Fun & Exciting Stuff

Extra-curriculars have taken up a lot of my recent time. The planning and execution of the grand American tradition of homecoming has taken up the last few weeks of my time. Next week will be when we put all of our plans into action. One component of that is to build a “float”. Now you may have seen the Macy’s floats at Thanksgiving or the Rose Bowl parade on New Year’s Day. This is similar to that in that there is movement to the float. We obviously don’t have the big budgets that they do, so we are limited in what we can use for our supplies. Cardboard has been our main component (Thank you ALPCO recycling) and we have spent the last two Saturdays working on a Wizard of Oz themed float. And for a group that has little skill in creating something like this, we haven’t done have bad. We aren’t going to come in first, but we probably aren’t going to come in last.

Which brings me to my title. The kids wanted to play Wizard of Oz music as we are marching. So the question comes up, “Does anyone have a battery-powered CD player?” Now,  it took me a minute, but I finally figured out what they were asking for. They wanted what I call a regular CD player. A big radio, with a CD player and some speakers. They all had iPod docks. Feeling every bit of my years, said “Why yes, I have 3 of them, at least.”

When did I get so old.

Something Awful has this interesting new use for Wikipedia. They call it Wikigroaning:

The premise is quite simple. First, find a useful Wikipedia article that normal people might read. For example, the article called “Knight.” Then, find a somehow similar article that is longer, but at the same time, useless to a very large fraction of the population. In this case, we’ll go with “Jedi Knight.” Open both of the links and compare the lengths of the two articles. Compare not only that, but how well concepts are explored, and the greater professionalism with which the longer article was likely created.

Some of their other examples:
Modern warfare vs. Lightsaber combat
Lizards vs. Dragons
John Locke vs. John Locke (Lost)

My theory is that a college professor/expert on the real world subject, is writing an actual book rather than a Wikipedia article. Publishing is more influential today than Web 2.0 publishing. Meanwhile someone who is an “expert” on cultural issues and topics is more likely to have the time to spend on the Internet.

I put this in my feed reader and it is great little site. The Quotations Page.
Quote of the day:

Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together….

- Carl Zwanzig