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Well, after hearing the phrase “smooth move ex lax” for 20 years I finally decided to find out who or what ex lax was.

heheh…. gross.

I’ve entered campusmoviefest, formally imoviefest. Anyone want to be on my team?

I made a meatloaf for my dinner in the apartment dinner rotation, and I totally forgot the eggs. It kind of sucked, and everyone made fun of it. Someone said it was the worst thing he’s eaten while living in the apartment. Another comment was that it was meat pudding.
Whatever, I don’t care.
People make fun of me for being absent-minded or for stupid things I’ve said. I usually don’t care.

But just now I was at a small get-together. This guy who everyone likes came in from a meeting where he obtained these two bumper stickers. One called for peace in Palestine, which is just fine with me. But then the other one called for no foreign aid to Israel.

Me: You’re a little radical
Ali: I’m here for a few minutes, and you’re already judging me?

I didn’t feel like arguing, so I left. Though, I was a little upset. I’m going to get some free frosties now.

I wonder what Thad Starner is like. I’ve seen him wearing that device shown in the picture around campus, and apparently he does it all the time.

As some of you know, one of my life goals is to play Duckhunt on a projector tv. When I was a kid, I wanted to know how the NES knew what I was shooting at. I found out how the gun worked eventually. Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on the NES Zapper.

When the trigger was pulled, the game blanked out the screen with a black background for one frame, then, for one additional frame, drew a solid white rectangle around the sprite the user was supposed to be shooting at. The photodiode at the back of the Zapper would detect these changes in intensity and send a signal to the NES to indicate whether it was over a lit pixel or not. A drop followed by a spike in intensity signaled a hit. Multiple sprites were supported by flashing a solid white rectangle around each potential sprite, one per frame.

So, the gun reads in a wavelength for a very short period of time and checks to see if it’s the right color to be shooting at. Hold onto this idea for a second while I talk about one of my pet peeves, the laser pointer.

I absolutely hate when a speaker is using a laser pointer on a PowerPoint for two reasons. My first reason is that it’s distracting. No one holds it absolutely still. The speaker says something like, “So, take a look at table one [circle circle circle]…” This is where I stopped looking at the table and looked at the laser pointer. My second reason is that most laser pointers are too bright. Just like the sun, if I look at it directly, my eyes burn. Consequently after I get distracted by circular or sweeping motions of the laser pointer, I have to look away from it, which means I look away from the PowerPoint. Thus, the laser pointer has defeated its purpose by having me look away from it rather than to what is being indicated.**

My idea: Using NES Zapper technology, make a pointer that moves the mouse around. When the pointer is inactivated, the mouse stays where it is.
Think about it: the mouse isn’t as bright, and it stays on the screen not relying on the presenter to make circles with it. Once the mouse is positioned, the pointer can be turned off, which would leave the mouse there to continue pointing. This would be totally not distracting and not bright.
I would so ecstatic if this were invented!

** As a side note, I would like to say that not many agree with me that laser pointers suck eggs. They partially disagree that they are distracting and mostly disagree that they are too bright.