The visitor

I survived Finals Week '09. Well, Finals Week Fall '09, to be exact. And, presumably, every previous one. (T-shirt idea: "I survived the first x years of my life.")

Now, have I really not mentioned Katja here since the summer? It seems that I haven't. This must be corrected.

I met her at an Esperanto event in Slovakia. She's Russian. Rather than communicating in English or Russian (the latter of which I don't know—ФЯ DФ I ИФШ?—eh, no, I don't), we used Esperanto. Her name is Ekaterina, which is Russian for Catherine, and her nickname is Katya. In Esperanto that's spelled Katja, and when speaking English, she goes by Kate.

Since meeting over the summer, we've stayed in touch, still writing to each other in Esperanto. (You may recognize Kate as the author of some recent comments on this here blog.) And as it happens, she had been planning to come to the States, so she's going to drop by when she's here early next year, i.e., in a few weeks. And no, it really isn't just to see me; she had been planning the trip before we met. Even so, it'll be really cool to have someone visit me from so far away.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to having her as a guest here in Gainesville (and at my home in South Florida, since we'll have a three-day weekend).

Stay tuned, because more exciting Europe '09 follow-ups are on the horizon. But first, I'm heading home for winter break. Yeeeaah!

Need to know how to pronounce a famous (or currently newsworthy) person's name? The Name Engine has got you covered. I had been wondering about Ndamukong Suh. And hey, it looks like their whole directory of sound files is accidentally browsable. (Via J-Walk Blog)

A graph: A Graphic History of Newspaper Circulation Over the Last Two Decades. (Via waxy.org)

Hallowhatever

I'm kind of ambivalent about Halloween. On one hand, I like candy, but on the other hand, I don't like wearing costumes.

I never really have good ideas for costumes, anyway. Off the top of my head, I can remember that I've been a ghost, a nerd, a doctor, a Beatle, Fred Astaire, myself, and a dinosaur. I could explain some of those, but I don't really want to. The best costume was probably the dinosaur one from when I was little, but you can only pull that off at a certain age (especially because the costume was tiny).

I've always had pretty lame costume ideas, and then there was a time when I thought I was too old for trick-or-treating. For a few years, I would sit at home on Halloween night and hand out candy or just chill. One year, someone (possibly another kid who lived in my house??) started a rumor that I read a dictionary instead of trick-or-treating. Actually, I was watching a football game on TV, but I guess the truth was stranger than fiction. Better yet, that story made an appearance a few years in a row. So, yeah, I was a pretty happy child on Halloween.

I couldn't think of anything to be this year, but I figure it really doesn't matter as much as I get older. College students just wear costumes to make their wild Halloween parties more fun. I'm going to a non-wild party, so I feel I can get away with not wearing a costume. It's also a football party, this being a big game day, so I guess I could say I'm going as a football fan? In that case, I'm being myself for Halloween again.

After all, this isn't the first time I've watched a football game on Halloween. Really.

Readers of the Independent Florida Alligator may have noticed my name in the newspaper this week. I had a letter to the editor published on Thursday in which I pulled out and picked apart a previous editorial's passing claim that the words "one nation under God" cannot be considered broadly offensive because they're found in the Pledge of Allegiance. No follow-ups to my letter have been published, but the online version has attracted its share of vitriolically tangential double posts from pseudonymous capslockers.

I was pleased to see that my letter had been published and that some of my friends (and my boss) took notice of it. I had sent in an unsolicited column and at least one other letter to the editor in the past, both to no avail, so I didn't have high hopes that this one would be printed. But I knew I had to write it anyway. If I don't stand up for my rights, who will?

Finally, good things to know: 9 Ways Marketing Weasels Will Try to Manipulate You. (Via Get Rich Slowly)

Dinner at Andrea's

Now that I attend a university with a top-ranked football team, I watch a lot of football games. Usually, I watch them alone because everyone else is going to the game or going out drinking or just doing something else entirely. That's all fine and good, but it's nice to actually socialize once in a while.

So I was pretty pleased when my friend Andrea invited me over to watch the game. A few of her other friends came too, and we watched (in HD) while having some pizza and snacks. I actually got there way early and stayed way late (through Saturday Night Live), so there were a lot of good times to be had. Well, I thought so, anyway.

The game itself was good too. The #1 Florida Gators' star quarterback had suffered a concussion in the previous game, and no one knew if he would be able to play in this, the biggest game of the season (at #4 LSU). He was finally cleared to play, and he lead the team to its fifteenth straight win by a score of 13-3. College football = epic drama.

