Category - Programming

As you may not recall, I decided to use my own script to count the number of Google web searches I performed in the month of April. The grand total turned out to be 468, or 15.6 searches a day. I didn't realize how much I relied on Google. It's pretty interesting.

I consider myself a pretty good computer programmer. This is a complete lie, in fact. I have much to learn and cannot write any program that people could actually use. Actually, I sort of do (see above), but the point is, I can't really write any useful applications that you would have on your desktop, as much as I'd like to. I'm in the Programming III class at school, and it's pretty enjoyable, mainly because it's at the same time as the Programming II class, which is much larger and has a lot of people I know. But anyway, this year I was asked by the teacher to be part of the school's team that will compete at the countywide programming competition that's taking place on Saturday. The team was supposed to consist of me, Gilbert, Kenny, and Ivan, but Gilbert can't make it, so he's being replaced by Tanner.

I was asked to do it when I was in Programming I, and I didn't really feel like it, but now I feel ready. I've learned quite a bit since then, and the sample problems that the teacher gave us seem really easy. Like, really easy. Basically, a lot of them involve calculating a value according to a formula: area given length and height, and so on. Other problems we've looked at were more difficult, but I'm really not sure how we're going to be. It seems, though, that we'll be at a disadvantage because we use an object-oriented programming language, while most of the projects can be accomplished quickly and dirtily with... the other kind. You know, the ones that use the command line and all.

Yesterday I found out that the HD-DVD process key had been cracked. It had actually been cracked for a while, but I'm slow to hear about these things. What it basically means is that it's now possible to remove the DRM from HD DVDs, which, although it shouldn't be illegal because there are legitimate reasons to copy movies that you own, apparently is. Yeah, they're saying it's illegal to possess a number. In protest, the Internet has been abuzz with people posting the number on sites like Digg, which eventually gave up on its censorship. The MPAA has apparently been trying to silence those who have publicized the number, but there's no way they can crack down on the 13,256,278,887,989,457,651,018,865,901,401,704,640 sites that have joined in on the fun.

According to the Wikipedia article, the key has been revoked, and no new discs will use it. But it's only a matter of time before the next key gets cracked. Why do they bother? Oh yeah, that's right: so they can try to sell you the same content over and over again.

When I found out about the infamous number yesterday morning, I wrote it on a piece of paper and pinned it to my shirt. Two people actually got the reference, which was pretty satisfying to see. I figured the guys in my programming class would be the ones who would appreciate it the most, and I was right. They wrote it on the board for all to see, and some of them tried to commit the number, represented in hexadecimal form, to memory. Kenny suggested that the programming competition team write the number on those "Hello, My Name Is" stickers and wear them to the competition. It sounds like a great idea; I'll just have to see if I can get the stickers. Where do you buy those things, anyway?

From the Journal of Irreproducible Results: All Theories Proven with One Graph. There are even calculus jokes in it. Yes: jokes, plural.

From the YouTubes Internet tubes: How to paint the Mona Lisa with MS Paint. Quite impressive, if you ask me.

It's dark out. I've been sitting here at the computer for a while -- in fact, pretty much all day. I'm on spring break right now, and I'm trying to enjoy it. Sure, I have lots of calculus homework to do, but I want to wait. I'm looking forward to staying up late over the following week to watch The Daily Show and Colbert, neither of which I've seen in months. What can I say? I go to bed early because I wake up early. I don't want to wake up early, but I do. I woke up exceptionally early this morning -- 6:30, to be in fact. I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn't. I must have thought it was a Friday (when I wake up at 6:30 to go to work), but more likely the dust in my room was irritating my nose.

I haven't really done much today at all, as I said. I did trick out Ubuntu quite a bit, though, by adding a new login window and splash screen. Some people may wonder why it matters, but I did it to go with the theme that I've made up, which is predominantly blue. I hope soon to get to the point that working at Ubuntu becomes transparent -- i.e., I don't use it, thinking, "Hey, this is Ubuntu instead of Windows, which is what I'm used to." That probably won't happen soon, though, because I read somewhere that it can take a year or more for someone to know the ins and outs of a particular operating system. Oh well. I'm enjoying the Linux experience.

