Category - Esperanto

Scheeze, April already? Back in January, I had the idea to start an Esperanto club on campus, and I got some of my friends interested. I haven't mentioned it much since then. What happened, you ask? Well, I certainly wasn't just sitting around, that's for sure. We've been trying to find a faculty advisor, which is required for starting a club. I've been e-mailing professors in the foreign language departments, but the few who have replied did so in the negative. People might find the job interesting but are frequently too busy. It was discouraging.

Andy came up with the great idea to ask the linguistics professors. Ah, linguistics. Odds are, they've all heard of Esperanto, so maybe they'd be interested in the idea. I e-mailed them and struck gold. Within days, e-mails came sort of pouring in. Not one, but two linguistics professors expressed interest in being our advisor. A third said he'd told the others in the department and that he'd get back to me with a good candidate. A fourth said that if we couldn't find anyone in the linguistics department, she would help us look for someone. And a lecturer from the Romance languages and literatures department sent me a reply, six weeks late, saying she would also be interested in being our advisor.

Not all responses were positive. One guy said Esperanto was a useless waste of time. But I didn't let that get me down. Instead, I worked out times to meet with the faculty members who thought that Esperanto was a useful non-waste of time. Andy and I met with the first professor on Monday morning. He's an African guy whose main interest is the extinction of languages, and he seemed to recognize Esperanto's potential for saving the many tongues around the world whose speakers are dying out. I'm supposed to meet with the other professor on Friday. It should be interesting.

Unfortunately, we probably won't have time to officially start our club this year; we'll have to wait till the fall, which means we might have to get off to a small start. Well, I was figuring we'd get off to a small start anyway, but the club approval process supposedly takes four to six weeks, and there are only... four weeks left in the semester? Well, maybe there's some time. It's worth a shot, anyway, if we can name a faculty advisor by next week. I'll have to ask the people who deal with approving clubs and see if there's time to squeeze in the approval. Then we can hit the ground running next year.

That's not the only thing I've got going on this week, though. Get Carded, the organ donation awareness group I'm a member of, is having its second annual Lifeapalooza event tomorrow night. A pretty well-known local band called Umoja Orchestra will play a free show, along with a couple of opening acts. There will also be organ recipients talking about why organ donation is so important. It's going to be at a cafe on campus called the Orange and Brew (because our school colors are orange and... blue... ha ha?). Anyway, we're also going to give everyone a free t-shirt and have them form a human ribbon outside (because every cause has to have a ribbon, you know). It should be a great way to end the year.

To help get the word out, I've been passing out flyers (actually cards) on campus. If you walk around college campuses a lot, people probably hand you a lot of glossy cards, about the size of a large index card, that tell you about upcoming concerts or parties or what have you. I'm passing out those. I spent about two hours Monday and Tuesday doing it, and I have a few more to give out tomorrow. Hopefully I've gotten some people interested. Although a lot of people avoid me as I stand in the middle of a foot thoroughfare, most people take the cards I put in front of them, and a few even come up and ask for one. It all adds up. I think the turnout at Lifeapalooza tomorrow will be great.

The call to End Software Patents is pretty common among the nerdy set. Find out what it's all about.

Want to celebrate your next birthday with class while trying to hide your age? Get Roman Candles for your birthday cake, so you can party like it's MCMXCIX.

Someday, I'm going to get a job. I want to work for a company that's friendly to Linux and related software projects. Here's how a number of major companies stand.

To my surprise, the Esperanto article I was supposed to be interviewed for was published today. The reporter interviewed my friend Andy at my suggestion and never got back to me. I'm glad for him, anyway. Plus, our hopefully-soon-to-be-launched Esperanto club got a mention. From the article:

Here's the full article: Esperanto fans in S. Florida cling to idealistic language.