During the game, the announcers offered a trivia question (brought to you by Aflac): when was the last time LSU hosted a game between Top 5 teams? I impressed or creeped out everyone present by knowing not only the year but also the teams, rankings, and score. (1959, #1 LSU def. #3 Ole Miss 7-3.)

I had read it in the newspaper the day before. I swear, they must get all their trivia questions from the college paper because that's not the first time that's happened. Anyway, I happened to come across that fact in an article, and I thought, That's interesting; I'll absorb it with my mind. Maybe it'll come in handy someday!

Anyway, it looks like the fun times will continue because I'm going to Howl-O-Scream at Busch Gardens with Andrea and friends on Thursday night. I haven't been there since I was too short or wimpy to ride the brand-new Montu, and I've never been to a Halloween-type event at a theme park (omg omg omg so awesome how could you not ahve ever been). Friday is Homecoming, a school holiday. Nice.

From Rocketboom: Know Your Meme: FAIL. (Via The Presurfer)

Birds on wires = music notes on a staff? See what some birds sound like when they're turned into notes. It's actually quite nice. (Via waxy.org)

The fourth man

Recently, I moved into an apartment with a couple of friends. At the time, I wrote,

There was room for a fourth person in the apartment, but we ended up not finding anyone to join us, and they didn't assign us another roommate. We're locked out of the fourth bedroom, but we don't have to pay extra or anything.

And that was that... or so I thought.

One of my roommates hit me with the news on Thursday while I was studying on campus. Our fourth roommate would be moving in on Wednesday. I had to take a study break.

I was already used to our three-person arrangement, and I wondered what would happen if an unknown person were thrown into the mix. And then I got to worrying. And then I realized that I shouldn't worry because it wouldn't do me any good, and things would turn out fine. I like to think I get along well with people. My previous random and quasi-random roommate assignments worked out just fine, and our new apartment complex actually matches people up based on compatibility and common interests.

Which is good, because we got another notice yesterday that our new roommate would instead be moving in on Monday. It also said that there would be an inspection of our common areas about 24 hours in advance of him moving in, and if anything wasn't cleaned up, they would clean it at our expense. So it's been a cleaning day.

All they've told us about him are his name and phone number. Maybe we should call him to introduce ourselves and make the moving-in process easier for him. It must be hard to move in to a new place where everyone else already knows each other.

When you think of health care reform, think of my friend Joshua McGee, who reminds us that those who stand to benefit from it the most are real people like you and me... and him: Health Care Reform Beneficiaries Are Not Anonymous.

You know how broadcasts of pro sporting events include that warning against rebroadcasting or describing the game without express written consent of the league? Major League Baseball seems to be the most infamous for this. Some guy decided to write to them for permission to describe a game to his friend. Find out how things went down. (Via J-Walk Blog)

The Beatles again

The Beatles' entire catalog was reissued on CD on September 9. Each track has been remastered, supposedly to make it sound better in digital formats (and, no doubt, to keep up with the loudness war). I'd been looking forward to the release for months. It coincided with the release of The Beatles: Rock Band, which is probably what more people were looking forward to. As for me, meh.

Anyway, I was anxious to hear the new albums since whoever did this remastering job supposedly spent four years teasing out an unprecedented amount of detail from the original tapes. As it happened, one of my roommates bought Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road the weekend after the remasters came out. He let me have a listen.

First, a disclaimer. The following comparisons are meaningless. I listened to the new discs through headphones, while I usually listen to lossy copies of the 1987 CDs through speakers.

I didn't notice a new level of detail at all. Also, the new mixes are very faithful to the older ones. The only real difference is that they sound somewhat louder and possibly a little punchier, but not distractingly so. I'm (possibly) known among my friends as the crazy guy who can discern compression artifacts. My overall conclusion is that if I can't notice a real difference, then nobody else will.

But come on, some of you can tell a low-quality MP3 from a high-quality one, right? I can't be the only one.

Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road are among The Beatles' later albums, so maybe that accounts for the sound quality not being very much improved. (In fact, Dolby noise reduction was used on Abbey Road, prompting George Harrison to decry the sound of the album as too harsh. Also, I know too much about The Beatles.) If I had to guess optimistically, I would say that the earlier albums should sound proportionately clearer. But I don't know.

On Abbey Road, I did notice that some anomalies were fixed. Most notably, in "I Want You (She's So Heavy)," the distortion on the microphone during John Lennon's "Yeeeeaaaah" has been (mostly) removed, with only a faint patch of background noise to suggest it was there. I'm a bit disappointed about that. Everyone knows that if you sing loud enough to cause distortion, you're doing it right.

