Jolly good!

The flight to London seemed endlessly long. And it was filled with children. Actually, that part wasn't so bad, but it could have been. I managed to keep myself busy mainly by just thinking about stuff. That's what I often do to beat boredom. When I got tired of that, I watched several of the in-flight movies, viz. Frost/Nixon and Gran Torino. I didn't sleep. Basically, 2 AM jumped to 7 AM, cutting out some prime sleeping time. I wouldn't have been able to sleep anyway because the plane was too noisy.

Anyway, we landed in the UK on Wednesday morning without a hitch, and the weather was typical: cold and overcast and slightly rainy. The four of us made our way into London before deciding to head for our own lodging; Mark and Dan went to a hotel while Andy and I trekked to Andy's relatives house in Mill Hill, Barnet, Greater London. After much frustration in trying to take the underground and overground trains, we made it to Mill Hill, and from there we asked locals how to get to the right street. Finally, we found the house and were greeted by one of Andy's relatives.

After settling in, we thought we would kill some time (and keep our jet-lagged selves from dozing in the afternoon) by taking a train into London and walking around a bit. But it was so cold that we didn't stray far from the station where we had gotten off. There wasn't much to see around there, so we went home but got kept taking the wrong trains. It was pretty confusing because some of the trains passed by our stop but didn't stop there. All the while, we were trying to beat the jetlag by not falling asleep. Even I was nodding off at that point.

Finally we were home, and we met more of Andy's relatives. There are three of them in all, parents and a son older than us. We finished the long day in a very British manner: by eating Indian food (which was delicious, by the way) and watching soccer on TV. Then we went to sleep. Ah, beautiful sleep...

On Thursday, Andy and I woke up well-rested and ready to see all the sights. We took a bus to Oxford Circus and planned to mosey down to the Palace of Westminster. I kept getting distracted by monuments off in the distance, and before we knew it, we were at a road lined with British flags and a lovely park on the opposite side. Toward the end of the road there was some kind of monument, so we decided to see what it was.

It turned out to be a monument to Queen Victoria, and behind it was none other than Buckingham Palace. We stuck around for a little while before continuing to Westminster.

We were getting hungry at this point, so near the Cenotaph and Downing Street we stopped at a cafe for sandwiches. And we continued on to Big Ben. It was pretty cloudy that day, so I didn't think the pictures would come out well, but it looks like they have.

We crossed Westminster Bridge to go to County Hall and the London Eye. We thought about getting on the Eye, but we decided to wait until the weather improved. So we went toward the Tower Bridge, crossing London Bridge and passing the Monument and the Tower of London along the way.

We couldn't actually do a lot of stuff at this point because it was getting late. We were also very tired, so we went home. Andy cooked some stir fry, and then we tried to make some Pasporta Servo contacts in France before we went to bed.

On Friday, we went into town again. The first thing I wanted to do was go to Abbey Road, famously shown on the cover of the Beatles album of the same name and home of the studio where they did most of their recording. As I had expected, there were a few fans there, and the wall outside the studio (also called Abbey Road) was covered in brand-new graffiti from visitors around the world.

The people there were also trying to get photos of themselves making the famous walk across the street, so I didn't feel so cheesy about trying to do it myself. Anyway, I wouldn't be able to live myself if I hadn't done it.

After that, we went to the London Eye because it was a sunny day. We stood in line for about a half hour, and the ride (or "flight") itself lasted as long, so it wasn't that bad. It was a great opportunity to see the city.

We had some time to kill before the meeting of the London Esperanto Club that we had planned to attend. So we went to Camden, near were it was supposed to be, and walked around a bit while having some fruit from a local market. We made our way to the London Irish Centre, where the club would meet, and sat outside because we were still early. I had never met other Esperantists before, so I was kind of nervous. Finally, we went in and had a seat near some of them. They were mostly older folks, and they welcomed us heartily. We chatted a bit, always in Esperanto, and then went upstairs for the meeting, also in Esperanto.

One of the members was compiling an Esperanto-English dictionary and showed us some entries he had come up with (and some he had decided to exclude). He was having some issues with trying to decide between British English and American English words, so it was fortunate that there were American visitors there. We talked about words and such, and when that was over, we introduced ourselves to the group and mentioned how we started an Esperanto club at our school. They weren't all old; the president was younger and an American, and another member was a Slovak who looked to be in his twenties.