Okay, this is something I really can't figure out for the life of me. Why do a few of my blog posts attract so much comment spam? This old post, "Where's my trailer?", gets upwards of hundreds of spam attempts a day. (No comment spam actually gets through thanks to the two anti-spam measures I've had in place for about a year.) "Really bad Rita" is another eternal favorite for spammers, as are "Where's my trailer again?", "Tornado waste of time", "Here's to 16 more", "From the song files of Jordon Kalilich", and a few others. I find it interesting that they were all posted in 2005. Other than that, I can't find a common link. I haven't done a word analysis of those posts, but it's not like I'm talking about mortgages, ringtones, gambling, World of Warcraft gold, or prescription drugs. (Am I asking for it here?) What's the deal? I challenge my other blogging readers to find (if possible) their most frequently spammed entries. What do they have in common that's so attractive to spammers?

As I was writing this, I heard a voice call out in the hallway. That's funny, I thought in italics, that sounds like Shannon, our RA from last semester who has since graduated. Then I heard another voice: "Shannon!"

It was Shannon indeed. She was her same old bleach-blonde self with her same old Midwestern accent, though she was looking tanner than ever. She's been applying to moderately prestigious law schools throughout the country, but, frustratingly, she's been waitlisted by most of them. Since moving back home to Chicago, she's been thinking about retaking the LSAT, and she's gotten a job (at a tanning salon). She said she's here in town with her friends till Saturday, and that she'll be around to hang out with her (not so) old floormates.

And now, the links.

Read about the Curious Histories of Generic Domain Names.

Dot-com days are here again? Check out some Web 2.0 Workplaces.

In this quiz, you're presented with six paintings. You have to guess whether each was painted by an artist or an ape. My roommate got four right.

On Saturday, I got an e-mail from a reporter from my local paper, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. She got my contact information from Esperanto-USA, which I recently joined for 2008, and wanted to interview me by phone for an article on Esperanto, which I've recently gotten interested in again.

Now time for the obligatory aside. Longtime readers may have a hazy recollection that I was interviewed and photographed by the Sun-Sentinel for an article on blogs in 2003, and interviewed and photographed again by their indie-style paper's more cynical article on blogs in 2004. So I'm no stranger to being interviewed by the Sun-Sentinel. In fact, I rather enjoy it. I find that when I'm talking to reporters, I become more eloquent that usual, even profoundly so. But that was when I was being asked about myself and my blogging. This time, I expect, I'll be asked about Esperanto, which I don't know as much about as I could.

Anyway, I gave her my number and told her when I was free, and she asked if I knew of any other Esperanto speakers in specific Broward County cities. I said I did know my friend Andy, a fellow Browardite up here at college who was familiar with the language, although I didn't know what city he was from. (He's one of the friends I'm starting the Esperanto club with.) So I hooked them up, and yesterday she interviewed him by phone. She asked him for further details on Teach Yourself Esperanto, the textbook I used to teach myself Esperanto, and on Pasporta Servo, the worldwide Esperanto hospitality network, so I gave him the info. He also joined Esperanto-USA. He said he's getting really excited about the whole Esperanto club thing, which is great, because it's enthusiasm that we're going to need... since we still can't find a faculty advisor.

So she hasn't called me yet, and I'm not sure if she will. But even if not, I'm glad Andy got a chance to represent Esperanto to our local paper. Now if only the local paper up here -- or even a campus newspaper -- did a story on Esperanto, it would really be great for our nascent club.

And Friday is February 29, that once-in-every-four-years leap day. Four years ago, I thought it would be cool to document the day in photographs, and I sort of pledged to do the same every leap day afterward. I don't have the photos online anymore 'cause they're kinda dumb, but I'll probably put them back online along with the photos from February 29, 2008. It'll be interesting to see how I've changed in the past four years.

This video is from The Onion, but it may as well be true: Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early.

We've all heard of people who will do anything that scammers tell them to, but did you know that it also works the other way around? This guy conned a Nigerian scammer into copying Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by hand.

This is what passes for police blotter in Bozeman, Montana: The Best of the Bozeman Chronicle Police Reports.

Esperanto. It was created to be a second language for the whole world. The number of speakers is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands, at least. I took up Esperanto briefly in 2003 and again in 2005. To prove how into it I was, I still have the category of Esperanto-related posts. But I haven't used it much in the past two years. I got somewhat bored with it because I had no one to talk to. (If I were in a sitcom, this is where the audience would say "Aww...")

