Category - Esperanto

Today I'm going to the skate park with Sean, Nick, and Mike. We went a few years ago, and it was fun, even though my parents made me sit it out. (Something about life insurance.) Anyway, apparently I'm covered now, so I can go and break my bones as I please. I tried to get on a skateboard once, some years ago, and I almost fell off immediately. I hope somebody has some pads and stuff I can borrow. I really, really, really don't want to get hurt, and I would rather sit on the sidelines than risk it. But as long as I come home in good shape, it will have been fun.

It's good to have a little Ask Jordon every now and then.

Peter: Where are some good places to practice Esperanto? / How do you practice Esperanto?

I've been getting a bit rusty myself. I (used to) keep tabs on the news site and portal Ĝangalo, but the last news item they've posted is from last month, and it says that the site has been sold by its creator. I also used to listen to Ĉi Tie Nun, a quirky Esperanto podcast that covers strange news stories from around the world, but the guy who runs that has only come out with two shows in the past six months. Those won't help you too much, I guess, but you can always read old news articles and listen to old podcasts.

Another good resource might be to read some Esperanto magazines. Last year I had a subscription to La Ondo de Esperanto, a magazine published in Russia that has news, reviews, literature, and so forth, but the subscription was pretty expensive (especially when I think you can read the issues online for free). You can't really blame me for falling out of practice, now, can you? Well, the big thing was that I had no one to practice it with, so I've been getting kind of bored. I'd say that the best way to practice is to have people to talk to (in person, online, or both). Maybe we could have some conversations together.

Pope Jolly Wilkins: What is the Firefox extension that finds the pages you will click onto in the future and caches them?

That feature is called pipelining, and it's built into Firefox. Go to about:config and set network.http.pipelining and network.http.proxy.pipelining to "true." It might also help to set the maximum number of connections per server and so forth. These preferences are also found in about:config, but I manage all this stuff with the Tweak Network Settings extension. (Here's its AMO page.)

Pope Jolly Wilkins: Also: why do boomer-folk like to say "Foxfire" instead of "Firefox"?

Boomer-folk have heard of Firefox? I thought they equated the Internet with the Big Blue E. Anyway, why do they screw up anything? It's because they're old, and their minds work in reverse or something. How many times did we have to hear "Pokey-man"?

Here's a gallery of World War II pictures in color. There are some videos too.

Watch some outtakes and goof-ups from the golden days of TV.

It's time for another installment of Jordon Asks YOU!!.

Jordon Asks YOU!!: Have you made any New Year's resolutions, and if so, have you kept them? Post a comment and let me know.

My birthday was yesterday, and it was good. I woke up to find two balloons in the dining room, where the table was half-set for dinner. Later, when dinnertime rolled around, my grandparents came over, and we feasted on pasta, bread, sausage, and salad. For dessert we had an ice cream cake from Cold Stone Creamery. It had coffee-flavored ice cream, and I guess cake, and some dark chocolate stuff, and Heath bars on top. Yes, there is still a lot left if you want to come over and have some.

Not counting the value of the dinner and the concert, I got an amazing amount of money for my birthday. I also got gift cards for Starbucks from my parents and for FYE from Katherine. Thank you, everybody. So what am I going to do with the money? Put it in the bank, of course. I don't really have much I could spend it on, so why not give it a bit of a guard against inflation and invest in the future? As for the gift cards, I already have tons of unused ones from birthdays past, so I hope to actually get some use out of them now that I remember that I have them.

Yesterday Casey told me that my friend Reid was going to be in a performance of The Pirates of Penzance. I haven't seen either of them much since back in October, and it's nice to see Reid doing what he loves the most, so I'm going to go and see the play. I believe my sister was invited too, but she doesn't really get along with Casey anymore. I have nothing personal against her, and it's really more about seeing Reid on the stage, so I'll go. I think we're going to be joined by Michael, so that should be cool.

