Yard Signs

Nearing Election day, when you drive around you notice the lawn signs promoting a presidential candidate or another. What good do they actually do? Same goes for bumper stickers, they merely say Obama 08 or McCain & Palin. Its not like people glance at these and go “Oh! I’ll go vote for Obama because that bumper sticker has his name on it”.

Sure they represent the of the “enthusiasm” of the voters, but I doubt you or anybody else will switch their vote because of another party’s enthusiasm. The signs also give out the names of the candidates, but oh! it’s not like as if nobody knows who McCain and Obama are. If there are enough signs present, I guess crowd mentality could come into place, but in most cities, you’ll see a pretty even split. The small amount of peer pressure people face , if any, will probably go both ways.

Besides, anyone whose ever had lawn signs will know they often get stolen.

Barack Obama’s organizers hate them. John McCain’s organizers hate them. It’s because yard signs don’t vote – but they do generate a ridiculous amount of complaining that must be patiently listened to. Until yard signs sprout little legs and go to the polls on Election Day, in a presidential election with universal name recognition they are just a nice little decoration.

In conclusion, other than making you feel good about the candidate and give you a false impression of activism on your part, all yard signs do is make some of your neighbors hate you.

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Fail.

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Tips on Studying

I’m often found at my desk studying for school, and over the years, I’ve come up with some of the most important tips that have streamlined my studying process.

Work at a desk
While it may seem comfortable to memorize things laying down on bed, doing this will make you susceptible to sleepiness.

Clear the desk
Make sure that your desk is not crowded with random papers and magazines. A busy desk will make your mind wander into other things.

Turn on some music
You have to be careful about the music you turn on. Either the music must be extremely familiar to you, or it is non-disruptive with no lyrics. Make sure if the song contains lyrics, you can recite the lyrics, or your brain will be scrambling to understand what the unfamiliar new song is saying instead of memorizing. It is also essential that you keep the volume very low.

Have a drink while you’re at it
Having a tasty refreshing drink periodically while studying will help you fend off boredom.

Give yourself rewards
Decide what you will reward yourself after you finish an assignment, finish reading, or memorizing. Do not interrupt a topic of study with a break. When you find appropriate breaking spots, give yourself a treat. For example, have some ice cream, go outside, talk with a friend; but always make sure you keep your breaks short.

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Subwoofers and Amplifiers

I remember multiple times, when I was in a car, another vehicle would come with their trunks rattling with thumping noises emitting from it. I’d scoff at them, and at their foolish attempt at getting attention. Well, one day, one of my friends had a very loud system installed in his truck. You could hear it from a hundred yards away due to the subwoofer’s location in the truck bed. After I rode in it, I fell in love with the system.

Often on, sound systems skimp on the low end sounds because it is costly to reproduce them, and car system’s arnt an exception. I listen to music almost constantly through the day, and especially when I’m driving. Thus, I decided to get sub woofers and amplifiers installed in my car.

After a few weeks of hunting for deals on the Internet, I attained parts for a receiver, sub woofers, amplifiers, and the necessary cables. I had decided to build the box myself. I got these parts at a fraction of the price  compared to the price if you had gotten them at a retail store. It took me a good 4 hours to install the stereo, the wiring and the amp, and a complete day to create the box to house the sub woofers the next day. If you want some information on the setup: it has 1000 Watts peak/500 RMS with 2 10 inch drivers and a sealed box.

With the low end sounds reinforced, it is now a joy to drive the car. The individuals you usually see with these loud thumping setups listen to hip-hop, but you’ll probably catch me listening to Radiohead or such. The bass lines come out defined, and drums produce a great thumps. While I don’t roll down my windows to share the bass with everyone, I still understand why others get them installedl; people don’t have them just to get attention. If you’ve ever wondered why in the world someone would pay for such seemingly useless features, you just never listened to them.

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Discover B-Sides

During the days when vinyl was king, the sides of single song releases were often referred to as A-side  and B-side. The A-side featured the premium content featured on a long play album, while side B was had insignificant songs to add to the value of the singles.

With the advent of CDs, B-sides songs have dissipated, but not completely disappeared. Artists do make other content other than their official released LP albums. They often publish these exclusive tracks on B-Sides albums. While general audiences may not be attracted to these B-sides albums, dedicated fans of bands or artists, without doubt, love their B-sides.

