New layout preview

A few months ago, as my boss was talking to me about the importance of having a good resume, he made an offhand remark that resonated with me: If I’m to get a career in web development (or anything computer-related, I guess), then my web site should be my portfolio.

I took a look at my layout, with its wannabe-Web-2.0 stripes and “beta?” badge thing that already looked outmoded when it got off the drawing board, and decided that the whole thing wasn’t really professional enough to be taken seriously. I decided it was time for a redesign.

I’ve been working on a new layout on and off since then, and in my eyes, it’s pretty much done. It just has some rough edges that need be smoothed out. And, rather than springing it on you as a surprise, I’m going to let you have a sneak peek. See that link on the top of the page that says “Switch”? Click that. (You’ll have to enable cookies in your browser. If you don’t know what that means, you needn’t worry.)

So, here’s a brief tour of the new layout:

The first thing you’ll probably notice is the collection of colored squares in the upper-right hand corner. Hate the colors? Reload the page! You’ll almost certainly never get that combination again because the colors are picked at random on each page load. I think you’ll find that randomness usually produces beautiful results.

The new layout will stretch to fit your browser window. There’s a maximum width, though, so if your screen resolution is really high, the page won’t get ridiculously wide. There’s also a minimum width for obvious reasons, but most people shouldn’t encounter that.

On the right, in addition to the usual old stuff, you’ll see my latest tweet (excluding blog post announcements). Basically, this is to get you to follow me on Twitter—not gonna lie. It is also useful if you’re Twitter-averse but still want to keep track of my (formerly figurative, now literal) blog marginalia.

If you’re using the latest version of your browser, you should see everything in the wonderful typeface Linux Libertine. The previous layout uses three different fonts, so I thought I’d consolidate them down to a single one this time, and an elegant one at that.

Speaking of browsers: In the course of designing this iteration of The World of Stuff, I’ve come to a new philosophy. I’m no longer trying to make each page look the same in all commonly-used browsers. Internet Explorer 7 (released in 2006) and 6 (2001!), which are still widely used by certain swaths of the web population, have been holding back the web for far too long as web designers have had to deal with their bugs and their lack of support for useful new features. From here on out, if I want to include an embellishment that superseded browsers don’t support, then I’ll include it as a reward for people who upgrade their stuff.

For the new layout, this means including a row of asterisks after each post even though IE7 won’t display it. In fact, IE8 doesn’t either, but with IE9 just around the corner, I expect everyone to upgrade soon. I know it’s an unrealistic assumption since IE is widely used by businesses, but I don’t care. It may seem unfair to single out IE users in this discussion, but they’re far and away the least diligent when it comes to upgrading. I just want to keep people who fail to update their software from spoiling everyone else’s fun.

As I said, there are still some things I would like to work on. Many of them are formatting cock-ups that have come from years of assuming that paragraphs aren’t indented and have spaces between them. I’m still not sure what I want to do about those, but I’d appreciate your comments and suggestions about anything and everything.

Aaaand here’s a montage of security camera footage showing trucks crashing into an underpass. For the metric people, 11 feet, 8 inches is about 3.5 meters. (Via The Presurfer)

Artificial intelligence

I bet you’re wondering what I’ve been doing for most of the last two weeks. Well, I’ll tell you.

I’m taking a class called Artificial Intelligence. Well, something like that. It’s probably officially called Introduction to Artificial Intelligence or Principles of Artificial Intelligence or something like that. I have the course syllabus next to my desk, so I could easily check, but to add an air of mystery to this post, I won’t.

Now that you’re intrigued enough to keep reading, I will describe how this class has been keeping me busy. It’s one of those classes where a lot of your grade depends on a project that you work on for much of the semester. In this case, we have to write a program to play a game intelligently.

Specifically, the game is a Tetris-like game called Letris, which is not like any of the Letrises you’ll find if you Google it. I think the professor just made it up. Instead of blocks, you have sequences of letters (read in from a file) that you have to put on a board, and whenever there are three or more letters in a row horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, they disappear for points and the letters on top of them fall to take their places. The game ends when you run out of sequences or you’ve filled up the board and can’t play any of them.

Our programs are allowed to peek up to three moves ahead to decide which move to make, but they’re only allowed 10 CPU seconds per move. They can be written in any language (that the instructor approves), but extra credit will be given for programs written in Lisp.