Last week, I made a new friend and got her interested in learning Esperanto. (She has a boyfriend, by the way; I left my last post open-ended because I wasn't sure.) Anyway, I haven't gotten a chance to meet with her again, but we've been talking online quite a bit. As I was talking about her to Joey (from down the hall) and Adam (my roommate), Joey mentioned that his roommate Andy knew Esperanto. Sure enough, he said he'd studied it recently, and he was familiar with some Esperanto web sites, books, and authors. He also said it would be cool if we started an Esperanto club.

Do you hear that? It's opportunity knocking.

I'm thinking that such a club would eventually consist of both Esperanto classes and social events. I've been trying to find information about other college Esperanto clubs to see what they do, but I can only really find two: one at UT Austin and one at Rochester. I guess it's better than none.

I've been looking into the process for starting a student organization, and it doesn't sound too terribly difficult. You have to have a president and a treasurer, three student members in all, a faculty advisor, and a constitution. Finding a faculty advisor will probably be the hardest part. His signature is required for you to start your club, but you can decide what his duties should be. Andy mentioned that the guy who teaches "The Tao of Star Trek" (it's an actual class) might be a good person to ask, but I'd rather not promote the idea that Esperanto is only for freaks 'n' geeks. It's a real language used by real people in real life, so I'd rather have a foreign language professor helping us out.

As for a name, I tried to think of one that would have the same initials in English and Esperanto, but eventually, I came up with "Esperanto@UF": that way, it would be the same in both languages. I think it'd be good for other Esperanto speakers who will get the idea that we're representing our university (the University of Florida) in the Esperanto community, and it'd be good for our fellow students who will find that "Esperanto@UF" implies that Esperanto doesn't exist just at our university but also elsewhere. Plus, the @ is reminiscent of technology and the future.

The three of us will have to get together and talk about it this weekend. There's a lot to plan.

How do you know when you've been procrastinating too much? I'll tell you how. Last week, rather than doing some homework, I figured out how to get the Java Runtime Environment (necessary for running Java applets on web pages) working on my computer. Even though I installed the sun-java6-jre package from Ubuntu's multiverse repository, Firefox wasn't recognizing Java applets. So I referred to some documentation that explained everything. All I had to do was the enter the following commands:

cd ~/.mozilla/plugins
ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.03/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so

One of the things that makes a neighborhood good is its walking distance from important places. Find your home's Walk Score to determine how walking-friendly its location is. My house has a score of 43/100. My dorm gets a 37/100.

This guy tried to get the most expensive drink at Starbucks. It cost him $13.76 (after tax).

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.

Agh. I've been sick for the past few days. I don't get sick as often as I used to, but when I do, it lasts longer. I wasn't so bad at prom on Friday, but the illness seemed to peak yesterday when I felt like I had a temperature. Today I feel quite a bit better, though still not 100%. It looks like I'll be well in time for graduation, which is Tuesday.

Yes, prom was Friday night. I didn't have a date, but I tried to find one. I really did. Nobody wanted to go to prom, or they were already going with someone else, or they had a boyfriend who they weren't going to prom with. I thought prom was such a big thing. I've heard horror stories of girls' boyfriends not taking them to prom and having the experience (or lack of an experience) scar them for the rest of their lives. But I guess, for the people I asked, it's their loss rather than mine, if it is indeed a loss at all. I was fine with going solo, anyway. It's not like I'm not used to it.

I went over to Ed's place for the limo. He's only a few blocks away, so that was convenient. Besides Ed, Andrew was there with Allison, his date. A bunch of people were taking the pre-prom pictures: Ed's mom, Ed's sister, and Allison's sister. Andrew's mom was videotaping. But we were a sight to see. Well, not me in particular, but Ed and Andrew went all out. Andrew dressed like a Victorian dandy, complete with a bow tie, a top hat, a cane, gloves, and tails. Ed wore a green velvet suit with alligator shoes. Copying Andrew's idea of having a cane, he brought a wooden-type cane with a fake shrunken head on top.