And as my mind inevitably turns to the future, I'm thinking about what kind of laptop to get. Obviously, one that runs Linux, as the main reason (or one of the main reasons) I switched to Linux was for the cost (usually free). It's my understanding that laptops with Linux preinstalled (they do exist, keep reading) are cheaper than equivalent laptops with Windows. Actually, they may not be, but with Windows you have to pay for a lot of the software, but on Linux it's mostly free. Besides that, I really don't know how the cost figures into things -- or, rather, how things are figured into the cost. I need to do my homework when it comes to hardware and stuff. I just found out recently that this computer is, by the standards of March 31, 2007, slow and old.

Anyway, when researching laptops with Ubuntu pre-installed, System76 immediately emerged as the definitive leader. They apparently have great customer support and are determined to help you when you buy from them (or even when you don't). Plus, they have guaranteed hardware support, which is a must when Linux hardware support is kind of patchy and unpredictable. Supposedly, System76 laptops come with Wi-Fi working out of the box, which is pretty neat because I think there's a wireless Internet connection thingy in my house.

I want a laptop that won't get outdated quickly and that looks slick. Obviously, affordability is important too. My friend Brian says he just got a laptop from System76, so I have to check it out for myself to see what I could be getting. He said he got the cheapest one, which does look pretty cheap. I'd like something a little nicer and sturdier with plenty of room on the screen to see stuff (a big screen, I mean). And I don't want their expensive white one that looks like a Mac. I think a white laptop would just get dirty and ugly over time. Besides that, I don't want people to think of me as an artsy, turtleneck-wearing, cappuccino-drinking Mac user if they see me with such a laptop. I am incapable of being that smug, and I know more about computers than that. (But I still don't know a lot.)

Speaking of knowing or not knowing a lot about computers, my latest Greasemonkey user script is a masterpiece, and I anticipate it becoming a big hit. It's gotten about 75 installs in the past 24 hours. It's called Google Search Counter, and it is intended to satisfy an idle curiosity I've had for a long time. How many Google searches do I perform a day? In the 24 hours since I've been using the script, I've made 50 searches, and that's just the main web search (which is all it counts, for now at least). I plan to have it count how many searches I do throughout the whole of next month. It should be interesting to see.

For nerds only: HTML Tags Illustrated.

A few months ago, my dog, who has never really been housebroken, started making a mess on the carpet in my dad's "office" -- where his computer and all his computer-related stuff are. (Now that he's gotten Linux on his computer, I've made it my main computer also.) We no longer trust the dog enough to let him roam free while no one's home, but we've had to put up with the unpleasant smell of the carpet. Since it was old anyway, my parents decided to get new carpet and repaint the room while they were at it. Over the course of a few days, we moved all the stuff to other parts of the house.

So, over the weekend, I was kind of disconnected from the world. I could have used the other computer, and that's what I did end up doing for some things, but I want to immerse myself in Linux as much as possible, and that means making a Linux desktop my main computer before I go off into the world and get a laptop of my own. It's good to be back, though, and I see that I haven't missed much.

Actually, I spent much of my weekend (and last week) toiling away at the Greasemonkey user script I'm most proud of. Before I go any further, I should mention to the uninitiated that Greasemonkey is an extension for Firefox (you know, the browser) that allows you to run bits of JavaScript called "user scripts" that change the look and/or behavior of web pages. Anyway, my favorite user script out of the ones I've written is Myspace Ignore Bulletins, which allows you to set specific friends whose bulletins you want to blacklist or whitelist. I've spent much of the past week improving it, and I'm satisfied with the results.

The script grew out of a need, as all of mine do, and it was simple enough at first. I wanted to be some people's friends on MySpace but didn't want to read the zillions of stupid bulletins they would post every day. Rather than ignoring bulletins altogether, I decided to write a quick and dirty little script to hide the bulletins from users that I would specify in the code. Figuring that others could also benefit from it, I uploaded it to userscripts.org, a repository of, well, user scripts. For such a not-very-popular script, I got a lot of comments on it, some of which clamored for the ability to see only bulletins from the users you'd blocked or the ability to see only bulletins from users you specify.

