Category - School

A lot has happened in the past week.

I had a physics test on Tuesday. I needed to study a lot for it, because I got only 12 out of 20 right on the first test. Luckily, my physics professors know how hard their class is, so a 60% is only a C+ (at my junior high it would have been a solid F). Still, I don't like C's or even B's. (Maybe I should mention here that you're allowed to have a handwritten cheat sheet for each test. I got a 60 with a cheat sheet.) So all the time I spent copying formulas and the answers to common problems paid off, because I got a 15 out of 20 - a B. I now have a B in the class. Yay.

I had a date planned for two Fridays ago, but it got postponed. A few minutes after sending off my last post, I rescheduled. We agreed Friday night.

On Wednesday, I did the whole "Are we still on for Friday?" thing. You know, where you... ask if you're still on for Friday. She said yeah, and that she'd like to bring a friend along. Oh crap. I try so hard to make my intentions made clear without looking like a jerk or a fool, but apparently I don't try hard enough. So I'm like, well, I think it should be just you and me... And she's all, oh, so it's like a date? And I'm, well, yeah... And she goes, oh, sorry, I'm not... whatever whatever. So I'm like, that's cool, you can bring your friend. And she's all, okay.

I was very disappointed about that. I've been trying all year, and I've still never been on a date. I talked about it to my friend Daniel, and he sent me some e-books on how to pick up girls and communicate with people and things like that. The one about girls caught my interest. It was from a guy in the seduction community, which I had only ever heard of on Wikipedia. Basically, it's a loosely-knit group of people who practice the art of picking up women. This one guy's recommendation was that you stand out and play hard to get. Well, everybody tells you to do that, but he explained it in detail. According to him, you have to say something crazy to get her attention, tell lots of interesting stories, and then act like you don't give a care about her. I mean, there's more to it than that, but that's basically it. If you do it like he says, then she's supposed to be begging for your phone number as you come up with excuse after excuse not to give it to her, only to divulge it finally after she's practically grabbing your arm. Or whatever.

Besides being awfully manipulative, it requires you to act like someone you're not, which is not only dishonest but also a lot of work. Although, I have to say, acting like myself isn't working well at all. There's got to be some sort of middle way where I can still be myself, but in a better way. I hope I can gleam some valuable information from the other e-books, which I haven't read too much of yet. The other one I've read most of is about body language. I find it interesting because I can't read body language at all. I'm hardly ever aware that someone may be using body language to convey feelings other than what they're expressing verbally.

There's just so much I have to think about. I could probably follow that one book to the letter and take a girl home every night, but I wouldn't like it. I probably should make a habit of approaching random girls -- I'm sure not meeting many as it is -- but how do I go about it? Should I continue to act the way I am even though it frustrates me in ways you can't possibly imagine? Should I pretend to be something I'm not? Should I actually change? Why should I even have to read these books anyway? It makes me feel like less of a man that I can't do these things myself. It's like I was born not knowing how to engage in social interaction.

Once I read an article or something that said how smart children are treated differently by adults. They don't spend as much time fostering the children's emotional and social development as much as they do with other kids because they think that the smart kids are just so precocious that they don't need their help. But it's not true. The result is that you have smart, neglected kids who can't do anything. So the article went. I wonder if I can find it.

So, maybe I need to practice reading body language and doing things like that. Actually, while I'm at it, why don't I go off on this tangent: Kissing sucks. Actually, I don't know whether it sucks, but here's what sucks about it. Being a good kisser is a great thing, and if you're not, everyone you ever love will hate you. That's a given. There are good kissers, and there are bad kissers (so I hear). But the thing is, you can't practice. I've never slipped anyone the tongue. How will I know what to do? Oh, easy, just read a book about it. Okay, but I'm thinking of the stereotypical comparison of learning to ride a bike. Imagine that you only learn how to ride a bike by reading a book. Then one day, the local volcano erupts, and you need to use your bike to make a speedy escape. You'd better make damn sure you read that book thoroughly.

