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4 months of pictures got developed today, and I got them on a CD to save time to
scan them, so huge picture update today.
First various miscellanous pictures of miscellanous things.
Darth Gator!
Real alligator in a pond by my dorm
My roommate on his computer being all nerd
like
My desk in my room
Then some pictures of why I love college. It's got it's
own page, and includes pictures of my floor trying to
learn how to skateboard, the Halloween decorations and makeup, and making sure
that gravity still works.
And finally by popular demand my nerd costume for
Halloween. And here's a picture of me and
the friend I went with to see Bat Boy to show that yes, chicks dig nerds
:)
In other news, DDR Max for the US PS2 came out on Tuesday, so I went
and picked it up. Not only is it the best US mix to come out, it's one of the
best DDR mixes period. It even has US only songs, including some of my favorites
like Darude's "Sandstorm" and Reel 2 Real's "I Like To Move It". It'd be worth
buying a PS2 alone for. And while I was at the mall I also picked up Tony Hawk
4, which is also awesome. So many videogames, so little time.
Happy
2nd birthday to the International Space Station! It's hard to believe it's
only two years old, but hopefully it'll be around for a long long time to come.
And I ever become super-rich, I'm definitely buying a ticket to visit it. $20
million is nothing for the experiance of a thousand lifetimes.
And finally while waiting for the pictures to be developed, I picked up The Onion's latest book: Ad Nausem. It's
the Onion as it's usal best, saterizing everything from marriage ("Darling will
you spend the next 6 to 10 years with me?") to politics ("Bush Vows to Remove
Toxic Petroleum from National Parks") to life in general ("Accountants Pack
Times Square for Fiscal New Year"). Great stuff, and well worth picking
up.
Well Jeb won yesterday, but at least the smoking ban amendment passed. Almost
all the amendments passed, including the uber-expensive class reduction
amendment, which after the speed-train amendment passing last year once again
seems to say that voters go "Gee, that sounds nifty" without even considering
the cost of implementing these things. Sure reducing class size sounds great on
paper, until you relieze it'll cost billions upon billions of dollars raising
taxes and causing other programs to be cut. But of course people think that
soley making class sizes smaller will fix all our educational problems......
yeah....
Which speaking of education, I think a fair share of the blame can be layed on
parents. But it'd be political suicide to even suggest that parents have
anything to do with failing schools. But watching these educational toy
commercials on TV, it's as if people are encouraged to let machines teach their
children instead of taking an active role in their child's education. I firmly
believe that the fact that my mom read to me ALL THE TIME when I was a little
kid and that weekly visits to the library were a normal part of our routine,
helped me out so much in school and in my love of learning. A talking toy is not
an adequete substitute for a parent reading to their child. But it's as if so
many people just expect the school system to do everything for them. It's no
secret that the students whose parents are most active in their lives do the
best in school, but it's so much easier just to just leave it to the teachers to
raise their child. /End Rant
Republicans: "All Your Congress Are Belong To Us"
Watch Me Dance. This guy definitly has
a lot of self-esteem to bust a move anywhere and everywhere. Interesting (if not
a bit frightening) video's though. The Hampster Dance one is classic.
While looking for a Maxwell's Equations
shirt (since we just finished that section in physics) I came across a piece
written by a fellow geek who explains the facination that a lot of science/computer majors
have with nerdy tshirts. I most definitly have it, as about half the shirts I
own come from ThinkGeek, and I do see it as a
"uniform" of sorts because I am proud of my nerdity. Which is reason
#5093493023 why I love college: People think nerds are cool :). And if you ain't
down wit that, tough luck fo'!
My roommate has a carton of "Creme Filled Pirouette Entertaining Cookies" on
his desk. What exactly is an "entertaining cookie"? Does it sing and dance or
something? These must be mighty special cookies indeed.......
You can now buy a remote control flying
saucer. Isn't technology wonderful? It was but 50 years ago that we had to
find flying saucers on our own in the desert of Roswell, NM, and now you can buy
them online. I just love the little section about how "This remote controlled
flying saucer is more fun than a barrel of monkeys and that's something we
rarely say here at ThinkGeek because, well, a barrel of monkeys provides
extreme delight." Oh they do.... ohhhhh they do.
101 reasons why
Mozilla is better than Internet Explorer.
My personal favorite reason is the automatic pop-up killer and image blocking.
Plus that last one: "Giant red lizards are cooler than a blue e".
30 browser windows open at once is a bit excessive isn't it? Nah.......
This guy rocks, he's running the New York City marathon in a diving suit to
raise money for charity. Very cool.
And because I forgot I didn't upload the last update, here's Wednesday's update,
TODAY! Huzzah!
I went home to Tampa this weekend for the first time this semester. It was
pretty much the first time I'd had a chance, since usually I have too much
homework or something else is going on on campus. But I got to see a bunch of my
friends and had a blast throughout the weekend so I'm happy I went.
Today I also went and saw Star Wars Episode II on an IMAX screen, which was
really cool. Unfortunatly we got there late, so had really bad seats, and it
was also a dome IMAX theatre, so the image was curved, resulting in curved light
sabers. But seeing it on such a huge screen was awesome and the sound was
incredible.