I'm looking forward to hearing the other albums, especially the White Album because the original CD version wasn't very well done. Also, the first four albums are finally available in stereo, and I'm interested in finding out what they did about the few songs that only exist in mono.

The packaging for the albums is also kind of interesting. They've done away with jewel cases in favor of cardboard sleeve-like cases. In keeping with standard CD case dimensions, this leaves a little extra space on the left side of the front cover. They stuck The Beatles' and Apple's logos there, which is kind of lame. Imagine if The Beatles had to put their (second) logo on every album cover back in the day. The impact of Sgt. Pepper, the White Album, and Abbey Road just wouldn't be the same. If I were in a band, I'd make sure we wouldn't have a logo. It's too limiting.

As it happens, I did get to see The Beatles: Rock Band in action yesterday at my friend George's apartment. I didn't feel like playing, but I got to see other people play some songs. My first impression was that The Beatles looked kind of creepy as video game characters. My next impression was that having people "play" the song made the listening especially enjoyable (well, it was either that or the layer of reverb added to some of the songs).

One thing really confused me. On "Come Together," the singer is supposed to say "Shoot me" where John Lennon does the "shh..."/clapping thing. I couldn't believe it. I've heard people claim that John was saying "Shoot me," but I've always wondered what they were smoking. Is that in Lewisohn? He wasn't right all the time.

There's a "sh," a clap, and that's it. No vocalization is audible. And, as I recall, in the liner notes for Love, Beatles producer George Martin states that John made the sound by clapping his hands and breathing into the microphone, or something like that.

The Beatles: Rock Band might get me to play Rock Band, but it's still kind of a weird idea.

A really trippy video: 8-Bit Trip. Do not watch under the influence of drugs. (Via waxy.org)

The Wall Street Journal asks: How Long Does It Take an Athlete to Make 100 Grand? The answers may depress you. (Via J-Walk Blog)

Bed

My new apartment came furnished, and my bedroom has a full-size bed. It's been kind of hard to get used to. I've been sleeping in a twin-size bed for as long as I can remember, and I can't imagine why a normal person would need or want a bed wide enough for two people. Well, I can, but still.

I have two pillows on my new bed, so there's a potential for an ever-raging debate over which side I should sleep on. I've decided to sleep on the side of my nightstand when I have to wake up at a specific time in the morning and on the other side when I don't. It makes a sort of sense. Still, I feel like I shouldn't have to make that decision every night.

Also, every day without fail, I've made my bed upon waking up, which is something I never used to do. Is this the beginning of OCD?

But seriously, I guess it is nice to live in a reasonably clean-looking space. That's a good attitude for me to have since I'll have to keep this place reasonably clean.

39% of Americans want the government "to stay out of Medicare." In other words, 39% of Americans don't know that Medicare is a government program. It has a cheesy name, so what do they think it is? (Via J-Walk Blog)

Here are 21 Oddly Named Places and the Stories Behind Them. I live near the first one (Boca Raton, Florida). (Via J-Walk Blog)

Nine days and five hours away

I had a little get-together for my birthday on Friday night. It was also a sort of coming-home party. I got to see some friends I hadn't seen in a year or two and also some friends I hadn't seen in a day or two. I got a slideshow going of all the pictures I had taken in Europe. It would have taken four and a half hours to complete, but everyone (including myself) left long before it could finish. The fun moved to TJ's house. That's where the fun usually is. I've also been there several times since to spend the night. I wish I could do that during the school year, but alas, college is five hours away.

I usually do a good job of following the news, but while I was in Europe for two months, I was basically living under a rock. I found out that Michael Jackson died, but that was about it. (That was the night we spent in Pisa. It was late, and Andy was outside the hotel room, making calls on our computer. I was channel surfing [we actually had a TV] and saw that Thriller was playing. When it was over, I saw "Michael Jackson 1958-2009" on the screen. I couldn't believe it, so I flipped to some other channels, including the BBC and CNN, which were all over the story. When Andy came back, I told him the news and jokingly asked if he had heard of Michael Jackson. The day before, I had found out that Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett had died; Andy had never heard of either of them.) (Oh, and I also found out that Billy Mays died. I wasn't completely cut off from the world.)

But when I came back, I learned that the government was providing cash for clunkers, that Microsoft had rebranded its search engine, and that there was a new reality show called Police Women of Broward County. As a citizen of Broward County, Florida, I thought it would be interesting to see how the area would be represented. I actually watched an episode. The show is every bit as horrible as it sounds. As a show that showcases crime, it's inherently unflattering to the region, and I can only wonder what went through the heads of the BSO brass when they decided to try to give our county a bad reputation across America.

