Jordon: blogs about stuff
Kirsten: blogs about herself - and then some

Jordon: living the collegiate life
Kirsten: living in a cubicle

Jordon: lives in balmy Florida
Kirsten: lives in blistering Las Vegas

Jordon: is 21 and doesn't look like he has any wrinkles or gray hairs
Kirsten: has been 29 for seven years now and while she's avoided wrinkles so far, the gray hairs are creeping in

Jordon: knows html
Kirsten: knows html, more or less

Jordon: knows php
Kirsten: knows php when she sees it but doesn't quite know what to do with it

Jordon: is a coding maniac
Kirsten: sucks at all kinds of coding

Jordon: knows what algorithms are
Kirsten: barely has any rhythm

Jordon: listens to The Beetles
Kirsten: listens to angsty chick music

Jordon: will graduate college with a 4-year degree and some career direction
Kirsten: graduated with a 2-year degree in liberal arts and still has no direction

Jordon: went to Europe and was able to meet all sorts of people because of years of dedicated, self-motivated Esperanto studies
Kirsten: went to Europe and was not able to speak to anyone despite 6 years of French studies

Jordon: puts interesting links at the end of nearly every post
Kirsten: stayed up way too late and couldn't find anything link worthy, so is encouraging everyone to go to wikipedia and just keep clicking on "Random Article" until something interesting comes along

It's a quaint idea—having photos on paper? Ha! I've used digital cameras exclusively since 2002, and you know how printers are. So I've long been content to just gaze at my photos on a screen, but now I've figured that having my favorites on nice Kodak paper wouldn't be a bad idea—think of it as a paper backup. And you can't pin lots of thin, tiny screens onto your wall (yet).

(Aside: When I was packing up all the stuff in my room a few weeks ago, I found my old cameras with film still in them. My mom got the rolls developed, and I'm looking forward to seeing the pictures [and also my mom and dad at the new house, which they started moving into on Monday].)

There are oodles 'n' kaboodles of web sites that send you prints of photos that you upload, so it was hard to pick out one. But I had heard good things about HP's Snapfish, so I decided to give it a spin.

Uploading the photos was easy enough. Snapfish offers a choice of uploading the photos at full size or scaling them down to medium size and then uploading those versions. They recommend the latter for all but the largest prints, probably because it saves a great deal of time. I was concerned that the quality of the prints would suffer, but I decided to go with their recommendation. Uploading over 100 photos didn't take long at all.

I got 20 free 4x6 prints for signing up, and I was able to get free shipping (something they normally charge a lot for) with a coupon code I found on RetailMeNot. So I ended up paying $10.44 for 136 prints (about 7.7˘ per print).

The photos arrived in a small box that contained two envelopes (like the kind you would get from having your photos developed at the drug store, except without a slot for the negatives). The first thing I noticed about the prints was that the paper was kind of thin—not super thin, but they seemed thinner than the old film prints I would get from the drug store (unless my memory is failing me). It was Kodak paper, though.

The color reproduction was pretty faithful to my monitor. I'm not an expert on colors, but a particularly colorful part of one photo seemed to be oversaturated. I don't think this would be a problem in general, though. As for the image quality, it was great. I looked as closely as I could, and I couldn't see any JPEG artifacts from the resizing. In fact, I discovered that my 14-megapixel camera produces much clearer snapshots than my old (cheap) film cameras (with cheap film) did.

All in all, I would recommend Snapfish if you can use the coupon code for free shipping. Even without it, it seems to be a pretty good deal. Sometimes you just need that paper backup.

A relevant link: Photographer Steve McCurry talks about shooting on the last roll of Kodachrome film ever produced. (Via J-Walk Blog)

But here in this little college apartment I've come to call home, big things are happening too. Although I'm buried under a pile of homework and work and housework (or at least the threat of impending housework), I'd like to stick my head in briefly to say: Kate is coming back.

I met her last summer when I was in Europe, and in January, she paid me a visit that I detailed in 5 posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

She'll be leaving Russia this weekend and will spend a week meandering from Miami to Gainesville. Then she'll be meeting up with me, and we'll spend a few days in St. Augustine and Jacksonville. Then we'll be back in the Gainesville area, where we'll visit my parents at the new house. After that, we hope to make it down to Key West for a few days, and then Kate will have to be in Miami to catch her flight home.

It's incredibly kind of her to travel halfway around the world twice in less than a year to visit me, and I'll make sure she enjoys her visit.