We got into the limo, which was pretty nice. I had never been in a limo before. It was pretty roomy, considering there were only four of us in there and it would have been possible to squeeze in six. There was a bar with bottled water. There were neon lights, and there was an XM satellite radio receiver. We weren't sure what channels were available (my parents have an XM subscription, but I never tune in myself), so we just played whatever stations we could find. At one point, the song "Sharp Dressed Man" came on. It was very suitable for the occasion.

It wasn't long before the limo arrived at the Signature Grand, which apparently is a fancy place with bunch of ballrooms and stuff. We were early, so we hung around a bit and met with some people as they came in. By then I had realized that I hadn't gotten an actual prom ticket, only a receipt. Andrew explained that they had given out the tickets at the senior breakfast the day before. Where was I? I was probably just stuffing my face too much to listen. But luckily, the teacher taking tickets had a list of all of the ticket-purchasers, and I was listed as having bought, but not received, a ticket. So that turned out fine.

After a while, more people began to enter the ballroom, which was pretty fancy. There was even an ice sculpture saying "2007." It was good to see a lot of people I knew. Among them was Tyler, who, a week previously, had given me the scariest car ride of my life. Not surprisingly, he had gotten into an accident on the way to prom. After some mixing and mingling, they started to serve dinner, and everyone was seated. Salad came first, of course, followed by the main course of chicken parmesan (which was introduced with "Also Sprach Zarathustra"). The food was actually good, by the way, and since no one was sitting next to me, I got to have an extra salad. And then, the dancing began.

The music was varied, unlike at homecoming, and the dance floor was much bigger, meaning that I might get sucked into the whole dancing thing eventually. But for a while, I just sat. Tomás, who had sat at my table, was out on the dance floor while his date sat a couple of seats away from me. We were among the few who weren't dancing. Her name was Julia, and she said that she worked with Tomás, so she figured that dancing with him would be kind of awkward. So we chatted it up quite a bit. I enjoyed it.

At one point, Allison told me and Andrew that she had heard in the bathroom that Jannike had been dumped by her date (boyfriend?). Allison suggested catching some rebound action or something like that. I wasn't so sure, but I thought it would be nice to dance with her. I didn't act on it, partly because I didn't know where the bathrooms were, and that's where I would have expected to find her. But later, Jannike was walking by my table and came up to me. She seemed very cheery, like nothing was wrong. She took a picture of me and her, which was nice. Then she went on her way.

Finally, it was time to announce the prom king and queen. Ed and Andrew had both run for prom king, so I figured it would be Ed because he seems to be more popular. As for prom queen, I voted for Kristen N. because she asked me to, but I figured that Michy would win because she's pretty popular and well-liked. After all, it is just one big popularity contest, isn't it? Anyway, the prom king turned out to be this guy named Jordan King. I met him once, last year, and he seemed like a pretty cool guy. The prom queen turned out to be Chandi, whom I've known since freshman year. As is custom, the king and queen shared a slow dance, and then everyone else was allowed to join them.

I longed for the days of junior high when I could slow dance with any girl I chose -- not because I was particularly fetching but because most of the girls weren't tied down with boyfriends at that age. This was, as I saw it, a rare opportunity to dance with a nice girl who now did not have a date and might have gotten lonely. I suavely slunk over to Jannike's table, found myself a seat next to her, and asked her to dance. She agreed, and we went to the dance floor, where we assumed the standard slow-dancing position (girl's arms around guy's neck, guy's arms around girl's waist) and began to dance. We talked, and she explained that she had just gotten dumped. Nearby, Chandi, who was still riding the high of being elected prom queen, shouted, "Grab her ass!" Her boyfriend added, "I would." "I know you would," was the best I could come up with. For what it's worth, I did not engage in any ass-grabbery.

The song ended too soon, and a fast one began. I was caught totally unawares and felt like I had been put on the spot, especially since I never do any dancing other than slow dancing. But I decided to go with it. Since I was feeling pretty good, I decided do do something silly and "warm up" by giving my arms and legs a good stretch. She got a kick out of that. Then I just started moving my body to the music. About a second later, Jannike said she had to leave, so we went our separate ways. I returned to my table, where I talked to Julia some more. She was really nice, and she sat out the songs that she didn't feel were danceable enough. She did dance some of the time, though, because she wasn't at the table the whole time.