Realizing that these people were asking for the same thing, I figured out how to integrate that functionality into the existing script so that you could toggle between blacklisting and whitelisting with just a click. That was last week. I uploaded the new version of the script and got some more downloads. But I wasn't satisfied yet because you still had to tweak the code in order to add or remove friends from the list. So I came up with a visual interface for adding or removing friends right on the bulletin listing page. It's nothing fancy -- just a textbox with the user IDs in it -- but I think it will help for people who don't know enough JavaScript to alter a little bit of the code. As it happened, just before uploading the improved version, I got a comment from a user who liked the script but had to ask "the Unix nerd I married" for help with configuring it. This new version of MySpace Ignore Bulletins goes out to her and everyone else who wants to block MySpace bulletins from certain users or show bulletins only from certain users and doesn't want or know how to edit the actual code.

So yeah. If you like MySpace bulletins but don't like some of them (and you use Firefox), do check out the fruit of my labor, MySpace Ignore Bulletins.

Turns out that the annoying Nokia ringtone comes from an old Spanish guitar piece. Here's a page with some more info and an excerpt from the original work.

Are you not a big fan of facts? Do you see reality as having a liberal bias? Then Conservapedia is the web site for you. It's like Wikipedia, but instead of aiming for a neutral point of view, it aims to be biased! (See also: A (Conservative) People's History of New York City.)

It's another Monday off, this one for (Dr.) Martin Luther King (Jr.) Day. My sister was curious about why he was a doctor. It was because he was a minister, and he got a doctorate in theology.

So it's been a four-day weekend, and once again, I have this immense feeling of having accomplished nothing. On Friday, I went to work, so that took up a great deal of my day. Saturday, Sunday, and today, I haven't done much of anything. But it has given me time to think, I suppose. As if I didn't have enough time to do that.

All right, yesterday I wrote a program that would periodically display a random date for me so I could find the corresponding day of the week mentally. Maybe it is a stupid idea, but I hope that one day I'll be able to impress someone. Then my family went out to dinner with my aunt, where we talked a bit about things in store. My sister and I are, if all goes according to plan, going to the University of Florida in the fall, and my aunt lives near there, being an alumna herself. Yeah, that's right, I said alumna. She said that we could spend the weekends at her place or something like that. I'm looking forward to it.

For years, my parents have been saying that they hate South Florida and want to move up there to North Central Florida at the soonest opportunity -- in so many words. I'd call it North Florida, where the grass is greener and the sun shines brighter and the houses are cheaper and there's no city lights, traffic jams, grocery stores, privacy, common sense... But that's in the country. Gainesville is a city. Heck, UF is practically a city. I'd be living in there, except when I'd be going out to the country to visit my aunt. Yeah, it would be nice, I guess. So we've got this city/country dichotomy going on here. But still, my parents would be following me to college.

I just can't shake the feeling that college is for being independent from your family except when you need money from them. How am I supposed to learn how to live for myself if I once again find myself under their watchful eyes? My home will always be here in Deerfield Beach. When I want to visit my family, I want to do it in my home. But soon there won't be a home to go back to -- no room of my own to crash in like when I was living there. My dorm room, shared with I don't know who, will be it, and that's that. If they move with me, there will be no closure. So when I leave my safe, comfortable home for those myriad cold, brick halls, I will be leaving forever.

Although this is a clip from a NASCAR race, it might actually be exciting: an improbably close finish (YouTube).

A math lesson from Microsoft: Do Vampires Really Exist?

So yesterday was the first day of the semester. I hadn't exactly been looking forward to it, of course. Yesterday and today, there have been some interesting turns of events. Read on.

I arrived at school worried. I had stupidly chosen to take AP Spanish, and I was going to have it second semester during first block (period). So I asked Mr. Mumtaz, one of the computer teachers, if I could be his teacher's aide second semester, first block. He said he could only have TA's during second block, and that was a no-go for me because of AP Calculus. He, however, suggested that I sign up to be a "tech kid," so I did it right then and there. When I made the change to my schedule in the Guidance office, they told me to report back to them right in the morning on January 9.

For the chronologically astute, that was yesterday. And so I entered, prepared to accept my fate of fixing people's computers (which is something I surprisingly don't know how to do) or something of that nature. I knew I had no chance of somehow asking to be Mr. Mumtaz's TA because I heard (on MySpace, eww, yuck, gag, etc.) that Billy was planning on being his TA during first block. Anyway, there was a group of other students in the Guidance office, most of whom I recognized. They had been told to show up there and then because they were planning to be TA's, and Billy was among them, telling others of his vague plans for TA-dom. Apparently he really wasn't sure what he was going to do, but he was only planning to be Mr. Mumtaz's TA. (That's unusual; when you ask to be a TA, you first have to get permission from the teacher and Guidance... normally.)

