Category - Linux

I visited my suitemate in the hospital on Thursday along with some other people. His mother and his brother were there. He was asleep at first, but very slowly he woke up and we tried to make small talk. We stuck around for about two and a half hours. It was a little awkward, but I hope he enjoyed our visit. I can't imagine whether he would have or not.

He lives near me, and it turns out that we went to the same mom-and-baby-type place when we were little. Maybe we played together. Maybe our moms remember each other.

I don't think he'll be back for a while.

Thursday night was the spring kickoff meeting for Gator Freethought. It was at this place called Tim and Terry's, which is a house-turned-restaurant with just enough room for a little live music. The main dining area was the former backyard, so that's where I made my way. There were a lot of people from the group just chatting, which was the point of the get-together. I sat away from everyone else at first, but then someone beckoned me to join in, so I sat between a girl and a guy. The guy introduced himself to me, and we made a little small talk. What's your name? What's your major? What year are you? Where are you from?

I decided to initiate similar small talk with the girl next to me. We talked for a while. Then we were both hungry, so we ordered some food at the counter inside. When we brought it back outside, we found our own table and talked some more. Did we ever. She's a first-year student who lives alone in an apartment. She hardly has any friends in town. She goes home on the weekends to work, and she has a job in town during the week. She doesn't like to go to parties. Sometimes when she's bored, she makes up math problems in her head and solves them. She loves learning languages, and when I told her about Esperanto, which I studied a few years ago, she said she'd want to learn.

Almost four hours after saying hello, we were still talking as she was walking with me back to my dorm even though her apartment was really close to the restaurant. Now that I'm home for the long weekend, I'll be able to bring my copy of Teach Yourself Esperanto for her to learn from... or for us to go over together.

It's not often you can say with certainty that something is going to happen at a specific time in the future. But 30 years from today, on Tuesday, January 19, 2038, there's going to be a Y2K-like problem that will affect many of today's computers -- if they still happen to be running.

Unix-like operating systems (such as Mac OS X and Linux) internally represent dates and times as the number of seconds since midnight on January 1, 1970. On 32-bit computers, the most common kind in use today, these operating systems store the time in 32 bits. But on January 19, 2038, the number of seconds will get too long to be stored in 32 bits, so the extra digits will be ignored, and these systems will think it's December 13, 1901. In other words, it would be like Y2K, but on a smaller scale.

Don't panic, though. Not every computer runs a Unix-like operating system, and anyway, the problem is slowly being fixed with the introduction of 64-bit computers, which allow twice as many bits for storing the time. This should serve us well for about 290,000,000,000 years. But because computers can and do last for more than 30 years, there will probably be some around that will experience the bug. Hopefully, though, they'll be historical curiosities by then and not repositories of important data. Wikipedia has some more information about Y2K38.

If the text of this blog post survives 30 years, I wonder if people will read and laugh at it. I'll probably laugh. Hey 2038 people, do you guys have flying cars yet? Does everyone use Linux? Are there still ice caps? Are we in a cold war with China? Oh, the questions I would ask the 48-year-old me. Where do I live? Am I married, and do I have kids? How much money do I make? (In 2008 dollars, please, so I can understand. 2038 Chinese yuan would be okay too.)

Rolling Stone presents The Almost-Impossible Rock & Roll Quiz. I got 30 right out of 58. That's over 50%. I made a lot of guesses.

Do you know what Congress is up to? Now you can keep track at GovTrack.us.

Find out how many five-year-olds you could take in a fight with this quiz called "How Many Five Year Olds Could You Take in a Fight?" at howmanyfiveyearoldscouldyoutakeinafight.com. Turns out I could take 10 five-year-olds in a fight.

Dorm life just got interesting. (Well, more interesting.) We have a new RA this semester. I didn't get to meet her until Wednesday, when we had a mandatory floor meeting. Her name is Zannia (rhymes with "mania," although she's not particularly manic), and she was apparently told that she had to plan lots of activities for everyone to do. Shannon, our RA from last semester, never did anything like that, so when Zannia asked us for some ideas for fun activities, we were a little confused. Someone (I won't name names) continued to draw inevitable comparisons to Shannon whenever Zannia said anything, leading to the outburst, "Do I look like Shannon to you?"