Okay, so, I decided to go on the non-date which we still had scheduled. I got to restaurant in about half the time I thought it would take, so I was just sitting at a street corner for a while watching the cars and people go by. Behind me was the university, and across the street was the Outside World. A car came out of the university and slowed down as it passed me. The car was full of girls, about four of them. It looked like they were going to ask me for directions, so I got ready to point.

The one in the back on the passenger side spoke: "Excuse me, which way is UF?"

"...It's right behind you," I said, pointing backwards, but they didn't want to hear. They just kept going. Then I said something that they definitely wouldn't have wanted to hear.

Girls, man.

What is it about me that makes me like a human punching bag?

So, anyway, tonight we went to Tijuana Flats -- a "fast casual" Mexican place that I love -- for dinner, with the girl's friend, who I had seen around. We ordered, ate, and had some light conversation. It was rather uneventful, and I had a good feeling that I could have pulled off a nice evening without the extra friend there.

They said they were going to go to a concert afterward, and I didn't really want to do that, but when they said it was on campus, I figured I'd go along. It was at the student union, where there's an amphitheater in front of a lake. It's pretty nice. The first guy had a loud guitar, and he played drums with foot pedals. Other than his singing, he sounded like the White Stripes. The next guy was a little more talented; he played the acoustic guitar and was very rhythmic with it. Finally, there was the headliner: she was the woman who did a lot of the soundtrack for Juno, a movie I actually saw. So some of the songs, sung with her distinctive voice, were familiar. But they were all captivating and entertaining. Her name was Kimya Dawson.

She was very funny, and it turned out that the tour was a family affair: the first guy playing was her husband, and the second was a good friend who got a namecheck in one of the songs in Juno (which prompted his local newspaper to publish a story saying that an area songwriter's name would be mentioned in a song in an upcoming movie). At one point, she had people in the audience raise their hands to request songs. A big group of people raised their hands together, and they requested a song of hers and asked if they could go down and dance to it. She let them. There were about twelve of them, and as she did this moderate-tempo acousting number, they were swing dancing and generally flailing about randomly. Then she asked anybody who had ever dreamed of auditioning for Annie to come down and sing "Tomorrow" with her a cappella. A lot of people did. Finally, a huge number of people came down to dance to her final number, and they continued to swarm around her and give her hugs long after her set ended.

During the set, my non-date and her friend had gotten about four other people to meet up with them, so I was now in a large group. There were a lot of things going on at the student union (they have a whole program of things to do on Friday nights to keep kids from going to parties, I guess), so a few people decided they wanted wax hands. I don't know if you've heard of them, but it's where they dip your hand in wax and then it hardens and you buy it for ten dollars. After waiting in line for an hour even though I didn't want a wax hand, I realized that the night was winding down, so I decided to leave right then. My non-date seemed to understand.

I visited my old high school today, less than a year after graduating. I was with my sister, my sister's friend Jennifer, and the (in)famous Ed. My friend Nick and his friend Tyler also joined us. This trip had been in the planning stages for a few days, but the timing was a little unfortunate. This week there was standardized testing in the morning, so we were limited to visiting in the afternoon. Actually, that wasn't so bad, since I don't think I would have been able to wake up early enough to visit in the morning. College does this to you.

So it was about maybe 1:30 when we got there. Ed said he had gotten immediately kicked out when he tried to visit twice in December, but we encountered no problems with anyone. We just went around saying hello to the teachers we wanted to see: Dr. Singkornrat, Dr. Shipe, Mr. Mumtaz, Ms. Scott, Ms. Boudinet, Mr. Chandler, Ms. Zambrano, Ms. Zolna, and maybe some others that I forgot. (Sorry, others!) They were all the same as ever. They tended to ask the same questions about college life and things like that. And when I told them I was majoring in computer science, they all said, "Oh, of course!" I'm smart, so I must be a computer nerd. Isn't that a stereotype?

