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.

Dek kvin minutoj da famo

Yesterday morning, I was reading articles at the Alligator‘s web site when a headline caught my eye. Student… club… language… hm… sounds like me. Oh wait, it is! I immediately went downstairs to pick up a hard copy.

A month ago, my friend Mark and I were teaching Esperanto phrases at a “language cafe” on campus. Rebecca Deely, a journalism student, was there looking for a story. She was very interested by Esperanto and interviewed both of us. She suggested that she could submit the story to the Alligator, and that’s all I heard about it for a month. I kept thinking about what quotations of mine she would use — we talked quite a bit — and the only one I could remember was “It’s not a word game.” I couldn’t really remember the context, but it stood out in my mind, so I thought it could end up as the all-important article-ending quotation.

Ooh dang. Who called that?

I thought the article was good and positive, and it apparently did get a few people interested enough to join our Facebook group. It was also apparently Rebecca’s first publication. Everyone wins! (By the way, the entire article can be found here for however long.)

Throughout the day, I was watching people read the Alligator to see if they would read our story. The placement could hardly have been better. It was an important issue, being the day after Student Government elections, so probably more people were reading it than usual. The front page story jumped to page 10, where it took up the whole page, and we were at the top of page 11. That’s almost like being on page 2.

I got two copies for myself. I cut the article out of one and posted it on the door of my dorm room. More promotion for our upcoming event. And in fact, on my way home from class, I actually did see someone reading the story. I wanted to start talking to her, but that would have probably freaked her the heck out. “Hi, I’m the person you’re reading about in the newspaper!”

Another Ask Jordon!

Cody – Natashas BFF: Why, on your Faq, do you have somebody set up us the bomb?, its someone set up us the bomb! =) Zero wing Rules

Sorry, but it’s definitely “Somebody set up us the bomb.” I know what I doing.

Check out this Multicolr Search Lab. Select some colors, and you’ll get some photos from Flickr that contain those colors. It’s pretty mesmerizing.

When you’ve got a word on the tip of your tongue, use Tip of My Tongue to get it out. You can enter some letters of the word, synonyms, and more.

And here are, according to someone, the Top 10 Amazing Prison Escapes.

Busy times

I’ve been busy with my new webmaster job. I started it on Monday, and it’s been pretty nice. It’s pretty easy so far, and I like it. If I ever get stuck on something, I can talk to my friend Mark, who works there as well. He’s already been showing me the ropes quite a bit.

I’ve also been busy promoting my Esperanto club’s first event, which I mentioned in my last post. That’s taking a lot of my time. We had an executive meeting last night where we went over the presentation and some ways to promote it. My ultimate goal is for us to be featured in the main student newspaper before our event. That way we could get the word out to tens of thousands of people.

I hardly get any Ask Jordon questions anymore.

diana: why i am lefty?

This one comes from an IP address in Pakistan. But anyway, I have a whole book about this subject since I did a psychology paper on it in high school. It’s The Left-Hander Syndrome by Stanley Coren, and it’s quite revealing about why people are left-handed. I forget now, but I think he said it had in part to do with early brain trauma like a stressful birth. That’s the book where he advances his controversial finding that left-handers die nine years earlier on average than their right-handed counterparts.

All political links today. Less than a month till the election, though.

A while back I blogged about Change Congress, the new initiative started by Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig (founder of Creative Commons). Change Congress aims to have politicians, candidates, and other citizens state their support (or lack of support) for four key issues that they believe would help improve fairness and end corruption. They’ve sent a letter to every Senator and Representative as well as every Congressional challenger too. You can see their progress on their iPledge campaign page. Change Congress is looking to improve their low response rate by having citizens pester their members of Congress. Click “Pester Now” next to the name of your member of Congress to find contact information, a phone script, and a form letter.

News coverage about things that don’t matter: Presidential Physiques of the Modern Age.

I’ve saved the best for last. John McCain Gets BarackRoll’d.

Good times

My last few posts have been pretty weighty. Let’s get back into the normal swing of normal things.

Ah, college. It is pretty nice. Except for, you know, the classes and stuff. But it’s good to have good friends. Adam, my roommate from last year, invited me over to his dorm for dinner tonight. But the place isn’t really a dorm in the traditional sense. It’s an apartment-style dorm, and it’s pretty comparable to student apartments you’d find off campus (that is to say, sweeeet). He lives there with Cameron, who was one of our suitemates last year. They also invited Evan, who was also one of our suitemates, so it was like a little reunion. Fajitas and TV with old pals. Ain’t nothing like it.