Ah yes. I remember when my sister and I would go to Reid's house and we would make up and record ridiculous movies. It started with "Dumb Wars," a parody of Star Wars. We had to be in third grade or something, and one day after school a bunch of us little somethingth-graders were acting out this whole Star Wars parody. The next day a bunch of us decided to get together and act it out before the video camera. Others followed, including a magic act, a tribute to the '70s, and the campy "Pigzilla."

A few years later, Reid was in an acting company for kids. We even made a few class field trips out of his plays. He was like the star of junior high... I guess. Then, after eighth grade, he went to an art school to study acting, and the last I talked to him, he was having a blast there. How cool is that? It's been fun to look back and see his transformation into a real live actor. I hope he pursues his dream further and wins an Oscar or something. Now I'm really starting to sound like some teacher signing a kid's yearbook, so let's just cut to the links.

Here's how the constitution of the Confederate States compared to that of the United States. Speaking of which, one blogger out there echoes my feelings by asking why the heck the Confederate flag is such an accessory, and in New Jersey, no less.

I guarantee this is the weirdest thing you'll see today (at least on YouTube, anyway): sock puppets speaking Esperanto. For what it's worth, their pronunciation is good and their grammar is okay.

One year ago: "Now figure out this English-language colloquialism translated into Esperanto: 'Mi ne havas vivon.'"

Birthday greetings and a bottle of wine to Paul McCartney, who is sixty-four today. Though he's not really losing his hair, it has been many years since the Beatles' song "When I'm Sixty-Four" was released on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. Thirty-nine years later, Sir Paul hasn't needed to scrimp or save. Linda and Heather have fed him, and he's probably stayed out till quarter to three on many an occasion. Who could ask for more? This is precisely what I mean to say: we're all older too, but we still need you, Paul. Every Vera, Chuck, and Dave would agree.

One of the newer features in Skype is the ability to participate in Skypecasts, which are basically huge conference calls (of up to 100 people) that are organized in advance. Perusing the rather short list of upcoming Skypecasts, I've been disappointed to find that most of them are about boring topics like business, self-help, religion, learning English, and soccer. Surprisingly, there have been a few about Esperanto, of which I have a pretty good understanding. I joined one only to find that only two or three people were there; we were all dabblers who just wanted to hear the language being spoken. Another Skypecast had quite a few people going on in Esperanto about various things. I was pretty shy, and I dropped out after listening for a little while. I think I need to talk to a native English speaker who is also in the process of learning the language.

Anyway, I thought that I could start a Skypecast, but I can't really think of a topic to talk about with random strangers scattered all over the globe. Actually, it doesn't have to be a big discussion -- Skypecasts have been likened to a call-in radio show because the host of the Skypecast can control whether the others are allowed to speak. Since it can also be used in this way, it would be interesting to deliver a comedy routine, with allowing a certain listener to speak being an analog to chatting it up with somebody in the first row of the audience. Does anyone have any interesting ideas for Skypecasts? Give me your answer: fill in a form. Er, post a comment. (Sorry if my lights have gone.)

Hey, maybe I could talk about the Beatles. I like them.

From the Wall Street Journal: Hollywood's Take on the Internet Often Favors Fun Over Facts. It's an article about how computers and the Internet have been portrayed in movies.

Here's a list of the Top Ten Weirdest, Creepiest, Freakiest Children's Television Shows, according to some blogger.

Two years ago: "It was described in the Warner Brothers sound effects library as 'Man Being Eaten by Alligator.'"

It's been nearly a year since I began studying the constructed language Esperanto. So, how's that Esperanto thingy going? Last summer I studied from a book, and since then I've read some literature, magazines, and web sites while listening to videos, music, broadcasts, and podcasts in the language. Even so, I've spent little time actually writing in Esperanto and even less time speaking it (to whom am I to write or speak, after all, besides myself?). Skype might be a good way to practice those skills, but it will probably be tough to find good people to talk to if it's so hard to find people to speak to you in pretty good English. I might start in chat rooms before moving on to voice chat.