Oh, and at least two people recognized me from Beowulf: The Movie and its sequel, which are now shown to every senior English class (except for the AP classes). Me and my Beowulf buddies are basically school celebrities. (Nick, who played Beowulf, says people recognize him all the time.)

Besides teachers, I had meant to see a few students, but I couldn't find the class they were in. I did, however, run into Allison, who I had lunch with over winter break. She was getting ready to go to a track meet.

After that, we went to lunch at Bru's Room, a sports bar. It was pretty empty, which meant no one was using the pool tables. We played Cutthroat, and through sheer luck, I won the only game that I took part in. (I'd previously had a 1-1 record.) The food was good. I'd only ever played pool there; it was my first time eating there.

Then Nick and Tyler had to part with us. On our way out, we saw Ms. McFadden, a guidance counselor of sorts, enter the restaurant, so we talked a bit and had that same old conversation about colleges and things. Then we went back to school (though classes had ended) because Ed wanted to see some coaches (he's an athletic guy). As we parked, a giant Bronco with huge tires came up. It was Reed, who went to our school a few years ago but dropped out or something. Last I heard (a few months ago), he was making money street racing, and he had a bunch of cars. Well, that was one of them.

While Ed and Reed chatted it up (or played monster truck derby), my sister, Jennifer, and I all roamed around school again. I met up with Susann, whom I was trying to find during school. She took me to Gaby, who practically tackled me with hugs. (They love me there.) Jen and Danae were also there, along with this guy Richard and some other people I didn't know as well. I had about 10 minutes with them, but then it was time to go, and that was the end of my big day visiting high school. I wish I could have seen more people, but hey, that's what the Internet's for, right?

Tomorrow: the beach!

You know, Christians and atheists do have a lot in common. Here are a few Gods We Don't Believe In.

Here's one of those crazy stories that you just can't believe: Retired Teacher Reveals He Was Illiterate Until Age 48.

Popular Science has a ranking of America's 50 Greenest Cities. Not surprisingly, Florida isn't represented at all.

It's the weekend!

On Friday, when 5:00 rolls around (the time I get out of my last class), I don't find myself very excited. Instead, I'm exhausted. These two-day weekends are too short. At least last semester I got done for the week at 10:30 on Friday morning. (I know what you're saying: I shouldn't complain because I have no classes on Tuesdays. But it doesn't feel like the weekend on Tuesdays because everyone else has to go to class, and because it's surrounded by Monday and Wednesday. Ugh. Don't even get me started about Wednesday.)

This weekend has been pretty interesting because my roommate's girlfriend came to visit. She's thinking of transferring here, in fact. She arrived on Thursday night and slept in our room. It felt a little odd at first. (She visited one weekend last semester, but I was away most of the time.) In any case, I'm glad to see that the two of them have spent time together. She's already left, actually. I hope she enjoyed her stay. (Actually, I know that she did.)

Random thought: I still can't believe I have a MySpace. Sure, I'm on MySpace constantly, but I don't feel quite like I fit in because I don't partake in the whole "make your profile take 20 minutes to load with semi-transparent images and animated GIFs and bad colors with your favorite song of the moment playing automatically, causing everyone who views your page to turn off their sound" thing.

I can believe I have a Facebook, though. My praises of Facebook still hold. Something I thought about Facebook immediately upon signing up was that it seemed to be "what MySpace wants to be when it grows up." And guess what? MySpace has been trying to grow up. Over the past few months, MySpace has been adding Facebook-like features such as statuses and photo-tagging. Now they're nagging everyone to enter their full name for search purposes, which is something many people haven't done in the past. (On Facebook, users go by their full names, while on MySpace, users can change their display name at will.) But the most interesting step is yet to come as MySpace has just announced that it's going to open its API to outside developers. Translation: Facebook-style apps on MySpace. Yeah.