They dealt with the group alphabetically, so I got called up relatively early. I explained my situation. Mr. Mumtaz gave me a sign-up sheet for... blah blah blah. So I assumed that I was going to be on the Tech Team. The lady at the desk tried to reach Mr. Mumtaz, but he was late and hadn't arrived yet (typical). So I was set aside for a little while. Later, the lady got in touch with the guy who's in charge of the Tech Team, and he said he wasn't doing it this semester. So the lady asked if I could settle for being Mr. Mumtaz's TA. Could I! I did hesitate for a moment because Billy had also asked to be Mr. Mumtaz's TA. I mentioned this -- he had been called up in the intervening time -- and Mr. Pitts chimed in, "Business is business." I was called up first, so it was my choice. I took it.

Of course, this was all subject to Mr. Mumtaz's approval, but I knew he wouldn't mind. So I went up to his room, opened the door, and said, "Does somebody need a TA?" He said he didn't mind at all, so I got to TA-ing immediately. The class is Web Design II -- not a class I've taken, but you can probably figure that I have some of the knowhow. I was able to help the students with their <table>-related woes. It should get interesting as they learn Flash and other things I don't know.

Second block was the same as always: AP Calculus.

I knew that third block was going to be interesting. My schedule said it was in room 164 -- the internal suspension room (like detention, but all day during school hours). The floor your third block is on determines which lunch you have. If you're on the 2nd floor or part of the 3rd floor, you have A lunch. If you're on the rest of the 3rd floor, you have B lunch. There are no classrooms on the first floor, but apparently if you do have a class there (like Drama or something) then you go to A lunch. So I went to A lunch, and I was able to sit in the exact same place and talk to the same group of people. Funny how that worked. Well, there are only two lunches, anyway.

So after that, I headed to the IS room for Physics. I had heard it was easy, but after having the class for a day, I decided to remain undecided on that. Apparently, a science teacher from a while ago came back for this semester, and so someone in the science wing had to give up their room. Mr. Marchand, the head of the Science Department, obliged and moved his room to this tiny chamber (about two-thirds the size of a regular classroom) far away from any other classes, and especially the science wing. As for the class itself, as I said, I'll have to reserve my judgment about whether it will be easy. I think it will be as long as I do the work and study. But that's always the case, isn't it?

Fourth block, the last of the day: Programming III with Mr. Mumtaz. My schedule actually said Programming II, but I assumed that was normal because Programming II and III (and IV, if there happens to be someone who's taken the class that many times) share a classroom. Actually, it should say Programming III, so I have to get that changed; otherwise, my transcript will look like I re-took Programming II even though I got an A in it. Anyway, I was expecting the combined class to have a total of 10 people like it did last year, so I was shocked to find that the whole room was full. There are about five of us in Programming III, and the rest are in Programming II.

Unlike last year, in which we dived right into advanced topics, Mr. Mumtaz is going to spend a few weeks reviewing the basics for this large group of Programming II students, and so we Programming III people are going to have to follow along. The Programming II kids apparently don't really remember what they learned last year, so Mr. Mumtaz is reviewing the basics -- flowcharting (which we covered for the first two weeks in Programming I and never did again because they're pointless) and "Lucky Seven," the first program Mr. Mumtaz teaches you to make in Programming I. Ah, the memories. It's going to be a little slow for a while, but I'm hoping to have some interesting challenges soon.

Here's an animated map showing the History of Religion and its spread.

Google Patent Search is pretty handy. I had been vaguely aware that my grandfather had had a patent at one time (he invented a special kind of Ping-Pong table), but I could never locate it on the Patent Office's web site. Thanks to Google, I've found it: Game Table, issued August 31, 1971. (That was his also his birthday, as it turns out.)

For Christmas, my friend Natasha and I exchanged gifts, but she sent hers later than I sent mine. She got her gifts before Christmas, but I didn't, and so I've had to keep waiting. It was pretty unbearable, especially considering that we just had three days in a row without mail service: December 31 because it was a Sunday, January 1 because it was New Year's Day, and January 2 because it was a national day of mourning for Gerald Ford. Thanks a lot, Gerald Ford. I had to wait until yesterday, when a bag-type package from Canada Post/Postes Canada finally came.