We went downstairs to chat with the twentysomething guy (in Esperanto), and before we knew it, it was dark out and almost everyone had left. He treated us to dinner at a vegetarian Chinese buffet in Camden, where we talked about our Esperanto-related plans for the summer. Then he presented some of his Esperanto raps (oh yes, there is such a thing). By then, it was getting late, so we went home, whereupon I fell asleep.

We haven't planned anything for today, so maybe we're just going to take it easy. Before we leave, I would like to check out Westminster Abbey or at least go to a pub and have fish and chips. We'll see how things unfold...

Almost there

I'm leaving for Europe on Tuesday. This may be my last post before I leave! Or maybe not. Stay tuned to find out!

There are four of us: Mark, Dan, Andy, and I. The trip was Mark's idea, and he asked us if we wanted to come along. We've decided to split into two groups so it would be easier to find accommodations. Also, Mark and Dan wanted to do some things while Andy and I wanted to do other things. We'll be going to many of the same places but probably at different times, and Andy and I will be spending time with Esperanto speakers.

The two of us will also attend Esperanto events such as the Summer Esperanto Study (SES) in Slovakia and the International Youth Congress of Esperanto (IJK) in the Czech Republic (not Prague, although you're going to tell me it's a beautiful city). We made our arrangements last week; it felt good to get them out of the way.

The events should be a great way to meet new people while improving our Esperanto. To date, 98 SES participants (not including Andy and me) have allowed their names and locations to be listed online. Of these, 1 is from the United States. And among 325 other IJK participants who are listed online, only 1 is from the US (not the same person, if you're wondering). Several people are from countries that my government isn't very fond of, such as Cuba and Iran. This will be a great opportunity to learn about other cultures without politics getting in the way.

Andy has already been meeting other Esperantists; he decided to go to the National Congress of Esperanto-USA in St. Louis this weekend. Although he makes spontaneous trips like that all the time, I wasn't ready to take a plane trip halfway across the country on a few days' notice. He called me a few times and seemed to be having a good time. I wish I could have been there. Maybe we can go together next year with some more planning.

Yesterday I went shopping to get most of the things I still needed for the trip. Now I have everything I think I'll need except for a clothesline for indoor use. I've seen clotheslines for sale that you can tie to trees, but none with some indoor sticky hook things on each end. Hopefully I won't need to hang my clothes dry anyway. Bleah. I also thought about getting souvenirs from home (my city, or Florida, or the US, or whatever) to give as gifts to new friends and anyone who provides us hospitality. Any ideas? Also keep in mind that tomorrow is a national holiday, so my shopping options are limited!

Danger Mouse, the artist behind the Beatles/Jay-Z mashup The Grey Album, has a new album called Dark Night of the Soul. It's the result of collaborations with various artists who sing on each of the tracks, including Jason Lytle of Grandaddy, a band that I'm a fan of. The album hasn't officially been released due to legal issues, so Mr. Mouse et al. are selling a blank CD-R with artwork and a note saying to "[u]se it as you will." You can stream the album from NPR and download it from some BitTorrent trackers; here it is at The Pirate Bay. I know an album is good when I go back to listen to it a second time right away. I listened to this one eight times in a row. Highly recommended.

Following the green star

The Pasporta Servo (Passport Service) is a hospitality network for Esperanto speakers. Since my friend Andy and I are about to embark on a two-month trip to Europe, and because we're Esperantists, we thought we should take advantage of this great resource. There's just one problem: this year's edition of the address book hasn't been published yet. Normally it's published early in the year, but since they're making an online version of what was previously only a book, things got complicated, apparently.

Andy and I just posted a request for hosts on the lernu.net forums, and we've already gotten a response from a young guy near Paris who we can probably stay with for at least a few nights. Also, I decided to buy last year's edition of the Pasporta Servo, which Esperanto-USA was still offering for sale. I don't think using it will be a big problem; this year's version can't be very different. While I was buying Esperanto-related stuff, I also bought a little Esperanto flag and some buttons so other Esperantists can identify us. Seeing that flag just makes me so happy. I'm looking forward to staying with and befriending a lot of nice people.