Is it useful to have a profile on more than one social networking site? I would say yes. Each seems to have its strengths and weaknesses as well as different user bases. The recent finding that Facebook users are more likely to be college-educated than MySpace is mind-numbingly obvious. Facebook tends to be for my college friends and my friends in colleges, while MySpace tends to be for everyone else. In addition, some people just have favorites and spend more time on one than the other.

This whole social networking thing really places decreased relevance on high-school reunions, doesn't it? As a member the first social networking generation to graduate from high school, this remains to be seen. I'll find out in 2017.

So, I guess the Oscars are coming up or something? Here are 79 Years of Best Picture Winners in Posters.

The presidential candidates have been photographed countless times in the past year. Inevitably, some of those photos have been unflattering.

I might have posted something like this before, but it's worth posting again: World's Most Interesting Bridges, Part 2.

This picture makes my head hurt. Have a good look.

If you've hung around The World of Stuff for a while, you might be vaguely aware that one of its component pages is actually a separate web site in itself: flipacoin.net.

The oldest part of TWoS, predating the site itself, flipacoin.net was released to the world on August 21, 2002, after I thought it would be cool to have a web site where people could virtually flip virtual coins on the virtual web. It soon became boring to maintain. Over the years, I added coins infrequently. I figured it would never integrate well with TWoS since its catchy name happens to be based on its separate domain name, among other reasons.

Although I still thought it was a cool idea, I decided it was time for someone else to keep the dream alive because I really wasn't doing a very good job. In December, I posted a notice on the site asking for a new webmaster. Recently, an Australian named Brandon Zubek decided to take up the offer. Effective today, flipacoin.net is no longer under my ownership or control. Wish Brandon the best of luck, and keep flipping those coins!

In other news: My suitemate never came back after his suicide attempt last month. I haven't seen him since he was in the hospital. He's withdrawn from his classes for the semester, and Evan from down the hall has moved in to take his place. Evan didn't like his roommate very much, so he decided to move out without telling him. That's pretty funny, if you ask me. He's a cool guy, and I'm glad to be one of his suitemates. (My dorm is like this: two roommates go in one room, and two rooms plus a bathroom make one suite.)

Here's a video that zooms in on a part of the Mandelbrot Set, a well-known fractal. It's at least worth listening to for the catchy tune, which is also about the Mandelbrot Set.

Use the Weird Converter to convert between weird units of measure. Did you know that a newborn baby weighs as much as 20 hockey pucks?

Here's a page by a high-school student who was unhappy with the job the photographer did on his senior picture (including changing the color of his eyes) and decided to take a self-portrait that he thought was a lot better: Rip-off Photography.

I am sick, so nobody can kiss me today. Sounds like it's time for some stream-of-consciousness action.

I had some tests over the past few days. Last Wednesday, I had a test in my biology class and I did well. On Friday, I had a test in differential equations and got a pretty good grade. On Monday, I had a test in physics, and, well -- it counts as a C on their own special grading scale. Let's leave it at that. (Leaving it not at that, I just want to say that I'm glad that a B+ is between 80-90%.)

I've actually been sick since I woke up Monday. (Great way to start a Monday, isn't it?) Monday and yesterday it was a throat thing. Today it was a nose thing. There are no more tissues around here.

Random thought (I'm writing stream-of-consciousness-ly, so I'm allowed to inject random thoughts): If this is my fifth "Stream of Consciousness" post between November 18, 2005, and today, and the Super Bowl has occurred annually since 1967, then in what year will I write a stream of consciousness post that has the same Roman numeral as that year's Super Bowl? Express your answer as a year in Roman numerals.

(Note: I just want to test the idea that if a site has a sufficiently large fan base, then its loyal and devoted readers will do anything you ask them to. Or, at least, one of them will, anyway.)