Inside, there were two souvenir shirts, a Christmas card, some postcards of local sights, stickers, and a patch, like for sewing on things. I'm really glad the stuff finally came. I love it, and I enjoy having more things around to remind me of her... not that I need to, anyway. While I'm thinking about it, I should mention that we're just friends. Friends who like each other a lot, but "just" friends. She's almost like a girlfriend to me; she does fill an emotional need or something like that. Shades of meaning.

Winter break has been good and exceptionally warm (I've unexpectedly wound up at the beach the last two nights), but it's almost over, unfortunately. I'm probably going to have to go back to work tomorrow. I'm not really dreading it that much because I'm going to get paid. You don't get paid for going to school, but I have until Tuesday to mull over that iniquity. Why do we go back Tuesday and not Monday? I don't know, but I'm not complaining. Don't you worry, though. I'll be complaining soon.

For Greasemonkey users, I've written a user script that automatically answers the quesca on this site and hides it from your view, so you don't have to worry about typing the answer every time you post a comment. Here's the script's page on userscripts.org, and here's a direct link.

The 7 Wonders of the USA (and of each state), as chosen by somebody. A lot of them are tourist attractions, which explains why I've been to 5 of the 7 wonders in my state.

From the I'm Filing This Under "Weird" Dept., a video from the White House: Barney Cam V: Barney's Holiday Extravaganza. It stars the President's dogs, Barney and Miss Beazley, and features, among others, George W. Bush, Laura Bush, Karl Rove, Tony Snow, and Dolly Parton. That's your tax dollars at work. Think of how many homeless people you could feed with that money.

Happy New Year. It's always weird to wake up to a new year because you always think, "Hey, it's next year." In reality, it's always this year. The old this year, 2006, is now last year, and 2008 is now next year rather than the year after next. You'll get used to it after a while. Historically, it's taken me about a month to several months to get used to writing the new year instead of the old one, but I think 2007 is going to be different. After all, I've seen this one coming ever since I started high school in 2003. 2007 is our year! Though I can barely wrap my mind around it, we're going to graduate in just a few months. And then: college! After all, 2007 is the new 2003. You see, I've really grown up these past few years; I've gone from dreading high school to dreading college. (Actually, I was worse about college back then: I couldn't even stand to hear the word.)

Last night, I rang in the new year at my grandparents' house. I brought my cell phone along (of course), and I put up an away message on AIM telling people to call me and wish me a happy new year. No one did, probably because they were all out partying themselves (yeah, that's it). At one point, though, I decided to call Kevin, who lives in the same neighborhood as me and my grandparents, and deliver my New Year's wishes. A few minutes later, he came over, so we chatted for a bit and passed the time playing cards (okay, Uno). He stayed for a few rounds, and before long, it was time for the countdown. And then, 2007 was here.

(Speaking of Uno, my sister says that her friend has relatives in Panama who call the game "One." You know, I'd been wondering about that for a while...)

Yesterday, being New Year's Eve and all, was also a good time to tie some loose ends. My friend Luke has been spearheading a project to compile an anthology of poetry and prose in reaction to the Darfur conflict. He asked me to contribute, and I agreed. It's a really noble cause. The deadline for submission was pushed back to New Year's Day, so I decided to get it done with. It really only took me a few minutes to come up with something meaningful (and slightly meta -- it was about how my not writing was responsible for more deaths). For more information, check out Luke's new Deadheads for Darfur blog.

Today I didn't have much to do, so I created an implementation of Conway's Game of Life in Visual Basic .NET. (It was designed by the same person who came up with the Doomsday algorithm.) Sure, the plane used in the "game" is supposed to be infinite, but for the sake of convenience, I made it 12x12. It took me a few good hours to code. There must have been an easier way. Either way, it's fun to watch the shapes bounce around and change.

Here's an animated map showing US County Formation from 1643-Present.

Now you, too, can measure areas with Google Maps by using this handy planimeter. Just click at least three points on the map to get the area, which is displayed in multiple units below the map. I estimated the area of my neighborhood at about a half of a square kilometer or 124.6 acres.