I wrote mine in Java… Hey. Don’t give me that look. Just don’t. You know what? If you’re going to act like that, why don’t you just leave? It’s just a choice of programming language, not a life-or-death situation. And you know what? Maybe I’m really good at Java. Maybe I figured out how to make it work well with Java. Did you ever think about that? Huh?

I didn’t, but it seems to work well enough. The hardest part, and what I spent the better part of two weeks on, was the lookahead stuff. For some reason, I couldn’t wrap my head around that very easily. It was so complicated (to me) that I actually spent days and days just coding and coding without even having anything ready to compile and try out.

Once I got that working, the only thing left was the evaluation function, i.e., how the game decides which move is a good one to make. It’s good to score a lot of points, but in the long run it seems like it would be better to keep the letters (blocks) low so you can score even more points in the future. However, I was on such a time crunch by then that the little testing I was able to do proved in. I ended up weighting those factors and several others equally.

The interesting part will come when the professor stages a “tournament” of all our programs, ranking them by how many points they score on certain data sets. I have absolutely no idea how my implementation will fare against everyone else’s, especially those who had the smart idea of using C or Lisp, so we’ll see how that goes.

Every time Bruce Schneier opens his mouth, amazing words come out. Actually, well, this is written, but it’s good nonetheless. Schneier half-jokingly proposes that we close the Washington Monument due to security concerns. When it comes to security, this guy hits the nail on the head.

One-day weekend

Veterans Day was on Thursday, so we had a one-day weekend. My roommate Andy went with me to visit my parents, and in a little over 24 hours, Andy and I watched all of the Back to the Future movies and most of the first Harry Potter movie. And we still had time to take a walk around the grounds (yes, we have grounds now) and do some homework. And eat. It was pretty intense. And going back to school and work the next day was awful.

Here are a couple of Ask Jordon questions from Kate:

According to your article, you don’t remember QWERTY. How did you type on my netbook then? Do you use the standard or the left-handed Dvorak?

I wrote that I’d forgotten QWERTY after learning Dvorak. I learned QWERTY again.

Every Russian man 18 years old or older must serve in the army for one year. The conditions are poor and there is a risk of mockeries, hazing and even death. What would you do if you were a Russian boy? (You can Google about current situation.)

Like most young American men, I’ve thought a bit about how I might feel if I were drafted into the US Army, but fortunately, there hasn’t been a draft in a long time. I can’t even imagine how I’d feel about compulsory service, but without the element of surprise in play, at least I might be mentally prepared. If you’re talking about deserting, I don’t think I’d do it. If an army is mad at you, bad things can happen. One year of hell doesn’t sound that bad compared to the risk of a much greater penalty.

Want airport security screeners to see you naked? No? Wednesday, November 24, is National Opt-Out Day. Of course, you can (still) choose not to go through the naked body scanner whenever you fly, but people have promoted opting out on a busy travel day to get their point across. I should point out that the alternative—getting groped—isn’t much more pleasant. The terrorists have won. (Via J-Walk Blog)

First of all, I’d like to thank you for this opportunity…

One of the classes I’m taking is called Legal and Social Issues in Computing. I have to take it for my major, but it’s actually pretty interesting. For example, we’ve watched relevant clips from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report as well as a presentation by my dawg, Lawrence Lessig.

Lately, we’ve been having debates in class. We’ve had to pick a debate topic (and position) from a list. The debates have to do with legal and social issues in computing, if you can believe it. The topic I chose was “Whether people who would never consider shoplifting a music CD from a store are correct when they argue that there is difference between that and downloading the same material for free off a P2P network.”

The fun part is that the debates, for the most part, have two people to a side. My debate was yesterday, so I e-mailed my debate partner beforehand for some ideas about how to argue our position. My main idea was that downloading isn’t stealing because it doesn’t deprive the owner of the original, and my partner had the really ingenious idea of arguing that they aren’t the same because the law gives (vastly) different penalties for each.

I started by making my point, and our opponents countered that downloading should be considered stealing because you’re enjoying the music without paying the author what he or she requires. I had anticipated this response, so I laid out the point that downloads are not equal to lost sales. Or, as I have often seen it said, downloads != lost sales. (It’s a geek thing, really.) My partner also offered her argument.