During a fast song, Allison came over to my table and pulled me into the action. So I did what any normal person would do: I danced. I didn't know any of the moves, and I was just making them up, which is I guess is sort of what you do. I had never really, truly danced before, and now here I was at prom, dancing and dancing and dancing. Actually, I got tired pretty quickly when I remembered that dancing is kind of like exercise, which is something I never do. After a couple of songs, I had to sit down. But it felt good, and I noticed that after dancing, my cold symptoms momentarily went away. I did return several times for some more dancing with my friends before the night ended. I'm glad I got the resolve to go up and dance -- or, rather, I'm glad my friends made me dance, because it really made prom more enjoyable. Who wants to sit out all the time? Not me.

On the way back from prom, Ed, Andrew, Allison, and I were joined by Tyler's girlfriend, whose mom didn't trust her to ride with Tyler after his accident (or, probably, ever). There were post-prom festivities awaiting us at Ed's, but since I had told my parents I'd be ready to go home at 1:00, I had to skip out on them. I was pretty tired, anyway, and I feared that my coldlike symptoms were getting worse. I went to bed immediately, though reflecting on all of the evening's excitement made it hard to sleep.

Listen to The Most Excruciatingly Painful, Yet Typical, Customer Service Call Ever.

Learn how to say "My hovercraft is full of eels" in over 50 lanugages. Mia kusenveturilo estas plena da angiloj!

While I've been on vacation, it's an all-Ask Jordon post coming your way.

Person! ^.^: What is the air speed velocity of an un-laiden swallow?

What do you mean, an African or a European swallow?

billybob jo: what are some other names for tornados

Cyclones. Tornadoes (with an "e"). Whirlwinds. Waterspouts, if they're over water. And... gosh. Oh, twisters, like another movie that I never saw. That's all I can think of without having to cheat and look up answers somewhere else. (And if "cyclone" is debatable, blame it on my old school, whose sports teams were called the Cyclones and whose actual mascot resembled a tornado.)

Peter: Question 1/2: How do you track visitors/hits nowadays?

AWStats, a log file analyzer. My web host provides it readily, so there was no complicated setup. It has its advantages and disadvantages compared to eXTReMe Tracking, which I used to use. The main difference is that the former tracks statistics related to your whole site, while the latter keeps tabs on individual pages. In any case, it's nice to see your log files broken down and explained meaningfully.

Peter: Question 2/2: What do you think of lernu (en.lernu.net)

I never used lernu! much for learning Esperanto, but I still have it in the Esperanto folder of my bookmarks. I'm not really sure how good it is, although I believe it has a number of texts you can read, and you can get a definition of any word just by clicking on it. If I recall, it even breaks down words into their roots and affixes, which is quite awesome. I've heard some good things about the site in general, but I can't say much about it myself.

Peter: Question 3/2: What do you believe are the major benefits of Ubuntu over Mac OSX or Windows XP?

Now that I've been using Ubuntu for over a month, I've been able to see some advantages and disadvantages when comparing it to Windows XP. (I can't really compare OS X to anything because I have little experience with it.) Of course, it can be frustrating when you're getting to learn a new operating system that does things a bit differently from what you're used to.

But to answer your question, I'd say that the major benefit is the software updates that come frequently. Unlike some operating systems I could mention, you don't wait five years for the next version, which doesn't even turn out to be much better than the last. A new version comes every six months, and besides that, the various packages or components of the operating system and its programs are being updated all the time for stability, security, and of course, killer features. As long as you use the software that's in the repositories, you're pretty much guaranteed to have the latest, greatest versions available... as long as you install the updates, that is.

But with Ubuntu, you don't have to be afraid to install updates, like with a certain other OS I could mention. That's because Ubuntu is freely distributable and free of charge, so there is no licensing key to share illegally. As a result, Ubuntu doesn't use its update mechanism to hound you about using unauthorized (unpaid-for) copies of its software. And as far as I can tell, Ubuntu doesn't bludgeon you over the head by automatically installing the updates you're trying to put off because they serve only to rat you out for copying someone's licensing key.

