Category - Internet

Summer is in full swing. Yesterday, my friends Nick and TJ were at a Memorial Day barbecue with Nick's relatives. They paddled down the canal and made their way close to my house. When I found out that they were in a boat in the canal across the street, I went over to say hi. I soon found myself taking a ride with them and trying to keep far enough from the shore not to get hit by the things Mike was throwing but close enough for him to try. Later we played a game of pool at the Pompano Bowl, and then went to Hooters at Beach Place in Fort Lauderdale. Good times.

That's summer to me: having fun with your buds and not having to worry about school. But you know what else I've been doing? Historical research.

It all started a few months ago, when I heard that presidential hopeful John McCain might pick Florida Governor Charlie Crist to be his running mate. If Charlie Crist became Vice President, the Lieutenant Governor would take his place as governor. But I wondered: who was the Lieutenant Governor, anyway? I wouldn't recognize him if I bumped into him on the street, yet he's a heartbeat away from running the state. Okay, so it turns out it's this guy named Jeff Kottkamp. But that wasn't enough for me. Wanting to know more about the office of Lieutenant Governor of Florida, I delved deeper.

To make a long story short, I've been tending to some Wikipedia articles for various lt. govs. of the past. Luckily for me, there haven't been that many. (The office was created in 1865, abolished in 1885, and reintroduced in 1968.) But still, I've got lieutenant governor fever. I checked out a book about Florida history from the library so I'd be able to contribute some precious morsels of information like... dates and things. Seriously, the records for 19th century Florida lieutenant governors are spotty at best. They weren't such a big deal.

But a little Googling goes a long way. I've got to admit it's thrilling to start with little more than a name and end up with somebody's whole life story (including a picture). That's what happened when I created the article for E. C. Weeks (Lieutenant Governor from January 24 to December 27, 1870... apparently). I've now submitted it to be featured in the "Did You Know?" section of Wikipedia's main page. Will it make the cut? It seems to meet all the criteria. (Did you know that the Florida state comptroller refused to pay Lieutenant Governor E. C. Weeks his salary because he was not elected? I don't see how that couldn't make it. That's the kind of stuff they eat up.)

In researching this stuff, I've found a few resources particularly useful:

• Google Scholar allows you to search the text of digitized books. For public domain works, you can see the whole text.
• The New York Times: All the articles they've ever published are searchable, and the oldest ones (19th century) are available for free.
• Florida Photographic Collection: From the State Archives of Florida. They have two photos of E. C. Weeks. Very impressive.
• Find a Grave was the only place where I could find Weeks's date of death (and a picture of his tombstone to prove it).

Okay, that's enough.

This is the best thing ever. No, really. I Will Derive!

Here's a map of baseball team allegiances throughout the country. I didn't know the Marlins were so popular over such a large area. I didn't even know they were popular.

National Geographic reports that the oldest living tree has been found in Sweden. Well, sort of: its roots are 9,550 years old, but its trunk is a youthful 600. And I'd say it doesn't look a day over 550.

Summer is upon us, so check out the 11 Most Awful Museums to Visit This Summer.

Continued from last time...

Sometimes, people violate your copyright. Maybe they think they can get away with it or that it doesn't matter, or maybe they just don't care. I take violations of my Creative Commons licensed work seriously; I could (and should) be getting credit for the use of my work, and I'm out to make sure that it happens. The Creative Commons licenses aren't out to undermine copyright; copyright is what makes them work. Otherwise, I'd have no power to say, "You must attribute this work and any derivative works to me in the manner that I specify and release any derivative works under the same license." Without copyright, the most I could do would be to say, "Uh, like, I know you don't have to, but could you please try to put my name in there somewhere or something?" And we all know what happens when people don't have to follow the rules.

Fortunately, I haven't found too many cases of people copying my work and passing it off as their own. But it has happened. A few months ago, with the help of Copyscape (yet another site I could have sworn I linked to once -- ah, there we go), I discovered that a keyboard company lifted several paragraphs from The Dvorak Keyboard and You for a sort of press kit they were distributing online. The document acknowledges that it contains information taken from some other web sites, and even makes an attempt to credit some of them, but there was no credit toward mine. I sent a somewhat harsh-sounding e-mail:

After waiting a week for a reply, I looked up their web site's IP address and e-mailed the ISP in charge of it about this copyright violation. No reply there either. Rather than go up one level further, I just decided to do nothing.

