once-a-day

I would like to start another blog that involves me doing something everyday. could be anything, so long as it meats the following requirements:

1) must be easy enough to do that I can do it once a day, even with homework.

2) must be versatile enough that I con be creative with it.

3) I must be able to do it for an entire year (366 days, next year is a leap year)

an example that would work splendidly would be haiku. this is easy enough that I could throw one together even on the most homework cramiest of nights, but I could also get creative with it, and be able to produce 366 of them.

If you have any ideas, please enlighten me. I am sure I will settle on something.

blogs I found.

Here are two more blogs I have found.

skull a day. fun blog of a guy making a new skull everyday.

lurking rhythmically interesting blog written by a discordian

title granting.

I do herby bequeath upon jeremy of ruhlandpedia the honorary title of:

Assistant to the King of Island Number 2 on Devil's lake.

*taps shoulders with long, thin object*

This is effective immediately, and is not reversible, though you may choose to not present this title at your own discretion.

Congratulations on obtaining this title, as you have beaten many potential applicants (upwards of six billion humans an several trillion other sentient species) to ascertaining this title. *shakes hand, or other appropriate appendage as per social requirements of recipient*

yours sincerely,

His magnificently whimsicle newfangled autostereogram, lieutenant Commander Pope Ja’son marrowfat pharmacophore the marsupialized murid eating palmiped, high lord chairmen of wibbly strudel in the misty river, grand high master pope of the nova-condenseian order.

my thaughts over the last week or so.

I have not posted for a while now. I appologise. However, this should be about the length of several posts that I was going to post during the time I was not posting. so, here we go:

1)

Today, I will discuss a seemingly ubiquitous, an I assume, often ignored item: the milk jug. The following are a list of attributes about the run of the mill milk jug. As far as I can tell, the design seams more or less standard in the U.S., with the exception of a couple of minor differences.


A picture of the milk jug I am observing. Note the little indent in the side. it is prevelant on two adjacent sides, the other two have stickers with information and advertising. The bottle is made of some sort of plastic, and much of it hase a pitted, rough look.


A picture of the lid. it can screw onto the mouth of the jug. There are ridges on the sides to facilitate easy gripping and turning.


While not in use, the cap is held in place by this ring. The ring serves to prove that the bottle has not been opened. To open it, the (towards the top) is used to rip the rest of the ring off.

The ring has 4 small indentations along the outside, spaced evenly. These indentations are easy to tear.


When torn entirely, the ring makes four equally lengthed strips, and one more equally lengthed strip plus a tab. Each strip has 7 ridges on it, totaling 35 ridges for a complete ring.

Other asorted observations
1) the tab has a skinny section which is slightly skinnier than the ring, and a fat section, the same width as the ring. both sections are of equal length.
2)the handle is in the upper section, which facilitates easier pouring.
It would appear that someone, or someones, put a great deal of time into designing the these simple objects. To these someones: good job, and thank you. One slight criticism, the handle should extend to the middle of the jug, so that the hand can be positioned at the balance point of the bottle, thus allowing for easier carrying.

This may help as a small insight into my mind.

2)
I have bean fibbing about my age recently. Not out of vanity, I am quite comfortable with my age, but for fun. See, I have bean fibbing to computers, saying that I was born in 1910 just to see what happened. One of the places I tried this was at facebook. I was attempting to find frank key's page, but, alas, one must register to do so. I stated that I was borne in 1910, making me 97 years old. however, face book turned me down, saying I must use my real age. probably something about saying I was still a sophomore in high school (grade 10). Then I tryed saying I was 5 years old (born 2002), and was flat out rejected. fortunately, they are no longer I.P. blocking my computer...

I tried this on blogger as well. I have stated that I was born on january 1^st 1. I checked my profile, and it stated I had the chinese zodiac sigh of a rat. Enraged, I furiously changed the year the appropriate amount to match my zodiac sign. It still stated I was a rat. I was surprised that their program for finding the zodiac sign was incorrect at that time. If anyone knows the exact year it stops working, please tell me.