It was good to catch up with Adam. Turns out he still reads this blog. I think he didn’t read it over the summer, but tonight he brought up the themes of some of my recent posts. I believe that would make him a World of Stuff fan. You don’t have to have read all 993 posts to be a fan (although it doesn’t hurt).

What else? Oh yeah. I start my new job tomorrow, the one I was interviewed for a few weeks ago. I’m the new webmaster for the Dean of Students Office. Actually, my friend Mark, who works there and told me about the job, showed me the ropes last week, so I got a bit of a head start by making some small updates. But tomorrow, it is official. I won’t have as much free time, but I’ll be gaining knowledge and experience (and I’ll have a cool job). Plus, I probably won’t have to work at strange times. I know some people who have to work at night while going to school. I don’t know how they manage.

Also, my new Esperanto club is getting off the ground. We’re going to have a presentation entitled “Esperanto: The Solution to the World Language Problem.” It’ll be an introduction to Esperanto explaining why people use it and such. If you happen to be in the area of Gainesville, Florida, it’ll be on Thursday, October 16, at 8:00 P.M., in room 110 of Rinker Hall at the University of Florida. If you have a Facebook account, RSVP on our event page. Everyone is welcome.

Surprise? Surveillance of Skype Messages Found in China. Yet another reason not to trust Skype or any other non-free software.

Also in the news: Military Hit with 2nd Suit Over Religious Freedom. They can’t seem to wrap their heads around the idea that they shouldn’t be pushing religion on people.

Finally, a blog: Cake Wrecks, for “when professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong.”

Schmysics

I had a physics test today. I’ve spent the past few days studying like a madman. Now I am a mad man. I don’t think I did very well on the test, you see. I was really nervous, and there was a lot of pressure. 10 questions in 50 minutes. I think I only had time to do about 6. Some I didn’t know how to do, so I had to guess.

My last physics class was cool because after each test, they would post the answer key online so you would could compare it to your scratch work and see how you did right away. For today’s test, we had to sign and hand in our scratch work, and they’ll be grading the exams and posting the answers tomorrow. I guess they’re trying to prevent cheating.

I feel that I deserve whatever grade I’ll get. I spent as much of the previous 48 hours studying, but it wasn’t enough.

But I do have some good news. My Esperanto club was approved today. We had registered for the 2007-2008 year at the very end of that year — so close, in fact, that we didn’t get all the way through the approval process. Now we are official for the 2008-2009 year. I just need to straighten out a snafu with the name. (Last year we were “The Esperanto Club at the University of Florida,” but for this year, we had to drop the “at the University of Florida” from our name due to new guidelines for student organizations. However, they registered us under the old name, which might get us in trouble. I will have to talk to someone about that.) Pretty soon, we are going to have our first event, I guess. I’ll be sure to tell you all about it.

Well, that’s it for my 989th post, cats and kittens. I’ve got to do homework and also eat and stuff. And then sleep. Enjoy these links.

I don’t know how many times I’ve had to comb through the edit history of a Wikipedia article to see who added a certain bit of vandalism. WikiBlame makes it easy to see who added what to an article.

I never realized it, but my own state of Florida has some weird holidays. Grandmother’s Day is right around the corner!

If you’re like a lot of people, you make yourself lots and lots of coffee. Here are 11 Good Reasons Why Coffee Grounds are Worth Keeping.

Speak to me

“What is your favorite branch of engineering and why?”

With that, I had three minutes to outline a three-minute speech. I took the prompt as I left the classroom and went into the hallway to work. I had enough time. Computer engineering would have to be my fave, of course, since I’m a computer science major. As I was practicing making impromptu speeches, I had realized that you can make anything about computers.

Computers have had a profound effect on engineering and science, and also, programming has allowed me to think more logically and analytically.

I spoke clearly, but I really wasn’t sure of what I was saying. I think my hands were shaking also. I did manage to restrain myself from saying “um.” I had to cut it short and bail after almost running out of time.

It took me a while to calm down after that. Right after my tech writing and speaking class, I was due to be at the Talk to Me Language Cafe, an event where speakers of several languages would teach people to say some basic phrases. (I’m starting an Esperanto club, and our faculty advisor got Esperanto to take the the place of Spanish in the program.)

It really was like a cafe. There were a few tables set up, and coffee and cookies were served. Passersby could meet with a speaker of Turkish, Italian, Czech, Chinese, Japanese, sign language, and (of course) Esperanto to learn some basic phrases. Most people I talked to hadn’t heard of Esperanto but were interested in the idea. (The people who had heard of it either had a friend who was interested or had lived in Europe.) When I mentioned how popular Esperanto was around the world, people were surprised that they hadn’t heard of it before. It was a great chance to plug our group.

