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Slashdot turned 5 today, which really isn't that long of a time in the grand
scheme of things. But I've been visiting for probably 3 or so years, and it's
still my homepage. I also have to credit /. for getting me into Linux, as that's
where I always heard about how great it was. Not to mention I find many of the
stories I link to on here on Slashdot. So
Happy Birthday to Slashdot!
There's an interesting article about Fark on a
webzine; how the website got started and an interview with the webmaster. If
you're a fan of the kooky website (who can't love the photoshop
threads) then you'll enjoy the article.
Rebate checks rule! I'm finally getting them in from the stuff I bought back in
August.
It's been a fun weekend. Thursday two good friends from high school came and
visited, so it was a wild night of partying and Pokey sticks (oh the ever
glorious pokey stick! (suprisingly there is not some "Bestest Fanpage for the
Pokey Stick Website!" that I could find, so basically a pokey stick is some
really good breadsticks that Gumby's
makes.)) and walking around campus at 4 in the morning. Thank goodness for no
class till noon. Friday went to the mall to reserve DDR Max when it
comes out in November, and then ate some great Mexican food. Saturday I went to
a play with a friend of mine, which was quite good. It was 3 seperate but
semi-intertwined plays about delusions, and while it was VERY long (a total of 3
and a half hours) it was really cool. It's what I love about college, being able
to see plays and stuff for muy cheap, and only a 5 minute walk from my dorm.
Today was studying for my huge digital logic and physics tests on Wednesday
though, so I spent a lot of time in the library. I know that place faaaaaar too
well for my own good.
Napster: The Movie! Coming
to a MTV near you. At least it's somewhat music related, unlike most of the
other crap they show on MTV. It was rough in the pre-Napster days. You yougin's
don't know how good you have it.
If anyone is subscribed to Salon
Premium, be sure to check out their
article on the war with Iraq. It's an opinion piece about the dangers and
risks, but also the rewards of going to war with Iraq. It talks a lot about how
Iraq is a threat, that Saddam isn't quite all mentally there, but also that it
would pose huge risks into destablizing the region and causing a lot more hatred
toward America. Really great article, but it does require that $30 a year
payment to read, which IMHO is well worth it for Salon's great writing.
I'll never understand females.
Two major tests this past Wednesday in physics and digital logic, and then two
more tests Tuesday in Statics and Discrete. Midterms.... ugh. Discrete is the
one I'm the most worried about, since that class tries to make the logical
illogical. Where you can count an infinite set of numbers. Where they make
division into a confusing proof and turn common-sense into mishmash. It's crazy.
So much studying this weekend for that.
I recieved my absentee ballot in the mail today. I really ought to just say my
residence is in Gainesville since I consider it my "home" and legislation here
affects me a lot more than Tampa legislation does. But for the Nov. 5 elections
I'm registered as living in Tampa, so I requested my absentee ballot a month or
so ago and they mailed them at the beginning of the month. There's a bunch of
admendments on it, some I've heard of (banning smoking in restaurants) and
others I hadn't (animal cruelty to pigs). So needless to say I have a lot of
research to do, to find out what exactly I'm voting on, and who I want to vote
for. Since I consider myself one of those "moderate" voters, I don't like
voting a straight Republican/Democrat ticket. I want to see what they really
stand for. It's one of the nice things about absentee voting, I can search on
Google for different viewpoints and have time to think about what I'm choosing
instead of semi-randomely choosing something in a voting booth. Google's been
extremely helpful in this regard. And speaking of Google, gotta love Google News
Also went to an orchestra concert tonight, which was really cool. A guy on my
floor was the first chair for cello, so my RA organized a walkover to see it.
This is why I love college, free interesting stuff is only a 10 minute walk
away.
Midnight Madness is tomorrow night, so looking forward to that. Go
Gators!
While looking up the proof to the most beautiful equation in math, e^(i pi)-1=0, I came across this
site which debates is better: e or pi. Personally I'm a fan of pi. e is just too funky for my tastes. I
do like calculus with e though, since it's so easy to differentiate.