How about that Super Bowl, anyway? I had an inkling that it would be the most-watched Super Bowl ever, and I was right. In fact, it was the second most watched TV program in American history, behind only the last episode of "M*A*S*H." (That's fun to type.) But anyway, I knew it would be an exciting game, no matter who won. What an upset for the previously undefeated Patriots. They'll be talking about that one for years to come. (And my poor roommate, who's originally from Massachusetts, wasn't very happy.)

Speaking of roommates and rooms, today was my day to sign up for housing for next year. I decided to stay in Hume Hall, and luckily, I won the lottery to stay. I even got to pick what room I could stay in (from a selection of a few). I chose a room on the opposite side of my same floor. I like being on the second floor. I don't have to spend too much time walking up and down the stairs.

Ah, there's nothing like a detailed entry about your web host's new bandwidth pricing policy to attract zero comments from readers. I'm starting to feel the savings now, though. I can actually watch my bandwidth costs go down. $0.9837 per gigabyte and falling, baby!

My sister's going home for the weekend, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to. Well, for one, I go away a lot as it is, and I think it's important for me to spend time here and socialize with my dorm-mates. Also, since I'm paying $tons to stay here, I might as well get my money's worth. On the other hand, it is nice to see my family. I'll probably still be sick on Friday, so I don't think I'm going to go home. (It's bad enough being sick and feeling awful, but being sick and feeling awful in a car for five hours? Bleah.)

And for those of you keeping score at home, this is my 899th post.

I guess the Oscars are coming up or something, so read about 6 Odd Moments in Oscar History.

More about that friggin' Super Bowl: If you watched the Super Bowl (I accidentally typed "bowel" there -- good thing I allow myself to correct typos in these kinds of posts), then you probably noticed a lot of advertising from Bridgestone, the tire company. Well, it turns out they're just trying to clean up their image in the face of a human rights lawsuit.

Science education in Florida's schools rather sucks. I should know because I was subjected to it for a few years recently. Okay, my school in particular wasn't so bad, but it could have been better. Anyway, there's a petition you can sign that aims to change that.

Now, time for some hot soup (of the ramen-like variety) and probably some rest. Ah, that sounds good. Oh, and a hot shower, too. Yeah. But not in that order.

As I write this, my bandwidth is now $0.9829 per gigabyte.

It's been a busy week. Last night I had a biology test. Tomorrow I have a differential equations test, and on Monday, a physics test. I wish all my tests weren't concentrated in such a short amount of time, but I guess it's better that I get them all over with within a week... only to be struck by another wave of tests a few weeks later.

Dayum. If you Google "lefty," Being Left-Handed is currently #7. How long will that last? I don't even know how it -- I mean, my lefty page -- is so popular. It's by no means extensive, and virtually no sites link to it. Come to think of it, I should probably add some information I read in Stanley Coren's "The Left-Hander Syndrome" for a high-school psychology paper in '04... which shows how recently I've updated the page. (I don't think I ever have, other than to remove some clip art and an animated GIF of my left hand in various annoying colors. If you remember that, I'm sorry.)

A few months ago, someone e-mailed me about an online quiz that they suggest I take. I checked it out, decided it was worthy of posting, and linked to it here. The other day, I got a surprisingly similar e-mail, addressed first to "Jordan" and later to "you guys," suggesting I take a similar quiz from the same site. The author says, "I thought would be perfect for your site. Especially in your geek section." The e-mail was from a live.ca address, and I think the first one was too (although it's not uncommon, being Canadian Hotmail and all). I don't have the text of the original e-mail handy, although I probably have it in one of my weekly system backups if you really, really care. (You don't care.) Well, I just thought that was weird. Does this quiz site employ manual spammers, or is it just a coincidence?

Enough asking questions. People have questions to Ask Jordon. Well, one person does, anyway.

Laura: what is your favorite restaraunt?

If we're talking about worldwide chains, Taco Bell can't be beat. I mean, beaten. I love Taco Bell and enjoy having one right on campus, a five-minute walk away.

"Washington Crossing the Delaware" is a poem in which each line is an anagram of the title. It rhymes and makes sense and everything. Pretty impressive.