In other words, I like Ubuntu because it is free (as in speech and also as in beer) and because it has an active developer base that's constantly coming out with better versions of software (usually free also) that are made easily available for you.

Have a look at the stories behind lots of famous logos.

This is a fascinating read: A Brief History of the Calendar.

The Ask Jordon mailbag has been getting heavy over the past few weeks, so let's bust it open and see what we've got. It's time for an Ask Jordon Extravaganza.

Johnathan: Why did britney Spears shave her head bald?

This question arrived a few weeks ago, almost immediately after the big story broke. In fact, I got this e-mail even before my sister, who actually cares about what happens to famous people, found out that Britney Spears had shorn her locks. But, to answer your question, Jonathan, I'd say the answer is either "For attention" or "Who cares?"

Natasha Dean: Will i ever go out with jordan thundow

Another interesting one, considering this site already has a Natasha/Jordon thing going on. Nevertheless, this user comes from the UK, so it's not my friend Natasha in some clever disguise.

Well, other Natasha, I don't know this Jordan Thundow you speak of, so I can't say for sure, but if you want a guy to go out with you, my best advice is to be direct. The reason my best advice sounds really bad and vague is because I have no experience in this field. Anyway, glad I could help. Next.

Wilhelm T. Grate: What can you tell me about paint thinner and thinning paint and whatnot?

Well, my friend Luke, I know very little about thinning paint. I assume you'd want to thin paint in order to chip it off or something, and in order to do that, it would be good to use paint thinner because you can be fairly certain that it is actually for thinning paint. Paint thinner is highly flammable, and it probably smells bad. That's all I can tell you.

Peter: Three questions. Get ready. PS: This is not a question.

Okay.

Peter: Will you continue blogging when you're in college?

As far as I can tell, yes. Just as I blogged to inform and entertain readers about the strange new experiences of high school almost four years ago, I think it'll be fun and interesting to keep it up as I undertake the biggest thing that will ever have happened to me in my whole entire life.

Peter: C^i vi povias korekti la mia mala demando en Esperanto?

Jes, certe. Oni dirus "Ĉu vi povas ĝustigi mian malbonan demandon en Esperanto?" Vidu, ke mi uzis la akuzativon. Estas ofta eraro forlasi ĝin, sed ne forgesu. Fakte, post iom da tempo, vi verŝajne memoros bone, kaj ne plaĉos al vi la sono de ĝia misuzo.

Peter: Can you tell me what the other question I was going to ask you, because I forgot?

No, I don't know what it was. Do you remember it now?

Wilhelm T. Grate: Is the Game of Life an application of fuzzy logic or just regular logic?

Well, Luke, it seems to be smooth rather than fuzzy, so I'd say it's just regular type. Incidentally, Xlife blows my implementation of Life out of the water.

Political interference in science is not a good thing. Here's an A to Z guide of examples of this phenomenon.

One of those cheesy articles that might actually be helpful: 10 Things You Shouldn't Buy New.

Today I'm going to the skate park with Sean, Nick, and Mike. We went a few years ago, and it was fun, even though my parents made me sit it out. (Something about life insurance.) Anyway, apparently I'm covered now, so I can go and break my bones as I please. I tried to get on a skateboard once, some years ago, and I almost fell off immediately. I hope somebody has some pads and stuff I can borrow. I really, really, really don't want to get hurt, and I would rather sit on the sidelines than risk it. But as long as I come home in good shape, it will have been fun.

It's good to have a little Ask Jordon every now and then.

Peter: Where are some good places to practice Esperanto? / How do you practice Esperanto?

I've been getting a bit rusty myself. I (used to) keep tabs on the news site and portal Ĝangalo, but the last news item they've posted is from last month, and it says that the site has been sold by its creator. I also used to listen to Ĉi Tie Nun, a quirky Esperanto podcast that covers strange news stories from around the world, but the guy who runs that has only come out with two shows in the past six months. Those won't help you too much, I guess, but you can always read old news articles and listen to old podcasts.