I was there for about two and a half hours, but it didn’t seem that long. Then, Mark took over for an hour while I had class, and after that, I returned for the last few minutes. We ended up giving out 24 copies of a “What Is Esperanto?” flyer and 21 copies of a flyer with basic vocabulary and grammar. Most people received one of each; a few left before I could give them any. I’d say we talked to 25-30 people.

Mark and I each got interviewed by journalism students who needed material for an assignment. One of the ones who talked to Mark later arranged an interview with me. She said she was going to cover the language cafe in general but discovered Esperanto and decided to make it the focus of her story. We talked for about 20 minutes, and I enjoyed it. She also said she’d try to get the story published. That almost certainly means she’d shoot for the widely-read Alligator (which I have decided not to write an editorial column for due to a lack of ideas).

What’s next for the Esperanto Club? We’re going to have a talk introducing Esperanto to anyone who’s interested. But we won’t be able to book a room until we’re officially approved for this year… whenever that will be.

Here are some free (as in freedom) fonts listed by license and where to download them.

More and more people are using Wi-Fi in their homes nowadays. Some people like to share their connection with their neighbors, and that’s where sharemywifi.com comes in. It’s a geographical listing of Wi-Fi access points that their owners want to share access to.

Finally, we have 3 Controversial Maps.

Esperanto > Spanish

I’m home for Labor Day weekend. In fact, I’m about to go to my friend Nick’s house for a barbecue. Will the weather cooperate? Let’s hope. It looks like Hurricane Gustav, which is heading for the Gulf Coast, is bringing some clouds our way. And then there’s Hanna out there too. Oh yes, it is a good time of year for hurricanes. I believe September 12 is the statistical peak of the Atlantic hurricane season (that is, the day of the year that has seen the most hurricanes since recordkeeping began).

In the spring, I got an Esperanto club started at school. I filed the application at the end of the spring semester, and they were supposed to get back to me when it was approved. They didn’t. I asked our faculty advisor, Holly, if she knew what was up. She contacted them, and apparently we were approved. We just need to re-register for the ’08-’09 year as all student organizations do.

Holly was by far the best choice for faculty advisor. She’s a language teacher (Czech, specifically), and she was very impressed by our initiative in starting an Esperanto club. She was also willing to work to promote our club, and that she has done. She told me she had landed a gig for us at a language fair coming up in a week or two. They’re going to have a flyer with some basic phrases in each of the languages that are represented. Apparently, Holly got her to drop Spanish from the flyer in favor of Esperanto.

The phrases in English:

1. Hi, how are you?
2. My name is ____.
3. I speak English.
4. What are you doing tonight?
5. Goodbye.
6. Go Gators!

In Esperanto, with phonetic transcriptions added just for you:

1. Saluton, kiel vi fartas? (sah-LOO-tohn, KEE-el vee FAR-tahs?)
2. Mi nomiĝas ____. (mee noh-MEE-jahs ____.)
3. Mi parolas la anglan. (mee pah-RO-lahs lah AHN-glahn)
4. Kion vi faros ĉi-nokte? (KEE-ohn vee FAR-ohs chee-NOHK-tay?)
5. Ĝis! (jeese!)
6. Ek, Gatoroj! (eck, gah-TOR-oy!)

I’m not sure if I could justifiably shorten “aligatoroj” to “gatoroj,” but I wouldn’t say it’s justifiable in English either. Nicknames are off-limits from logic.

Here’s why you should never use an online translator.

From The Consumerist, it’s false advertising. This water slide thing looks way bigger on the box than it actually is. See the sad children for comparison.

At 1:00 A.M. on Sunday, September 10, 1995, WTVJ-TV, Miami’s NBC affiliate broadcasting on channel 4, and WCIX-TV, the CBS affiliate broadcasting on channel 6, traded channels. At the same time, WCIX changed its call sign to WFOR. Here are videos of the changeover as seen on channel 4 and channel 6.

Prediction: The title of this post will make people mad. Relax, amigos, it’s all in good fun.

The World of Stuff goes to the movies

“Seen any good movies lately, Jordon?” you ask.

In fact, yes. And thanks for spelling my name right.