Even with this lack of practice, I can speak pretty decently, as I found out the other day in programming class when I started spouting Esperanto for no good reason that I can remember. I was just saying basic things, but Gilbert was floored by my level of fluency (if you could call it that), so that was kind of cool. I still have a long way to go. A cool thing for an Esperantist to do -- something that usually grown-up-types with money do -- is to attend an Esperanto event and speak with people from around the country or world as equals, often without even knowing where they're from. And then there's the Pasporta Servo, a guide for Esperanto-speaking travelers who want to stay at other Esperantists' homes, thereby saving money, experiencing the area like the locals do, and making friends. A good way to start at all this would be to take one of those summer courses in Vermont. Someday, perhaps.

You know what's fun? Looking up the names of your teachers at the county's Clerk of the Courts web site. Many of them are in the database, usually for petty things like traffic tickets. For example, one of my teachers is currently fighting a speeding ticket, and another got a ticket last year for making an "improper left turn." I also uncovered things I didn't want to know, such as the fact that one of my former teachers might be a felon. Still, it's an interesting use of public records. Look to see if your area court has these records on the web. Finding dirt on your friends, family, and coworkers can be fun!

There are times when I really want to use JavaScript to write Greasemonkey user scripts. I knew I should have learned it years ago.

Top 10 Movies That Went Wrong. First on the list is The Conqueror (1956), which was responsible for the deaths of its stars and much of its crew. And it wasn't even that good, supposedly. Come on... the Duke as Genghis Khan?

Worldmapper is a site with lots of cartograms. These particular cartograms are maps of the world in which the countries are resized on the basis of population or other statistics. Countries with larger populations (or whatever) appear larger on the map.

Two years ago: "What I mean is, what do you say when this mysterious guy who created everything, this guy who you talk to to receive terse but wise answers - they are similar in that sense - wants to drop by your house?"

Today I got a large envelope in the mail from Russia. I had no idea what it was until I opened it and saw some familiar words. It contained two issues of La Ondo de Esperanto ("The Wave of Esperanto"), a magazine I had subscribed to a few months ago. I've read a little bit of it, and it seems pretty interesting. It includes news about the Esperanto movement, interviews, letters, and original fiction.

I've been studying and using Esperanto since the end of May, which, I am surprised to find out, was a whole ten months ago. Since finishing my book, Teach Yourself Esperanto, I've been continuing my education mainly by reading news sites such as Ĝangalo. I've also listened a bit to Ĉi Tie Nun, a podcast that covers weird news from around the world. Most importantly, however, I've been trying to think in the language. I constantly try to translate what I think and hear in English. I should probably try thinking straight in Esperanto, though. That will take a little more work. Also on the agenda is improving writing, speaking, and my vocabulary. Hopefully I'll be able to achieve a good level of fluency eventually.

Yesterday I had what could be the best ice cream in the world. It was a flavor called Cappuccino Fudge Blitz. I love coffee-flavored ice cream, and I love fudge, so you can just imagine the goodness. And what a blitz it was. That stuff could conquer Poland any day.

And now, three Ask Jordons.

Luke: What was on the All Your Base Are Belong to Us page? Also: do you heart library scientists?

The All Your Base Are Belong to Us page had a few images badly photoshopped to include the phrase. Also: not especially.

catherine: Do you know any single men between the ages of 18-23?

No.

ng: what is the longest word that can be typed with only 1 row

To find relevant QWERTY statistics, I did a little research and found that the longest words typed on a single row are "perpetuity," "proprietor," "repertoire," and "typewriter," all 10 letters long. I tried going through the Dvorak list manually, but it was so long that I gave up. Instead I wrote a quick (ha!) and dirty program to do all the work. It determined that "instantaneous" (13 letters) is the longest. That word also describes how long it took the program to figure out the answer. I love computers and they rule the world.

Here's a gallery of aerial photographs of Mexico City, one of the world's largest cities.

And here's how to fold paper into a secret note square. According to the page, "some people have trouble opening this type of note, so it's perfect for passing secret notes to your friends." If they can open it, that is.

One year ago: "Once you have a good set of filters, it's truly amazing to see the Internet in a whole new light -- and it's much more fun than simply avoiding sites that have annoying ads."