Music these days is way too loud. Record producers want their songs to be the loudest, so they compress the sound, making the quiet parts as loud as the loud parts. Every valley is being exalted, and every hill made low. The result is music that's boring to listen to because there's no variety. Luckily, the Turn Me Up campaign is working to reverse this trend.

Check out the Secret Word of the Day web site every day to see what the secret word of the day is. When you hear the secret word, scream real loud!

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).

Tonight, Jack Kevorkian is speaking at UF. As an advocate (and erstwhile practitioner) of physician-assisted suicide, he's pretty controversial. Over the past week or so, the debate has been heating up around campus. As I walked past the facility where the former doctor is due to speak, I saw that there were seemingly makeshift "free speech zone" signs posted around. My sister reports that a plane is currently flying over campus with a banner saying that Planned Parenthood kills babies and Jack Kevorkian kills parents. I think we can expect about as much protest as there was when Alberto Gonzales spoke a few months ago. That is to say, a lot. Difference is, I'm actually going to this one.

Opinion: Terminally ill people in a sound state of mind should be able to put themselves out of their suffering. And why is it any of your business?

(Let the flames begin!)

From the Why-Don't-You-Join-a-Club Dept.: I went to the first few meetings of Gator Freethought hoping to have some intelligent discussion with freethinking Gators. But the meetings got increasingly boring as they tended to focus on yawners like philosophy. I didn't even go to the last few meetings, which were about morality and Nietzsche and things. Luckily, the student organization's "new year's resolution is to have more fun," and they're going to start the fun with a meet-and-greet on Thursday night at a local restaurant-type place.

The meeting after that will be just before Florida's presidential primary and will deal with how our religious beliefs (or lack thereof) will affect our choices in the polls. The next meeting will be around Valentine's day and will be a discussion on religion and dating. This is an issue that affects me (in fact, I've been meaning to complain about it here), so I'll be sure to attend... unless I have a date. In fact, I've figured that going to Gator Freethought meetings is probably the best way to meet a sweet atheist (or agnostic -- I'm not that picky) girl, so it should be really interesting to see what other people in my situation have done or are doing.

If you're a freak who notices every single little change I make on this site, you'll know that last week, I changed the Creative Commons license for this site to allow commercial use of my content. (Previously, commercial use without special permission was prohibited. Attributing to me and sharing alike -- that is, releasing the derivative work under the same license -- are still required.) Here's a brief summary of the old license, and here's a summary of the new one.

Why the change? I've occasionally gotten requests for commercial use of my images, which, because they were prohibited by the old license, had to be approved by me on a case-by-case basis. To give a recent example, the Piute County (Utah) Chamber of Commerce asked to use my image of a $1 bill signed by former U.S. Treasurer and Piute County native Ivy Baker Priest. I decided to allow their use of the image as long as they credited me and my web site. Every time someone asks for special permission to use my stuff commercially, I allow them to do it, so I figured I'd change the license to allow it in general.

Some people might be concerned about this apparent display of flip-floppery. Most of the content that was under the old license is now under the new one. Which license applies? It depends on when you accessed the content. If you saved an old copy of an article or post from this site, that copy still falls under the old license. But if you access that same sexy article today, the new license (which has fewer restrictions) applies.

You've probably heard a lot about the OOXML standardization debate, but it's all very confusing. Here's an overview of the ISO standardization process that OOXML is attempting to go through.

Read some stupid essays by some guy. They don't look like they were really printed out and graded by an actual teacher, but they're still funny.

Here's a film from 1967 (confirmed authentic by Snopes) reporting on what technology would be like in A.D. 1999.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I've known about geocaching for a long time, but until recently, I'd never actually done it. Basically, geocaching is where you hide a small box with little things in it and post its coordinates on the Internet so people can try to find it. People who find your cache can sign a log in the box and swap out whatever little trinkets you have in there. It's for people who like treasure hunting and going out into the wilderness and things like that.