I had another whack at it just the other day, when I went to Copyscape again and found that a non-profit was also using several paragraphs from The Dvorak Keyboard and You in violation of the license. I wondered what I could say that might be taken a little more seriously. I poked around to see if anyone had written form letters for responding to Creative Commons license violations, but I could find no such thing. But I did find some GFDL violation form letters on Wikipedia, so I ran with one of them. (Incidentally, my Creative Commons BY-SA license is pretty similar to the GFDL, so there wasn't much, conceptually, to change.) I liked the approach that some of those letters took. Instead of being threateningly pseudo-legal-sounding, they were warm and fuzzy: "Yes, it's okay to copy my work! Just please give me credit and let other people adapt your new work!"

So, I sent this to both the non-profit and the aforementioned company:

I decided to make it easy for them to comply by telling them exactly what they should say. It was hard to figure that out, though, because that meant I had to go past the summary of the license and actually read the legalese myself. I think the manner I suggested should comply with the license or be darn close: you have to cite the original title (if any), include the URL of the original (if any), credit the author (if one is given) in a manner that they specify, preserve the original copyright notice (if any), and make clear that your work is a derivative work of the original. I asked someone at Creative Commons about proper attribution, and while he was helpful, he tried to use the standard disclaimer that his answer wasn't legal advice and "should [sic] be taken as such." Maybe if something goes wrong I can sue him. (Turns out I could have read the FAQ. Bad me.)

Anyway, in suggesting a proper copyright notice, I had to take a whack in the dark (there's two metaphors that don't go well together) because I scoured the web up and down looking in vain for someone who attributed someone else's CC-licensed work in such a formal (read: license-abiding) way. In the few cases where I could find someone using someone else's CC-licensed work, they would just include a link to the author and a link to the license. Even Creative Commons themselves have done this. (Although it's possible that in those cases, the works are untitled, have short copyright notices, and aren't being modified enough to be considered derivative works. Then I guess it would be okay. If I were a lawyer and worked with this stuff for a living, my head would asplode.)

And what of the replies to this friendly letter? Three hours after e-mailing the company -- the one that had ignored my previous letter -- I got a friendly response from them thanking me for letting them use my work. They also said they'd get their webmaster to add the proper copyright notice. Though I've gotten no word from the non-profit yet, maybe it is true that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

One final word on this: I hereby dedicate the above quoted letters to the public domain with the hope that other Creative Commons licensors will find them useful. But I am not a lawyer, and they should not be interpreted as legal advice, etc., etc.

The Wall Street Journal has a graph of Presidential approval ratings from 1945 to 2006. During that time, the only president who had a higher approval rating upon leaving office than upon entering was Bill Clinton. Also, Truman was a man of extremes. His highest approval rating was higher than George W. Bush's after 9/11, and his lowest was lower than Nixon's upon the latter's resignation. If the graph is right, that is. It's pretty close in both cases.

From the BBC: a British perspective on baseball. It's a captivating account written by a complete outsider to the sport. I mean, this guy knows even less than I do. Here's what I found especially interesting: With many linguistic examples, the author notes, "So pervasive is American culture that we Brits have a complete arsenal of phrases for more or less every aspect of human activity, all drawn from a sport that none of us play and few of us understand."

Here are the Top 10 Awesome Nostalgic Foods We [meaning whoever made this list] Want Back. I remember some of them. Actually, just one of them.

My old high school's prom was this past weekend. The photos have started to come in on MySpace and Facebook. It looked like everybody had a good time. And of course, it got me thinking about my own prom, which was last year. I could go on for a while about how great it was. I could mention more details that I didn't add to the original post. For example, one of the songs I remember dancing to was "Hey Ya!" Everyone went crazy immediately upon hearing the count-in. I could also mention how the only regret is that I didn't get the nerve to talk to Jannike sooner. But I won't. I just hope the Class of '08 had as good of a time at their prom as I did at mine.

Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about today was copyleft. What's that, you ask? Before we answer that question, we have to ask: What is copyright? Mr. Webster says:

For example, the above quotation is from the 1913 edition of Webster's dictionary, which is no longer protected by copyright. As such, I can quote as much of it as I want in this blog post, and everyone in general can do anything with it that they please. If it had been copyrighted, I wouldn't have been able to quote very much without first requesting permission from the copyright holder and likely paying a large fee.

Over the years, copyright protection has become much more widespread in several ways. First, it is much easier for works to be copyrighted. Instead of having to file a form with the U.S. Copyright Office and include a copyright notice in your work, anything you create in a tangible form is instantly copyrighted whether you include a notice or not. Second, the control that copyright holders have over their work has been extended to include not only copying but also adapting, performing, translating... basically everything but quoting brief passages. Third, copyright terms have been extended drastically, from 56 years in 1975 to 120 years or more in many cases today. The effect of all this is that it's getting harder for people today to follow in the footsteps of generations of innovators in science, business, and entertainment, who advanced our culture by building upon material that had little or no copyright protection.