Another good resource might be to read some Esperanto magazines. Last year I had a subscription to La Ondo de Esperanto, a magazine published in Russia that has news, reviews, literature, and so forth, but the subscription was pretty expensive (especially when I think you can read the issues online for free). You can't really blame me for falling out of practice, now, can you? Well, the big thing was that I had no one to practice it with, so I've been getting kind of bored. I'd say that the best way to practice is to have people to talk to (in person, online, or both). Maybe we could have some conversations together.

Pope Jolly Wilkins: What is the Firefox extension that finds the pages you will click onto in the future and caches them?

That feature is called pipelining, and it's built into Firefox. Go to about:config and set network.http.pipelining and network.http.proxy.pipelining to "true." It might also help to set the maximum number of connections per server and so forth. These preferences are also found in about:config, but I manage all this stuff with the Tweak Network Settings extension. (Here's its AMO page.)

Pope Jolly Wilkins: Also: why do boomer-folk like to say "Foxfire" instead of "Firefox"?

Boomer-folk have heard of Firefox? I thought they equated the Internet with the Big Blue E. Anyway, why do they screw up anything? It's because they're old, and their minds work in reverse or something. How many times did we have to hear "Pokey-man"?

Here's a gallery of World War II pictures in color. There are some videos too.

Watch some outtakes and goof-ups from the golden days of TV.

It's time for another installment of Jordon Asks YOU!!.

Jordon Asks YOU!!: Have you made any New Year's resolutions, and if so, have you kept them? Post a comment and let me know.

My birthday was yesterday, and it was good. I woke up to find two balloons in the dining room, where the table was half-set for dinner. Later, when dinnertime rolled around, my grandparents came over, and we feasted on pasta, bread, sausage, and salad. For dessert we had an ice cream cake from Cold Stone Creamery. It had coffee-flavored ice cream, and I guess cake, and some dark chocolate stuff, and Heath bars on top. Yes, there is still a lot left if you want to come over and have some.

Not counting the value of the dinner and the concert, I got an amazing amount of money for my birthday. I also got gift cards for Starbucks from my parents and for FYE from Katherine. Thank you, everybody. So what am I going to do with the money? Put it in the bank, of course. I don't really have much I could spend it on, so why not give it a bit of a guard against inflation and invest in the future? As for the gift cards, I already have tons of unused ones from birthdays past, so I hope to actually get some use out of them now that I remember that I have them.

Yesterday Casey told me that my friend Reid was going to be in a performance of The Pirates of Penzance. I haven't seen either of them much since back in October, and it's nice to see Reid doing what he loves the most, so I'm going to go and see the play. I believe my sister was invited too, but she doesn't really get along with Casey anymore. I have nothing personal against her, and it's really more about seeing Reid on the stage, so I'll go. I think we're going to be joined by Michael, so that should be cool.

Ah yes. I remember when my sister and I would go to Reid's house and we would make up and record ridiculous movies. It started with "Dumb Wars," a parody of Star Wars. We had to be in third grade or something, and one day after school a bunch of us little somethingth-graders were acting out this whole Star Wars parody. The next day a bunch of us decided to get together and act it out before the video camera. Others followed, including a magic act, a tribute to the '70s, and the campy "Pigzilla."

A few years later, Reid was in an acting company for kids. We even made a few class field trips out of his plays. He was like the star of junior high... I guess. Then, after eighth grade, he went to an art school to study acting, and the last I talked to him, he was having a blast there. How cool is that? It's been fun to look back and see his transformation into a real live actor. I hope he pursues his dream further and wins an Oscar or something. Now I'm really starting to sound like some teacher signing a kid's yearbook, so let's just cut to the links.

Here's how the constitution of the Confederate States compared to that of the United States. Speaking of which, one blogger out there echoes my feelings by asking why the heck the Confederate flag is such an accessory, and in New Jersey, no less.

I guarantee this is the weirdest thing you'll see today (at least on YouTube, anyway): sock puppets speaking Esperanto. For what it's worth, their pronunciation is good and their grammar is okay.

One year ago: "Now figure out this English-language colloquialism translated into Esperanto: 'Mi ne havas vivon.'"