Blue tape

During my freshman year, I was hanging out with some members of Gator Freethought after a meeting, and I mentioned my plan to start an Esperanto club. The president of Gator Freethought offered me a word of caution.

It's a lot of work to start a club, he said. "There's a lot of red tape."

One thing that student organization presidents have to do is attend a training session at the beginning of each year. They mostly just go over the rules that you had to go over yourself to renew your club's registration a week or two ago. But, in any case, there are a few morsels of new information.

As I found out at a training session on Wednesday, one of the new rules for this year is that organizations can bring "outside" food into meetings as long as it doesn't have to be temperature controlled. Previously, clubs had to rely on the student union's catering service for all their food needs. (Their pizza is the worst I've ever had, so that's a welcome change.)

The woman explaining the new rules mentioned as an afterthought that we couldn't bring non-Pepsi products to meetings.

Wait, what? Yeah. You should have heard the uproar in the room.

Apparently, since UF has a deal to sell Pepsi everywhere on campus and tout it as the official soft drink of the Gator Nation or whatever, student organizations—which, as the presenter stressed in another part of the program, are not part of the university—are bound by that sponsorship deal as well. Capitalism rears its ugly head, stifling consumer choice and common sense.

Where does it end? Are Coca-Cola's Hi-C juice boxes out of the question? If I want to bring oatmeal to a meeting, does it have to be made by PepsiCo's Quaker Oats? How much money is the university getting from this stupid deal, and could it be had without making personae non gratae out of those who have the good sense to spit in the face of its stifling provisions?

Since then, I've noticed that the ubiquitous Pepsi machines around campus say "Thanks for Choosing Pepsi." Some choice we have, all right.

So, the university gives everybody some free web space. Not many people know about or take advantage of the offer because it's not 1996 anymore, but I thought I'd put my own space to good use.

As viewed from a campus IP address (and forwarded to my screen by SSH tunneling):

And from off-campus:

A real '50s instructional film: Dating: Do's and Don'ts. It's in color, too! (Part of the film is missing, hence the lack of an introduction.)

Famous films edited down to (about) five seconds: 5 Second Movies.

And finally, I know this site isn't new, but I've never linked to it here before: Will It Blend?

PR blitz

I was sick last weekend (for the millionth time, I did not have the swine flu), and then I had a busy week.

Why was my week so busy? I've been preparing for the Esperanto Club's first meeting of the year. Per a reader's request, I'll answer some questions about the club here.

The club is simply called the Esperanto Club. We sometimes use the qualifier "...at UF" to distinguish it from other Esperanto clubs. Our Facebook group is our online source of information. We post announcements and relevant links there. We typically teach the language at our meetings, but we'll probably branch out to other topics once people get the hang of it.

For this year's first meeting, Andy and I are going to talk about how we got around Europe with Esperanto. I wrote to my friend at a student-run newspaper asking her to write a story (she hasn't responded), I submitted a short description for the newspaper's "What's Happening" column (it was published yesterday and will probably continue to run), I submitted a 500-word guest article to the newspaper (nothing has come from that, of course), and I submitted a description to the daily e-mail newsletter for honors students (it was published yesterday and will continue to run) and to the general university e-mail newsletter (which goes out on Mondays). Oh, and Andy and I manned a table at the Student Organization Fair all day Thursday.

Our presentation, "Breaking Down Borders with Esperanto," will take place on Tuesday evening. On the off chance that a UF student or Gainesvillian is reading this and hasn't heard of the event before and would be interested in going, here's the event page with more details.

The New York Times has an interactive graph showing How Different Groups Spend Their Day. (Via J-Walk Blog)

After the recent death of John Hughes, a woman wrote about how she had been the Hollywood director's pen pal when she was a teenager. A touching story. (Via waxy.org)

When could you tell your relationship was over? It Was Over When... (Via J-Walk Blog)

Yawn

Besides being a blog, The World of Stuff is a bunch of stuff. Over the years, I've added new pages that defy categorization. Nonetheless, I've been trying for a long time to keep each extraneous page one of a few neat, little boxes. It's not working.

Currently, the navigation links are Blog, Archives, Geek, Writing, Video, Fun, Store, and About. Of these, the Blog, Archives, and Video pages are worth leaving alone. They do their job well. It's the Geek, Writing, and Fun pages I'm most concerned about. They're not very intuitive. (Would you expect to find Ultimate Cool Characters in Geek, Writing, or Fun? It's in Geek.)

I'm thinking of splitting up those three categories into the following four categories. (The current category for each page is in parentheses.)