Enter copyleft. First devised for computer software in the 1970s, "copyleft" refers to any form of copyright licensing in which the copyright holder revokes some of his exclusive rights to the work and requires anyone who modifies the work to do the same. So you can be sure than any work that is covered by copyleft will always be free for other people to use, no matter how it is changed. (Until the copyright expires, at least.)

Maybe you've heard of the GPL, a copyleft software license. It's the license under which Linux-based operating systems are distributed. The GPL and similar licenses allow a group of people to collaborate on software, and that's part of what has made Linux so popular. Software development under the GPL advances rapidly because it allows people to adapt and extend other GPL-licensed programs. And there are many thousands of them. It's exciting stuff. What's more exciting (if you can believe it) is the recently released version 3 of the GPL, which closes a lot of loopholes that companies have discovered in the previous version in recent years.

Recently, it's become easy for people to apply copyleft to other works. This is largely due to Creative Commons, an organization that provides licenses for people to "easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry." These licenses can apply to most anything you create, whether it's a web site, a book, a painting, a song, or something else entirely. Say you took a photo and posted it on the Internet, and you'll let anyone use it for any purpose as long as they give you credit. Just say it's licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Then, if somebody uses your photo without attributing you, they've violated the legalese of the license, and you can sue them. Other licenses prohibit making derivative works and/or using the work commercially. There are fun mix-and-match combinations to suit just about every need.

You may notice that these requirements themselves do not constitute copyleft; that is, someone who modifies someone else's work and just gives credit or uses it non-commercially can declare "All rights reserved" in their new version. But several Creative Commons licenses require users of the work to "share alike." I used to have this site licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, meaning that anybody could use my work for noncommercial purposes if they gave me credit and released their new version under the same license. Then, I got some requests to use some of my images for commercial purposes. I had to give them permission explicitly because the license forbids it in general. But I thought about it, and I realized that I wouldn't really mind if my works were used for commercial purposes. As long as they remain under copyleft ("ShareAlike"), it doesn't harm me or the general public. So recently, I re-licensed the content of this site under an Attribution-ShareAlike license. (Check out the sidebar and the footer to see those links you've never noticed!)

But I have to admit, folks: I haven't always been this attentive to copyright issues. I wrote The Dvorak Keyboard and You almost 6 years ago, when I was 13. When I needed an image of the Dvorak keyboard layout to illustrate the article, I searched the web and found high-resolution scan that someone had made from an MS-DOS manual. I prettified it, and other people copied it when they linked to me. That's no way to respect someone's copyright, even if it is Microsoft's. Yesterday, I finally decided to correct this indiscretion. I searched Flickr for a diagram of a keyboard that I would be able to use under the terms of the Attribution-ShareAlike license. I found one with an Attribution license, modified it for my own needs, gave the author credit according to the license, and relicensed the new work under the Attribution-ShareAlike license. (This is allowed because the original author is still being attributed and has not restricted the right of others to require sharing alike down the line. At least, that's what this table says.) Now, if someone comes along wanting to use my modified image, they'll have to give me and the original author credit and allow others the freedom to modify it for their own purposes. That's copyleft.

Lawrence Lessig, the founder of Creative Commons, has some interesting things to say about copyright in his book Free Culture, which I'm currently reading. It's pretty cool stuff, but I'll hold off on it until I've finished reading it. Besides, this has been enough for one post. And now, the links.

Here's an Animated History of the NYC Subway. It's an animated map that shows each line in the order it was built.

Math humor: 36 Methods of Mathematical Proof. This reminded me so much of my differential equations professor (what with his ingenious math tricks and all) that I sent him the link. I'm not sure whether he liked it or not.

Firefox Logo Spied in Deep Space? Okay, the image is a little modified from the original, but there's still a resemblance if you look at it the right way. At least it doesn't look like a woman wearing long robes or a guy with a beard.

It's summertime in The World of Colleges. All of my friends are either taking summer classes, traveling Europe, pursuing research opportunities at national laboratories, getting married, or working. Yes, working. I'm home for three months, so I figure I'd try to get a job that's close enough to walk to and that I could work at, say, most days of the week. I could always use the money.

I searched the Internet for extremely local job listings and found a place close by that was looking for someone to do easy but tedious work on their web site. As it happens, I love doing easy but tedious things, and I have experience with web sites. I got the resume ready (thanks Kirsten), wrote a cover letter, and shot them an e-mail. Response: "I have found someone for that position. Thank you." I told her to take the ad off the freaking web site so other people wouldn't make my unfortunate mistake of wasting time trying to apply. I did not use the words "freaking" or "wasting," but that's how I felt.