To call friends and family at home or future friends in Europe at low, low rates, I set out to install the Internet telephony program Ekiga on our Eee PC. It wasn't as straightforward as I thought it would be, though. The EeeUser wiki has a whole big page about adding software repositories, but none of the ones listed on that page had Ekiga, so they were pretty useless. What to do, what to do?

I had read somewhere that the customized version of Xandros that runs on the Eee PC is based on Debian Etch, so I decided to add the Etch repositories to see what would happen. If my system got hosed, I could just reboot and restore everything to the factory configuration. So I added the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian etch main contrib

The EeeUser wiki page wasn't entirely useless. It taught me about the importance of pinning, which gives different priority levels to different repositories. I edited /etc/apt/preferences to give the standard Eee PC repositories a higher pin priority than the default 500:

Package: *
Pin: origin update.eeepc.asus.com
Pin-Priority: 950

Then I went to Synaptic to install Ekiga, but I kept getting an error message about being unable to parse /var/lib/dpkg/status. I tried some fixes as suggested on the wiki, but the problem persisted. I even restored the original settings, but to no avail. So I just tried using apt-get on the command line, and that worked. Apparently I also could have just scrolled down to Ekiga in Synaptic. The message apparently only comes up if I install a package after entering a search keyword.

Anyway, Ekiga seems to be working fine except for lag problems on my end and sound quality problems on other people's end. The latter, I hope, can be fixed by adjusting the equalization of the microphone, i.e., giving it more treble and less bass. But I can't seem to find a utility to do that. More research is needed. In the meantime, I have set Ekiga to start automatically, so friends and family who want to call me should be able to whenever the computer is on.

Self-explanatory: japanesebirdcookingspaghetti.com.

Dork Yearbook is a collection of dorky photos of dorks when they were dorky children. I'm glad I wasn't that dorky as a little kid. (Via waxy.org)

A sweet end

End-of-year things have been going on. Last Monday, I presided over the last Esperanto Club meeting of the year. Not a lot of people showed up, but I guess that can be expected since people had to study for exams and do more important end-of-year things. We had elections, but no one was challenged, so they were kind of pointless. Still, you've got to respect the democratic process.

Last Thursday, Get Carded had its year-end dinner at Bento Cafe, a hip Asian place. This year, they'd been awarding points to people for volunteering a certain number of hours at events. The member with the most points at the end of the year would get a gift card for the restaurant of their choice. I was the frontrunner all year, so Michael and Jehan, the guys in charge, already asked me what restaurant I wanted a gift card for. And on Thursday night, I was awarded Volunteer of the Year (defending my title from last year) with a gift card good for Chili's, Macaroni Grill, and a couple of other places whose names I can't be bothered to remember because I'm too lazy to take the gift card out of my wallet even though I could have taken it out and checked in the time it's taken me to write this.

Saturday night was a Gator Freethought party. I was only able to go to a few of their meetings this year due to scheduling conflicts, so I thought I'd make up for it by going to a party at the former president's house. It was fun; there were games, political debates, and s'mores. I wish I had gone to more of those parties.

Oh, and exams. My first exam was yesterday, a whole week after classes ended. I think I did well. My other two were today. In fact, the exams I expected to be harder were easier and the one I expected to be easier was harder. Is that ironic? It might be Alanis Morissette ironic, but I don't think it's really ironic.

For my discrete math class, we got to choose our own grade distribution (according to certain guidelines), so I took advantage of that by writing a program that would find the best grade distribution for me. I gave it a few possible values for my final exam grade and went for one of the distributions that weighed my final somewhat heavily but not as heavily as possible. It made getting an A pretty easy without the risk of getting a very bad grade if I somehow bombed the final. I shared my program with my classmates, and at least some of them used it, which was cool.

After that exam, which was my last, my roommate moved out, and I'm now left in a half-empty room till Saturday. But all is not lost. I planned a date with my new friend. We hadn't met for a while due to various things (mainly exams) getting in the way, but things worked out tonight. We went to Chop Stix, a pan-Asian place, for dinner, and it was delightful. I'd like to see her again before I go home, and I might.

And, well, that's basically it. I guess it's time to put this year to bed. I'll be moving out on Saturday, and I'll probably get home Sunday.