I thought we were doing pretty well, but our opponents had found that the definition of stealing in the law included using someone’s copyright or something of that nature (I don’t have the exact wording). I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, but by then, the audience (the rest of the class) was busy berating our opponents over some obscure point they had made about RIAA settlement fees.

That was it, really. I think the professor preferred our opponents’ argument, so I consider us to have lost. Still, I feel like we did a pretty good job. I had never been in a debate before, so it was kind of fun.

A Facebook-related link: If Historical Events Had Facebook Statuses.

Ugh, why is Jordon writing about football???

October is a busy month. It’s the middle of the semester, so I’ve have a lot of exams and projects and such for my classes. My last hurdle is a paper that’s due on Tuesday, and then I should be less busy for a little while. I hope.

As usual, I’ve been following the football team with interest. It figures that the only year I enter the student football ticket lottery is arguably the Florida Gators’ worst in many years (because why else do people enter the lottery if not to sell their tickets?). Early in the season, I went to the games against South Florida and Kentucky, both decisive victories. Then the team went to Alabama, the top-ranked squad in the nation, and lost—no surprise there. Next, the Gators played Louisiana State at home. I went to that one, but I wish I hadn’t; LSU ended up scoring the game-winning touchdown in the final seconds. What a nail-biter that was. The next week was the homecoming game against Mississippi State—and we dropped that one too. I’m glad I wasn’t there; I listened to it on the radio.

So, the Gators lost three games in a row for the first time since 1999 and lost three regular-season games in a row for the first time since 1988. Fortunately, they had last weekend off. Everyone hoped that they would come out of their bye week with a win. And today, they did, by beating Georgia in overtime. I had never seen a college football game go into overtime, so it was interesting to watch. Of course, it was a nail-biter as well.

It’s just football, you might say. Yeah, I know. But I figured I should mention this stuff so I could put it in 2010: The Year in Review.

I will try to bury this post with other stuff soon.

On Kickstarter: a project to hide corporate logos from your videos. If you like it, you can help fund the project. My favorite feature: replacing a company’s logo with its CEO’s face.

Adventures with Kate, part ten

On Thursday, August 19, the sun slowly sank into the ocean behind a half-empty Greyhound bus as it crossed bridge after bridge, passing through quiet island after quiet island, heading for Miami. On the bus were Kate and I, watching a movie on Kate’s laptop. She had picked out a foreign film called The Seventh Continent. It was horrifying, and I wondered why she thought I would like it. But the more I thought about it, the more I did like it.

We made a very short stop at a Burger King; it was the same one, decorated like a boat inside, that our bus had stopped at only a few days ago on our way to Key West. On the bus, while we were watching the movie, the minutes passed almost as quickly as they did in the restaurant. Before I knew it, we were speeding along on an elevated freeway with the orange-yellow glow of city lights all around. We were back on the mainland.

The bus took us to Miami International Airport. From there, we took a city bus to a Metrorail station. We knew where we were going; Kate had once again made our sleeping arrangements through CouchSurfing.

At the Metrorail station, as we were buying our tickets to get on, a man came up to me and wanted me to buy his old Metrorail ticket from him for the same price as a new one. He swiped it to show me that it still worked. He said he had a wife and kids to support or some bullshit like that. He wouldn’t stop bothering me. I bought the ticket from him so he would go away. He probably went off and drank, smoked, huffed, or snorted it. So, yeah, I know it was a bad idea. I need to learn to say no to those kinds of people, especially since the same thing had just happened to me. It’s hard because I was raised Catholic.

The ticket got me in. As we stood on the platform, Kate and I and Kate’s friend’s guitar, I called our host to see if she was in. She said she’d be on her way home to let us in. I looked out over the dark city that I had until very recently called the major city closest to home.

The train came and swept us to Brickell, an upscale district south of the Miami River. Young, well-dressed people were dining and drinking and having a good time. Carrying our huge bags, I felt like we were out of place, and they seemed to too. I got at least one stare.

We arrived at a tall apartment building next to one of the many restaurants. I had a hard time figuring out how to open the door. The man inside heard me over the speaker and said he would unlock it. We walked inside. The lobby was vast and empty. The man sat at a desk near the door. Off to the side were a couch and a few chairs. There was a large mural on the wall next to an elevator. That was it.