I suggested we have a Super Bowl party. "Right here," I said, referring to the common room. I don't know why everyone laughed.

Since it's the beginning of the semester, there have been inevitable shakeups in the dorms. Besides having a new RA, a few people have moved out. Several have yet to be replaced. Other than that, everything's been pretty much the same. People playing cards in the common room at every possible opportunity... a bunch of people in the next room being loud at 2:30 in the morning... and, of course, doing fun stuff or just hanging out -- "bro-in' out," as my suitemate Cameron would say.

Programming class is pretty awesome, even though we haven't really done anything yet. It just gets me pumped. The lecture hall only has one computer (for the instructor), so we've just had to write down his instructions or follow along on our own laptops. (I haven't brought mine to class yet.) Since we'll be programming in Java, we were supposed to download JDK 6 from Sun's web site, but I found it as sun-java6-jdk in Ubuntu's "multiverse" repository. The teacher showed us how to write a "hello world" program in Java, and I managed to write and compile it on my own computer.

Lots of people have brought their laptops to class, and, as a Linux user, I've found it interesting to note the share of operating systems. This is Programming I for Computer Science Majors or something, so we're talking about computer people here. The distribution doesn't seem much different from your average randomly selected group: mostly Windows and a few Macs. Yesterday I happened to see that someone was dual-booting Vista and Ubuntu. (He chose to boot into Vista.)

Using Linux does have its advantages for this class, though, and not just because the JDK was easy to install. The teacher had to explain how to get the "java" and "javac" commands to work outside the directory where java.exe and javac.exe were located. I didn't have to do that on Linux. And while the teacher was going over Windows command-line basics, I already knew how to get around with the command line on Linux. It turns out that I won't need to use Windows at all because the computer labs, where we'll meet once a week, use Linux. So I won't need to pay much attention to the Linux command-line lessons either. I can show off my relatively mad Linux skillz.

On Monday, we'll be counting in binary, which is something else I know how to do. (One of my crowning achievements in high-school programming was making a program that converted numbers between binary, decimal, and hex while everyone else was having problems just going from decimal to binary.) In fact, the other day, I converted numbers from decimal to hex on paper because I had showed up to a class early and was very bored.

Strictly No Photography features pictures of places where photography isn't allowed.

What does it feel like to be lashed? Find out.

In Croatia, there's a sea organ, a unique musical instrument played by waves that flow into the organ and push air through different holes. That page has a beautiful sound clip; here's a short video with more.

Tonight's my last night home for winter break, but I'm not returning to the dorm just yet. I'll be staying with family tomorrow, so I'll be back to school on Sunday. Class starts Monday. I see here that the UF bookstore is closed on the weekends, which kind of stinks because I've ordered books there, and I need to pick them up. Hopefully, they'll be open on Sunday. Considering all of the students coming back this weekend, they'd better... or I'll give them a knuckle sandwich.

Overall, the break has been pretty nice. I did most of things I wanted to do. But all good things must come to an end. I guess I should focus on all the good things about the coming semester: having no class on Tuesdays, having 150 dining hall meals and $330 to spend on other food and stuff, chillaxing in the dorm with the suitemates... stuff like that. You know, the things that don't involve thinking or going to class.

I had a good time today, as it happens. I had lunch at a Chinese restaurant with some friends from high school: Ed, Allison, Allison's sister, and Susann. Ed was nice enough to give me a ride; we live near each other. It was good to see everyone. I wish more people had been able to go, but that's how it goes sometimes. At any rate, I know I'll be back here for spring break (March 8-16), and possibly the Martin Luther King Day weekend (January 19-21). I never have time to do anything when I'm home for three-day weekends, though, so it looks like fun plans will have to wait for spring break. Those are the only two holidays of the spring semester.

When I wrote The Dvorak Keyboard and You to promote awareness of the Dvorak keyboard, I had no idea how many people would come across the site and switch to Dvorak (or at least consider it). Now I sort of have an idea: a lot. That's the great thing about having articles on your web site. You can say what you want people to hear, and people will find them. I don't need to promote Dvorak very much because the article does it for me.