Today's Election Day, the day we've all been looking forward to. I think these mid-term elections are pretty interesting, probably because I've never really been aware of their existence before. The balance of power in the Senate and the House of Representatives could shift tonight, and 36 states are electing governors. It's almost important as a presidential election. Well, maybe not, but still.

Election Day is very important, I think. We even had today off from school, presumably so that the teachers would have time to vote (and probably because the school might have been used as a polling place). In fact, while I was pondering that yesterday, I came to the realization that Election Day should be a national holiday celebrating democracy (and giving everyone a chance to go and vote without making excuses like "It was too crowded at five o'clock"). Apparently, though, I've been beaten to the punch. It turns out that Election Day is a holiday in some states, and a bill making it a national holiday has been introduced in the House.

Anyway, on Saturday I had the opportunity to see former President Bill Clinton at a political rally at my school. He was campaigning for Ron Klein, who's running for a House seat. I was taking pictures and video for the school paper, the Pompano Pulse, while my friend Luke recorded the audio of the entire rally. Luke has posted his audio and my video at the Internet Archive, where it lives safely in the public domain. But since he hasn't posted the photos yet (no hurry, Luke), I thought I'd post some of them here. Enjoy!

	Former President Bill Clinton greets Student Government Association President Sherrelle Thorpe as State Senator Ron Klein looks on. (Sherrelle later denied allegations that Clinton kissed her.)
	Klein makes a brief speech, proudly introducing Bill Clinton.
	The school band, some other students who were somehow allowed onstage, and Bill Clinton look on as Klein addresses the crowd.
	Klein beams as Clinton wags his finger.
	Clinton's all, "You know I'm right," and Klein's like, "Come on and applaud, everyone, the man's right."
	Check out Lucas Boyd's green-and-white-striped shirt. It's crazy. I was looking for news coverage of the rally the following day, and I saw a shot of Clinton and Klein, but it was very tight, so I couldn't tell if they were at my school or somewhere else. Then I saw Lucas Boyd's shirt in the background, and I knew.
	Clinton wags his finger yet again in this action shot (actually, it's probably just me being unsteady with the camera). Now I'm trying to remember if there was a reason I wanted to provide captions for all of these photos.
	After making his speech, Clinton salutes the crowd, and the band starts playing. I can't believe I was close enough to get a shot like this. I love it.
	Clinton meets with senior citizens from local retirement community John Knox Village as the rally ends.
	The Pompano Pulse's very own M. Luke Myers (right) asks Ron Klein the hard-hitting questions about the Darfur conflict. "The United States Government should be much more involved than they are right now," said Klein. "The United States should absolutely be providing much stronger leadership."

Here's a simple demonstration (YouTube) of how electronic voting machines can be hacked 'n' cracked without leaving any evidence of tampering. Whoops!

McSweeney's reports on an election held at the most local level: The Race for Junior-Class Vice President Goes Negative.

Listen to an NPR interview with two voice-over guys who do negative political ads. Don't miss them reading nursery rhymes.

Three years ago: "It appears that a bunch of people came here within the same few hours and poked around quite a bit."

It's been a busy week. How many times have I said that? Too many times, methinks. But it's true. Practicing for the Christmas play and going to work have taken a big bite out of my weekend. (Sure, they only occupy Thursday nights and Fridays, but still.)

This week's practice for the Christmas play -- The Year Without a Santa Claus -- was particularly enlightening because Reid's mom was there. You know, Reid, the actor? Reid, the soon-to-be movie star? As you can probably guess, she was there to give us some pointers on our acting. (I couldn't guess that until she actually did.) Out of all the cast, only one of us has any real experience as a thespian -- although some of us have had our share of amateur performances. (Nick, Mark, and I star both in our self-produced Beowulf and in this play. Nick is also directing the play.)

One of Reid's mom's first bits of advice was related to singing. I'm singing in this play, and we have no microphones: a recipe for disaster? She basically told me and Mike, who do this really sappy number, to project our voices and not to be so nervous. It sounds obvious, but the way she said it helped. Of course, after the scene, when I was allowed to slink backstage, I was all nerves. Sure, I can sing with a guitar and a band. But singing onstage, along with a backing track, while acting, is another story. It's something I'll have to work on, but luckily, I don't have much to sing.