3) I went camping in the north cascades on thursday, and came back today, saturday. I had a good time, did some nice hikes, good weather, pretty views etc. etc.

what I want to talk about are some of the people I met there. One of the services offered by the park is ranger talks about various aspects of the park. These take place at dusk, and are generally slide shows. I watched one on hydroelectric power. I learned nothing new, but enjoyed myself nonetheless. the speaker was a very good speaker, good rhythm, fun to listen to, that kind of thing. Afterward, my mom struck up a conversation with some nice people from my area, who lived only a few blocks away. They where impressed with my "brilliance." an I learned something

People are easily impressed. All I had to do was unexpectedly flash the word "bio-mass," and give a correct definition, to Impress them. So, for all you low self esteme people, reed a few chapters out of a science book, go out into the world, and recite it.

allow me to eat a sugar packet before continuing with my next topic.

mmmm... crunchy. thank you for that. incidentaly, my prefered brand of sugar for eating raw is "sugar in the raw."

4) harry potter predictions

For those not paying attention, the last Harry Potter book is coming out.

my prediction: Hagrid dies! why? well, we have been promised a character death, and Hagrid qualifies. It would also be sad.

5) bent objects

Readers may have noted the "next blog" link in the upper left hand corner of my blog. I encourage you to use it. An excellent blog I found using this is bent objects

no review or anything, but check it out, the guy does fun stuff with wire and everyday objects.

7)
I recently got a wonderfull new desk. It is about 8 ft long. Here are some pictures


my new desk, with starburst for size.

and finally, a cookie to those who noticed that number 6 is missing.

one final word (with punctuation): pants.

gone campin'

Im gone campin' be back saturday maybe.

Truth Rests

I have finally uploaded my novella.

you can download it herecourtasy of DivShare. Have fun!

On a side note: I distribute all of my content under the humorous "Kopyleft: all rights reversed." This means that you are free to distribute it, change it etc. All I ask is that you don't do it for money, and leave my name on it. I do this because I believe that information should be free. So, give this to all your friends, translate it into yiddish, translate it back just to see what happens, write a sequel, or an alternate ending, or slash fiction between Prince edward and Charles, just tell me about it, 'cuz I want to reed that.

To get the ball rolling on this, I used babelfish to translate the text of the story into dutch and back to english. this is the result. If you want the original text of the document, just let me know.

our smoke bomb.

Jeremy of Ruhlandpedia got together and made a smoke bomb for independance day. The final process that we used was:

10 mix sugar into elmers glue
20 mix stump remover (potasium nitrate) into glue/sugar thingy
30 lay to dry on a paper towel.
40 cram paper towel and mixture into paper cup.
50 when ready to light, cover in alchohal and light.
60 watch.

Now, on with the pictures.





videos of it burning will be up soons!

a picture is worth a thousand words.

We have all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words. (for those who have not, say "a picture is worth a thousand words" aloud. If you are deaf, just read it.) I agree with this statement. I am sure that a picture of, say, my desk could easily garner one thousand words. But, I doubt that a grainy, out of focus picture of an unremarkable floor could get as many words as the pulitzer prize winner for 2006 . This leeds to the disturbing conclusion that not all photographs are worth 1000 words. Perhaps, they average to 1000 words, where verbose photographs are balanced out by the shy ones.

This lead me to an epiphany. Pictures with higher resolution would probably tend to have more words than ones with less, simply because there is more detail to talk/write about. Therefore, a monitor that displays pictures with higher resolution than one with a lower resolution would tend to gather more words. while they average out to be 1000, one could have 1020 while the other has 980. This leeds me to my next conclusion, that monitors, televisions etc. could be rated by the number of words on average that they get. This ranking system would be an easy way for consumers to know how a television ranked against other televisions.

Think how much easier "1100 words" is for the average consumer than "1080 i 30 in. panoramic L.C.D. flat-panel H.D.T.V." Sure, there is less finesse, but think how much more efficient it is. Also remembering that half of america is even more stupid than the average american, this could be a godsend to the costumer service and sales industries.

my name (update #1)

I am adding lieutenant Commander to my name, placed just before "Ja'son". My name is now:

His magnificently whimsicle newfangled autostereogram, lieutenant Commander Ja’son marrowfat pharmacophore the marsupialized murid eating palmiped, high lord chairmen of wibbly strudel in the misty river, grand high master pope of the nova-condenseian order.

see here for a breakdown of my many names and titles.

burn notice and ducks.