So I went around to some local businesses to see which were hiring. Then I went home and called them to see what positions were available. The pizza place wanted a chef, and the Thai restaurant wanted a delivery boy. Nope and nope. I haven't tried calling the others because I can't decide which one I would want to work at the least.

Ah, getting a job. It's totally worthwhile, even necessary. It can bring you security and happiness. But finding one is tough. You will get burned a lot, especially if you have little to no experience. And the longer you wait, the harder it gets. Good thing nothing else in life is just like that.

I need to come up with a clever idea to make money. One that doesn't involve writing a cover letter. Something really stupid yet clever that no one has thought of yet. Maybe I could just play the guitar on a street corner. Maybe I can start a business and Be My Own Boss™. I also need an outlet for my near-constant frustration. I mean, besides this blog. Something that doesn't involve complaining. I wish I could make art. Angry art. Sad art. Luckily, anything can pass for art these days, so I guess I could throw paint on a wall and call it art. But art isn't really my thing. I want to smash things or blow stuff up in a field. And I want to not clean up after it.

Maybe I can make a business out of smashing things. Send me $50 or the iPhone gets it.

On a completely random note, no one has ever bought anything from the World of Stuff Store.

By the way: Justin is in Rome for one of his classes, Adam is going to pursue a research opportunity at a national laboratory, and Jennipher is apparently engaged. I don't know her that well, but we're friends on Facebook.

This is cool if you're an independent artist: TuneCore distributes your music and videos to Internet music stores. You keep the rights to your songs and and all the money they make.

Big-time Jeopardy! winner Ken Jennings has interviewed a former Jeopardy! writer. Carlo Panno reveals all the secrets about how the show was made, as well as some amusing anecdotes. Here's the interview: parts 1, 2, and 3.

Because you've always wondered: The Stories Behind 10 Famous Product Placements.

This weekend, I'm going with my family to our usual vacation spot on North Hutchinson Island in Fort Pierce. I haven't been there since last March, so I'm looking forward to it. We go at least once every year. A typical trip to the condo entails going to the beach in the morning, playing games in the rec room, eating coffee cake for breakfast, relaxing by the pool, and going to Vero Beach to have ice cream at Cravings. The beach is the best part. While it's true that I live near a public beach, the one at the condo is private, so there's usually nobody there. I'll try not to get sunburned this time.

This is the first time I've gone there since I've had my laptop, so there's no precedent here. I'm not going to bring it because it sort of ruins the idea of having a vacation. We're also bringing the dog for the first time, presumably because we can't find someone to look after him. He's been good lately, so I don't expect any trouble. But we'll see.

Though I just said that the beach is the best part, I'm also looking forward to some good, old-fashioned R&R. I'd been kind of sleep deprived, living in a college dorm, so I was hoping I'd be able to catch up on sleep at home. I've been back for a week, and I haven't noticed an improvement. For one thing, it's bright in my room in the morning, and it's usually hot too. I could open the windows so it's not as hot, but then it would be noisy. To be able to sleep, I need to be stored in a cool, dark place with lots of quiet. What I need to have at home is one of those masks that ladies wear when they need to get their beauty sleep. I need my resting sleep.

Anyway, I'm leaving tonight, and I'll be back on Sunday night. Au revoir.

Scary stuff from Wired: FBI Targets Internet Archive With Secret 'National Security Letter', Loses. This is one of a few such cases to have come to light. Who knows how many others there have been?

Researchers have recently decoded the earliest known sound recording, made in 1860. It was scratched into a piece of paper as part of an attempt to record sounds visually rather than to play them back. But thanks to modern technology, the grooves have been converted to sound in much the same way that a stylus reads grooves on a record. This article has more, including the sound clip itself.

And finally: When you're a reporter doing a spot for the TV news, you've got to make sure you're standing out of harm's way. Such was not the case for this reporter, who got owned by a sled.

I went to a French restaurant for today with my sister and our friends Yamilee and Austin. The place was called Rendez-Vous, and it was located in Fort Lauderdale. I'd never heard of it, but then, I don't go to a lot of French restaurants. It was actually part bakery, as those sorts of places tend to be, and the atmosphere was pretty relaxed. (No snooty waiters who take offense at your butchering of the French language.) I had a crepe with chicken, spinach, and mushrooms. It was good. Apparently Yamilee and Austin eat there a lot. I think I should go back at least a few more times to try all the things that looked good on the menu, not to mention the desserts.