After our rehearsal, which wasn't of the entire play (it's been two months and we've never even rehearsed the last scene onstage), Reid's mom went over the notes she had taken and told us about the idea of developing our characters. The script, being rather lighthearted, is pretty threadbare, she said, and so we should each adopt a different persona to bring our respective characters to life. I guess it's sort of how actors "channel" various people as their inspiration for roles. (Example: Johnny Depp's Ed Wood = Ronald Reagan + Casey Kasem + the Tin Man.) As a group, we helped each other sort out the various personas that we would adopt in our performances. Somehow, I (Santa Claus) got saddled with the personality of Eeyore and Rodney Dangerfield. I wasn't sure how that would work at first, but I think I've got it: he's Eeyore when he's depressed, and he's Rodney Dangerfield when he's too agitated to be simply depressed.

So I'm going to have to spend this week carving out my character and developing his mannerisms. Maybe I should spend a day in character. I don't think I'd be able to make it without looking like a complete idiot, but Marlon Brando would be proud. Anyway, the least I could do is memorize my lines, which is something I haven't yet done over the past two months. Time is ticking, as they say (although clocks are really the things that do the ticking).

Last night I spent some time talking to Natasha on the phone, and it was wonderful. It's nice to hear her voice. I wish I could see her in person. Hopefully sometime.

Today, I didn't really do anything except program in vain (curse you, GM_xmlhttpRequest) and download Firefox 2. It came out earlier this week, but I was wary of downloading it for fear that my most used extensions wouldn't be supported. I went and checked to see which ones would be supported, and it turned out that most of them would be, so I went ahead with the download. (Firefox's "Check for Updates" feature was saying that there were no updates, so I had to download the new version myself.) It's not much different from 1.5.x, but the difference between 2.0 and 1.5 is 0.5. The main thing I've noticed (besides a few annoying things I've been trying to fix) is that spell checking is now included. That's pretty good. There must be some other features that are new... well, not really. Other than that, the only new features or improvements are those that have been covered by extensions in the past. But it's still good. It's supposed to be more stable than 1.5, which is fine by me. And since IE 7 was officially released just a few days before Firefox 2, it looks like the Browser Wars are back in full swing, and we've got ringside seats.

(Just as I was writing that, I got to experience another of Firefox's new features: restoring the browsing session after a crash. Thanks, Firefox!)

Apparently Jesus and Mary aren't the only religious figures making appearances in unlikely places. Here are some miracle photos of Islam.

From The Smoking Gun's gallery of concert riders, here's Iggy Pop's list of demands, which is probably the wackiest you'll ever see. Apparently written by one of his roadies, it aims to entertain. Don't forget to read the last page.

Three years ago: "Halloween is Friday and I haven't even thought about what I'm going to do."

Yesterday this e-mail rolled into my now squeaky clean inbox.

Yes! The Dvorak Keyboard and You has been updated relatively recently, if only slightly. (See the page for information on the Dvorak keyboard.) I guess that does boost its reliability in the eyes of readers, especially because many Dvorak-related sites are old and derelict. Anyway, I replied thus:

If nobody out there in Internet-land can recommend a good Spanish Dvorak tutor, I figure I could generate lists of words and things like that. After thinking about it for a second, I've realized how it could be done. Plus, it would give me a good opportunity to exercise my Visual Basic prowess (heh, that's a good one) during a time when I've been immersing myself in JavaScript. If we go through with this, we could even post the tutorial on the web for any other Spanish speakers who want to use Dvorak(esque) layouts.

"What happens when an English phrase is translated (by computer) back and forth between 5 different languages?" So ponders Carl Tashian, the creator of Lost in Translation, an exercise in machine translation gone wrong. Just feed it some text and watch as it gets translated back and forth between various languages. Here's how it mangles this paragraph.

On a more comprehensible note, Tashian is related to Barry Tashian, a member of The Remains, a band that opened for The Beatles during their 1966 American tour, which was their final tour. Way cool.

How much do you know about major world religions, belief systems, and philosophies? Find out by reading the Big Religion Chart.

By the way, totally check out One Day in the Desert: Special Director's Cut and leave some love on its Google Video page.

One year ago: "This book has once again confirmed my suspicion that I'm a horrifyingly slow reader."
Two years ago: "Well, it's probably all right because their legal department must have given it some thought!"