If world leaders were on Facebook, they would probably have a Facebook group for world leaders.

The Benny Hillifier makes any video sillier by substituting the audio with that sax tune from The Benny Hill Show.

You know you need to put your comic strip to bed when you reuse artwork and/or jokes from decades ago. Recently, Blondie and The Family Circus have been caught doing just that. (Via J-Walk Blog)

Another week

I've survived another week. These classes are pretty demanding. I had my first two exams; digital logic on Tuesday and discrete math today.

Digital logic was pretty rough. I wish I had studied more, but I'm not sure how much it would have helped. In any case, I think I did okay. The exam counts for 28% of my grade.

I was expecting discrete math to be pretty bad because the teacher (a grad student) doesn't teach well, but I studied with a friend who reminded me that we were allowed to have a cheat sheet. Boy, was that helpful. Also, a lot of the questions on the exam were adapted from or taken directly from the practice problems. So I felt good about the exam. It's 20% of my grade.

What else? At work, we're working on moving the web site to a new server. The site currently runs on Mac OS X (did you know there were Mac servers and that people actually use them?), and the new server runs FreeBSD. (No, I didn't make that choice. I'm not in charge of the server configuration, so stop asking me questions about it. I don't even have root access to this new server yet. "Jordon, you're the webmaster and you don't have root access to the new server?" No. No questions. Stop.)

Anyway, the main issue for me is that file names in Mac OS X are case-insensitive, while on FreeBSD, like any good Unix, they are case-sensitive. Past webmasters have been, shall we say, inconsistent with capitalization on the site. For ordinary requests, this will be fixed with the Apache module mod_speling (ha ha, Apache), but some PHP includes would still be broken, so I've had to change them to use all-lowercase file names throughout the site. This is in anticipation of my renaming all of the files on the site to all lowercase, which the network guy wants me to do.

There's much more to the move, but I can save that for another day.

Meanwhile, my Esperanto Club has been meeting every week. We've got a small group that includes some people who weren't with us last semester and doesn't include some people who were with us last semester. I hope people aren't skipping out because they think our lessons are stultifyingly boring. I think we could do some more fun things, but first, we have to teach the basics. Andy, my trusty Vice President, has been making comprehensive slide shows based on the excellent Teach Yourself Esperanto, third edition. He's also videoblogging about our meetings in Esperanto and I bet he'd love it if random people watched his videos and commented on them!

So that's all that's been going on. And now, the links.

Apparently, Queen Rania of Jordan (which is not to be confused with me, Jordon) has her own YouTube channel. Here's a video where she spoofs David Letterman's top ten list. The question remains: if a queen cracks bad jokes, do her subjects have to laugh? (Via The Presurfer)

This would be fun if you like to confuse people: How to Make a Sawed-Off USB Key.

And finally, the Stories Behind 10 Famous Food Logos. (Via The Presurfer)

Europe '09

A few months ago, my friend Mark mentioned that he wanted to go backpacking through Europe over the summer. Then he bought a plane ticket. The implication was that I was invited to come along. The more, the merrier, Mark said. Our friend Andy decided he would go along, and Dan did too. How could I resist?

Okay, I had to think about it a bit. It is a big decision to spend a lot of money traveling on another continent for two months. But it's the chance of a lifetime. Who knows how many people I'll meet and how many things I'll see and do? And when's the next time I'll be able to travel across Europe with friends?

So I made it official. Yesterday, I bought a plane ticket to London on the same flight as Mark and Dan. We're leaving May 26 and coming back July 31. Yep. Over two months.

Interestingly (I'm reminded of a professor I had last semester would stress the third syllable of that word), Mark, Andy, Dan, and I, are the officers of the Esperanto Club here at the University of Florida. We plan to do at least some traveling within the Passport Service, a hospitality network for Esperanto speakers. It'll be a great way to meet people, practice the language, and save money. We also plan on going to the International Youth Congress of Esperanto in Liberec, Czech Republic. As it happens, our club's faculty advisor teaches Czech and will be in the country then, so maybe she'll come along.

While I happen to be on the continent, I'd really like to visit my distant cousins in Croatia and see the beautiful town that my ancestors emigrated from. Also, if my friend Kevin happens to be with his family in Spain over the summer, I'd like to drop by and say hola. And if any of you want to put up four guys for a few nights, it would be much appreciated.

