The name game

I was also thinking about "Darth Johnson, Lord of the Seth" since the real thing is supposed to be Lord of the Sith. Get it? Huh? Huh?

Also, if you're serious about the silly nicknames, you can change them in your account info on the blogger home page.

Awesome insult

You curmudgeonly troglodyte!

(I'll let you look up what that means yourself!)

For Laurel and Other Apple/Mac Fans

If you have never heard of "As the Apple Turns," then shame on you. It's a site of witty Apple commentary that treats the whole computer world (with a very, very heavy emphasis on Apple-related stuff) as a soap opera. (Get it? As the Apple Turns, As the World Turns?)

To the Lady Laurel

One more question: you know how the PC wireless cards have to be 802.11b? How does one know if one's wireless card is 802.11b?

AirPort cards are 802.11b. AirPort Extreme cards are 802.11g, which are compatible with 802.11b (they also work on the same frequency and are higher bandwidth). Almost all places with wireless have 802.11b.

802.11a, on the other hand, is incompatible with 802.11b and g. It offers higher bandwidth than b, but it works on a different frequency, consumes more power, and has a significantly shorter range.

Almost all wireless products will be labeled about which one is which, so you needn't worry (did I just invent a new contraction?).

Silly poem

Oh, powerful bacillus,
  With wonder how you fill us,
    Every day!
      While medical detectives,
        With powerful objectives,
          Watch your play.
      - "Ode to the Bacillus"
By William Tod Helmuth, American physician and writer (1833 - 1902)

[by "objectives," I believe he means objective lenses]

sigh

Okay, I will actually link to a quizilla quiz (gasp!). It is actually for my own good though - I have to see Meredith's results on it!

Which Teen Girl Squad girl are you?
click to open picture
You are.. da guy! No one knows who you are, or cares... They just know you are sent to randomly kill them in the strangest ways imaginable... You also have a pet alien named Thomas, who runs around hitting people with a baseball bat, and your very own giant robo-----VOIP!

For Laurel

Laurel, here is a deal I found for a wireless router like the one you need for only $20 after a $40 rebate. You might want to look into it.

Odd dream

I had a strange dream last night. From what I can remember, we were in College Station (I remember Easterwood airport) and there was this association of Nazis or something our age. I think Mrs. Carney had to do something with it. I believe I was a member of the opposing faction, and I remember that we had to go to war. I was afraid that a lot of people would get killed. When I went to the battlefield, it was muddy and trecharous. Then I discovered that instead of having war with guns, etc., they were playing ultimate frisbee. It wasn't for fun, but it was as a replacement for real war. Whoever won the game won the war. I remember that my side won. Randomly, at one end of the battlefield (an end zone) there was a chest filled with those pennies that got turned bronze. There were nickel- and bronze-plated pennies, which was odd. I think that's it.

Reply to Laurel

Okay, there should be no problem with this. I've looked into the same stuff myself.

Do we need to buy a special wireless modem for this? Our ISP, Comcast, allows us to rent a modem for $3 a month. Does that mean we can't use this?

No. And you should look into one of these Circuit City "Free Cable Modem if you sign up for any cable service" things. It might save you a decent amount of money. But you do need a cable modem. And it absolutely needs to have an Ethernet port (some cable modems only have USB, sillily).

If we don't need a special wireless modem, do we need a special wireless router? Or do we need both?

You need a wireless router. This is like Apple's AirPort Base Station (less than $200 for a regular 802.11b one). I suggest, though, that you get a combination base station / router (like a LinkSys one) from Best Buy. It has a port where you plug in an Ethernet cable directly from your cable modem into the router, a few ports which it distributes the connection to other wired Ethernet computers, and also broadcasts a wireless signal that wireless-equipped computers can pick up.

How much would the necessary modem/router cost?

The Apple base station costs less than $200. The LinkSys (I think that's the name) ones cost around $100. I actually saw an offer for a refurbished one for $40 after rebates, but I don't know if that's such a good idea.

Does my iBook have a wireless ethernet card in it? Is there a chance the other (fairly modern, I believe) PCs do?

You will have to purchase a $79 card from Apple (their education store which you qualify for sells it for maybe %10 less). It's an internal card with very easy installation and is very good quality. Many new PC laptops come equipped with wireless (it has to be 802.11b or 802.11g, not 802.11a, which is incompatible). All laptops marked with "Centrino®" technology have built-in wireless (I am 98% sure on this). If you have a laptop that doesn't have an internal AirPort slot and does have a PCMCIA slot on the side, a card from that will cost maybe $40 - $70 from Best Buy.

If not, how much would one cost (for each of us; I assume the Apple one will be more expensive, because they always are, but I suppose that's the price you pay for quality)?

