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Happy New Year!
I had a good one myself. As noted before, for the second year in a row I went to
Epcot to bring in the new year. Got there about 7:30, but this year they didn't
let us in until 8:45 (park opens at 9, and last year they had everything going
when we got there at 7:30). Needless to say, thanks to probably less interest,
and the bad tourism industry, it wasn't really too awfully crowded, more like a
very heavy summer day than a New Years day. Definitly less people than last
year, and a whole lot less people than for the 1999-2000 celebration. Anyways, I
just mainly watched shows as the lines for attractions were really long (3 and a
half hours supposedly for Test Track, but I'd be willing to bet more like 2-2
and a half). Then at 6 pm disney passed out hats and noise makers, and the music
(the thing I mainly came for) started about 7:45. Once again they had several
areas around Epcot where they played dance music, including a swing band, but I
stayed mainly around Scooter, who was
absolutly awesome once again. Not too much rap, and a bunch of really good
techno. Plus I got to show off a bit during one sequence in a circle of people.
It's very very exhilirating to have 50+ people all focused on you while you
dance. Very very exhausting too, as I finally got home about 3:30 am, and slept
till about 5 pm. Anyways, I had a blast and I'll probably do it again next
year.
Today also marks the first day of the Euro, the new European currency. It covers 12 countries, as $568 billion (in
dollars) became legal tender at the stroke of midnight.
The German Chaos
Computer Club has turned the side of a building into a
144-pixel screen. Plus if you're willing to pay some money, you can play
pong on the building, or even express your
love.
Hey, 2002 is a palindrome!
Salon has a good piece on how
to divide up all the charity money that has been collected for the September
11th funds. How much is someone's life worth? Is it right that a cop or fireman
who died be paid more money? Should a janitor who died with a $800 a month
apartment rent fee get paid the same an investment banker who died with a $8,000
a month mortgage? And what about other disasters, like the Pentegon crash (which
is virtually ignored) or Oklahoma City bombing? Plus charties feel they have to
do this right, so that people will continue to donate and won't feel like their
funds were misused (like the Red Cross was going to only use a portion of the
funds for Sept 11th and save the rest for other causes, which caused a huge
uproar). So many questions, and so few right answers.
Box Office Mojo has a nice table comparing
the box office earnings for Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Phantom
Menance, and Titanic. Should get more interesting as the weeks go on.
Maybe I should make it my New Years Resolution to update the site everyday. But
then again I'd just break it in a week anyways.
Buddy, Bill Clinton's dog, was run
over and died today. And well he died. And this is news because?
The Bad News: Nsync is supposed to be in next Star Wars movie: Attack of the
Clones.
The Good News: They are only in there as extras for half a second before they are blown
up.
I think it's worth them being in Star Wars to see them get blown up. Now if only
they could work in a nice death tortourous death scene for Jar Jar.
Went to the dentist, got a haircut, and froze in the "cold" 40 degree weather of
Tampa. Now that it finally got chilly, I think I"m ready for some heat
again.
Well I'm back up at UF again, to start my spring semester. I'm finally getting
to take some programming courses (though one of them is supposed to be very
hard) as well as physics and differential equations.
Just when you think you can trust the government, they pull something like this, where they doctor photographs to put Osama into western clothing. Can you
imagine the uproar if the Taliban had put George Bush into a picture of him
shooting children or something like that? And then at the same time that the
military does this, they also want the Muslim world to believe that that
previously released video of bin Laden talking about the terrorist attacks is
real, and not doctored. I can't believe that the US would do something "wrong"
like this, but at the same time I can.
Looks like trying to get every last dollar possible has backfired on a few file
sharing companies who discovered that there was a spyware that no one knew about in those programs.
Ah, only in closed source software.
And I thought I was crazy. Two guys, as of January 1st, have started waiting in line for Star Wars Episdoe
II. They have some interesting ideas on why someoen would do something like that
though. Four months does seem a bit obsessive though.
Looks like the earth might be saved from burning
up in the sun. According to some British scientists, prior calculations that
had the earth being swallowed by the sun as it died, about 7.5 billion years
from now. However since the sun will lose mass, gravity will weaken and the
earth's orbit will expand, keeping it out of the sun's reach. Of course, it will
still get far too hot to support life, but it does give us an extra 200 million
years to plan.
Random text to make it so I have three "things" new today.
Today was first day of classes, though it wasn't a very tough one. But the
spring semester hath begun!