Due to their reduced publicity, it may be difficult to attain some B-Sides albums. Your best bet would be to use Amazon’s CD store. You’ll be delighted to learn that your favorite band has released songs you still haven’t listened to.

Some of my favorite B-Sides are from Coldplay and Radiohead.

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Firefox Extentions to Increase your Productivity

The best part about Firefox is its ability to take extensions. Here are some extensions that I’ve found that will help you blaze through the internet.

Fast Dial
When a new tab is opened, Fast Dial will give you quick graphical access to your most visited websites.

All-in-One Sidebar
Put all of firefox’s powerful features into a streamlined interface in the sidebar.

DownThemAll!
Leech files from multiple connections to achieve blazingly fast downloads.

Web Developer Toolbar
Handy for website owners and designers, it features dozens of tools to find out information or diagnose a website.

Fireshot
Take screen shots of websites, then you can add additional information such as text and diagrams on the image.

Scrapbook
Handy for online research, quickly organize websites to refer to

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LG Rumor

My old cellphone died, I waited till my contract expired, and I got a new LG Rumor.

So far, I’m pretty happy with it. It was 50 dollars with a contract, great for the price. Since it’s a phone, I’ll begin by talking about its calling related features. As you would expect, it has speakerphone and 3 way calling. The call quality was very clear and sharp, including the speakerphone. Definitely better than my old A900. The contacts menu is very intuitive and the search works well.

I think the design could be better, It is a little chunky. There are also a lot of differently colored lighting up buttons, and the colors don’t exactly complement each other. The GUI look better though. You can customize the menu style from a list to a grid, I highly recommend the grid. You can also choose different color schemes for the skin.

The phone redeems itself from its chunkyness with its roomy slide out QWERTY keyboard. Messaging is a joy on this thing. I really hated typing with number keys. When you slide out the keyboard, the screen will automatically switch orientation.

Extras
I also signed up for the $15 data plan. Its half the data plan for the smart phones, so if you want to go cheap, the LG Rumor is a good choice. The browser on it is pretty crappy, for example, you can’t scroll down fast. If your stuck on a long page, your screwed. To remedy this problem, you can always install Opera mini 3.1 on this phone. The Internet speed on the LG Rumor is comparable to dial up speeds, OK for a cellphone. The email application is great though. It will setup popular services easily, and you can also have multiple email accounts on it. Not only does it support any POP/IMAP services, it will also support Outlook Web Access Emails. The email application is definitely one of the best parts of this phone, its easy to use, especially with the qwerty keyboard. The 1.3 MP camera however, is a piece of junk. Its photos are always washed out, but who actually uses a cellphone camera?

The LG Rumor includes a Micro SD card, most likely for its media player; The phone doesn’t have a standard audio jack though which is a pooper. The phone can only hold about 16 pictures, so invest in a 5 dollar card if you want to take more pictures.

Oh yes, and I should mention, the Rumor has a totally sweet Tip Calculator.

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Book Art

In your local public library, if you ruffled up a book’s pages or cut chunks of the book out, it would be looked down upon. Despite this, as artists often do, they broke the rules and turned boring books into works of art.

Read More »

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Ferrofluids


Ferrofluids are composed of very small magnetic particles in a liquid. Under a magnetic field, the particles polarize, creating shapes. Not only does it look mesmerizing, it also has practical applications in mechanical engineering, aerospace, and medicine.

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Olympic Scoring Fail

I was watching NBC today, which reporting that the United States was on the lead in the Olympics with the most amount of medals. Why would they rank a nation by its number of medals? It is most often ranked by the number of gold medals.

Think about it, if Country A won 51 bronze medals, and country B won 50 gold medals, according to NBC’s system of ranking, country B would lose to Country A.

At the time this post was written, China is ahead by 16 gold medals, yet news stations in the US rank China following the United States.

I’m not supporting China over the United States, or vice versa, but only on the technical issue at hand here.

This begs the question: If it had turned out that China had more medals than the US, but the US had more gold, would they rank using totals or by gold medals?

Go vote on NBC’s website; scroll down to the poll, and vote for gold medal rankings.

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