And speaking of math, I have a discrete math test tomorrow (hence why I'm
updating, I don't have to study then :)) which I can sum up pretty well by this
quote: "Mathematics consists of proving the most obvious thing in the least
obvious way." - George Poly�. The whole test is pretty much proving various
things that make logical sense, but when you actually try to prove that a set is
infinite countable, or prove that the big-O of an nth degree polynomial function
is x^n it gets really messy. So any future computer engineers/scientists, you
have been warned. It's also one of those courses where you can think you aced
it, and it up getting a 50. Happened to me on the last 2 quizes. In better news
though, with the curve on our test, I got a 100 on my digital logic midterm,
which gives me a 100 average for the course midway through. So I'm muy happy
about that :)
Midnight Madness on Friday was awesome. I went with a few friends and had a lot
of fun. I'm definitly looking forward to the basketball season, which starts in
early November, especially now that our football team is doing so miserable. Of
course I've always like basketball more than football, and would have gladly
given up my football season tickets for a guarenteed seat in the Rowdy Reptile
section each basketball game. Instead I get to stand outside the O'Connell
center for 4 hours before the game, but stand I shall! Go Gators!
I hate it when people use those handless cell phone adapters while walking. It
looks like they're talking to themselves (or maybe to you?) until you get close
enough to see that they're actually talking into a microphone hanging from their
ear. And on a related note, I also don't like when you're walking and you hear a
"Hey!" right behind you, only to turn around and relieze it was someone just
talking on their cell phone. Happens way too often. Or mabye I'm just spiteful
since I don't have a cell phone. Of course I never use the phone anyways, so I'm
not sure what good a cell phone would do me. What I need is portable AIM, and
none of this text-messaging type stuff, I need a full portable keyboard. Yep
yep.
That wonderful little law known as the DMCA is
back, this time preventing a Linux kernel security patch from being fully
explained to US
citizens. You can still download the patch, but "RHSA-2002-158 is an errata
kernel which addresses certain security vulnerabilities. Quite simply, these
vulnerabilities were discovered and documented by ppl outside of the US, and due
to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act legislation in the US, it is potentially
dangerous to disclose any information on security vulnerabilities, which may
also be used in order to circumvent digital security - i.e. computer security."
So to find out (legally) what those security vulnerablities were and how it was
fixed, you can't be a US citizen. If you're willing to risk prosecution however,
you can get it from TheFreeWorld.net after you click
through a waiver saying you aren't a US citizen. When will we stop passing
stupid laws?!?!
Need an arguement settled? GoogleFight is your answer. At least if
finally proves that the pen is mighter than the sword.
It's been
exactly one year since October 19, 2001. Just FYI.
It's that time of the year again to make up the schedules for next semester, and
so I'm trying to figure out what to take. I found out that with just two extra
4000 level math courses, I can get a math minor, and those extra courses will
even count toward my computer engineering major. Plus there are several
interesting sounding math courses that I'd like to try, though I"m worried they
may be a bit hard. Intro to Number Theory would teach cryptography and hashing,
and then Theory of Computing would deal with turning machines, finite and
infinite state machines, and other cool topics. So I'm leaning toward getting it
since I think it'd be interesting and a nice little addition to my resume. I'm
such a nerd :)
As for the classes I'll be taking next semester:
Intro to Computer Organization
Data Structures
Intro to Computational Analysis
Circuits 1 w/ Lab
For a total of 13 hours, which is the fewest number of hours I've taken so far
in college. Should be an interesting semester though.
Someone is looking into the future, and into the time when we can download
our minds into a computer. He figures that by 2039 it'll be possible to put
our minds into silicon, thus making humans immortal and infinitly more powerful
than we've ever been before. It's a facinating 18 minute radio piece and well
worth a listen to if you're wanting to know what some of the top minds in
computer science are visionizing for the future. Some even see putting our minds
onto silicon as the next evolution of humanity. Absolutly facinating topic to
me, and one where I look forward to see what ends up happening.
I did my voting today ,via absentee ballot. It let me use Google to try and
figure out who I really wanted to vote for, and so I ended up voting about
evenly for Republican and Democratic canidates. For governor I went with McBride
since Florida schools are horrible and Bush with that stupid FCAT isnt' helping
matters. McBride isn't much better, but at least he's not Bush. I hate
standarized testing, I think it proves nothing and is a complete waste of time
for anyone who isn't failing regular classes. Plus I didn't like how Bush
planned to "decieve" Floridians and that he thinks gay couples shouldn't be
allowed to adopt. The other offices I'd either had no idea what they did or had
never heard of the canidates, so the Internet was incredibly helpful once again.
There were also a ton of amendments to the Florida constitution to vote on, some
of which I think had no place being in the consitution to begin with. As one
site put it, "If you want pigs to be constitutionally protected, vote yes.