In the meantime, I have all this work to catch up on.

Just one link today: An interactive chart showing The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook.

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.

Q: Why is the drinking age 21 and not 18?

A: The Florida Legislature has the power to set the drinking age, and that's what they've decided is appropriate.

In other words, the classic because-we-said-so argument with which we are all familiar. (For the real answer, read about the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984. The history of alcohol purchase age limits by state is also interesting.)

Anyway, Tuesday was my 21st birthday. After I wrote my birthday blog post, I continued studying until the exam (except for a brief study break at Taco Bell). I was gradually joined with other people in my class, and we all sort of ended up commiserating. That's always fun. The exam itself was pretty challenging, but I don't think it was harder than the last one, which I got a pretty good grade on, all things considered.

By the time I was done with my exam, it was already 9:30. Andy picked me up, and we went to Gainesville Ale House on Archer Road. Andrea met us there. I picked the place because it was one of the only restaurants in town I'd ever been to that was open after 11 PM (the others being the Original Pizza Palace and Chili's). Plus, there would be a wide variety of alcoholic drinks to choose from if I so desired.

I so desired. I needed to unwind after that exam. After much deliberation, I decided to get a whiskey and soda (Jack and Pepsi, to be exact). I almost thought the waitress wasn't going to card me, but she did. To eat, of course, I got a burger. Since this establishment was half-bar, they had a trivia contest going on, with the questions and answers being announced over the speakers. The three of us put our heads together and got most of the questions right, although we didn't actually participate.

Andrea had the audacity to ask the waitress whether I would get a free desert. She said I could get a free slice of ice cream cake and brought one out. The three of us enjoyed it together. Andy covered my part of the check since he owed me money (it's a good thing he remembered because I didn't). Then, Andy and I went back to our apartment, where Andy had decorated the living room with balloons and other birthday decorations as a surprise. We threw the balloons around for a little while. After midnight had passed, I started working on homework.

I report my music listening habits to last.fm because I enjoy seeing the statistics. Here are some more statistics for last.fm users: The Obscurometer tells you how obscure your musical tastes are compared to others'. Apparently, my obscurity level is 30.1%, and my musical tastes are more obscure than 27.9% of all users.

This article does a great job of explaining how The RIAA and MPAA Have Failed to Understand a Cultural Shift. Everyone who doesn't understand why the RIAA and MPAA's tactics are wrong should read it.

Here at old Florida, there are three summer semesters. Summer A is six weeks long. Summer B, which follows Summer A, is also six weeks long. Summer C spans both Summer A and Summer B. I took Intro to Public Speaking during Summer A, and during Summer C, I'm taking Operating Systems and Finance. Summer A has ended, so the latter two classes are the ones I have left.

Summer course offerings are more limited than during the Spring or Fall semesters, so for my computer science major, I had no choice but to take Operating Systems with one of the department's more infamous professors. He claims that the average score on his exams is 60%, which includes 20% extra credit. He also gives lots of homework, and he's just assigned the term project.

The flipside, as I've been told by my friends who have survived his classes, is that you learn a lot from him. And I seem to be doing just that. I didn't think I would do very well on the first exam, but I got a 77 (which I first misread as 11, my mind precluding the possibility of such a "high" grade). The next exam is on Tuesday night, which also happens to be my birthday. I hope the exam makes it a good one.

The other class I'm taking right now is for my business administration minor. It's Finance (properly, Business Finance), and it's one of the classes that the business college has done a great job with. They record the lectures and post them online, so there's no need to actually attend class. Instead, I download the lectures and watch them at my leisure. The quizzes are also online (but the exams, alas, are not).

I chose to be a business minor because it would give me valuable skills (and because my major requires me to take a minor, but never mind), and this class hasn't disappointed me. I've learned, among other things, the importance of saving for retirement. Plus, I've been doing very well in the class. The way things are going, I could end up with an A. Yay.

I was actually very worried that I wouldn't do well in either of these classes (Finance is said to be the hardest class in the business minor), but I've been busting my hump for them, and it shows. I just hope I can keep up the good work.