Articles:

• Free Your Computer with Linux (Geek)
• Finding the Day of the Week (Writing)
• Courtesy Autographs on US Currency (Writing)
• Tredici (Fun)
• Being Left-Handed (Writing)
• The Dvorak Keyboard and You (Geek)

Fiction or Creative:

• PLEASE READ THIS!!!1 (Writing)
• The Prisoners (Writing)
• Romeo and Juliet: A Sock Puppet Adaptation (Writing)

Reference:

• Using IRC on UF DHNet (Geek)
• Kalilić/Kalilich Family Genealogy (Writing)
• Donation Information for Free Content Projects (Geek)
• Fix for Ubuntu Hard Drive Problem (Geek)
• "Click Here" Around the World (Fun)
• Minor Scale Chart Thing (Fun)
• Ultimate Cool Characters (Geek)

Interactive:

• RTS-SMS (Fun)
• From Canada with Love (Fun)
• Fake Cyrillic Generator (Fun)
• Greasemonkey User Scripts (Geek)
• Ask Jordon (Fun)

If I were going to change up all these organizational things, which I probably will, then I'd also change the name of the About page to "Meta" at the risk of alienating the 98% of the population who don't know what "meta" means. It's because I have not only About Me, About the Site, and Donations, but also press coverage of the site.

As for the store... the store makes me sigh. No one's ever bought anything from it. Looks like I'm going to need another way to effortlessly make money while promoting my blog.

By the way, all of the above is up for discussion; that's why I'm posting it here. Let me know what you think. Ideas for effortlessly making money while promoting the site are particularly welcome.

Awesome video: a complete Goonies reunion. (Via waxy.org)

Roomba + camera + time = Roomba time exposure. (Via J-Walk Blog)

Here are some rare and interesting mental disorders and illnesses you've probably never heard of. (Via The Presurfer)

nm u?

This semester's schedule has been pretty easy to get used to: class, work, lunch, class, work. The only thing that's odd is living off campus. I can't just go home if I have a free period. Moving from a dorm to an apartment is like moving from a summer camp to a house... sort of. I'm away all day, anyway.

On the bus, I pass by my dormitory of two years, Hume Hall. I notice that they've done some landscaping, and I wonder how they could have afforded it if there's some sort of budget crisis going on. I also think about the friends I made there last year. Many of them have returned to Hume and tried to get rooms on the same floor. All in all, I made more friends there last year than I did the year before. They were mostly freshmen last year, but they felt like equals to me.

Work has been good. I'm still the Dean of Students Office webmaster, a job I got to keep over the summer thanks to the miracle of the Internet. This week, I finally got to meet the new graphic artist, who started while I was gone. I would e-mail her from Europe because sometimes I needed to work with images, and I didn't want to risk installing the GIMP on the little netbook that Andy and I had bought.

The big project at work lately has been moving sections of the web site to their own subdomains per an organizational shake-up. Much of this was done over the summer by another webmaster in the department. The work was finally finished yesterday. Now the web site I'm responsible for is smaller, but this just marks another chapter in my webmasterdom. The Interim Dean of Students has some ideas for improving the web site, and I have some of my own. Can I say this stuff? Probably. I'm not giving away state secrets or anything.

One of my new professors says the key to success with schoolwork is to have it on your mind constantly. But at the end of the first week of the semester, that's the last thing I want to think about. Last night, I did something I don't do very much at all: I channel-surfed. Back-to-back Family Guy, car chases, Joe Biden eulogizing Ted Kennedy, The Land Before Time, a live-action show on Cartoon Network, an old college football game, news about kidnapped people, Tropic Thunder, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Al Jazeera, Craig Ferguson's stand-up. Who says Friday night TV is a wasteland?

Sugar Stacks lets you see how much sugar is in popular foods. (Via The Presurfer)

Did you know you can easily create a book of Wikipedia articles? PediaPress makes it possible.

A '50s-style instructional film: Facebook Manners and You. (Via The Presurfer)

Darker futures

My sister and my mom were away on Saturday, so I spent time with my dad. He took my grandmother to her hair salon and then took me to a place nearby. I was in need of a back-to-school haircut.

It was a small, old-school barber shop where men could be men. There was a TV with NASCAR on. The barber was smoking despite the "No Smoking" sign and said that we could have a beer or a soda if we wanted. He did a good job with my hair. His name was Rob, a fact I'm only taking note of because I might want to go back there. The price was fairly reasonable.

After that, we went to a new diner called Nelson's. It's run by a guy my dad used to work with (and his name is Nelson). I should have expected that the place would be all '50s style and that our waitress would be named Candy, but I didn't. Anyway, the food was good.

On the way home, we went to Blockbuster and rented It's Bad for Ya and The Dark Knight. That's some feel-good viewing right there. But it was fun to spend a night in and watch movies (with popcorn, to boot). I should do that more often.

Florida's Bright Futures scholarships pay for students' college tuition based on their academic performance. Like many others', my tuition is 100% paid, and I get some extra money for books. Even though that sounds pretty good, I've still had to borrow money for housing and meal plans. Spending two years in one of the most expensive dorms really made the difference. I wasn't even familiar with the concept of having leftover scholarship money deposited into your bank account, but it seems that this happens with most people.

So you can tell how pleased I was to get this in my inbox yesterday:

Dear Student,

The Florida Bright Futures program has undergone recent changes that will affect you as a recipient. This email is to ensure that you are aware of these changes, which are effective for the 2009-10 year, and understand that they apply to all students, "new" and "continuing". Please carefully review the information contained in this email.