So, I watched the series premier of the show "burn notice" and that means... another Drivel review!!! (wooo!!! yay!!! wooo!)

burn notice is about a spy, Michel Westen, who gets "burned." Our hero then returns to Miami and becomes a private detective. While I prefer not to judge shows until a minimum of 5 episodes, preferably 10, have passed, I will give an initial review.

The show is occasionally interrupted with a voice over from our main character. These interruptions are often sarcastic and/or sardonic. I found them to be entertaining and fun. Another thing I liked was his lack of weapons. Sure, there are guns, but michel doesn't get a "Q" character to supply him with the latest and greatest. He has to make do with supplies from the local hardware store, or what he can steel. This brings up a fair amount of hacking (the good "get stuff to do stuff it wasn't intended to" kind, not the "crack into and cripple a computer" kind). The hacker attitude of Michel gets bonus points, as does the line "Don't fight with guns. Guns make you stupid. Fight with duct tape. Duct tape makes you smart."

Bottom line: a good show with wit, and a few fun hacks. 5 candy wrappers/check plus

On a side note: RUBER DUCKS!!!

In 1992 (my birth year...) over 29,000 rubber ducks where accidentally released into the ocean in a shipping accident. Ever since then, they have been giving scientists information on the currents of the ocean. They are now expected to land in brittain. I would like to give a shout-out to our fadded yellow, rubbery friends! Thank you for all you have given us.

Also, a nice rewarad is in place for anyone who finds one and can send it to the company who made them. Happy hunting.

fireworks.

so, the 4^th of July is aproching. For those (un)lucky enough to not be in the U.S.A.(worst country name ever I might add. so uncreative.) the 4^th is our suposed "independance day" when we "gained" independance from britain. We did not actualy gain independance for some time, but nonetheless, this is when we celebrate.

one of the most important (in my opinion) of these celebrations is fireworks. The 4^th is one of two premeir firework holidays, the other being new years. For those outside the U.S. substitute your own firework holiday, such as Guy Fawkes day. Fireworks are launched at shows, or on private property. so, for (insert time devision)'s post, I am going to talk about fireworks.

so, first off, legality. There are some basic laws that are instituted at the national level for fireworks in the U.S. Many states then add their own laws, some banning them outright. Washington state has very few fireworks laws, but this varies greatly from city to city. in the particular area that I live in, along with several others, fireworks are banned completely (though compliance with this ban is minimal.) However, there are some places where fireworks can be launched, though only on some holidays, like the 4^th.

now, onto the fireworks themselves. while many can be perchased at local fireworks stands, fireworks surpasing the federal limits can be purchased on indian reservations. An alternate to that is to make them yourselves, which you will of course not do if it is illegal to do so.
this is a resource on where to find chemicels in everyday products.
this is a resource on how to make fireworks.
and this also has chemicles and guids to fireworks
I intend to make smoke "bombs" made from 60% potassium nitrate and 40% table sugar melted together over heet. I'll need to find some sort of fuze thou...

notes:
for the "(un)lucky" thing in the first paragraph, substitute either lucky or unlucky however you see fit.

I say "we" rather than "they" when refering to the revolution because we are supposed to be filled with patriotic pride, and I fear what the N.S.A. will do to me if I am not.

frivolous eggs

"EEEEEEEEEEEGGGGGGGGGGGSSSSSSSSSSSS!" circulon 7 of the gama order yelled. Loudly. So that all could here.
"What about eggs?" asked Crylor 12 of the beta construct.
"Do you not know? EEEEEEEEEEEGGGGGGGGGGGSSSSSSSSSSSS! are the gama order's most revered food stuff. Not that I would expect a minion of the beta construct to understand." replied circulon 7.
"What kind of eggs?" asked Crylor 12. "Space chicken? Human? Nova-Condenseian tree mite? What kind of egg, and why is it so important?"
"Any kind of egg will do, for it is in the heart where one's true egg-iness resides, not in ones egg." resoponded circulon 7.


END.

It is at this point that I choose to dismiss this story as frivolous and stupid. Better content to follow.


changing the rom on an e-voting machine in under 60 sec.