So, people who live in or have been to Europe: what should I see? I'll have two whole months, and I'd like to do as much as possible. What do you recommend? Do you have any tips? Also, I'll be celebrating my 20th birthday during the trip, so if you have any ideas for that, I'd like to hear them.

If you know me, you probably have a lot of questions: "What about this? What about that? What a horrible idea!" Obviously, I don't have all my arrangements made yet, but I am thinking about them. I think I want a travel-sized guitar because I obviously can't go without playing the guitar for two months. I might also bring my laptop, even though I nearly broke it last year when I took it to the dining hall down the street. If I don't bring my computer, I'll at least try to blog as often as possible. I'd also like to take hundreds if not thousands of pictures, so I'll pick up a larger memory card for my camera.

Wow. I can't wait. It'll be the experience of a lifetime.

Rejected titles for this post include:

• Go east, young man
• Eurotrip
• The World of Stuff goes to Europe
• The World of Stuff Live! In Europe
• The World of Stuff's European Vacation

Barack Obama wrote some books, and that means there are audiobook versions of his books. Here's your chance to hear the President utter some questionable quotations like "Sure you can have my number, baby!" and things you can't say on TV. (Via waxy.org)

In case you doubted it: the Top 10 Signs of Evolution in Modern Man. Pretty fascinating stuff. (Via The Presurfer)

Wikipedia has a long list of shibboleths. (There's also an article explaining what a shibboleth is.)

2008: The Year in Review

Another year has slipped behind us. It seems like only yesterday that we rang in 2008, and here it's about to be 2009. At the end of every year I'd always like to say it's been a good year, but it never really has. There's always the world situation to consider, and that's never very rosy. Despite that good triumphed over evil, I can't help but be reminded about how bad 2008 has been if you have money or a house. But as someone who doesn't have much money or a house, it was pretty okay. Here, in bulleted list form, is what went down in '08.