I think I'm going to get a new recorder for Christmas. Yes, I may just be moving up from a rather nice stereo cassette recorder to a rather nice digital recorder. I have my eye set on the Fostex MR-8HD. I feel a bit giddy just thinking about it, but of course, the nagging details remain. (Specifically, how can I trim space off the beginning or end of a track? I suppose I could just do it on the computer. But maybe there won't be enough noise for it to be a problem. Like, maybe the compressor could take care of it. That would be cool. But I doubt it. I'd probably have to do some editing on the computer.) I've looked at the PDF of the manual quite a bit, so I can start using it once I get it -- if I get it. It's $400, but I'd be willing to pay some of the price.

On this day in 1859, Dr. L. L. Zamenhof, the initiator of Esperanto, was born. Zamenhof Day (also called Esperanto Book Day) is the most widely celebrated day in the Esperanto world, but it's generally limited to internal celebrations, like formal dinners held by local Esperanto clubs. But I decided that today would be as good a day as any other to make contact with others by promoting Esperanto a little bit at school. I wore two pins: one that said "Esperanto" and another that said "Salutojn el Usono" ("Greetings from the USA"). For anyone who asked about them (many people tried to pronounce "Salutojn el Usono"), I gave them two flyers -- one with general information, and another with a small grammar and vocabulary. I managed to interest about three people, all friends.

This is a bold affirmation: We are in the digits of pi and live forever. If pi is a transcendental number, then the decimal places must continue infinitely. Therefore, the digits of pi contain -- somewhere -- numerical encodings of everything and everyone that has ever existed or ever will exist anywhere. Furthermore, each could be found an infinite number of times. Essentially, your DNA must be encoded somewhere, along with your thoughts (although these would be difficult to decode if they could even be encoded in the first place), experiences (ditto), the complete works of Shakespeare, and all your MP3s (imagine the record industry going after that!). Of course, this would be the case with any such number, including e, but pi intrigues people.

The house that MS Paint built (Flash animation). I can't imagine spending a maddeningly long time on such a thing.

One year ago: "Now I've nearly been hit by a red ball that people are throwing around the classroom, so I'm out."

I doubted that I would lose weight on the No S Diet during November, but I figured that I had to have lost at least a little. Well, I'm glad to report that by averaging multiple weighings at the end of last month and the beginning of this month, it appears that I have lost 9 lbs. since I started about a month ago. Now the exact number, of course, is debatable, because we happened to get a new scale since I last weighed myself back when I started. But the fact remains that the No S Diet is helping me lose weight. It may not be long before I'm out of the "overweight" category. And the best part is, even though I lost all that weight, I still managed to do hardly any exercise at all!

I did start using the shovelglove for 14 minutes on Monday and Tuesday, but due to the pain I had to take some rest. I had to keep my arms -- especially my left -- bent or else they'd hurt like crazy. They only got better today, probably because I'm doing more arm-bend-requiring activities than when I'm in school (where I have to bend my arms to keep them on my desk). In any case, I'll probably feel good enough on Monday to try again. My parents say my muscles were just responding because they're never used that much, but I think pain is your body's way of saying something's wrong. I guess it's worth another shot doing the same routine; I'll just have to be more careful.

With the end of November I've been learning Esperanto for six months (It was at the end of May that I got into it again). I think is a sort of a milestone, because I commonly hear from others who have learned the language that they gained reasonable proficiency in six months. Now, I doubt I'm as good as them, but I read my Esperanto news sites along with English blogs. And I just wrote this article about the Liberty Bell (or, shall I say, la libereca sonorilo) for the Esperanto Wikipedia. I need an opportunity to talk to speakers, and learn more words, I guess. And gain proficiency in listening. In other words, I need help all around.

But, I have gotten an early Christmas present: a youth membership to the Esperanto League of North America, a subscription to "La Ondo de Esperanto" ("The Wave of Esperanto"), a magazine from Russia, and a couple of Esperanto buttons that I intend to wear on Zamenhof Day (December 15), Esperanto's main holiday, if you will. Hopefully these will foster my understanding of the language, like those books which I've finished some of.