When I started using Linux last year, I knew that having an article about it on my site would be a great way to make people aware of Linux-based operating systems. I figured I should allow myself at least six months of Linux experience before writing about it in such a way. I passed that mark in August, so over the past few months I've been working on the article intermittently. Actually, I wrote about half of it on a bus in October, and I resolved to finish it at home during winter break.

And after having my Linux-using friends look over the page, I decided it was ready. Late last night, I finished it, except that I hadn't come up with a title. I spent quite a while trying to think of a good one. Finally, in a sudden stroke of inspiration, I came up with a catchy phrase that I felt best summed up the article. With that, I invite you to Free Your Computer with Linux.

J-Walk of the J-Walk Blog plotted the results of yesterday's Iowa caucus against each candidate's estimated campaign spending. It's interesting to see the correlation between campaign spending and votes received. He also gives the "cost per vote" for some of the candidates.

Think pollution isn't a problem? Read about the huge agglomerations of plastic waste in the Pacific Ocean and how they might affect you.

Here are ten fun facts about dreams.

It's Christmas again.

I did go to church with my family yesterday, and I didn't feel that bad, but I won't make a habit of it. I gave gifts to my friends that I saw there. The Christmas pageant, as it were, was pretty short. Some of the kids in it were way too young; they didn't seem to know what they were doing. One girl who had a reading still had a Homestar Runner accent. "A weading fwum the lettow of Paul to..." Just no. Did she even know what she was saying? The Cowinthians wouldn't have taken her seriously. Sewiously.

I got mostly guitar-related gifts: strings, cables, and a practice amp that's small enough for me to take to my dorm. It packs a punch, though. But what else would you expect from a Vox? Okay, maybe I only like Vox amps because the Beatles used them, but my friend Sean had a Vox mini-amp that I liked. Other than that, I'm a Fender amp guy.

For the second year, my pen pal Natasha and I exchanged gifts for Christmas. I got her a plush gator that says "Go Gators" and plays UF's fight song. I also included a video greeting where I showed her my dorm and the alligator in the pond across the street. This afternoon I called Natasha to wish her a merry Christmas and see if she got my gift to her. (She did, and her gift to me should be coming any day now.) I love to hear her voice. We both agreed that we need to talk on the phone more often. I'll hold up my end of the bargain, long-distance charges be damned. Ooh, I said damn. Maybe I'll get a phone card. That probably would have been good to ask for for Christmas. Oh well. I got money that I can buy phone cards with.

And now, a not particularly holiday edition of Ask Jordon.

Justin: Did I ever explain to you my theory on the communist santa?

I think so, but I don't really remember. Let's see what I can make up: He wears red. He distributes toys equally to practically everyone. People are urged not to question him. He doesn't live in the West. And what else? I bet he has pretty tight control over the elves.

Justin: Also, do you think there may be an "Answer Jordon" component in the future?

I did have Jordon Asks YOU!! about a year ago, but I haven't done anything with it since then. It's probably because I gave a schedule to work with (ask a question every Saturday), and anyone who reads this blog knows that I don't adhere to schedules when blogging. (Remember the monthly interview series that only lasted one month?)

In Soviet Russia, Santa writes letters to YOU!!

New at The World of Stuff: Do you use Wikipedia? How about Creative Commons? Or Linux? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you should consider giving a monetary donation to the organizations involved. I came to that conclusion yesterday, and to make it easy for people to donate to free content projects, I've created this page with Donation Information for Free Content Projects. As a student without a credit card, I'd like to know which free software projects I can send a check to. Hence the list. I hope you or somebody finds it useful.

Classical music is everywhere these days. We hear the same classical pieces all the time as they've become associated with a particular aspect of popular culture. Enter Kickass Classical, a list with information about popular classical tunes. Incidentally, I found this site when I was trying to find the name of the repetitive, escalating piece they use in movie trailers to indicate mounting chaos. I couldn't find it there, but I bet somebody knows the name of it.

If you grew up in the '90s, here's a present for you: a memorable sketch from All That.

Here are some vintage Images from the Tobacco Industry Campaign to Hide the Hazards of Smoking. Did you know that more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette?