• January 1 - After watching the Florida Gators lose their bowl game to Michigan, I have dinner at my friend Mark's house.
• January 4 - A new article at TWoS: Free Your Computer with Linux.
• January 6 - My suitemates and I go on a Geocaching mini-adventure.
• January 7 - The first day of my second semester of college.
• January 15 - I go to a lecture by Jack Kevorkian.
• January 17 - Cameron, Adam, and I visit our other suitemate in the hospital.
• January 17 - I make a new friend and get the idea to start an Esperanto club with her.
• January 29 - I vote for the first time ever in my life.
• February 8 - I hand over control of flipacoin.net, the oldest part of TWoS, to a new owner.
• February 12 - I go to Free Pancake Day at IHOP with my sister and our friend.
• February 16-17 - Our new suitemate Evan treats us to some revelry in his native Tampa, and we spend the night at his house.
• February 20 - I watch a lunar eclipse with my friends.
• February 29 - I document the leap day by taking photos throughout the day.
• February 29 - Evan puts a kiddie pool in the bathroom, fills it with hot water from the shower, and invites his friends. We have a pool party in our dorm.
• March 4 - My not-yet-formed Esperanto club is mentioned in my local paper.
• March 13 - While on spring break, my friends and I visit the old high school.
• March 20 - I go to a pretty awesome orchestra concert.
• March 21 - I go on a non-date. We go to dinner with one of her friends and then see Kimya Dawson with some more of her friends.
• April 3 - I volunteer at Lifeapalooza, Get Carded's end-of-year event.
• April 5 - I go tubing on the Ichetucknee with friends and friends' friends.
• April 6 - TWoS turns 5 years old.
• April 11 - I'm Get Carded's Volunteer of the Year.
• April 12 - I go to the spring football game.
• April 12 - I get inducted into Phi Eta Sigma honor society.
• April 18 - Ask... date... ugh.
• April 30 - Agh... again...
• May 2 - I come home from my first year of college.
• May 9-11 - Family vacation at the family vacation spot.
• May 18 - I discover that I closed my window on a snake several days before. Awesome!
• May 26 - I go canoeing with my friends on Memorial Day.
• May 31 - My grandmother finds an old Hanoverian coin and gives it to me.
• June 3 - I visit my old high school again and find out that this site is censored there.
• June 4 - I go to the Rapids Water Park with some friends.
• June 14 - I create a family genealogy page.
• June 21-22 - I read a whole book (George Orwell's Animal Farm) in Esperanto.
• July 4 - I hang out at my friend Nick's house for a barbecue and other fun.
• July 9 - Nick and I get together at my house to jam.
• July 12 - I invite my friends to a barbecue restaurant for my birthday.
• July 13 - My 19th birthday.
• July 19 - I see The Dark Knight at midnight with my friends. It's a big deal to everyone.
• July 28 - It's official: I'm farsighted.
• August 16 - I go to South Beach with Nick and TJ.
• August 21 - I move back to Hume Hall for a second year.
• August 24 - I go to the Student Honors Organization's beginning-of-the-year barbecue (I sure have been doing a lot of barbecue-related things) with friends new and old.
• August 25 - On my way to my first class of my second year of college, a Christian guy encounters me, and I handle the situation well.
• September 5 - I visit the Alligator's office to talk about the possibility of being an editorial columnist.
• September 9 - My friend Mark and I teach people Esperanto phrases outside the student union, and I get interviewed by a journalism student.
• September 17 - I interview for the webmaster job at the Dean of Students Office... and I get the job.
• September 19 - I find out that the faculty at my high school read my blog for at least a year and cited it in meetings.
• September 26 - I write a letter to a Marine in Iraq.
• October 6 - My first day on the job.
• October 9 - The journalism student's article about me and my Esperanto club is published in the Alligator.
• October 16 - For the Esperanto club's first event, I give a presentation introducing the language to people who are interested.
• October 24 - I participate in an unsuccessful attempt to break the world record for the largest water balloon fight.
• October 28 - 1,000th post.
• November 4 - I voted!
• November 11 - I go to Lake Wauburg with my friends. I have a wonderful time.
• November 21 - I go to a volleyball game with some of the same friends.
• November 26-28 - I spend Thanksgiving at my grandparents' house.
• December 3 - I participate in an unsuccessful attempt to break the world record for the largest human green ribbon.
• December 4 - I go to another orchestra concert with my friends Mark and Andy.
• December 5 - The Esperanto club's end-of-semester event, Esperanto-Vespermanĝo (Esperanto Dinner).
• December 9 - I wake up sick and late for class for the first time ever.
• December 19 - I return home to my newly semi-redecorated room.
• December 25 - I spend Christmas at home with family and friends.

I plan to ring in the new year at my friend Nick's. As you can see, I tend to go to his house on holidays. It's like the Holiday Inn or something. But I know I'll have a good time there.

A year ago, I asked (or, rather, you asked),

Where do I see myself at the end of 2008? I'm glad you asked. I don't really know, actually.... I'll still be in college, hopefully, and I'll probably be working on that computer science major. I hope to be in a relationship, or at least to have been in a relationship. Actually, just to be dating would be nice. We'll just have to see, I guess.

This wasn't the year. All I can say is maybe next year.

Anyway, have a great New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. May you keep your new year's resolutions all year, and may 2009 be a world of good stuff.

Oh, and one more thing: a site called Change.org is collecting ideas to submit to the Obama administration. Anyone can register at the site and vote ideas up in various categories. The first round of voting ends tonight. Please vote in favor of citizens' funding of the nation's elections, net neutrality, and teaching Esperanto in schools. I'm very pleased to see how well that last one is doing.

Full circle, gaining momentum

I spent some time planning an end-of-semester/Zamenhof Day event for my Esperanto club. The usual Zamenhof Day celebration is to have a dinner on December 15. Since that day falls during final exams, and because adulation of the creator of Esperanto is increasingly unfashionable, I decided we should have a general Esperanto-Vespermanĝo (Esperanto Dinner) at a local restaurant on Friday night. Most of the actual "planning" was trying to get local Esperantists to come, but none of the ones I contacted were able to.

As for the restaurant, I chose Tim and Terry's, which is casual and has live music. We ate outside (pretty much the only place to eat) and chatted for a while about Esperanto and general topics. I already knew it was a cool place to hang out because the student freethought organization has had several get-togethers there. In fact, it was at Gator Freethought's January outing that I came up with the idea to start the Esperanto club. In December, I came back with an actual club. Full circle.