Ratatoullie

I just saw Pixar's *ahem* sorry, it's Disney now, Ratatoullie. For those who don't know, it is about a psychotic (and when I say psychotic, I mean he has psychosis) rat in Paris who wants to be a chef. This means it's time for .... A DRIVEL REVIEW!!!

first off, i was disappointed that Pixar sold out to Disney. i don't like the idea of all our media being controlled by a select few corporations. It's bad that our entertainment is being controlled by people who we have no say over. Abcnnbcbs controls most of the information control in this country. Given this, you can imagine my distress when Pixar melded with Disney. Then cars came out. I did not like cars. Bad film, 'nuff said

so, Ratitoullie. Fairly good. Nice tale, plot was rather predictable, and there where the obvious "the world is a nice good place and people are all nice and good underneath if you can just expose it" kids morals. Ignoring that "would the world be better if we all had the morals of children" thing, it was a good film. the plot had more ups-and-dons-- than I expected.

The animation was good, and the rendering was awesome (for today's standards. time travel does not apply.) In my opinion there were to many chase-style scenes (lots of fast moving scenes that tare rather overwhelming. examples include: running through the sewer, being chased around the kitchen etc.)

overall review/final word/positive-negative/5: positive / 5

summer and friction

Today, thursday, is my first full day of summer! Rejoice! With summer comes a lot of free time, and I hope to use some of that for more blogging.

So, without further ado, my summer goals/plans etc.
1) Homework. Nothing special, just some reading 'n' the like.
2) Math. I intend to skip a year of math (officialy 11^th grade) so that i will be two years ahead.
3) Stop motion. I also intend to make 5 minuets of stop motion animation, either in one or two long episodes, or several short episodes.
4) a new desk. My present desk is small and cluttered, but I plan to get a new one. I wanted something that was large, and the best I could think of was a door, so that is what I have. I chose a door because it is cheep, and is nigh on three meters long, more than enough space to spread out.

In other news, I have finnished my first novella. it is set in victorian london, and is centered around the whitechapel murders, more commonly known by the "name" of the murderer, Jack the Ripper. I will upload it as soon is I have found a nice file-sharing site that supports PDF's and does not have an expiration date. since it is a measly 200kb, file size or bandwidth limits wont be a problem.

And Finally, Friction.
I don't trust friction any farther than I can throw it, which is not that far. Recent estimates about the distance Friction can be thrown put it at about 5-7 nanometers. While I have not reviewed the test to confirm the results of the crack teem of scientist, the exact measure is irrelevant as I doubt I could throw Friction that far anyway. Even if i could throw friction several kilometers, I would still not trust it.

Allow me to explain. I do not easily trust forces. Strong and Week nuclear forces are actually fairly nice to me. They have never done wrong by me, and can be rather nice company on occasion. Strong and Week are the kind of Forces you would invite to dinner, or your brother's wedding. Normal force, while not as nice as Strong and Week, is ok, and we have no real problems with each-other. Tensional force and I tend to ignore each-other, and we went our separate ways after middle school. Applied force has bean my only real friend, and I use it daily. we have had good times together, and i would be very sad to see Applied go. Gravity and I have had a bumpy relationship, which has occasionally come to blows, but we do alright. But friction, a man (woman, child, cat or other entity) cannot trust friction to give out under his (her or its) feet (fins, paws, roots etc.).

It is just the sort of back stabbing thing one could expect from friction. one minuet you will be walking or driving or swimming along, and the next minuet you'll be stuck floating along, unable to stop yourself, save hitting things. I can't trust friction, and you are a fool if you do.

p.s. i use "man" and "his" first because they apply the best to me, though that is under some contention (to be continued, maybe.)

ethnic food.

My apologies for the neglect over the last few days. One more day of school (sigh) before summer(!!!!!! W000t!!!)

Anyhow, onto today’s post.
I went to a Chinese restaurant for lunch yesterday. (insert things like “The food was good” and other standard compliments). This made me wonder, what is ethnic American food? Before you answer, what ever that answer is, consider this:

Ethnic food does not necessarily reflect food in that country. While ethnic food is often similar to the food in that country, the particular dish does not have to be from said country. The examples I sight for this include General Tso’s chicken and fortune cookies, neither of which came from china, and fortune cookies are from California.