Otherwise vote no". Pigs are important and all, but it doesn't belong in the
state consitution. My favorite amendment was the one saying that any future
amendment would have to lay out how much it would cost on the ballot, so that
way we wouldnt' get people voting for that stupid high-speed rail system that
costs millions of dollars we don't have, but gee golly it sure sounds cool so
let's all vote yes! Which is also why I voted no to the amendment to limit class
sizes. Sure it's a good idea, but where do you get the money for this? It's much
better for something like that to be made a law rather than in the consitution.
All in all it took about a good hour or so to complete the ballot, and it was
pretty cool since it was my first time to ever vote in a "real" election. Every
vote counts, because it's a lot of single votes that make up a majority (or
minority). So be sure to vote on Nov 5th if you aren't doing absentee voting,
enjoy your freedom of living in a democratic society!
ThinkGeek got a make-over the other day, so
the site looks a lot cleaner now. If any of my friends are reading this and
there's some event where you want to get me some kind of gift but don't know
what, either check out ThinkGeek for ideas or just get me a gift certificate
from them :)
Reason #83490230 why I love college: Getting pizza delivered at 5 in the morning
and there are still people up to eat it.
Tom the Dancing Bug has a good comic this week that sums pretty much everyone's
experiance
with middle school.
I saw My
Big Fat Greek Wedding this evening, and absolutly loved it. It shows life in
any large family pretty accuratly, as I know I've seen a lot of the same stuff
happen in my extended family since both my parents come from large families.
Considering it originally opened in April, and was released nation-wide in June,
it's still going really strong for being late October, and it's definitly worth
seeing.
Happy Halloween!!!
Ok, lots and lots to tell about, so it's gonna be a big update? Ready? Set?
Go!
Yesterday (30th) we had Haunted Hume, where we decorated our dorm floor to have
a bunch of kids from the Boys and Girls Club come and
trick and treat through the dorms. So over the course of the previous week we'd
been coming up with ideas and decorating and stuff, and finally decided on a
psycho-insane-asylum theme. So a bunch of the guys got ripped white tshirts, put
fake blood all over the shirts and their faces, and ran around trying to scare
the kids in a strobe light and darkness. I was one of the candy passer-outer
persons (in a hall with glow in the dark spiderwebs and black lights), so I got
to see the affects of the scaring, which in some cases made some of the littler
kids cry, which wasn't cool. But we did an awesome job, and ended up placing 2nd
out of 18 floors in Hume, which means pizza party for us! And it was so much fun
decorating and then doing the haunted house.
Then in the after-party for all the dorm residents, I got peer-pressured into
joining a pumpkin pie eating contest. I now NEVER want to eat pumpkin pie again
(or at least until Thanksgiving, whichever comes first). We couldn't use our
hands, so we had to dive in face first to try and be the first to eat an entire
pie. I got a little over halfway through before I just couldn't eat anymore and
keep it down, but it was quite an interesting experience since it was my first
food eating contest. The girl across from me decided to shove my whole head in
the pie though, and so it got up my nose and so now everything smells like
pumpkin pie. Not cool, not cool at all. But such is the price to pay for some
fun :) UPDATE: I've added the pictures to the Hume page
They also had a costume contest, with first prize going to a guy who dressed up
as "Box Man". He had wooden boxes (with no sides, just the framework) around
both his feet, both his hands, around his torso, and around his head. He had to
waddle everythwere cause he couldn't really move in it. Definititly one of the
most interesting costumes I've seen. Jesus then won for scariest costume,
probably just cause of the absurdity of Jesus being in a Scariest Costume
contest. But I dunno, Jesus is mightly scary....
And now Halloween day!
It is true, nerds to get the girl in the end! :)
Me and a friend of mine got
tickets to see Bat Boy: The
Musical on Halloween night. So we wanted to dress up, and I was thinking
about being a nerd (cause I mean come on, I AM nerd, so it'd be easy and I'd get
to unleash my nerdality), and she said she wanted to wear this nice dress that
she hadn't had an occasion to wear to yet. But as all nerds know, hot girls do
not do things with nerds. So she suggested that I be the nerd that finally got
the hot girl, so we went on a "date" to see Bat Boy with me being the nerd
(complete with taped glasses, pocket protector, hiked up pants, the works) and
she being the hot girl. The play was awesome, and she did the hot girl part very
very well. I got a lot of good compliments on
my "costume", and had a blast the entire night. Definitly one of the best
Halloween's ever.
Pumpkin Pi :)
Having the H-Bomb would be
nice, though I'd wonder about any girl who would only start to pay attention to
me because of the school I go to. Somehow I'm not suprised that though that
saying you're from Harvard gets you girls (or at least the money-grubbing
materalistic kind). Interesting article though.
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