When I upgraded my operating system a few weeks ago, I got a new version of Rhythmbox, my media player. In the new version, a plugin is enabled by default that allows you to stream and download music from Jamendo, a site that allows artists to distribute their music for free and receive donations from fans. So I poked around and found some albums that I liked. Here are a few of my favorites. All are downloadable for free.

• Demo by MoOt. Though it's a demo, its six songs are more polished than some of the other tracks on Jamendo. This album consists of nice pop-type numbers that are -- dare I say it -- Beatlesque. Very catchy, imaginative, and well-done.
• I Don't Know What I'm Doing by Brad Sucks. The artist's name and the title of his album both suggest a lack of self-confidence, but this album of moody-sounding semi-electronic numbers has managed to capture my interest -- an achievement to be proud of. I think I'd actually heard of Brad Sucks, even, and his music sounds like stuff that may or may not have been on the show with zefrank.
• I've saved the best for last: The Heavens by The Heavens. It's a professional recording by experienced musicians -- and it shows. This new British group's four psychedelic rock songs show that kickin' it old school is cool. The final track, "Echo Serena," is -- dare I say it -- sublime. (Or at least lime. I'm daresaying a lot of things today.) Highly recommended.

Although I've run out of the space I've allotted for myself, I will continue to go on about The Heavens for a minute. Their songs are cool. Their album cover is cool. (Seriously. Look at it.) A reviewer on Jamendo says of "This Beautiful Machine" that its stereo separation is "straight out of 1966." The drums and bass on either side, with guitars in the middle, hearken back to the days before record producers decided they should always be the other way around. "Echo Serena" is one of the better expressions of love ever committed to tape. And The Heavens the first and only band (not counting my friends' bands) that I've friended on MySpace. That is no small thing right there. I look forward to acquiring their next record, whenever it comes out, even if it involves paying money.

And now, the links.

If all the humans on Earth died, our buildings and cities would fall into a state of disrepair. Here are some lovely pictures of what it might look like.

Here's a fun read: "40 Years in the Future," from Mechanix Illustrated, November 1968. According to the article, the world of 2008 will have such advances as computer-guided cars, vacations in space, the four-hour workday, domed cities, and plastic silverware. Big-screen TVs will allow us to shop and take college classes from our own homes. We'll also be able to get new hit movies on demand!

Wikipedia has a list of common misconceptions.

For the past few days, I've been studying for exams (and taking them). Now I'm done. So are a lot of other people. Over the past week, trucks, vans, and SUVs have been buzzing about and parking outside the dorms. People are moving out.

My differential equations exam was on Monday morning at the ungodly hour of 7:30 A.M. I couldn't get much sleep beforehand. I studied a lot, but I could have studied more. I needed a 56 on the final to get a B in the class. I estimate that I got the equivalent of 4 out of 7 questions right; if that's true, then I got a 57. Anyway, it's going to be close. I'm glad I did the optional assignment that will only be invoked if you're on the border between grades.

I had my last biology exam yesterday. It wasn't a cumulative final, which was good. I hadn't been doing as well as I wanted on the tests, whose average makes up the entire class grade. I needed a 100 on the last test to get an A in the class and an 88 for a B+. I just found out that I got a 90. B+ in the bag.

Also yesterday, I found out how I did in physics. Amazingly, I got a B+ in the class somehow. I received a breakdown of my grade. They gave me full credit for the in-class response questions (5% of the grade) even though I got some of them wrong. I did get an 85 in the final exam, as I had guessed. Even then, I still should have had a B, according to my calculations. They must have rounded up, which they said they weren't going to do. Oh well. I would have been happy with a B, but a B+ is welcome.

And today, I had my last exam: programming. I'm all but certain that I'll be getting an A in the class.

Last night, I visited my friend Andy, one of the people I'm starting the Esperanto club with. I didn't have to go very far because he lives down the hall. He plays the piano, and he wanted to know if I wanted to rock out with him. I had a lot of fun. He's really good at improvising on the piano. Besides discussing music, we also talked about computers. He said he needed an office suite to run on his Mac, and I suggested NeoOffice, which I recommend to all my Mac-using friends. For everyone else, I recommend OpenOffice.org. Both are free as in price and free as in freedom.

So, in short, good times were had by both. It reminds me of all the interesting things I've done that I haven't mentioned here. As I begin to pack up all my stuff and leave my dorm for the summer, I reflect back -- in no particular order -- on some Things I Apparently Didn't Mention.