Ethnic food, even when it originated in the country it claims to be from, does not need to be made of the ingredients that is was made from in that country. I understand where some ingredients would be hard to get in other countries, or difficult to sell (think grasshoppers). The examples I site for this is the ketchup that can be found in pad-Thai( if you guessed it, give yourself ten points.)

These two points lead me to conclude that American ethnic food would probably be some variant off of: deep fried Crisco and Velveeta(which could be substituted for cheese whiz.) the two could be fried separately, or mixed together served with “coca-cola” made from the effluent off the deep fryer( probably healthier for you…) I came to this because, 1) when you think of American food, it is greasy, and 2) is is unhealthy. Deep fried Crisco is the greasiest thing i can think of, and it is made on the cheep with ingredients available in other countries (i assume.)

If you disagree, please, leave a comment.

Peter Watts

Hello all,

so, while i am not in the clear when it comes to finals, i hope to distract you with what has distracted me, that is to say the writings of Peter Watts. i strongly recommend them, as they have engrossed me for hours. They are released on a freedom friendly Creative commons license, so you can go and download them if you want to. A word of warning, they are very dark, so don't go to them if you are looking for a fun read.

Ja'son out! (whooshing noise)

I grovel before you, oh almighty reader!!

my sincerest apologies for not updating!

time to talk about what has bean happening in these last however many days since i last updated. school is not out yet (we get out late here due to a large number of breaks, and the weather delaying school.) this means that i have finals and project galore! i have had precious little free time. this will only get worse in the upcoming week.

that being said, i went to the Freemont solstice parade, and i brought by chestcam with me! on top of that, jeremy of Jeremy's podcast brought his camera, and captured video. expect plenty of footage. there will likely be (and in fact are) several areas where footage will jump forward several minutes. this is due to the large number of nude (except for the paint) bicyclists at the event, and Vimeo does not allow nudity on their website.

summer is on the way! w00t!

in other news, i made this little guy for model making practice. tell me what you think. he is shown next to a starburst for size comparison.





also, the best explanation of net neutrality ever.



please ignore the extensive editing, it was not my fault...

jericho is back!!!

Jericho was canceled. the fans organised, and sent in literaly tones of nuts (from a line n the last episode). but there is hope! this just in from CBS:

To the Fans of Jericho:

Wow!

Over the past few weeks you have put forth an impressive and probably unprecedented display of passion in support of a prime time television series. You got our attention; your emails and collective voice have been heard.

As a result, CBS has ordered seven episodes of "Jericho" for mid-season next year. In success, there is the potential for more. But, for there to be more "Jericho," we will need more viewers.

A loyal and passionate community has clearly formed around the show. But that community needs to grow. It needs to grow on the CBS Television Network, as well as on the many digital platforms where we make the show available.

We will count on you to rally around the show, to recruit new viewers with the same grass-roots energy, intensity and volume you have displayed in recent weeks.

At this time, I cannot tell you the specific date or time period that "Jericho" will return to our schedule. However, in the interim, we are working on several initiatives to help introduce the show to new audiences. This includes re-broadcasting "Jericho" on CBS this summer, streaming episodes and clips from these episodes across the CBS Audience Network (online), releasing the first season DVD on September 25 and continuing the story of Jericho in the digital world until the new episodes return. We will let you know specifics when we have them so you can pass them on.

On behalf of everyone at CBS, thank you for expressing your support of "Jericho" in such an extraordinary manner. Your protest was creative, sustained and very thoughtful and respectful in tone. You made a difference.

Sincerely,

Nina Tassler
President, CBS Entertainment

P.S. Please stop sending us nuts :-)

02007 northwest folklife festival.

i went to the northwest folklife festival on monday, may 28^th i also went with my special camera rig. this is the rusulting video, curtesy of Jeremy R. of Jeremy's podcast. also fetured is rouge onion of Perfect grammer. this is it:






2007 Northwest Folk Festival from Jeremy Ruhland on Vimeo

engulfed in a see of enless work.

i have bean completely swamped with homework, so there is little chance i will be writing in the next week or so. but all hope is not lost! if you all be good little boys and girls, and you do what you are told, i might share with you a prewritten piece created just for these times like these when my muse is being murdered slowly and painfully.

ta ta!