Fall classes ended today. Tomorrow and Friday are reading days (studying days), and then it's finals week. In fact, I got a package a few days ago from Romina, who I used to work with for the last two months or so before I had to quit my job, which is really something. What's really something else is that I only worked one day a week, so I really didn't know her all that well. But she was fresh out of college, and she wanted to make sure I (and my sister, who also worked there) would do well and have fun. Hence the package that came the other day with pens, giant notecards, Post-It notes, a highlighter, a marker, cough drops, Advil, some food, etc. It was really nice, and I thanked all my old friends from the office for putting it together.

I really can't believe the fall semester has gone by just like that. I thought it would drag along like my first semester of high school. But nope. Does this mean that the second semester will go by even faster? And the next faster than that? Is this how life ends up passing you by? Because things just go by so fast? I've tried to make the most of my time, and I think I'm getting better at it in some ways. But I won't worry about it too much right now. I have exams to study for plus a paper to finish, and I'm looking forward to sleeping in.

As a high school student, I probably thought about what being in college would be like. Actually, I probably didn't because I didn't want to think about college. (In fact, when I was in eighth grade, I couldn't even bring myself to hear it mentioned.) But I'm sure some of my younger readers are wondering what the daily life of a typical college student is like. So I'll tell you. It's quite simple, really. Let's take a typical... Tuesday... from my schedule. And let's run with it.

At 9:20, I would wake up (courtesy of my cell phone's alarm clock feature), do 14 minutes of shovelgloving, get changed, eat some breakfast (banana bread made and mailed by my mom), brush my teeth and all that stuff, and get out the door. I'd usually be out by 10:00. My roommate would still be asleep, for which I envy him. (I particularly liked Tuesdays because I could sleep in the most. On MWF I'd wake up at 6:20, and on R -- Thursday -- I'd wake up at 8:20.)

I'd set out on foot to the chemistry building and get there around 10:20 or so. The class would start at 10:40, but I like to be at least 10 minutes early to class, and earlier if there's a quiz I needed to study for, as I often did. This was my chemistry discussion class, where I'd be quizzed on topics from the lecture on MWF. The quizzes were pretty easy. They were given by a teacher's aide (or teaching assistant, or however you can expand "TA") who would go through the problems on the quiz before we took it.

After that single period (50 minutes), I'd go back to the dorm for a little downtime (oxymoronically, on the Internet) until about 1:10 P.M. or so, when I'd head to the dining hall (cafeteria) for lunch. They have some pretty good food there sometimes. It's hit or miss. But I have a meal plan that consists of 150 prepaid dining hall meals as well as $300 to spend at other campus eating locations, including a Taco Bell (a criterion, incidentally, that helped UF secure the number two spot in CollegeHumor's annual Power Rankings of colleges and universities this year).

After that, I'd have one period of America in the Fifties -- a class of about 12 people with lectures and the occasional class discussion -- and then, immediately after, a two-period lecture for Social Geography. The professor for that one was cool because he wouldn't lecture for the whole two periods. He would wrap up about half an hour early, leaving me done for the day at around 4:30.

So I'd mosey back to my dorm room, chillax some more, do my online chemistry homework that would be due most Tuesdays, maybe hang out in the common room where people would be studying or playing cards, go back to the dining hall with some people for dinner, and sleep... only to do it again the next day. On Tuesdays I'd have to go to sleep pretty early because of how early I had to wake up on Wednesdays. But it was all good.

So that's what a day in the life of this new college student has been like this semester. In about a month, I'll be getting ready to get into a new routine.

If you're using Ubuntu 7.04 ("Feisty Fawn") or 7.10 ("Gutsy Gibbon") on a laptop, be sure to check out this fix for an unexpected behavior that may be shortening the life of your hard drive. It worked for me.

The North Alabama Freethought Association is organizing Operation Foxhole Atheists, a project that's sending care packages to atheist soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Here are 21 facts you probably didn't know about the Internet.

In a recent edition of Ask Jordon, I was asked if I knew anything about string theory. Turns out Discover Magazine recently held a contest to find the best two-minute video that explains string theory. The winner was called String Ducky, and it actually helped me understand the theory.