1. As part of my college orientation over the summer, I had to spend the night in a real dorm room with a real roommate. My one-time disposable roommate was even quieter than I was, which, if you know me personally, might be hard to imagine. I had to do the talking. Anyway, his name was Amer or Ahmer or something, and he lives in my current building, so I see him every once in a while. Invariably he has earbuds in his ears. I don't know how people can walk around listening to music all the time. Open your ears, folks. You can do without your Fall Out Boy for ten minutes. (Seriously, it's getting bad. When I would volunteer for Get Carded in crowded areas, I would marvel at the proportion of people who listen to music while they're walking. At least one of my professors did it on his way to class.)
2. There was an old woman in my programming class. When I saw her on the first day, I assumed that she was doing a write-up or something to judge the lecturer, but she kept coming back every day. She looked like she was over 70. Way to go for her, taking a computer class in college at that age. Eventually, she stopped going to class, so I assume she dropped it.
3. At the beginning of the year, our RA, Shannon, made little name-tag-type things and put them on everyone's door. Although it took me about 6 months to realize it, each one was supposed to look like a little iPod with a different album cover where the screen ought to be. I had the most random album ever. Every day during the fall semester, I had this on my door, printed by a color printer without yellow ink:

   

   So random. When we got a new RA in the spring, she replaced our iPods (as I still didn't know they were) with blank CD-Rs with our names and hometowns written on them. Have you ever tried taping a CD to a door? Those things are heavy. Few of them lasted very long without falling. After a month, I gave up on trying to stick mine back on the wall and substituted my and my roommate's iPods, which had been placed inside the room when they were taken down. They've been up ever since. (My roommate's album was the Virgin Suicides soundtrack).

4. I was poking around the web site of one of my physics professors one time when I came across a link to a picture of his "famous sister." One of my physics professors, it turns out, was Sally Field's brother. And not the one I liked, either. I thought that was pretty weird. I did some Googling to make sure it was true, and I found some sites saying that Sally Field had a brother named Rick Field who was a physicist. I also found a university library catalog mentioning a video of Sally Field visiting her brother Rick at the university in 1982. Almost everyone I talked to about this hadn't heard of Sally Field or referred to her as Sally Fields. Sucks to be you, Sally Field. But I like you, I really like you. As for your brother, meh.
5. I took up a form of exercise called shovelglove in November, but I didn't really explain why. I did hint at it, however. There's this girl Ashley who lives on my floor, and she would come by to talk to my roommate, Adam. Adam works out a lot and would often hang around without a shirt on. She mentioned how she always seemed to encounter him while he was shirtless. So, one time, I had gotten out of the shower and I had a towel wrapped around me while I was combing my hair. There was a knock on the door, and I saw through the peephole that it was Ashley. Oh, no problem, I thought, since she sees Adam without a shirt all the time. So I opened the door, and she averted her eyes and said, "I can come back later!" Come to think of it, maybe it was the towel. I am not a fat guy, and I wasn't then, but it got me thinking about how I should probably work out.
6. In January, one of my suitemates apparently tried to overdose on pills. He had to go to the hospital for a while and withdraw for the semester. What I didn't mention was: he came back to the dorm to visit a few months later and seemed to be his same old self. He spent a few nights sleeping in the common room, and then I think he got kicked out.
7. Evan moved in to take his place as he had wanted to be roommates with Cameron. Evan really livened things up around this here two-room/one-bathroom suite-type thing. I already mentioned how he had a jacuzzi party by buying a kiddie pool, putting it in the bathroom, filling it with hot water from the shower, and inviting his friends. One night, he happened to catch Die Hard on TV, and after that, he started posting a "Die Hard Quote of the Day" in the bathroom. After he, Adam, and I rented Die Hard: With a Vengeance, we all got in on the act. They're still hanging up there. My contribution:
   Jeremy Irons: My only problem is that I went to some trouble preparing that game for McClane. You interfered with a well-laid plan.
   Samuel L. Jackson: Well, you can stick your well-laid plan up your well-laid ass.

My first year of college is over, and tomorrow, I'm going home. I've done pretty well in my classes. I've had fun. I've made a lot of friends, and I've learned some things. But I honestly don't mind not having classes for a few months. I could use a break. In fact, except for a friend's birthday on Sunday, I have absolutely no plans at all this summer. I think I'll try to get a job to make back the money I spent this year. I've already started working on the old resume. I'm also looking forward to sleeping in and not getting irreversibly awoken two hours early by someone singing in the shower or having a loud conversation in the hallway. The time for those things is no more. It's summertime.

But first, it's time to pack.

And throw crap away.

JungleCrazy.com lists some crazy Amazon deals. This is great for people who buy random cheap stuff online.