Of course, we took the obligatory group photo:

From left to right, that's Andy (Vice President), Enrique, George, Dan (Secretary), me (President), Mark (Treasurer), and I'm pretty sure his name is Trevor. I was kind of surprised by who turned out and who didn't. These people only went to a few meetings, while the people who went to more meetings didn't show up. One of the usual guys passed up the Vespermanĝo to go to a ballet... with a girl... who already had a boyfriend. Clearly there is room for improvement here.

For a while now, Mark has been planning to go backpacking through Europe over the summer. When our club got off the ground, he decided that he could learn Esperanto to get around and get some free lodging. Andy wants to join him, and he's extended his invitation to me and everyone else in the club. How could I pass this up? I've always kind of wanted to go to Europe. There are so many things to do and people to meet. Maybe I'd even have a fling. Fine, probably not!

Anyway, it's a lot to think about. Going to Europe for the summer means I wouldn't be able to keep my job (unless they held it for me special?). I would also spend a lot of money, free lodging or no. And how would I blog? (Yes, I thought about this.) I would have to just hit up an Internet cafe or a host's computer every few days. It's doable. And it would make this blog much more exciting: The World of Stuff, Live from Europe!

I ran the whole idea by my parents, and they were supportive. I could not be much more surprised. Don't be surprised if I evaporate out of the plans. Remember when I wanted to go to Honduras? I've also wanted to go to Canada and New York (shocking, the latter, isn't it?). It never happens.

Remember in my last post when I said that a local TV station covered our organ donation event? Watch their piece on YouTube. That's me standing behind the girl in the opening shot.

A creepy argument for banning subliminal messages: WTF, Broccoli?

For those who still don't realize what's wrong with the RIAA and MPAA's bullying tactics, here's an extended metaphor that kind of works: If the MPAA Did Handbags.

Dinner

I had a physics exam on Monday. Exams aren't fun, but Monday exams are especially unfun. Especially when they're one hour during the day instead of two hours at night. For the previous exams, I had studied for several days beforehand and got a 7/10 each time, beating the class average of 5.5. But when an exam is on a Monday, you have a weekend to study beforehand. Weekend? Study? That didn't really, um, happen. I studied for an hour or two on Sunday night and another hour on Monday morning. I figured I would be happy to get a to get a 5 or a 6. To my surprise, I knew how to answer 6 of the questions, a figure in line with my previous exams. I made semi-intelligent guesses on the rest.

I got a 9. Apparently I am a good guesser. Now if I can keep my homework and quiz grades where they are, I need a 16/20 on the final to get an A in the class. (Yes, I do keep a spreadsheet to calculate my physics grade. Why do you ask?) But it turns out that even the professors think the class is too hard; they just announced that they'll be adjusting the grading scale to make it easier.

Overall, the Esperanto Club is going pretty well. Our last meeting, on Monday, was a bust because even fewer people showed up than normal. We have one more meeting this semester, and then it'll be time for our extra-special end-of-semester event. Many Esperantists celebrate December 15 as the birthday of L.L. Zamenhof, the originator of Esperanto. We're going to have a general Esperanto-themed celebration at a laid-back restaurant-type place. I'm calling it Esperanto-Vespermanĝo (Esperanto Dinner), which kind of rhymes. If you happen to be around, you're welcome to come.

Where: Tim & Terry's Music & More, 1419 NW 1st Ave, Gainesville, Florida, USA
When: Friday, December 5, 2008, 8:00 PM

I was thinking that my Esperanto students (and I) would benefit from meeting and talking to a real Esperanto speaker. I've e-mailed about 30 members of Esperanto-USA in the southeastern US, and not one has said they'll be able to attend. They're all either too busy, too far away, too old, or something. One person in Miami asked if I knew his friend, so-and-so. The name didn't ring a bell, but I looked him up on Facebook and I realized that I have a class with him and he lives in my dorm. Too weird. I'll have to see if he's interested in Esperanto.

The first stereophonic record was released in 1957. Here's one of the very first stereo discs for your probably illegal downloading pleasure.

A Parallax Optical Illusion with CSS! This only works if your window manager dynamically redraws windows as you resize them (it probably does, and if it doesn't, you'll know).