Joel A. Friesen used a series of charts and graphs to show his girlfriend "Why You Should Continue to Date Me." After the last slide you can find out how she reacted to the presentation.

The best paper airplane in the world? It's quite possible -- I used to know how to make a similar one that flew rather well -- but I'm not enough of a paper airplane aficionado (or a paper folding aficionado) to find out.

One year ago: "No sleeping style is for everyone. You have to see what works best for you."

It's Thanksgiving today. Thanksgiving was historically a day of giving thanks for the harvest. Today it's stereotypically (but quite correctly) depicted as a day for eating turkey, bickering with relatives, and watching football.

What happened? Well, we sort of don't grow our own crops anymore. I can see Thanksgiving having a significance to some farming family outside Zuquardic, Nebraska. They raise their own grain and vegetables, I guess. And they grow their turkey themselves. Father, in his overalls and farmer's hat, slaughters the turkey in the barn, and mother cooks it and everything else all nice and old-timey. Mashed potatoes 'n' gravy, green beans, corn on the cob, yams, cranberry sauce, whatever. And the farmer's hot daughter churns the butter. Yeah. They have a feast tonight, and then tomorrow morning they start working again.

But for the rest of us, we can't help but trivialize the holiday. Like every other holiday in Western culture (except maybe Passover), we seem to have lost touch with its origins. Last year, a classmate of mine who didn't spend much of her childhood in America decried Thanksgiving as a celebration of gluttony. I didn't believe her, but now I realize that she's right. Today Thanksgiving really is all about the meal. Everyone who calls Thanksgiving "Turkey Day" knows this, subconsciously or otherwise.

Furthermore, Thanksgiving has traditionally been regarded as the gateway to Christmas. Franklin Roosevelt knew this when he changed Thanksgiving from the last Thursday to the second-to-last Thursday in November (rationale: longer Christmas season = stores make more money = no more Great Depression). He and Congress hammered out a compromise: it's now the fourth Thursday in November, which is sometimes the last and sometimes not. But now stores are going back even farther than Thanksgiving, no matter what the date. I started seeing Christmas decorations and stuff a couple weeks ago. It makes me want to puke.

I'm going to put the "Thanks" and "giving" back in Thanksgiving by giving thanks for things I'm thankful for. The other day I scribbled down a little list:

• Friends and family... duh!
• My willpower & desire to always improve myself.
• Good teachers, especially Dear Mrs. Vazquez [who, as I failed to mention, actually moved to Puerto Rico].
• Reinhard Engels for the No S Diet & shovelglove
• The people I've communicated with in Esperanto
• My chiropractor

I added that last one because the day before, I had been a little overzealous with the shovelglove. But I'm thankful for her anyway. I haven't missed a day of school in about three years because she keeps me healthy.

Today, some relatives will be coming for Thanksgiving dinner at our house, as usual. I like it best that way because if it were anyone else's house, it just wouldn't be the same. Part of the reason is that we have a large dining room table, so there's a lot of room for everything and everyone. The table's here in the room with the computer (or vice versa). It's already set for dinner (which will probably be in the late afternoon/early evening). My mom started setting it last night.

Are you going to fry your turkey? UL (as in "UL Listed") has a video saying that you might want to be careful. (You know the video's going to be great when you see a firefighter carefully placing the turkey in the fryer.)

And today Snopes (once again) tackles the question: Does eating turkey make you sleepy? Their answer, in a nutshell:

It's not the turkey that makes you tired, it's all the food. Who'd have thought?

Hypocrite alert. I've said that LiveJournal and MySpace are not for me. But then I went and got a LiveJournal just so I could read my friends' friends-only journals. And now, wouldn'tchaknowit, I've gotten a MySpace. It was some time ago, actually. October. Maybe September. I don't remember. I guess I just felt like jumping on the bandwagon. I don't post blog entries there and I don't beg for comments. Also, I'm not trying to collect as many friends as I can (unlike some people); I personally know all 32 of my friends (except maybe one, but she made the friend request to me).