If you get an automatically generated e-mail with a return address at donotreply.com, do Chet Faliszek a favor and don't reply to it. He's the owner of DoNotReply.com, and his site gets innumerable e-mails every day.

From Lawrence Lessig, creator of Creative Commons, comes Change Congress, "a movement to build support for basic reform in how our government functions." He's trying to have politicians and citizens pledge to support increased honesty and transparency in Congress.

Today was the last day of classes of the spring semester. Tomorrow and Friday are "reading days" to study for final exams. On Saturday, exams begin.

I can't believe how fast this semester has gone by. But I'm more surprised by the grades I've been getting. I was a straight-A student in high school (except for one B), and I'm on track to get 2 A's and 3 B's this semester. I guess I could have studied more. But I have to study more now. I have my physics exam on Saturday, differential equations on Monday, biology on Wednesday, and programming on Thursday. Luckily, my bio exam isn't cumulative, but the rest are.

I've been worried about physics all semester, but now that I got an 85 on the last test, I've got a B in the bag (after having a C+ most of the semester). Diff. Eq. has become the new enemy. I didn't do very well on the last two tests, so what might have been an A can now be no more than a B+ (if I'm lucky). So I've really got to hit the books. In fact, the only book I really don't have to hit is for programming, and not just because we don't have a textbook. I'm doing so well in that class that I haven't even checked to see how the grade is calculated. Programming really is my thing, y'see.

So, I talked to the latest girl today, and guess what? We're going to dinner tomorrow night!

Just kidding. She said it was a "bad time of year," with her having "three exams" in "two days" and all.

I would have asked her last week, or the week before that, or the week before that, but I was working up the nerve and I didn't want to get rejected. My careful planning has brought about the very situation I planned to avoid. This would be funny if it weren't so sad.

Moving on to important things, the next version of Ubuntu, my operating system of choice, is coming out tomorrow. It includes a lot of updated programs, including Firefox 3.0 beta 5. I just hope the update goes without a hitch. The last time I upgraded Ubuntu on my dad's computer, there were some hitches of unknown origin. I think the system managed to fix itself, but it was quite a scare, and I don't want it to happen with my computer. The alternative is to do a clean install and probably lose stuff like wireless and sound. Also, I'd have to put all my personal files and settings back on. I guess I'll just take the risk of upgrading, but I'll do a backup first in case things go awry. Wish me luck.

Here are some fun facts you probably didn't know about living in space.

I think I've posted something like this before, but in any case, here's another password strength checker.

The Pirate Bay, the world's largest BitTorrent tracker, gets a lot of nasty letters for facilitating the unauthorized downloading of copyrighted movies and music. They've posted a few of the many letters they've received, along with their responses.

My roommate left for class yesterday morning around 10:30 or 11:00, as he usually does on Fridays. But he hasn't come back. I think he went home for the weekend. He might have told me about this, but it had to have been a long time ago, or I would have remembered clearly. I think Passover is starting.

In any case, I'm here by myself, and I've realized how boring it is without him. He usually has some nice music and/or the TV on. Or he might be on the phone with someone, or playing games on the Internet, or at least just studying or crunching data and graphs for his top-secret materials research project. In any case, he's usually there, and now, for a little while, he's not. It's hard to imagine that some people live like this all the time in their single rooms. I think I'd go crazy.

It's been a pretty stressful week. The culmination was last night, when I had a physics test. Yeah, a physics test from 8:20 to 10:10 on a Friday night. I studied a little more than I wanted to, which wasn't much anyway, but I wasn't completely lost on everything. I felt pretty good about it, in fact, but I was wary because I've gotten tripped up before. (I got a 60% on the first test and a 65% on the second one. I should have gotten a 75% on the second one, but I apparently bubbled in two of the answers wrong. Both of the scores I did get correspond to a grade of C+ in the class.) After last night's test, I went online to compare my scratch work to the answer key. Totally unexpectedly, I got an 85%, which will be very good for my grade -- provided I bubbled in the answers right.

Even though I have more work to do and more tests coming up, I've been taking it easy. I've been listening to music a lot today (even more than usual). With my playlist on shuffle, it's like Radio Free Jordon in here. Now that I have my own computer, I have all my music available on the go (except my record collection -- I'm leaving that project for the summer. Thanks to Luke for the shrink-wrapped copy of Double Fantasy. That'll make a pretty darn good digital transfer). It just occurred to me that because no one's around to overhear my music, I don't have to pump it directly into my ears. My laptop speakers aren't great, but I'd rather not have my headphones on all the time and go deaf.

