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)

Look around you

No posts in six days. That must mean I'm having fun, right? The answer is yes!

Actually, I got sick this week, and that was annoying... you know, because I was at home on spring break and all. But I passed the time with... panoramic photography.

See, I'd long missed putting together panoramas easily with a certain program that I no longer find ethical to use because it's not free as in freedom. I was wondering what was free but also very easy to use. There's Hugin, which runs on Linux, but from what I had seen, it couldn't stitch panoramas automatically. You had to choose a lot of corresponding points between images for it to put them together.

Actually, it turns out that Hugin can work with programs that pick points automatically, which makes the task of stitching panoramas much easier. It's not quite as easy as giving a program some images and telling it to go ahead, but it's close. I just downloaded Hugin and Autopano-SIFT (both available from Ubuntu's software repositories) and made sure that they would work together, and then everything was ready.

All you have to do is follow the instructions in Hugin's Assistant tab. It will guess the focal length of your camera based on the EXIF data in the images or something like that. All I know is that it didn't like photos I took with the camera sideways unless I stripped the images of their EXIF data and entered the focal length manually as three-quarters of the camera's actual focal length as calculated by Hugin (due to the aspect ratio being the opposite and aw, you don't really need to know this, do you).

Anyway, you load the images, then you and Hugin decide what the camera's focal length is. Next, Autopano-SIFT picks points common to different images so Hugin knows how to stitch them. You're then presented with a rough idea of how the panorama will look, and there you can set some parameters like the projection. That's one thing that I don't remember [non-free automatic panorama stitching program] being able to do.

It turns out that one projection is not suitable for all kinds of panoramas. For example, it's common to see buildings looking very bendy, like in some of my previous panoramas, but they look much better if you can keep straight lines straight, as in this example. But that sort of projection isn't always the best because the edges of the image get more distorted as the field of view gets wider. It's a trade-off.

Finally, Hugin generates an image. I like that it's an uncompressed TIFF with transparency around the panorama, as opposed to the aforementioned program which generated a (compressed) JPEG with black around the panorama.

Taking panoramic photos can be tricky, but with the right software, stitching images together doesn't have to be a problem. As long as you do a good job of taking the pictures, you can get a pretty flawless panorama like this one I took of my backyard. It consists of 17 photos.

(Also: I finally upgraded WordPress today, so let me know if you notice anything funky with the blog. 2.7 is sexxay.)

I have lots of gift cards that I rarely get a chance to use, so this site might be handy: you can buy and sell gift cards at Plastic Jungle. (Via mcgees.org)

Fun project: a Scrabble Keyboard. And it's for a Mac. Go figure. (Via The Presurfer)

You may have heard of Songsmith, Microsoft's new program that generates backing music for melodies. (See a recent post where I link to Songsmith's treatment of "Roxanne.") But it turns out that the program can do more than that. Here, Songsmith plays melodies based on recent stock charts... descending melodies, of course. Funny in a seemingly inappropriate way. (Via waxy.org)

Title that will make you want to read this

To no one's surprise, the Unite Party basically swept the Student Government elections, winning the executive and treasurer tickets as well as 42 Student Senate seats. The Progress Party picked up 8 seats, while the Orange and Blue Party won none.

Also, 61% of students voted to ban SG funding for facilities that require biometric data for entry. Recently, the main student gym announced plans to install hand scanners at the entrance because they thought that showing your student ID card to an attendant would be too slow and inexpensive. In the fall elections, something like 84% of students expressed their disapproval of this incredible waste of money and arguable invasion of privacy in a non-binding referendum. This semester's initiative is binding.

The turnout was 19%, which I think is considered high. Kind of a shame, if you ask me.

Um, what else? Spring break is in a week. Yay. Um, that's it, I guess. Talk amongst yourselves.

Tupper's self-referential formula is a certain formula whose graph looks like the formula itself. The Wikipedia article makes the rationale sound simple, but I still think it's pretty wacky.

Bhutan, the quiet Himalayan kingdom that got television and the Internet at the same time, is now the world's first non-smoking nation. (Via The Presurfer)

At howoldareyou.net, you can see pictures of people and guess how old they are. You can also submit a picture of yourself... if you dare to find out what people think. (Via Atheist Revolution)

Elections: they're not just for fall anymore

Yesterday I was going through old issues of the Independent Florida Alligator, formerly the dependent Florida Alligator, because I was looking for scans of old (public domain) issues to add to the newspaper's Wikipedia article. It was really interesting to see what sorts of things were going on at the university decades ago and how many of them were similar to what's going on today. I saw a lot about Student Government elections, which is appropriate because the spring SG elections are Tuesday and Wednesday.

Nice segue, eh? Before I jump to that subject, some gems from old issues of the Alligator: a 1964 editorial about Fidel Castro's hostility toward the naval base at Guantanamo Bay; a satirical 1975 article, presented as a news story from the distant year 1995, about the threat of ozone cans to the aerosol layer; and the first issue of 1990, in which the newspaper introduced a brand new look that today's students would find very familiar. Same logo, too.

Anyway, during the spring elections, the student body president and representatives of the various colleges are elected, so this is kind of a big deal. There are three main parties in the race:

The Unite Party mainly consists of former members of the majority, Greek-supported Gator Party, which was hit by scandal last semester when some damning e-mails got out about... I don't know what they really said, but the implication was that the student body president had a hand in choosing which senators got elected or something like that. Allegedly! Anyway, now there's the Unite Party, which aims to unite. My friend Cameron is running with them to represent the College of Engineering. He's a responsible guy and great senator material. And since he's running on the Unite ticket, he'll probably win. But would I pick a Unite candidate for president? I'd look at my other options first.

The Orange and Blue Party was the party calling for change last semester, and they seem to have made some good progress considering they're the minority party. Ben Cavataro, my dorm's senator, is a member of the Orange and Blue Party, and my interactions with him indicate he's a good guy.

And then there is this guy:

He's Benjamin Dictor, presidential candidate for the Progress Party, which seems to have splintered from Orange and Blue. This never-before-seen photo is from the Andrew Meyer protest I attended. Ring a bell? "Don't tase me, bro." Right. Ben Dictor took a leadership role in those protests.

I don't know him personally, but that's how I know who he is, and my impression of him is that he's a man of principles and action. Even if they weren't the best principles, as I freely admit, he has good intentions and knows how to get things done. Also, Orange and Blue had their chance, but now I'd like to give some new guys a try in Student Government. That's why I'm probably voting for Ben Dictor for student body president. I don't think he'll win, but it would be really cool if he did. Thus ends the lamest editorial ever.

This is pretty cool, though: Wikipedia Names Your Band. The idea is simple:

Go to "Wikipedia." Hit "random" and the first article you get is the name of your band. Then go to "Random Quotations" and the last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album. Then, go to Flickr and click on "Explore the Last Seven Days" and the third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

When you see the album One Damn Thing Over and Over by Liberty Motor Car, and the cover has a picture of a chef smoking a cigarette and examining a pot full of bright green goo, buy it, because it's mine. (Via waxy.org)