I've been linking to a lot of infographics lately, some good, some not so good. Here's a parody of pointless infographics. (Via waxy.org)

Another one of those montages of clips from movies and TV shows: We've Got Company! I first saw this before watching Avatar and groaned upon hearing the line in the movie. (Via The Presurfer)

Stupid Fight compares the spelling and grammar of celebrity Twitterers' fans to see whose are dumber. (Via waxy.org)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

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

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

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

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

Statistics reveal America's "beer belly," where bars outnumber grocery stores. (Via The Consumerist)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The event was held on Wednesday evening, the last day of classes, in the smaller ballroom in the student union. There were a lot of empty seats, probably because people were at home studying for their upcoming exams. I guessed that most of the audience members were there to see their guy or gal take part in the discussion; not many people looked like they were genuinely disinterested. I have to admit I was in the former camp. I sat with a group of Freethought members.

(Derail: People always seem to say "disinterested" when they mean "uninterested." I've also seen an excellent clip from The Rachel Maddow Show [which I otherwise don't watch, by the way] in which Ms. Maddow says "uninterested" instead of "disinterested." If you're uninterested, you don't have any interest—you're bored or you don't care—and if you're disinterested, you don't have any interests—anything that could be considered a possible source of bias or prejudice. Paul Brians has an entry on this error in his Common Errors in English Usage web site, which is worth checking out. In the associated book, there's a cartoon in which a man says to a woman something like, "Let me make myself clear: I'm not disinterested, I'm uninterested.")

Um, right. So, the forum was emceed jointly by what appeared to be a Christian and a Muslim. Answering their questions, as well as some from the audience, were the panelists:

• Representing Christianity was a guy from Campus Crusade for Christ. He seemed ill at ease and spoke with thinly disguised contempt at the other belief systems that were represented. He must have said that Jesus "stepped into the pages of history" at least six or seven times. I was surprised they couldn't get a better speaker, considering how many Christians there are.
• Representing Islam was a dapper local businessman. He had a good sense of humor and explained how Islam gives people advice on how to live their everyday lives. He used the word "brother" in referring to some of the other panelists and joked with brother Blake that only a freethinker was brave enough to sit between a Muslim and a Jew.
• Blake was the only student on the panel. His answers were short and to the point (giving him less of a chance to dig himself into a hole, he said later), and he was careful to represent freethought in general without mentioning the A-word. I liked his answer to the question, "Who is the most important figure in your religion (or lack thereof)?" He said, "Yourself," because freethought is about thinking freely (hmm...) and not taking for granted the things that other people tell you.
• Representing Judaism was a local rabbi, who explained how Judaism also gave advice for everyday life. A kid from the audience, badly feigning ignorance, asked him some innocent-sounding questions to try to get him to link Judaism with Zionism. The rabbi didn't fall for it. You could have cut the tension in that room with a knife right then.
• Speaking for all denominations of Hinduism was a distinguished Indian woman of a certain age. She explained how Hindu beliefs and practices vary greatly and called out some of the moderators' questions as being specifically geared toward the Abrahamic religions. She had to dip out about halfway through, so she made a quip about avatars as another distinguished Indian woman of a certain age took her place.
• Speaking specifically for Hare-Krishna-ism while wearing Krishna robes and Krishna face paint was a young representative from the local Krishna House. She gushed with enthusiasm while getting all buddy-buddy with the other Hindu and quoting the Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit. Though she would get extra credit in the enthusiasm department, she used a lot of terms that were vague (like everyone's favorite, "energy") or not very clear to us laypeople.
• Finally, representing the Bahá'í Faith, whose name I had to copy and paste from the Wikipedia article, was a professor or something (what, you want me to actually read the program I took home?). The Bahá'í Faith (Ctrl-V) is essentially a greatest-hits compilation of the world's major religions, but Ms. Bahá'í Faith didn't do a good job of explaining what it was actually about. She talked a lot without saying very much.

It was a great way for Blake to go out as Gator Freethought's president. He was definitely one of the better speakers on the panel, and even though freethought was the odd belief system out (as evidenced by the tacking-on of "or lack thereof" to seemingly every question), he did a good job of representing our club.

And this is what I do when I should be studying for exams. I'll be glad to have them over with. By the time I write my next post, I'll be home free... for a little while.

Need to come up with blog post titles that are sure to draw readers in? Go to the Linkbait Generator for random gems like "8 Ways to Get Rich with Ninjas" and "10 Myths About Mustaches That Hollywood Wants You To Believe." I was sure that "Sony DSC-H55 Digital Camera Review" would net me some intense comments from photography-loving Google searchers, but it's nothing but the same old same old right now. (Via The Presurfer)