Category - TWoS

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!

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are ten fun facts about dreams.

So, Tim Tebow won the Heisman Trophy. How about that? America's best college football player is right here at the University of Florida. And I seem to been bitten by the Tebow bug. How about that? I even changed The World of Stuff's logo subtly:

For those of you wondering whether I changed the site's name to The Woroned of Fivetuff, Tim Tebow's jersey number is 15. Now you know.

I finally finished my paper for America in the Fifties today. Coincidentally, it was due today. Anyway, it's a relief to have it done. The only thing I have left to worry about is my calculus exam on Thursday. And selling my textbooks. And buying ones for next semester. And deciding where I should live next year. And...

It's been almost a week since classes ended, and it's been fun not having to wake up early. Yesterday my suitemates had a barbecue out behind the dorm. You can't really have a barbecue on a Monday night, normally. After that, we went in and watched TV in the common room. We ended up settling on a show about gangs in LA. We joked about forming our own gang called the East Side Deuces (Hume East 2nd floor 4 lyfe, y'all.) Surprisingly, a Google search for "East Side Deuces" yields two hits.

Then my roommate made the mistake of trying to drink a can of Diet Dr Pepper that someone had left out with a sign that said "Free!" "That's odd," I said, "the can design doesn't look like that anymore." I checked the expiration date. The soda was three years old. Crazy times...

A few months ago, I mentioned that the state of Florida was having a contest to replace its state song, which has a catchy tune but is pretty racist in its lyrics. Today, the three finalists went up for voting by the public. Here's what I thought of each one.

• "Florida (Where the Sawgrass Meets the Sky)" - The lyrics are pretty nice, but the song seems overproduced. It sounds more like a pop song than it should. The vocal range for these submissions was supposed to be pretty narrow, but I can't imagine trying to sing this one.
• "Florida, My Home" - Pretty boring and includes references to a god. Why trade one offensive song for another? The new song should be inclusive to all Floridians.
• "My Florida Home" - Even though the lyrics are a little vague, I thought this one sounded the most like a state song should. I like how it features the word "home" prominently in the lyrics.

The voting continues till January 9.

I Am a Host at the Olive Garden is a series of comics a guy drew while he was a host at the Olive Garden. They're about being a host at the Olive Garden.

Check out The History of Lolcats, a documentary by Ben Burrns. Having recently seen part of "Eyes on the Prize," I can't help but notice how Dr. Flufflesworth, D.F.A., sounds like that guy with the eye patch.

On Monday night, I went to see Less Than Jake play a show on Flavet Field, which is a short walk from my dorm. I'm not that big into ska, but my friend Sean is, so he came all the way up from UCF to see them for the seventh time. Since Less Than Jake was the headliner, I first listened to the opening acts, which were The Expendables, Reel Big Fish, and Pepper. Of those three, I had only heard of Reel Big Fish, but they all put on a good show. Between the second and third acts, I got hungry and went to the dining hall for a bite to eat. I didn't miss much, though.

But yeah, Less Than Jake was a real crowd-pleaser. Sean was up in the front the whole time, and he almost got to go onstage. They were picking out a random single guy and girl from the audience. They asked the guy and the girl to make out while they were playing a song, and the two strangers obliged. Then the girl pulled another girl onto the stage and they started making out. Such is the power that ska has over people. I must say, it does get the toes a-tappin'. I really had a good time, even though I didn't skank. I'd probably see Less Than Jake again.

Speaking of bands that I really don't know that well: about a year ago, a waitress at Chili's said I looked like Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance... "when he had dark hair." Not like I was familiar with the guy anyway. And what's stranger is that a few other people I met also thought I looked like him. Have a look for yourself:

The other day, I was walking back to my dorm from class when a guy on a bike stopped beside me and said I looked like Adam Jones of Tool. He said that with my long hair and everything, I could pass for the guy's brother. I didn't know who Adam Jones was, but I mentioned that some people thought I looked like the guy from My Chemical Romance. He didn't know who Gerard Way was either. But I do kind of look like Adam Jones:

(Oh yeah, and there's a picture of me on the About Me page.)

The people have spoken! Just in time for the holidays, you can get World of Stuff gear at the World of Stuff Store. Available for purchase are T-shirts, tank tops, and sweatshirts with the "Property of" design I posted recently, but if people will actually buy this stuff, maybe I'll think of some other things to add.

And for your information, here's how the store works. It's run by CafePress. You order through them, and they fill the order -- I have nothing to do with it except that I get a cut of the profit. All the money I make will go toward running the web site. So check out the World of Stuff Store and see what I currently have to offer.

Here are 20 weird English words with their definitions. I had heard of about three of them. Number 7 should be "limerence."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are some fascinating facts about food coloring!

My inbox was busy today. Earlier this afternoon, I got a notice from my web host saying that the balance in my account was down to $1. I didn't think much of it; I get charged for bandwidth and storage (usually around 10¢ per day), and then I make another deposit, and the cycle continues. I also got a large number of e-mails (3) about The Dvorak Keyboard and You, but I didn't think much of that either. After coming home from dinner this evening, I put two and two together. I had another e-mail from my web host in my inbox: my balance had gone down to 50¢ in less than 5 hours. I was being Slashdotted. Or Dugg. Or attacked. Or something.