We called our host to let us know we had arrived, and soon she came out of the elevator and brought us up to her apartment. She showed us where everything was in the kitchen case we wanted any food. Then she showed us our own bedroom and bathroom before going to bed. It was late, so we just made plans for the next day and then went to bed ourselves.

The next day, Friday, August 20, was the last day of Kate’s visit. We woke up early so our host could drop us off at a Barnes and Noble on her way to work. It wasn’t really on the way at all, so we thanked her for having us and going to the trouble. Then, once again, we were on our own.

Some of Kate’s friends and relatives had given her money to buy certain things for them. A couple of people wanted Barnes and Noble’s e-book reader, the Nook. After having breakfast at an Einstein Bros., we went to Barnes and Noble. I parked myself and all our stuff in the philosophy section, which was right at of one of the front windows, while Kate went through the apparently difficult process of buying several Nooks.

After what seemed like forever, she had them. From there, we took a few buses to get to the Lincoln Road Mall in Miami Beach. We were getting to be on a tight schedule, so there were some tense moments when we couldn’t find the buses we needed. Fortunately, we were able to get to Lincoln Road pretty quickly, so we set out for our next shopping-for-other-people destination: the Apple Store.

As Kate waited in a line that stretched more than half the length of the store to buy some iPads, I got on one of the computers to check my e-mail. A police officer who had been stationed at the front door tapped me on the shoulder and told me that those computers were only for people who were signing up for iPhone service, and that if I wanted to use one of the computers, I should use one of the ones on the opposite side of the room. I didn’t; I was done by then anyway. It wasn’t till later that I realized that the cop wasn’t a cop at all; he was just a security guard. The giveaway was that the American flag patch on his right shoulder was backwards. No, not backwards the way it’s supposed to be, but backwards from backwards.

Finally, Kate had the iPads. We had a little bit of time left, so we went to the Swatch Store so she could buy some watches. Kate made her decisions with great care. Meanwhile, I tried to find out when the next bus to the airport would be coming. I went to the bus stop at the end of the mall to see if I could find a schedule, but there wasn’t one. Next, I went back to the Apple Store to look up the schedule online. Back at the Swatch Store, Kate was buying the watches she had chosen.

We set out for the nearest bus stop. The driver told us where to get off so that we could take a bus directly to the airport. Fortunately, that bus was waiting right at our stop, but unfortunately, the driver was taking his time. At last, the bus started moving. It left Miami Beach and entered Miami, going farther and farther west. Before long, we were at the airport, the last stop on Kate’s visit to America.

We were in a hurry. Kate packed her bags as we were standing in line to check them. She wanted to carry on the guitar case, her backpack, and the stuff she had just bought, but they wouldn’t let her take all of those things. Eventually, we found ourselves tearing open iPad boxes, trying to get all of the gadgets to fit into her backpack.

Somehow, they all fit. Kate was good to go.

Nearby was an escalator going up to security. At the entrance of the escalator stood an attendant. I asked her if I could follow Kate up to security and see her off there, but the woman said I couldn’t. I had to stop there.

Kate said she had to throw something away and started walking away toward a garbage can. I followed her, wondering what she was thinking when she was already going to be late for her flight. She told me she really just wanted to get away from the attendant so we wouldn’t have to kiss right in front of her. Silly Jordon, why didn’t I think of that? My mind doesn’t work that way.

We kissed. Then I took a picture of us as fast as I possibly could.

She went ahead; I stayed behind. She faced me as the escalator carried her up. I remembered our last goodbye at the bus station in Gainesville not long ago. This time, though, it was different. This time, I wasn’t torn apart by lingering uncertainties; instead I felt at peace, calm, knowing this was not really goodbye. There were no tears, only smiles.

* * *

I stood alone at the bus stop outside, waiting for the shuttle to the Tri-Rail. The sky, sunny earlier, was turning gray. The bus came just in time; I had a few minutes to put down my bags and sit.

It started pouring rain as I got out of the bus. I dashed toward the platform for refuge. A train came, and I got on. I had my ticket, bound for Deerfield Beach. I would be spending the night with a friend in my old neighborhood.

He picked me up from the station, and we caught up with each other over dinner at the neighborhood bar and grill. He drove by my old house. It looked the same, except the lawn was overgrown. Back at his place, I went to bed early.