Interested in what the top 400 word restaurants were in the year 2000? Well
probably not, but if you are, here is a list. At no
suprise, McDonalds is in the lead with over 38 billion dollars worth of sales,
with Burger King a distant second.
Minoru Arakawa, president of Nintendo of America, retired
today. He had been the head of the American arm of the company for 22 years, but
felt it was time to step down. He will be missed.
Human stupidity never ceases to amaze. Check out the funny story of the spammer
who threatened to sue when someone complained about his spam. Good
stuff.
Scientists can now stop
light in a crystal, and then release it later. It is thought that this
technology can then be used in building quantum computers, which is especially
cool.
Privacy invasion at it's best, you can now search through AIM logs. They explain how
they got the logs here, but
it stems down from the DoJ asking for them, and Google getting it through the
Freedom of Information act. And you thought your conversations were
private...
Oh yeah, that last news item is a total, but very good, prank. Nice
huh?
Can you guess I'm back at college again, with no updates for 5 days. All
well.
Does anyone else think it's incredibly dumb that such a fuss has been made about
Prince Henry
smoking some weed and getting drunk? Sure its' illegal, and while I disapprove
of drugs, millions of teenagers have done the exact same stuff as Henry, but
they do not get near the publicity. It seems as though the media is treating
this like the first time anyone has ever tried marijuana or drank alcohol under
the legal age. Oh say it isn't so! Sure I think what Prince Henry did was wrong,
but I don't think it deserves the huge media frenzy that it has been given.
Guess that's mass media for ya.
Those documents you think are deleted may not be
trully deleted at all. Due to the way operating systems work, when you
delete something, it only deletes the link to that spot on the hard drive, the
actual file is still there. The government is hoping that advancements in data
recovery will be helpful in the Enron scandel, to try and recover the deleted
documents.
NASA is researching anti-matter engines to power spacecraft in the future. Currently it is far
too expensive and time consuming ("one billionth of a gram a year is produced at
a cost of $80 million"). to use anti-matter engines, but it is hoped
that future breakthroughs will help solve current problems. Science fiction is
once again hitting reality.
Wow, I had two people tell me today that they loved my site. It makes one feel
all bubbly inside. Or maybe that's just the result of drinking too much Pepsi.
The world may never know.
At the urging of a friend of mine, I'm putting up this mp3 of me giving a short yell. He thought it was
really funny, and well, it certaintly is disturbing. It's the result of a hoarse
voice with a stuffy nose. I claim no responsibility for any adverse
reactions.
Someone finally came up with a nice good arguement with what
to do with the Microsoft anti-trust settlement. Instead of dividing up the
company (to form 3 new monopolies) or fining them (and MS would still have
several billion left over), make them open
up all the API's. API's are what programs use to interact with Windows, and
while Microsoft releases some of them (so that programs can work on Windows)
it's a pretty commonly known fact that MS keeps some to themselves. So what this
author suggets is to make Microsoft open up how to make Office documents, or tie
as deeply into Windows as IE does. He points out the incredible advancements due
to the Intel vs. AMD chip race, and the possiblities if that could happen to
software development. Imagine being able to buy competing Office suit products,
that produced Word/Excel/Powerpoint/etc documents just like the Microsoft
version, but the software is not Microsofts. Or an operating system that was
able to run all of Window's programs, but was far more secure and reliable. of
course, some are saying lack of
security may be the downfall of Microsoft, but I dont' think something that
drastic will happen. But it's never good when a company only treats security
problems as PR problems.
Could Punxsutawney Phil be the next terrorist target? Me thinks the town just wanted to get
some free publicity, but letting Phil die would be letting the terrorist win.
Then who knows what groundhog would be next?!?!
Song of the Moment is updated for the first time in
probably 6 months with Christina Milian - AM to PM (Hex Hector Club Mix). That was quite a moment. And it MUST be the Hex
Hector remix, cause the original song is terrible.
Sorry I didn't update my site before I
left, but I just got back from Miami after going to a huge Dance Dance
Revolution tournament: TournaBoom 2K2. I went with the DDR club up here at UF, a total of 14
guys, and we all had a blast. I finished 7th in the Trick level competition, and
20th out of 25th on the freestyle. Anyways, I had a ton of fun, and road trips
rule!
People have complimented me on that yell mp3 down below. Now THAT
is scary.
FISH TACO!!!!
At the bequest of one of my bestest friends (Hi Jenny!), I'll link to the site she created the other
day. So here are your 15.43 minutes of fame!
More DDR stuff. A new USA version of DDR called Konamix has been announced for the PSX. The logo looks pretty
cool.