I finally saw Across the Universe last week. It’s that musical that’s set in the ’60s and based on Beatles songs (which feature prominently throughout). I liked it. It’s a timeless story of boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, plus sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and also war. The visuals are appealing, and the music is, of course, great. It was pleasant to hear some of the Beatles’ songs in new and exciting contexts. Who knew “I Want to Hold Your Hand” could be such a sad song? I do now. It was nice to see that their earlier songs weren’t entirely ignored, unlike other recent re-imaginings of the Beatles’ catalogue I could name. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr liked the movie too, so that has to count for something. I would see it again.

I also saw The Corporation, a 2003 documentary that takes a look at the modern corporation and the effects it has on our lives. The problem with corporations is that they’re required by law to make as much money as possible, and they do so without regard to anyone’s interests but their own, “social responsibility” PR notwithstanding. A corporation is considered a legal person, but you can’t put it in jail when it decides that breaking the law is more cost-effective than following it. The film makes the case that if a corporation were a real person, it would be a psychopath. A number of high-profile interviewees (including Milton Friedman, Noam Chomsky, and Michael Moore) make the case for and against the corporation. I recommend this movie to everyone. If you have a BitTorrent client, you can get it here.

And on Saturday night, I went to see Pixar’s latest film, WALL-E. My friend Nacole invited me, and some other people were there too. It was the first time I had seen her since graduation a year ago, so it was a nice get-together. I also enjoyed the movie. If you couldn’t tell by now, I guess I like most movies. But WALL-E is pretty great. If Nacole (whom I sat next to) is to be believed, just about everything in the movie is cute. But there’s more to it than robots in love. I’ve heard it called a sci-fi film, and it really is. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t read much sci-fi (honest), but central to the plot is how the human condition could be impacted by technology, not to mention the huge corporations that provide it. This bleak angle sets WALL-E apart from Pixar’s earlier films and makes it enjoyable in a different way (in spite of the plugs for Apple, which Pixar thinks it can get away with now that Apple is popular).

A commenter on my last post linked to the web site of Esperanto Lobby. I checked out the site a bit and learned Malgorzata Handzlik, a member of the European Parliament, is a fluent speaker of Esperanto who wants the language to be used more widely in the EU. At first I misread her name as Malzorgata, which would make her a neglected official.

My jokes, they are inaccessible.

Here are (according to someone) the 21 Best Mugshots Evar. #1 is my favorite.

Love to travel? Wikitravel is the travel guide that’s also a wiki.

I like science, but I never liked designing experiments for my science classes. I could never come up with any really original ideas, so I did lame things like watch mold grow on bread or run electric current through salt water. So I envy this kid who, for a science project, found a microbe that eats plastic. Oh, the implications.

Animals speak Esperanto

“Read any good books lately, Jordan?” you ask.

In fact, yes. And it’s Jordon, not Jordan.

Last weekend, I read Gerald Tucker’s Esperanto translation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm (Lanterno, Munich, 1970). Supernaturally astute readers will remember that I bought this book several years ago but never read it, nor had I ever read the original in English. I still haven’t read the original, but now I have read it in Esperanto.

I was a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to understand it and I’d just get frustrated, but I actually managed to understand enough to know what was going on. I got a lot of the allusions to the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union and all that. A few words tripped me up, but I was usually able to guess what they meant. Plus, I kind of knew what was going to happen anyway since everyone read the book in, like, fifth grade.

Maybe if I had gotten a translation of a book that’s unavailable in English, I would have read it sooner. I guess it kind of took the incentive out of reading it since I knew I could just find it in English. But it’s a short book, and I bulldozed through it in a weekend. Nineteen Eighty-Four next? Or, shall I say, Mil Naŭcent Okdek Kvar?

We all need a buck or two or three. My sister is selling our Nintendo 64, which is the only game console either of us has ever had. I’m not much of a gamer, so it’s no big deal. I’ll always have the memories. We would wash cars to buy a game. They went for $50 apiece back in the day. That’s over $60 in today’s money. We only had four games; washing cars is tough work. So, what’s the asking price for the N64 with two controllers four games? $60. People are already responding to the ad, but they all want a lower price. I say no. $60 or best offer means just that.

YouTomb is a project of MIT Free Culture that lists some of the videos that YouTube has removed due to alleged copyright violations. Incidentally, I hope to get involved in the University of Florida’s chapter of Students for Free Culture next year.

Jamie Livingston took one Polaroid snapshot almost every day from March 31, 1979, until his death on October 25, 1997. His friends digitized them, and now his photos of the day are available online. It gets kind of sad, actually. I think the last photo shows him dead.

On a lighter note, here’s why you should never order a cake over the phone.