I woke up as the sun was rising and slipped out while everyone was still asleep. A friend of my mom’s who was going up to visit her picked me up outside. She had decided she could use the company; so could I.

On the way, I read. Kate had given me Of Human Bondage for my birthday, and though I had read it on some of our long bus rides, I hadn’t been able to finish it. Now I had my chance.

Of Human Bondage is a novel about a boy who grows up. He does things, and things happen to him. He falls in love with a woman who doesn’t love him but takes advantage of his good nature. He falls in love again and finally finds true happiness.

This book, before and after Kate’s visit, felt like a connection to her. I finished reading it just before we arrived home. It was back to life as usual.

Kate, I miss you.

Stream of consciousness IX

It seems to come in cycles of three or four years. I’ve been deeply worried about junior high, high school, and college. Now, it’s almost time to get a job.

It’s hard to think about the possibility that I’ll be a member of the workforce a year from now. Well, more likely, I’ll just be eligible to be in the workforce. With any mention of the job market these days come mentions of doom and quite possibly also gloom, so I guess I’ll be lucky to get a job so soon after graduating.

First I have to think about getting an internship. It’s not required as part of my major, but anyone who has any common sense does it. It makes you an experienced potential worker, and Companies Like It™ when you have experience.

If left to my own devices, I wouldn’t even bother trying to get an internship because I love my job and I feel like it’s given me the kind of experience I want and need. I’m a webmaster for a department of the university.

(A webmaster, to the uninitiated, is someone who’s in charge of a web site. I thought this was common knowledge, but I’ve had the word thrown back at me in an awestruck way so many times that I have to assume this isn’t the case. Also, I’m not the webmaster for the university’s entire web site, as some people misremember. Egads, that would be awful.)

(And maybe “thrown back” isn’t the best phrase, but imagine this: “Wow… a web master.”)

Anyway, I’ve been poked and prodded into looking for internships to supplement my job, and my first opportunity came last week when there was a so-called “swap meet” on campus. It was an informal gathering for companies looking for internships to meet potential interns looking for companies. Most of the companies didn’t interest me; I would want to work for a company that I feel does interesting work.

I narrowed it down to only a few, and I didn’t get quite the response I had hoped for. I have an open invitation to undertake a “mini-internship” at a company that the bus barely reaches. (On the other hand, the company makes a cool product, and that’s something I could potentially get excited about. I’ll have to see if it’s worth it.)

By the way, people from that company: if you’re reading this, thanks for visiting, and I hope you like the design. (I sold myself short, perhaps, when I told them that I didn’t have an eye for design. But I want to make sure I’m honest and I don’t get in over my head with regards to something I can’t do.)

Anyway, with this internship and any others I might possibly undertake, I would be working on web-related stuff. I’ve discovered in the almost two years that I’ve been working my current job (if my boss is reading this, October 6 is my anniversary) that it’s what I like to do, and by golly—I think it’s what I want to spend the rest of my life with.

In the meantime, I’ll have to battle for internships with my classmates who have bigger resumes and suits that fit them. And I’ll have to take rejection a little better. (Talking to a company at the “swap meet” was like trying to talk to a girl, if not having a girlfriend meant you would be homeless and starving.)

On that note, I’m out. Here’s hoping something serendipitously comes my way or I get a suit that fits.

I don’t watch the show Glee, but I am interested in copyright, so I found this article to be thought-provoking: Copyright: The Elephant in the Middle of the Glee Club. (Via waxy.org)

Intermission

Aaaand we’re back. I’ll continue talking about my adventures with Kate soon (probably interspersed with other posts), but it’s been a long time since I’ve talked about anything else, so I thought I’d fill you in. (Funny how that happens, isn’t it? I get lazy for a few days, and then I’m finally ready to write something but I’m just too dang busy to do it.)

The first day of classes was August 23. This semester has been pretty good so far. My classes aren’t too bad. I’m taking four classes, as usual, and my course load actually seems lighter than it was over the second half of the summer, when I took two classes.

As for socializing, I’ve been spending a lot of time with my friend Andrea, which is good because I didn’t see her very much for a while. I’ve also been getting to know my new roommates, whom I’ll talk about more later. And, of course, I’ve been hanging out with Andy, who’s still one of my roommates.