I'm home again for the long weekend. Ubuntu has been giving me problems. I thought Compiz was stable on this computer, but it's actually less stable than Beryl was on Feisty. If I had wanted my computer to freeze and shut down at random times, I would have stuck with Windows 98. So I've switched back to Metacity, the default window manager. The screen brightness changes when I don't want it to and doesn't change when I want it to -- unless I adjust it myself. Plus, I once again have to enter a password to use the Wi-Fi at home; the fix I used before is now ineffective. Other than that, everything is fine. (If you didn't get that, here's a summary: the computer's slightly wonky but mostly hunky-dory.)

I've often wondered how many words I've written in this here bliggity-blog. Of course, I could copy and paste the text of every post into a word processor and have it determine the total, but that's not how I roll. No, instead I decided to write a quick JavaScript script that would count the words in the 869 entries I've written before this one. It's not a perfect script, of course; I think it tends to overestimate slightly. But its result is telling: the previous 869 posts contain about 470,264 words. Remember that time I tried to write a novel? How about that other time I tried to write a novel? If this blog were published, it would be the length of about 9 novels. Whoa. How many volumes could you split that into? Samuel Pepys, eat your heart out.

A few weeks ago I was tossing around the idea of selling World of Stuff t-shirts through a site like CafePress. I even made a mock-up design. Imagine this emblazoned across your chest:

Apparently, the design can only be as wide as 10 in. So on a large t-shirt, it would be rather small (some might say discreet). On smaller shirts, however, it would look just right. The solution is obvious: I have to get lots of girls to buy and wear these shirts. If I decide to sell them.

Okay, let's have a poll. Would you buy this shirt?

Are you a web lingo expert? Apparently I'm not. I only got 70% of the questions right. I think some of those abbreviations have never been used by anyone ever.

A collection of your favorite Internet phenomena set to an infectious tune: The Internet Stars Are Viral.

Here are some fascinating facts about food coloring!

Version 7.10 of Ubuntu, my operating system of choice, came out on Thursday, so guess who upgraded right away. That's right: me. It's free of charge, so all I had to do was let the upgrade process work its magic. Sometimes magic takes a while, especially when web servers are bogged down with traffic and Internet connections are inexplicably slow. (20 KB/s? What the heck?) But I'd say it was worth it.

Ubuntu, like most Linux distributions, has repositories of software packages for easy downloading and installation of programs and other tools. Upgrading the operating system usually means upgrading your programs too. So I'm enjoying new versions of Thunderbird (e-mail), Pidgin (instant messaging), the GIMP (image editing), OpenOffice.org (office suite), and more. Plus, there's a more stable version of Compiz (one that doesn't seem to make my computer crash*) with all the Compiz Fusion extras. (I only hate eye candy when I can't have any. Check out this video to see what Compiz is all about.)

Besides adjusting to new versions of programs, the only real issue I had was with fonts in Firefox. The same fonts were showing up, but they looked very different. I don't know much about fontography, but I found out that it had to do with the hinting of the fonts. So I changed Ubuntu's font hinting settings, and everything is good again.

I've been pretty lazy this weekend, but time has been going by fast. Today I watched the Gators beat Kentucky. (I enjoy football, okay, guys?) Tomorrow I'll be doing research in the library with my America in the Fifties professor and most of the class. It should be fun. Since the class only has about 12 people, we're pretty good buds. At least, I like to think so. I don't know many of their names, but since when did that matter? One guy (who looks like a John or a Chuck but isn't) has said that he uses Ubuntu, and that's cool. He said he switched to Linux because he hated Windows Vista. I have him beat; I switched because I hated Windows XP. (Though my friend Luke switched because he hated Windows 98 -- granted, it circa 2003 at the time.)

Incidentally, I used Windows from version 3.1 right up to the beginning of this year. In this space I would reminisce if I felt like it. Instead, I'll just do it mentally. You can too! Fill the rest of this space with your own memories of your old computers.
 
 
 

Ah, the memories. Done? Good. Me too. Oh, I was just thinking... remember that idea for a World of Stuff store? I have a pretty lame idea for a shirt, but I know that hardcore WoS fans would buy it. And I'm sure that if I came up with some funny things to put on shirts, people would maybe buy them. Of course, I'd be using something like CafePress, and all of my earnings would go toward running the site.

Wikipedia has an article on deliberately fictitious entries in encyclopedias and other reference works.

Saturday, December 8 is Pretend to Be a Time Traveler Day!