My suitemates Adam and Cameron recently found out about geocaching, and one of the first things we did together when we got back from winter break on Sunday was to look for some caches in the woods next to our dorm. Cameron had seen on the geocaching web site that there were two there. With their coordinates programmed into his GPS, we set out to find them. Adam found the first one in a tree that had fallen over. That one was pretty easy. Searching for the next one was pretty interesting because it took us to an area we didn't even know existed; it was pretty scenic, like a park.

The spot where the cache was supposed to be was near a boardwalk, so we looked over and around it and in the surrounding woods, but to no avail. Finally, Cameron found a hidden container with a few things in it -- but it wasn't a geocache. It was a letterbox; letterboxing is similar to geocaching, but this wasn't the cache that Cameron had found out about online. The notebook inside indicated that it had been placed earlier that same day.

So the search continued. Eventually, I found a box that was hidden along the side of the boardwalk; it was the same color as the wood, so it was camouflaged very well. That was the geocache we were looking for. According to the log inside, numerous people had found it over the past few years.

It only goes to show how popular geocaching and letterboxing are. Maybe I should get into it. I do have a GPS receiver at home that I never found much use for. And if we were able to find two (actually three) caches in such a small area, I can't even imagine how many there must be all over town. (Actually, if I went to the geocaching web site, I could look it up, and then I would be able to imagine it.) And, of course, it would be cool if I hid my own cache somewhere and checked back to see if people had found it. It's a cool idea.

Buying textbooks is kind of crazy. Luckily, my purchases were covered under my financial aid, but that doesn't mean that things had to go smoothly. As I picked up my order from the bookstore on Monday, they gave me the wrong Physics books; I was supposed to get parts 1 and 2 of the textbook when instead I got parts 3 and 4. Unfortunately, I didn't notice till I had gotten back to my dorm, so going back and trying to explain the situation was a big hassle. I got the books I needed, and to give back the ones I didn't, I was redirected to the return and exchange line, which started outside the door of the store. My new books set off the anti-theft alarm. Lovely, right?

So I'm trying to explain to the security guard why it seems like I'm stealing these books. I don't think he really suspected that, but when you have a store security guard saying "Let me get this straight..." to a long-haired college kid in a Rolling Stones t-shirt, it tends to look suspicious. Once I managed to explain that I paid for parts 1 and 2 and needed to return parts 3 and 4, they held the new books for me (standard procedure, y'understand) while I waited in line to give back the books I didn't need. Finally, when I got the cashier there to understand what was going on, he deactivated the bar code on my new books, which a staff member had brought over, and took back the books I got by mistake.

I should have kept them for next year.

I haven't had much luck selling my books. I managed to unload my chemistry book, but my calculus book is now out of date, and nobody wants the old edition. I did sell my course pack for Social Geography, though; I pulled it off by standing outside the class as it got out on Tuesday and asking if people wanted to buy it. I was asking $50, but the guy I was talking to only had $45, so I took that. Not bad for a $63 book.

New feature: when comment on a post, you can now choose to be notified of future comments on the post via e-mail. I've tested it out, and it seems to work, so give it a try. With each e-mail, you'll be provided a link to manage your subscriptions and even change your subscription e-mail address. As usual, your address is safe with me; it won't be given to anyone ever in any way. I enjoy this feature when it's employed on other blogs (such as mcgees.org and now All About Me - And Then Some), and I think you'll enjoy it on The World of Stuff. Hopefully, it will encourage commenting, discussion, and "first post" comments. That would be awesome.

If passed by the House of Representatives, H.R. 888 would be a grave insult to non-Christians and everyone who cares about separation of church and state in America. Joshua McGee says it better than I ever could.

Diamond-encrusted gadgets are always tacky. Here's Wired's list of The Worst Diamond-Encrusted Gadgets Of All Time.

Here's a pretty cool periodic table.