Yeah, that’s right. Let me explain.

The last time I was around, my friends had caught wind of the Red Bull Flugtag, which would be coming to Miami in July. My understanding is that it’s a contest where various groups build flying contraptions that may or may not be airworthy but are always fun to watch. In Miami, this would involve shoving your craft over the edge of a dock, with a pilot inside, and seeing how far it goes.

So, my friends decided to enter the contest. Since each group is apparently supposed to have a theme, they planned to dress up as the members of Kiss and have their airplane thing look like a guitar. (I can’t help but think that Role Models may have been an influence.) But anyway, to everyone’s surprise, including their own, they were accepted into the contest. So they’ve been getting ready to build their giant guitar thing.

So, after considering various types of lumber, we went to see their friend Jonnie as he moved out of his dorm room at FAU. Then the guys signed some Flugtag paperwork, we moved Jonnie’s stuff into Nick’s house, Nick’s cousin Mike had his long hair cut short, and we had dinner with Nick, who was now old enough to drink. To top off the day, we went to Bru’s Room, a local bar/restaurant, so Nick and the other over-21s could have some more drinks.

The next evening, Nick had a party, and there were a lot of people there. And the day after that was Sunday, so I had to go back and get ready for another exciting semester. I’ll fill you in on that later.

By all accounts, Google Chrome is fast. Here’s a pretty cool video (that you may have already seen making the rounds on the Internet) showing just how fast it can be. Be sure to watch the making-of video as well. (Via waxy.org)

The retractions are coming a minute apart

Some ignorant things I’ve said in the past have been weighing heavily on me, so I’d like to try to apologize for them. I don’t know how much it’ll help, but I feel like it’s better than nothing.

In 2005, I wrote a cynical take on a Black History Month talent show that they had everybody attend at school. It pretty much devolved into a rant about how I couldn’t identify with any specific racial or ethnic group. I don’t suppose I have much to apologize for here, but I feel like I should mention that I understand the situation more now.

The message of the show was that “black history is everyone’s history.” It would be more accurate to say that white history is everyone’s history. The reason we have things like Black History Month is because the standard historical narrative is dominated by white people—the majority. (As usual, The Onion got to this idea before me.)

There have been one or two times when I was one of the few white people in the room, and that gave me a small taste of what it might be like to be part of a racial or ethnic minority. It wasn’t fun, let me tell you. White people have the luxury of being the majority in many parts of the United States, and this white guy no longer feels like celebrations of white history are something he’s missing out on. If you think about it, they’re everywhere. On the other side of the coin, it’s also good to bond with people who aren’t like you, whence all this stuff about sharing your culture.

I do regret referring to the JROTC as the “Nazi Youth.” As much as I’m against warmongering and all that stuff, the fact remains that the Nazi Party didn’t invent marching in lockstep.

The following year, I was tapped to join a new club at school. It was ostensibly about being an upstanding citizen, but it had religious undertones, so I decided not to join. In the ensuing rant, I said:

Religion has given us the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust, to name but a few atrocities.

Why did I say that the Holocaust happened because of religion? You have to try to understand the position I was in at the time. Hear me out.

When I was growing up, it was my understanding that people were Jewish in the same way that we were Catholic and our neighbors were Lutheran or what have you. Judaism was just a religion to me, and why should be anything else if my Jewish playmates looked just like me? Of course, I saw the Passover episode of Rugrats, so I had this vague idea about the Jews being a people, but I didn’t fully comprehend it; in my experience, Jews were just people who practiced Judaism. And since I thought that that was the only difference between the Jews and the other people in Europe, that must be the reason for the Holocaust.

Embarrassing as it may be, my perspective didn’t start to change until I took a history class in college. I learned that in the United States, Jews were considered non-white until World War II, when a shift in cultural attitudes suddenly occurred. (If you want to reward the guy who taught me this, buy his iconoclastic new book, The Permissive Society: America, 1941-1965, available now at fine bookstores everywhere!) And that’s pretty much how it occurred to me that the self-described Chosen People really are a people, even if they tend to look like some other peoples, who in turn all tend to look like each other.

So, in short: the Holocaust wasn’t caused by religion.

Last and least, I said New Yorkers were mean, and then I backpedaled but stopped short of apologizing. Well, now I apologize for saying that New Yorkers are mean. It’s unfair to characterize 8 million people like that.

A cartoon from The Oatmeal: 10 Reasons to Avoid Talking on the Phone. I’m reading The Oatmeal regularly now. It’s pretty hilarious. (Via J-Walk Blog)

I need you so much closer?

I got home on Thursday. I haven’t seen my friends yet since they still have exams. So I’ve had some time to think about things.

When I was in high school, I tried to write a book. I tried to write several books, actually, but the one I got furthest with was supposed to be a collection of poems and short stories. I looked back on some of them recently—they’re on my computer—and I realized how angsty I must have been when I wrote them. Even in this blog, if you go back a few years or even months, there are plenty of instances of teenage angst as well. (The classic example.)

In the past year or so, I feel like things have been on the up and up for me. I did some things that made me happy. I’m not one of those people who say that they’re a completely different person now than they were at some time in the past, but looking back on my old writings, I sure felt like I had changed for the better. I thought I was no longer capable of being angsty (I’m trying to avoid the word “emo” here). But I’ve found out that I still can be.

Unrequited Love, we meet again. Last time, your visit was more pleasant, but this time, I have questions. Why can’t I be friends with a girl without falling in love with her? (Do I even know what love really is? Probably not. Thanks for catching that.) And, more importantly, why is it so hard to dig myself out of it? How can I prevent this from happening in the first place? Can I at all? Should I? Who can I even talk about this with?

I don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions, least of all myself. But it makes me remember why I wrote those little stories at the heart of my teenage years. Just phrasing the questions is somehow therapeutic. It’s comforting to know that anyone who might read them has been there before and can provide advice or, if nothing else, commiserate. And once I’ve written this and sent it off into cyberspace, I can preoccupy myself with something else for a while.

There’s nothing quite as powerful as writing. That’s why I blog.