What's the deal with John Mayer, this guy is adored by like every girl I know.
He played a concert in Gainesville on Saturday so I had a couple of friends that
went, and they all gush about John Mayer now. Ok, so he's handsome, and sings
romantic songs, and is famous, but that... oh wait, I see now.
Nevermind.
My new DDR pad came in on Friday, and so I've been playing
around with it. It's a BNS DX pad which
means it has a foam insert inside to make it feel more like an arcade pad. It's
really nice, and a whole lot better than the soft mats I was using before. I can
actually full combo songs now with this pad, which was pretty much impossible
using the official Konami pads. I'd definitly recommend buying one.
My friends rock! :)
Actual exam question on my digital logic test yesterday:
"You need to build an ASM chart for the following scenerio. A person in my
robots lab had their 21st birthday, and you must build a state machine for their
night. Begin in the AT_BAR state where you just chill and look for an
Interesting Person (IP). If spot an IP, ask to take their picture. If they say
yes, go to the ASK state. If they decline, go back to AT_BAR state and chill. If
in the ASK state, ask for if they have a significant other. If yes, go to AT_BAR
state. If no, go to CONTACT state. Then ask for their phone number (GET#). If
they give it, output GO4IT and go to the WORKIN_IT state. If no, go back to AT_BAR state to try again."
So yeah, a question worth 10% of my test was a flow chart for hooking up at a
bar. :)
Now you can use Google to find the top linked to pages (at least
according to Google). And looking at Yahoo is
amazing how much it's changed, but yet how much has stayed the same over the
years.
Cookies are good.
Welcome of the nerd edition update of BF.N. (And I know
you're asking yourself, "You mean all the other day's aren't?") But I've got
some good ones for today
Heck's frozen over and pigs are flying, because two congressmen are
going to try to get a bill passed that stands up for consumer rights instead of
giving it away to corporate conglomerates. It's the Digital Media Consumers'
Rights Act of 2002 ("DMCRA") and it wants force companies to label CD's that
will crash your computer due to the "copyright protection". It also prevents
scientists from being sued over research that could have copyright protection
consequences. It also lets you circumvent copyright protection if you own the
actual work. So this would make it legal for me to view and have full control
over the DVD's I legally bought. Essentially it fixes some of the many problems
of the DMCA and that can only
be a good thing. As such the Electronic Frontier Foundation support it
and I urge you to write to your Congressmen to get this thing passed.
Once again the Internet proves useful, as where else could you find thousands of science jokes
all in one place? Some of them are pretty obvious, but other's you have to have
a good background in math or science to trully appriciate.
And coming soon to elementary and middle schools everywhere: Yo' Mama jokes for nerds. There's
some truly harsh things in here, like "Your mom's weight is modeled by the
summation of a diverging sequence." Kids can be so cruel sometimes.
I went to see my very first opera last night: La Boheme. I wasn't
quite sure what to expect, but for the $6 student ticket price I figured it was
better I find out while it was still cheap instead of paying $50 for the
experiance. Anyways, it was pretty good and definintely worth seeing. I was a
little worried about it all being sung in Italian, but luckly there was
translations up above. The singers and orchastra were both really good, but the
constant singing did start to get old after a while. Every single word is sung,
so a lot of times it just seems really unnatural to hear someone sing "I am off
to the store" or whathave you. But I suppose that's what makes it opera. All in
all an interesting night and while I don't think I'd become a fan of opera, I
would go again if the price isn't too bad.
Don't forget to watch the Leonid metor shower tonight
(Monday night/Tuesday morning) before the dawn. It's supposed to peak around
5:30 am EST, which I'll probably just wake up for. I saw them last year, and
even though it was really bright out with a bunch of lights it was still a
remarkable sight. Definitly worth getting up for. NASA also has some viewing
tips
After getting about 2 hours of sleep, I woke up at 4:30 to watch the meteor
shower Tuesday morning with some guys from my floor. It wasn't as good as last
years, but it was still really cool. Unfortunatly the sky was so bright that we
could only see the brightest meteors, but it was well worth the hassle of
getting up for. There was a suprising amount of people out there too at 5 in the
morning, I would guess around 40 or so. Then it was back to bed for an hour and
then off to class.
Needless to say I was exhausted the rest of the day (I have to have at least 6
hours of sleep or else I just don't function). But the CPU I designed (which I named
"Anthium") for my digital logic class worked just like it should, which was a
miracle in itself, and then I saw the opening game for the men's basketball
season that night, which got the back of
my head on a picture on the front page of the Alligator. So yeah, I'm famous now. :)
j/k
Physics is suck.
Sign #293230203 that the Apocolypse is coming: 11% of
American youths can't find where they live on a map. I mean not knowing
where Iraq or Iran is is pretty bad yeah, but I'd venture that most people knew
the general area (middle east) but just didn't know which exact country it was.
But not knowing where the United States is? Scary....
Not sure who you are? Let the internet help.
And if those aren't enough, here is page 2. Hooray
for the internet!
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