It's funny how different social networks are popular in different countries. What is up with that? Anyway, here's a pretty up-to-date Map of Social Networks' Popularity Around the World. Apparently the good old USA is the only country where MySpace is the most popular. And I'm surprised that Facebook is so popular in the Middle East. I didn't know if they were even into that whole social networking thing at all.

The presentation

I'm baaaack!

Yeah, it was a busy week. Probably the busiest week I've ever had. I stayed up late. I accidentally skipped a meal. Almost all of my time was spent studying, doing schoolwork, or promoting my Esperanto club's first event. Of course, I also went to my first Florida Free Culture meeting, which was very cool. I also had a Get Carded meeting. Basically, I did all the things I said I was going to do, except that the deadline for my programming project got moved to Monday. Otherwise, I would have been spending much of tonight working on it. I finally have a break.

I worked hard, though. I got a 7 out of 10 on my physics exam, which was higher than the class average and the same score I got on the first exam. At this rate, I can squeak by with a B+ in the class. I think I'm right on the line. I spent many consecutive hours working on my Indian Ocean take-home test, and I did well. I know that because the professor said everyone's responses were probably good before he saw them.

Of course, the elephant in the room is: "Jordon, how was your new Esperanto Club's first event, 'Esperanto: The Solution to the World Language Problem,' that you were promoting like crazy?"

Okay, I promoted this presentation every way I knew how. I invited friends on Facebook (only two said they would come), I sent a blurb to various mailing lists (some of which actually ran the blurb), I contacted the major student newspaper (they didn't write back), I contacted a vaguely related club (they didn't reply), I advertised at other club meetings (okay, one), I handed out and posted flyers (which got covered up by other flyers almost immediately), and I even spoke in a class (of ten people, and not everyone was there).

At first, I had no idea how many people to expect. I wanted a room for 150 people, but I was told flat out that I wouldn't be able to get one at night. (They tend to be used for exams.) I settled for a room seating about 100. Yesterday, 19 people on Facebook said they would go to the presentation. I expected some more than that because I didn't just promote the event on Facebook. 20-30 people sounded pretty reasonable. I would be happy to have that many.

I got to the classroom extra early to make sure the computer and projector worked. Someone was already waiting outside. "Esperanto Club?" I asked. "Mission meeting?" she asked. Uh-oh. Could they have double-booked the room? She was very convinced that there was another meeting there at that same time, but she went over to the computer to double-check the e-mail. Turns out she missed her meeting by a week. Close call for me.

By the magical time of 8:00, only a handful of people were there. I figured the others would be coming shortly; you know how no one's ever on time. At 8:15, there were still only a few people. I decided the show must go on. Present were three of the four club officers, our faculty advisor, and seven others (five of whom were friends with one or another of the officers). Seven people. Actually, really only two.

I decided I couldn't let that put a damper on my enthusiasm. I presented the presentation, and even though I hadn't had any practice with the vocal delivery, I think I did quite well. It's probably because I'd been working on it bit by bit over the course of several weeks. I familiarized myself with it that way. Anyway, if you're curious, here's the presentation as a 5.6 MB PDF. Yes, I am actually hosting a large file here, believe it or not!

It was kind of discouraging to have only seven people come to the presentation, but at the end, when I asked how many people would be interested in learning the language, my spirits were lifted a bit. Almost everyone raised their hand, even our faculty advisor and the other officers, who don't know Esperanto very well yet. It seems that of the seven people in the audience, almost all were very interested. When I showed the information about our recommended textbook, several people jotted it down.

If I could have a small core group of people for this club who will stick with it for the long term, that would be great. And it would give the group room to grow. I use Gator Freethought, whose meetings I usually attend, as a sort of model for my own club. Their meetings draw about 50 people, so they've already reached critical mass. They have enough momentum to go on forever, even when the officers graduate. My vice president and I have three years to build the club up so that it can outlast us. Can we do it? I think so.

The World Names Profiler has surname statistics for several countries. Enter a surname and see which countries it's most common in.

With some creative folding of US paper money, you can spell out some interesting messages.

How do you securely store files remotely? Apparently there's a mathematical method that makes it possible to easily store small pieces of files (encrypted, of course) on a large number of computers.