Immediately, I checked my bandwidth and storage stats. Today's bandwidth use was about 10 times the average, and my storage was also climbing high. I combed through the latest access logs, and it didn't take me long before I saw that lots of hits were coming to The Dvorak Keyboard and You from del.icio.us and reddit, two very popular web sites. The page has also been mentioned on a thread on Fark. It seems that there have been so many hits that my access log was causing the drastic increase in storage.

I had to act, and fast. It sounds cheesy, but it's true. I made an emergency payment which should be enough. I could have bought bandwidth in bulk, but I don't think the influx of hits will last long enough to warrant that. I just needed to keep my balance from hitting $0, at which time the site would be disabled. We wouldn't want that to happen, now would we? I'd get even more e-mails about the site being down, and I'd be like, "I know, guys." Unless, by chance, I didn't happen to check my e-mail after dinner tonight, in which case I'd be in for a nasty surprise come morning.

As of this writing, The Dvorak Keyboard and You is #12 on the front page of del.icio.us, #31 on reddit, which puts it on page 2, and #2 in reddit's programming category. And the question is: why? The Dvorak Keyboard and You has long been bookmarked by del.icio.us readers, and only now is it enjoying its fifteen minutes. That's just the way the web works, I guess. The wisdom of crowds.

So, to you new readers that I've tried to lure in from the Dvorak page... welcome... if there are any of you, that is. (If you just found my site from the Dvorak page, post a comment and say hello!) I usually don't blog about my site very much, although I do have a category for it. Usually I talk about my life, and people think it's cool and/or entertaining, so they stick around. Okay, now what's something interesting that's happened to me in the past few days? Well, I was planning on asking a girl out on what would be my first date. Yeah, say what you want; everyone else has. (Actually, they haven't.) Stay tuned as this story unfolds.

Then I usually have a few links that I think are interesting. Here's the first one: Wikipedia's list of film sequels by box-office improvement. Apparently a lot of sequels actually make more money than their predecessors.

Fine Art Taco Photography. And you thought this site was weird.

Regular readers: Am I crazy for assuming that so many new visitors are going to be reading this? What if they're not? That could be kind of embarrassing, but I can't say it hasn't happened before.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

15 Stunning Images Using Blur to Portray Movement.

The Change Contest is over. I know you're eager to find out who won. But first...

My going-away party was last night. Hardly anyone I invited actually showed up (thanks to those who did), but there were a lot of people overall. The party was also for my sister, who's going to college, and my grandparents, who are moving. The place was packed. There was lots of food, and there still is. Everybody had a good time. There was so much going on that it couldn't all be contained indoors, so a lot of the party moved outside, where there were all sorts of tables and chairs. Some people stayed inside to watch the football game. Luke tried to play leapfrog with a frog. We talked about plans to go to Miami on Wednesday (everyone is invited, even you). As the night grew late, Luke found out about the Driveway-A-Thon and insisted that another driveway endurance contest be held. He, Justin, TJ, and I participtaed. Luke won, staying on the driveway continuously for exactly 3 minutes.

Today I went to the grocery store to turn my change into cash. Yes, I know the bank does this, but I can't get to the bank without a car, and I'd probably have to roll all that change, which I'd really rather not do. Plus, I already did this, so it's too late for you to criticize me. Anyway, I got to the machine and was amazed by how simple the process was. I had expected to be standing there for hours placing each coin in a slot one by one. No. You just dump 'em in. It only took a few seconds to do that. Then the machine counts. It's really noisy, but it only takes a few moments. Once it determines how much you've got, it gives you a receipt that you can redeem for cash. There's an 8% service charge, but it's better than the 8.9% charge that the other grocery store's machine imposes.

I had my own guess for this contest, and it was based on the amount I had counted when the jar was a little more than halfway full. It was a long time ago, but I remember that the amount then was around $50. So I figured that with the jar mostly full, the amount of money inside would be about $75.

The actual amount of change in the jar was $77.14. Congratulations to Mark Myers, whose guess of $78.87 was off by only $1.73! He gets to write a post about whatever he likes, if he wants to. (And if he doesn't, then I suppose the runner-up can have the honors.)

In second place was Todd, who guessed $2.86 too high, followed by Natasha, whose guess was $3.04 low. Not bad for people who don't use US currency. (They're both Canadian.) Of the 14 valid guesses, the average amount guessed was $64.23, and the median guess was $68.23. Gilbert's guess of $15 was less than 20% of the actual amount. The highest guess, Daniel's $100.44, was more than 130% of the actual amount.

Thanks to everyone for participating in the contest. It's been a lot of fun. Plus, I now have an extra $70!

I knew that Weezer had two eponymous (self-titled) albums, but I didn't know that there were so many other artists with multiple self-titled albums.

Domain hacks, like blo.gs and del.icio.us, are cool. Here's a search utility for domain hacks. There are two for "theworldofstuff": theworldof.st/uff/ and theworl.do/fstuff/. It looks like those domain names are available, too.