1. The Bright Futures program will no longer pay 100% or 75% of your tuition and fees, but rather a fixed amount per credit hour. If you are a Florida Academic Scholar your award will be $126 per credit hour. There is no longer a stipend that accompanies this scholarship....

It concludes with, "Have a great year!" Yeah, I'll have a great year now that I have to worry about money more than ever in my life. Apparently my fine university used to charge $125.91 per credit hour, but it will now be charging $145.76. The amount they've offered me for Bright Futures isn't going to cut it. Fortunately, I have another scholarship, so I should have $599.36 left for whatever else I need, any unforeseen charges notwithstanding (and they probably are withstanding). Probably all of that money will go toward textbooks, and voila: I still won't have anything for my own bank account.

In eighth grade, I was taught how to budget (or at least make pie charts). I've never needed that skill. Even today, I don't. But rather than borrowing money for school ($[imagine your own number here],000 is enough), I'll now try getting by on the money I make at work and dipping into what's left of my savings if necessary. So, for the first time, I'll have actual income and actual expenses. I've crunched the numbers on those too, and it looks like I'll be lucky to break even. When rent, utilities, and this web site are all said and done, I'll have about $3.84 per meal. Why do I have to eat 90 times a month??

But really: how can I make some money on the side? eBay and craigslist are calling out to me.

Okay, a few posts ago I linked to a rendition of the Super Mario Bros. theme by a printer or something. If you thought that was neat, this is going to blow you away: "Bohemian Rhapsody" as performed by old-school electronics. (Via waxy.org)

In the style of bash.org, here's a database of nerdy limericks.

For a while now, YouTube has had a system in place to automatically silence or delete videos containing certain copyrighted musical works. It was only a matter of time before a curious netizen would try to see how he could game the system. How much can you transform a song before it's unrecognizable to YouTube? See the interesting results.

Nine days and five hours away

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

I should be working

I've been to the movies a few times lately. I saw Star Trek with my friends the Friday before last and again just this Sunday night. I'm proud to say I'd never watched any of the shows or the other movies because otherwise I'd be someone who watches Star Trek. Anyway, from the perspective of a complete outsider, the movie was good enough for me to see twice without getting bored. My friends and I also went to the midnight showing of Angels and Demons on Thursday night/Friday morning. It was pretty fast-paced, and I liked it. I didn't read the book.

In my last post, I talked about getting a new memory card for my digital camera. Well, I've discovered another benefit of having a large memory card. If you've seen my videos, you've seen the handiwork of my digital camera. The quality is pretty good, but it only records at something like 16 frames per second, so any motion looks pretty jerky. (Mmm... jerky.) I recently remembered that my camera has a higher-quality video setting that I couldn't use with my old memory card because it didn't have enough space. My 1 GB card can hold over 12 minutes of high quality video at 30 frames per second. It looks like it's from an actual camcorder. I could reach 8 GB sooner than I think.

For my upcoming trip, I've got a computer, but the keyboard is pretty small. This would be a problem for picture-taking because I name all my digital photos and videos to include the date, the number in the sequence for that day, and a brief description. After years of doing this manually, I wrote a Bash script to help me automate the task. It prompts me for a description for each photo or video and then moves it to the proper folder. Here's the script if you're interested.

11 Extinct Animals That Have Been Photographed Alive. (Via The Presurfer)

Ah, Area 51, a favorite subject of conspiracy theorists everywhere. Some goings-on at the base have recently been declassified, so several people have gone on the record to talk about what it was like to work at Area 51 and what some of those "UFOs" actually were. (Via waxy.org)

Welcome back, Conky

For a relatively long time, I used Conky as a system monitor on my desktop. It's pretty popular among Ubuntu users and other Linux types. Eventually, I switched to Screenlets, mainly because they look snazzy. But since my Screenlets have been acting up lately (spontaneously losing their configurations when I log in), I decided I'd have enough of that. I've gone back to Conky and all its powerful features. To that end, I've spent hours on what I believe is a pretty sexy Conky setup. Click the thumbnail for the full-size version.

The wallpaper is from InterfaceLIFT. The semi-transparent background for Conky is actually part of the wallpaper. I made a transparent image with a black stripe down the side in the GIMP and overlaid it on the original wallpaper with ImageMagick, which will make things easier when I want to change the wallpaper later. As for the Conky configuration itself, it's pretty self-explanatory. Here's my .conkyrc, and here's a Bash script I wrote to make audio metadata from Rhythmbox look pretty whether you're playing a song, a podcast, an Internet radio stream, or nothing at all.

And now, the not-so-boring links:

The difference between Pixar's and DreamWorks' animated films explained.

Wrong Tomorrow documents predictions made by public figures and keeps track of whether they become wrong or right. (Via waxy.org)

NPR did an interesting story recently on how ants know when their fellow ants are dead. As with many such things, it has to do with a chemical, which you can use to really confuse them.

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)