The top TournaBoom freestyle video's have been posted (or used to be anyways).
Kneedrawp's is really really good. Mine should be up eventually, I'll let yall
know. Also one of the DDR Gators took a picture of most of us walking toward the aracde. I'm the one 5 from the right,
standing to the left of the tall black guy. Also here's a picture of half
the crowd watching the tournament. I took quite a few pictures
too, but I have yet to get them developed, much less scanned. So who knows when
they'll be up.
More privacy concerns with spyware, this time a program
called Sputnik that is packaged with Audiogalaxy which reads forms and
email that you send out. It will also download and install programs without
alerting the user; all done in the name of "convenience". Surely this can't be
legal, but somehow I bet it is. Anyways, it's some food for thought.
NEVER EVER defer your meal plan at UF. First off, it only says
in very fine print that you don't get DB Bucks (money you can use at the fast
food places on campus, so you don't have to eat the cafeteria food all the time)
until your scholarship money comes in. Then, after UF releases your money (the
extra money is in my bank account already!), it still takes like 2 weeks for the
Dining services to get it in order to release the hold. So it takes almost a
month to be able to spend the money you defered. Argh!!!!!!
Now this is cool for all the political junkies. This guy has made up a short article with
links to all the various C-Span websites. So now you can not only watch all the
House and Senate proceedings, but now all the Senate committee hearings. So if
you're really hardcore, you can skip all the media spin, and go straight to the
source. It's times like this that I LOVE the internet, because it's only though
the net that this kind of stuff is possible.
Now this is really cool. Quantum gravity has
been observed. To quote the article "An experiment with ultracold neutrons shows
that their vertical motion in Earth's gravitational field come in discrete
sizes." The article is pretty technical, but it's still an interesting
phenomenon.
I went Swing dancing tonight, at a dance put on by the Student Honors
Organization. They had a short lesson for all us who had no idea how to swing,
and then they started up the music. It's a lot of fun, I just wish they would
have taught more, as there is SOOO much to learn, and there were a lot of really
good dancers out there. I had fun anyways, and while it's very tiring, I'm
definitly up for swinging again!
The Lego Man is back, now
creating a physical ASCII mosiac with a quarter million
Modulex (basically like small legos) pieces. What a way to make a
living.
The Floor event in gymanstics is quite possibly the coolest thing ever. Well
actually it's not, but it's up there.
35 years ago today, a fire aboard Apollo
1 killed Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Ed White. NASA has a whole site
set-up about the
event.
Now here is an interesting conspiracy theory. Was United Flight 93 shot down over rural
Pennslyvania? It provides some interesting reports to back up the claim, though
some are pretty shaky. One guy wrote a short
synopsys of how it might have come about.
A new hi-resolution picture of the Horsehead Nebula has been released.
Good desktop wallpaper material.
My freestyle Dance Dance Revolution video is now avaliable for download. It's
approximetly 5 MB big, and it's a fairly low quality video of me doing an improv
freestyle to Dream a Dream at TournaBoom 2K2. This was only about the 3rd or 4th
time I'd played this song, and that was over a month ago, so I was literaly
making up the stuff I did on the spot. You'll also need Divx to play the video, though
most of yall should probably have it already.
In a study that should suprise no one, there are fewer
facts in today's media coverage than there was right after the September
11th events. It also found that newspapers usually have more facts than TV news
does, which also isn't suprising to anyone who has watched local TV news lately.
Fluff pieces get old after a while.
Someone is trying to create tran
slucent concrete, and he hopes to eventually get it to transpaprent. As
crazy as it sounds, it's actually quite possible to make concrete from clear
bits and pieces, and then using a clear type of glue to bind them all together.
One possible use is for non-traditional windows, that can be shaped in anyway
you want with spirals or holes. Unfortunatly it's still not ready for the
mainstream, but look out for it in the future.
DDR 5th Mix comes to
UF!!!! The Reitz upgraded the old 3rd Mix into a 5th mix earlier today, so I've
been playing it whenever I've had the chance. And since it was a brand new
machine, I even got to put in my initials in for the high score table. Anyways,
I love all the new songs, and I'm sure I'll spend lots and lots of money on this
addiction.
Looks like AOL isn't
happy about Trillian being better than them, and is trying to strong-arm the
copmetition by not letting Trillian connect to AIM. Why oh why can't we have an
open standard so stupid things like this don't have to happen? But noooo, AOL
has to protect it's huge market share, and refuses to play nice. That's big
business for you.
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