When I upgraded to the latest version of Ubuntu in April, an annoying new bug/feature was that the operating system would only check for non-critical updates once a week irrespective of my preference to check daily. Or something like that. I was gone from my computer for two months, okay? Anyway, the official fix didn't do anything (or maybe it did but I didn't get any non-critical updates after that). The instructions I found here seemed to do the trick. In short: sudo chmod ugo+x /etc/cron.daily/apt, followed by the official fix (gconftool -s --type bool /apps/update-notifier/auto_launch false). Of course!!

The New York Times has a lengthy article about The Beatles: Rock Band, which comes out next month. If you're particularly interested in The Beatles or Rock Band, have a read. (Annoying registration possibly required; use BugMeNot.) (Via waxy.org)

This is what the Internet is all about: Cats That Look Like Hitler.

Here's the true and exciting story of the little-known State of Franklin. (Via The Presurfer)

Summer again

Well, hello there. I'm home, and there hasn't been much to report.

Friday night, my last night in Hume Hall, was pretty quiet. I basically spent it with my friend Andrea, who was as bored as I was. She made some food for us, but I got hungry later, as people are wont to do. That's when I found out that all of the dining halls, convenience stores, and restaurants on campus had closed early. We went to McDonald's, where there was a touch-screen game system presumably for the kids as they munch on their Happy Meals. After eating, we took a whack at a trivia game that was too hard for us, let alone some little McNugget-gobbling brats. It took us about a million tries to beat the high score, and we were very proud.

On Saturday, my dad came and helped me moved out. We spent the night at my aunt's house, and then on Sunday, we took the long way home. I got home Sunday night and, well, here I am.

I've been working online, and that's been pretty okay. As a webmaster, I do most of my work on the Internet, so it's been basically like going to work, except I don't have to walk there. That would be a long walk.

Also, I just found out today that I got all A's and B's in my classes. Awesome. Let's celebrate with an edition of Ask Jordon:

Carlos: When are you coming out of beta? Flickr already did.

Well, my friend Luke, since this design looks so modern and Web 2.0 (is that still modern?), and because it's always subject to change, I thought a "beta?" badge would be appropriate next to the logo until I have it the way I like it. The only thing I'm yet concerned about is the line spacing. Do you guys think there needs to be more space between the lines here? I'll have to check it out on Windows and see what looks okay.

Tomorrow is the National Day of Reason, which coincides with that National Day of Prayer thing. Americans United for Separation of Church and State explains why the National Day of Prayer is a bad idea.

Here are lots of crazy McDonald's menu items from around the world. Find out where you can get McSpaghetti.

Earth Hour was March 28. Here are some photos of cities around the world in the dark.

From Hogtown to Cowford

On Thursday, Get Carded held its third annual Lifeapalooza concert at the Orange and Brew, a coffeehouse on campus. It was similar to last year's, which is to say that a lot of people signed up to be organ donors. 52, in fact.

This year, rather than keeping track of how many people were entering the building, I mainly concerned myself with talking about organ donation to people as they made their way in. Unlike at our general tabling events, the people who weren't already organ donors were all willing to sign up.

Like last year, we were planning to have the attendees hold green glow sticks and stand in a ribbon shape to make a human green ribbon for organ donation, but that didn't happen. I think it was because the weather was fickle (it was very windy and it rained for a little while). Still, the turnout was good, and the music was good too. I think everybody had a good time.

I had a pretty boring day on Saturday. Around 8:00 at night, I was just pondering how boring my day had been when my friend Evan called. He wanted to go to Jacksonville in search of mozzarella sticks and live music. He had never been there, and neither had I for any significant amount of time, but I didn't need much convincing to go along.

After chatting about all kinds of things during the 90-minute drive, we parked downtown and went to the Landing, a place I had heard of. There was a band playing, and we found an American-type restaurant that had mozzarella stars, which were actually kind of triangular. After those and some chicken strips with french fries, we were satisfied. We took a few pictures to remember the trip by and went back to Gainesville.

Also, The World of Stuff is 6 years old today. Happy birthday, TWoS!

Yet another cool list from Wikipedia that will probably be deleted within six months: List of inventors killed by their own inventions.

Apparently, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer has always been crazy... and bald. See him pitch Windows 1.0.

Radio broadcaster Paul Harvey died recently. He was known to deliver amusing stories that no one else covered... because they were made up. He also put a misleading spin on some of his stories. That's what a reporter found in 1997 after investigating some of his fishy tales.

Just say no

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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