I just answered that, silly!

Also, if you want to hook up a desktop to your wireless network / internet, buy an Ethernet cable and plug it in to the wireless router if possible, because it will make it cheaper AND faster.

Whew! That is all. You're welcome.

Reminiscences

We're cleaning some stuff at my house, and some of those things are old papers of mine from when I was about 3 to 6 years old. I thought you guys might find a few of the things I found funny (or at least interesting), because I sure do (I have kept the spelling and capitalization as true to the original as possible).

One of my papers that I wrote when I was three featured some kind of proto-writing. It had real letters (for the most part) but made no sense. Here is the sample:

HTOU OUEStt UUPtO tOOFFE bBiRP lObPO OB ObllO

I thought that was pretty odd.

At the end of kindergarten (I was 5), I composed a poem: "I see the Sun. Summer is fun!" I don't know if it was supposed to be a poem or what, but I had obviously mastered masculine rhyme, meter, and even alliteration. I amaze myself. :-)

I remember that at the beginning of first grade, we were led into a primitive computer lab to type on a computer and print out our stories. This is a monospaced, dot-matrix story that I wrote (I was barely six).

Once upon a time tnare was a germ
named backtirea and and the good
backtirea. The good backtirea and
the human body was fiting aginst the
bad backteria and some otheor
germs. Once thare was a boy who was
sick.The good backtirea came
undergrond to the little boys house
and he neddid to be in the human
body to have the human body
to make the human body on its team.

Umm, I probably embarrassed myself, but oh well. I got a kick out of reading that stuff, so I wanted to give you all some entertainment too.

Silly me

Now that our blog can handle multiple languages, you may want to try out Babelfish and translate English to some non-Latin foreign language. Observe:

こんにちは! 私の名前はSeth であり、私は日本語を話すことができる。

and...

여보세요! 나의 이름은Seth이고 나는 한국어를 말할 수 있는다.

One more thing.

I also changed our commenting system to the new HaloScan. It brings quicker loading times and more reliability. That is now the main ":: post a comment ::" thing. To the right of it, I have links to the old comments. This is so that you may look at the archived comments. One downside is that it won't show the number of comments, but I think that it's worth it. Tell me what you think.

Test

I've changed the character encoding on our blog from Western (ISO Latin 1) to Unicode-8. This will allow us to paste characters from almost any language. Not like it's necessary, but it could potentially be cool. Here is a test (the first stanza of the Russian National Anthem):

Россия - священная наша держава!
Россия - любимая наша страна!
Могучая воля, великая слава-
Твое достоянье на все времена

Parents.

I just received a lecture from my parents on my posting the links to the explosive how-to web sites (apparently, they have been regularly looking at our blog). They think that my posting of those links (or even my visiting those web sites) might:
1. put me on the FBI watch list
2. put me on a list of suspects if a bomb goes off nearby
3. jeopardize any future security clearance I may have if I work for the government (a distinct possibility since I plan to be a nuclear engineer).

I have therefore removed the links to the "anarchist" web sites. Also, I have asked my parents not to visit the blog again (they agreed). If they are here, shame on them.

Please, those of you who are in college far away from home (or will be shortly), no pity comments (or laugh-at-me comments).

Hrmm... I need your opinion

I am looking into a new commenting system (according to Laurel, it's faster and more reliable). The downsides are: little customization (it will no longer match our web page's style), a lot less administration benefits (I can no longer edit posts, etc.), and we won't be able to put the counter on it (and keep track of most viewed comments. That's about it. I leave it up to you guys. But please leave a comment to cast your vote.

Test it out here:

Grr.

I just lost horribly at a game of 80. I had fun, but I am still unhappy for some reason. Maybe posting this might make me feel better. And we still have ultimate tonight at 7, so be there.

END OF LINE

Heh, again

<tounge-in-cheek>We've had so many hits from people trying to find out how to make TNT (or just look it up) that it has inspired me to find out more explosive goodness. I (again) hope that I'm not violating any laws, etc. by doing this.</tounge-in-cheek>

Most of these explosive how-to's seem to be text files from the BBS days, before the internet was around.

I was curious about making flash paper, so here are a few sites about it: site 1, CENSORED DUE TO CONCERNS ABOUT NATIONAL SECURITY
I decided to leave one out because it had way too much bad stuff (i.e. land mines, book bombs, pipe bombs, blasting caps). I also left one out called "The Patriot Guidebook
to a Better America," which has stuff about "Sabotage/Harassment/Espionage," "The Weapons of the Right Wing," and "The Enemies of the Right Wing" as major chapters.)

Here is a bit of an explanation about the chemistry behind making flash paper, which is interesting.

Umm, that is all.

[edited July 27, 2003 10:35 PM]