* Although, while I was gone from my computer today, it rebooted. I can't pin this down on any specific program because the system logs reveal nothing about it.

The other day I got a notice from the university's housing department saying that they'd be doing maintenance to the network in my dorm on Tuesday morning. The notice also said that there would be computer network guys in my dorm's lobby to help with people's connection issues. I knew I'd lose my Internet connection, so it was no surprise yesterday that I couldn't get online. I went downstairs with my laptop to ask for help, fully expecting a sigh from the guys at the table because I use neither Windows nor Mac OS, but Linux -- Ubuntu, to be exact.

One of the guys gave the standard comment to the other: "This one's all you, Jim/Bob/Steve/Larry." So Jim/Bob/Steve/Larry, the resident Linux guy, had a look at my computer and started poking around. He had a laptop of his own on his desk, and I could see that it was running Linux: it was a stereotypical setup featuring KDE, tiny fonts, a space-themed background, and about 17 command line windows open. I think he said it was Sabayon Linux. Anyway, he spent five to ten minutes editing some files only to get errors connecting to the Internet. He wasn't aware of the differences between Ubuntu and Sabayon, but he asked for my number and said he'd call me when he found out.

The problem isn't really connecting to the Internet, it's setting up an Ethernet connection that requires a user name and password. That is possible with Linux, but it's apparently not as straightforward. What I want to know is why we have to enter a user name and password to connect to the Internet in our own dorms. Is someone thief going to come in, plug his computer into the Ethernet network, and steal the university's precious bits? I doubt it. (In the meantime, the Linux guy turned off authentication in my room, so I don't need a user name or password to connect. That's how they "solved" my problem initially, and it had been doing me fine until yesterday. Seriously, guys. Why do we need to do this in the first place?)

In more optimistic news, the next version of Ubuntu, 7.10 (codenamed Gutsy Gibbon), is coming out next Thursday, and, as always, it will be free (zero cost) for everyone. There's a bunch of new features that will make it easier to use, so bookmark Ubuntu's official site and return after next Thursday to download the operating system for free.

I've been using Linux for almost 8 months now, so I feel that I'm qualified to write an article about it à la The Dvorak Keyboard and You. Of course, I don't pretend to know everything about Linux, so I'm going to have a friend look it over and give me his thoughts. There are tons of sites that introduce people to Linux, but we could use one more. Most of my friends have never heard of Linux, after all, so I hope that a page about Linux on this site will allow my friends and others to give it some thought.

See what's all the rage on Wikipedia with wikirage.

15 Stunning Images Using Blur to Portray Movement.

I've never used Skype much. Although I've long believed it's a cool idea for a program, I rarely need to use it. After switching to Linux, I had some qualms about using the Linux version of Skype because it's not free software (free as in freedom, not necessarily as in price). Nonetheless, I downloaded it anyway, only to confirm that it sucks. Skype has spent almost all of its resources developing the Windows version of its software, leaving the Mac and (especially) the Linux versions in the proverbial dust. However, I continued to use Skype as often as before (that is, hardly ever).

Then, recently, I found out that Skype for Linux reads your password and Firefox profile. It apparently took a while to be noticed because Skype is not free software as per the definition linked to above. Only the Skype developers have access to the source code, so only they can know what the program is programmed to do. If Skype were free software, this breach of privacy would have been uncovered very quickly and fixed by members of the community. And with that, I got rid of Skype and searched for a free (as in freedom) alternative.

I came across WengoPhone, which, unlike Skype, uses the open protocol known as SIP. A WengoPhone user can talk to people using other SIP clients. (Skype users, on the other hand, can only talk to other Skype users due to Skype's use of its own proprietary protocol.) What I like about WengoPhone as opposed to Ekiga (which I already had on my computer) is that the interface is similar to Skype's. The program is a little rough around the edges in the way of bugs (I can't hear the sound that's supposed to play when you get a call), but overall, it seems like a pretty good alternative to Skype. The sound quality, from what I've been able to tell, is worse than Skype's but a little better than your phone's. As for calling real phones, Wengo's rates for the US and Canada are less than half of Skype's (€0.008/minute vs. €0.017/minute).