I entered the football ticket lottery this year, and I won, so I have tickets to all of the home games. I really should have entered the lottery in years past, but I just never felt like doing it. It’s a great way to make money: just go to the games you want to go to and sell the rest of your tickets to other people to make an overall profit.

I didn’t go to last week’s game, which was the season opener against Miami (Ohio) (I believe “Ohio” is supposed to be whispered; read it again and see if it sounds better.) I sold my ticket instead. But I plan to go to this week’s game against USF with my sister and a bunch of her friends. It should be fun. I haven’t been to any football games since I was a freshman (this was my last one), and since it’s my final year, I feel like I need to get some more of those experiences in.

Last week, I wrote a letter to the editor of the Alligator about a column titled “Christian Philosophies Shaped America.” They ran my letter yesterday, and you can read it online as well (but probably not for long since their links die after a certain amount of time.) This is my third letter that the Alligator has printed; the previous ones were from October and February.

One link today: Google Scribe, an apparently new toy that offers autocomplete suggestions for everything you type. (Via Andy Biao of waxy.org, who suggests, “for fun, try typing any word and hit enter repeatedly.”)

Seven links

I don’t usually participate in these memes, but I thought I’d take the 7 Link Challenge (thanks, Kirsten). These answers aren’t necessarily authoritative since I’ve written over a thousand posts and can’t be bothered to go back and look at all of them except in special circumstances.

1. Your first post: The World of Stuff Opens, April 6, 2003.
2. A post you enjoyed writing the most: [sic]. You could say I started writing this one in junior high, when I would keep track of my teachers’ many slips of the tongue. In the post, I listed some of my favorites.
3. A post which had a great discussion: Tough one. We usually don’t have those around here. The discussion on Brain Damage went on for a while, though.
4. A post on someone else’s blog that you wish you’d written: That would have to be The Ultimate “0.999… = 1″ Guide over at Greatplay.net.
5. Your most helpful post: My Sony DSC-H55 Digital Camera Review seems to have helped a fair number of people so far.
6. A post with a title that you are proud of: Man, what post title am I not proud of? Half the time they’re clever as hell. Sometimes I think of them ages in advance. I was going through some old titles, and this one made me chuckle: A Turtle (And Also the Meaning of Life).
7. A post you wish more people had read: Any post with no comments. Seriously, I think if my every post generated a huge discussion, it would compel me to write more often. Not that I don’t write a lot, but I used to write more often than I do now. One post I like that seemed to go under everyone’s radar was By the Way… It brings back a lot of memories for me.

I guess this post should be called “Nine Links” because here are TWO MORE LINKS!!

Here are some Useless Fliers. (Via waxy.org)

Here’s a pretty extensive article about the guy Nintendo named Mario after.

Let them eat cake (and let me eat pie)

You know what I have done in a while? Some Ask Jordon!

Kate: What are the main problems of the US, which really affect people’s lives and need to be solved as soon as possible, in your opinion?

Well, we finally got universal health care (or health insurance, or whatever), so check that one off the list. I’ll admit that I’m having a hard time thinking of other things. A lot of the things I care about don’t have a direct impact on people’s lives.

Are they still giving tax cuts to rich people? If they are, that’s going to have to stop. If anyone needs tax cuts, it’s the people who, you know, have nothing.

Eh. I don’t know. Obesity, maybe? We have a lot of fat people here. But there’s not much you can do about that. You can tell people that they ought to exercise, but you can’t drop them onto a treadmill and make them run all day. You can tell them they should eat more vegetables, but you can’t tie them up and force-feed them brussels sprouts. And anyway, it doesn’t bother me that other people are eating however they want, and it shouldn’t. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg, as they say.

I hate brussels sprouts, by the way. I would empathize.

So, I guess I don’t really have a good answer to your question.

Kate: What do you like most for dessert? :)

What don’t I like for dessert? I’ll eat pretty much anything. That said, I like pies. I think pecan pie is my favorite. My mom made one for my birthday, and it was great. Blueberry pie is also good too.

I had no idea green screens were used so much in TV and movies. Here’s a four-minute video showing many a green screen scene. (Via The Presurfer)

Some guy spent 24 hours in a Super Walmart. (Before you get too confused, he replaces profanity with other random words.) (Via The Consumerist)