I was going to do something tonight, but now I'm not. Yesterday, I asked a girl (previously mentioned) to dinner. She seemed surprised but pleasantly so. She said it was probably a bad weekend for it, but that it was okay. In what I am considering a first, she actually seemed to understand my intentions, probably because I made them as clear as possible without sounding like the completely blunt and naive person I was until shockingly recently. But she called me today and said she was going out with her girl friends tonight. I should have expected this. The semester is drawing to a close; everyone is stressed out; everyone is about to leave for the summer. Okay, how about Wednesday? "We'll see how the week goes." I don't want to have to wallow in feelings of failure all summer.

Speaking of which, I'd better get on that resume. And now, the links.

Do you believe in God? There's a poll going at YesNoGod.com. A breakdown of results by country is available.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Rate your local law enforcement officers at RateMyCop.com.

Check if a site is down for everyone or just you: Down for everyone or just me?

On Friday night I went out to dinner with some people from Get Carded, the organ donor awareness organization I'm in. After we put on our end-of-the-year concert, there was nothing left to do but celebrate. So we went to On the Border, a Mexican place that I went to once about 5 or 6 years ago.

Not everybody was there, but some people I knew were. After we ate (good food, by the way), there were the obligatory photos. Michael, one of the co-presidents, had an award to give out. Printed on his computer, was the "Volunteer of the Year" award, and it was given to... me! I couldn't believe it. Actually, I kind of could, but it was still a little hard to believe. Apparently I was the only person who helped out at all of Get Carded's events this year. I also got a gift card for Moe's, which is this extremely popular Mexican-type place. Many people would envy the $10 in Moe's cash I now wield.

But anyway, I really appreciated the award (even though Michael and Jehan, the other co-president, forgot to sign it before they gave it to me). I have it hanging on the fridge now. Hopefully there will be some competition for the award next year. That would be great for the group.

UF's spring football game was yesterday. It's called the Orange and Blue Game after the school colors. The Gators split into Orange and Blue teams, and they played each other. They get a chance to show off their talent, and the fans get their football fix until August.

I figured it would be a pretty big thing, but I didn't know it was going to be on ESPN. Actually, by the day of the event, I did know. I had planned on watching it on TV, but I decided to go instead because it was going on about a block away and, as my roommate said, 50,000 fans would be mad at me if they found out I didn't go.

The game was pretty informal. There were 44 minutes of play, with no penalties or anything. (A referee did throw a flag once, but I think it was due to force of habit. He just picked it up without saying anything.) The coaches were just chilling there out on the field, watching each play closely. The players went pretty easy on each other, and there was no tackling the quarterbacks. (The team doesn't want to get hurt playing against itself, you know.) After each field goal or extra point, the kicker would try it again at varying distances, just for giggles.

The atmosphere was likewise relaxed. Even though the stadium wasn't packed to capacity, there were still a lot of people there, and I saw some people I knew. Everybody had a good time, although some people left early. I can't blame them. The sun was bright. Even though I was wearing a hat and the game lasted less than two hours, I got sunburned like whoa. But I'm glad I went. I had a pretty good time.

The final score was Blue 28, Orange 14. Also: The Sun 1, Jordon 0.

Yesterday evening (actually more like the late afternoon), I got inducted into the Phi Eta Sigma honor society. It wasn't anything big, really. They had a room that was way too small for all the inductees and their guests. Fortunately, the whole thing didn't last very long. They said a few words, and then they called each person up to get a pin. Then it was a free-for-all as people lined up to get their certificates. My family came to the induction, and then we had dinner. I had lunch with them again today (at Moe's) before they left.

So now I have an official-looking Phi Eta Sigma certificate and pin. I can wear the pin whenever I want to look important, and people will think I'm in some fraternity that secretly rules the world. They probably won't know that it's just an honor society that does community service every now and then.

Here's an Ask Jordon question.

Carol: Is it possible for you to see when someone is visiting your site? Like me right now?

As with most web sites, accesses to files on this site are logged, mainly for statistics purposes and my own amusement. I can tell which IP addresses have visited the site, and what browsers and operating systems they correspond with (although all of that information can be faked). When you submit an Ask Jordon question, your IP address and browser/OS information are sent as well. I can tell that your ISP is Verizon and that you're using IE 7 on Windows XP (if your browser isn't lying), but that's about it.

With regards to the story I posted last time about Illinois state representative Monique Davis, she has apologized -- though not publicly -- for her bigoted tirade.

Can't decide between Clinton or Obama? Here's a Democratic Primary Quiz (Flash).

Here are photos of 10 Interesting Abandoned Places.