One problem I had with Skype is that I really didn't have anyone to talk to. Let's make this less of a problem for SIP. WengoPhone is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux (and it should be in the repositories for your Linux distribution). And here's a list of moreSIP clients. Once you have it set up, give me a call at sip:jordonk27@voip.wengo.fr. I think you should be able to leave me a message if I'm not available.

I'm think my friend Luke is right. Proprietary software really is a crime.

On the Ask Jordon front, we're picking up from last time.

Clairecrowww: Well, I have to do my assignment today. Its a talky-type thing, so I don't think you could help much... Unless you came to Australia?

Maybe next time we can use SIP!

Clairecrowww: And also: My friend would like to know if the West Coast Eagles will win the grand final. (Its AFL, if you didn't know)

Reply hazy, try again later.

Also on the privacy front: I've reported about the phenomenon of color printers printing Seeing Yellow is a site that has more information about the phenomenon.

Not to be confused with the 10 amazing Earth facts I posted recently, here are 101 Amazing Earth Facts.

As I've mentioned, adapting to college life has been pretty easy. In fact, almost too easy. I thought it was going to be really angsty and blogworthy like high school, and here I am, disappointed by not being disappointed. I mean, there are tests and things, but that's pretty much just like high school. If you're able to keep yourself afloat on your own two feet (two clichés that mix like oil and water), you'll do fine with your classes (it seems). You just have to make it your priority; that's why you're in college, after all. And if you can do that, then you can shift your focus to extracurricular activities. But if you don't stick your schoolwork, The Beatles can tell you what happens:

But then again:

I have somewhere to go. In fact, I can go wherever I want (within reason or walking distance). That means that college is a lot better than high school when it comes to extracurricular activities. I could never join clubs in high school because I don't drive, and staying after school would cause me to miss my ride. In college, I call the shots, and I can walk (or take a bus) not only to but also fro. So I'm taking advantage of that opportunity by checking out a few of the hundreds of student organizations on campus. Yesterday, Mark, whose blog I found before I started college here, invited me to check out the hacking club, where they're apparently going to teach people how to identify vulnerabilities in web servers. It's not as interesting as I thought it would be, so I don't think I'll follow up on that.

Last night, I went to the first meeting of Gator Freethought. It apparently originated as the Atheist, Agnostic, and Freethinking Student Association, and has adopted a new term to match its new ideals. While freethought is usually associated with atheism and agnosticism, Gator Freethought is not necessarily an atheist or agnostic group. Freethought is about rationally analyzing your worldview rather than sticking to dogma that you might not entirely have a feel for. Among the 50 or so people at the meeting, there were not only atheists and agnostics, but also Christians and Jews who wanted to analyze their own beliefs with a rational eye. Some of them will probably keep their current beliefs, and others will change theirs entirely. There were also people at the meeting who didn't want to identify with any labels. The point of the group is to allow people to think for themselves, discussing and examining their own beliefs and those of others. I enjoyed being in the presence of other atheists and freethinking persons, so I'll be going to the next meeting.

Today, my friend Amanda told my sister and me about some sort of organ donor club. As an afterthought, I went. The group, as it turns out, is called Get Carded, and the idea is to get people to become card-carrying organ donors. I learned quite a few things at the meeting. Donating organs is a good thing. Well, I knew that. But what I didn't know is that people buy into myths that make them hesitant to become organ donors, and that's why there are so few people who aren't selfish with their organs. I ended up volunteering to man the booth that they're going to set up outside the stadium at next week's football game. It's good to know that I'll be helping to save lives. Now that I'm 18, I should probably become an organ donor myself.

I've been busy going to club meetings, but what else? I'll let you in on a secret: I'm not exactly the most social guy in the world. I sometimes find it awkward to talk to, say, the opposite sex? I know, it's really surprising, since you always see bloggers getting chased by ladies. But anyway, going on dates always would have been a problem in high school, because some girls are really shallow and they probably wouldn't like it if you didn't have a "whip" (car) of your own. Being driven to a date by your parents is also pretty lame. But now that everyone's living close together, transportation isn't really an issue, and I can develop my relationship skills... once I find someone worth developing them with.

Have you heard about Glazastik, Russia's new Internet hero? Neither had I.

Here's an 85-minute documentary called Revolution OS. It's a few years old now, but it's still an interesting look at Linux and the free software movement from some of the people who brought it about.