In addition to that social networking craze, I've started another spinoff on the blogging thing. I've started keeping a diary in Esperanto in order to get practice. I get practice reading, but I hardly ever do any writing, and so my writing sucks. Whenever I feel bored, angsty, or simply skribema, I'll just pop open this journal book that somebody gave me for Christmas or my birthday a few years ago and I'll be able to write. In fact, it's already gotten me through the trauma of Hurricane Wilma. (I used to have a journal, actually, and I can't find it, darn it. It must be somewhere. Maybe I'll find it someday.)

Stolen from The Presurfer: Go to Google, then plug in "(your first name) needs" and see the results.

"Jordon needs parents who can help him deal with his losses." Nope, already have them.
"Jordon needs help in learning to control his frustration." How true...
"Jordon needs our prayers." Not especially.
"Jordon needs to come back here tomorrow for a few more tests." What am I being tested for?
"Jordon needs to move to France he would be more in tune with that government." Maybe I would.
"jordon needs to return half of the land it occupies that was part of the pal mandate in the forties." I am not a country!
"Jordon needs to mind her own business." I am not a woman!
"Jordon needs to ditch the band, the show, and get her own record deal." Ditto.
"Jordon needs someone to look after and love him in his old age." And young age.
"Jordon needs to cut his hair." I could swear this one's about me.
"Jordon needs help to realize this 'adventure of a lifetime'." Ooh, where are we going?
"Jordon needs to be shot!" I could swear this one's about me.

I can't explain this: iiiiiiii.com (Flash, sound). That's eight I's in the URL if you want to tell your friends (but I counted 94 in the song).

Oh, right, I had exams on Thursday. I already know what I got on them: an A in chemistry and an A in English. English was very easy (as I expected) and chemistry was too (surprisingly). I'm not sure what I got on Monday's exams, though. Anyway, this week is short because of Yom Kippur, so we have a four-day weekend. Our next days off are for Thanksgiving at the end of next month. Ay.

Yesterday I went to a surprise birthday party for my friend Mike. We met at an Italian restaurant and then went across the street to see The Greatest Game Ever Played at the movies. Although it was good, it's hard to make a 2-hour movie about golf without running into slow and boring bits. Happy 17th birthday (once again), Mike.

I seem to be hanging out at a site called Esperanto Radio Arkivo (Esperanto Radio Archive) quite a bit. Believe it or not, Esperanto radio programs are broadcast from China, Poland, Vatican City, Cuba, Italy, Australia, and (if you count Internet broadcasts) many more countries. I think my listening skills are getting better; I could understand everything pretty well, depending on the quality of the MP3s. On the site I listened to a few broadcasts from Radio Havano Kubo -- Radio Havana Cuba (broadcast from "a free territory in America," they remind us). One anchor typically mentions that you can listen to their shows online at the Esperanto Radio Archive and gave a tip of the hat to the site's webmaster who, ironically, is an American.

I haven't listened a whole lot, but apparently they take calls from people and talk about Cuba, generally. I get bored listening to it online, but I think it would be more exciting to hear it coming in on the old shortwave radio. I think their Esperanto shows are the only such programs broadcast in the Western hemisphere, and since they're coming from so close by, it should make for some good reception (although I guess shortwave signals can travel around the world). Cuba has always been mysterious to me (and other Americans, I'm sure). Because we're not allowed to go there, it only makes the place more alluring, like how you always want what you can't have. In any case, Esperanto allows for cultural exchanges to take place by means of a neutral common language.

Anyway, they broadcast from Cuba three times on Sundays, and all of those times yesterday I happened to be out of the house (or asleep). So next week I'll have to catch the half-hour program. That should be fun for my family because they get to hear me listening jibber-jabber that they can't understand.

If you're like me, you (a) like Esperanto and (b) can't remember people's names. If only (b) applies, maybe these tricks to remembering names will help. I'll have to try them.

The Jowler is a photo that makes anyone look unflattering. To make one, have someone take a picture of you (with the flash) while you shake your jowls really fast. Have a look at the gallery.

I couldn't think of a good title for this post, so I thought I'd call it "Free Candy."