John's Thoughts

Niftiness

I got accepted into Rutgers' Bloustein School for Urban Planning today. I celebrated by joining in on a Zelda Dance Party (warning: video, 9mb, Japanese. courtesy Waxy.org)

It's been too long since the last post.

I've been working on my senior seminar research. I'm nearing completion. I have a presentation due 12 April, and the paper's due at the end of the semester.

Tonight is Disciples of Groove in the Rowan Pit.

I'm going to change the look of the home page. Again. Damn it.

California.

34 Million people live there. It's over 155 thousand square miles. Just because there's open space in the desert doesn't mean you should fill it up with a track. That's the perfect way to revitalize your town: cap acres of desert to make a track for a foreign company that will leave it vacant in a few years when the economy changes and they decide to pull out of the area. Now you're stuck with a depressed local economy and truly blighted and urbanized desert.

Dumb, dumb, dumb. I'll bet you in fifteen years, the city of California City will be applying for open space grants to restore that parcel to desert.

AAG and URISA

While Kate's spring breaking, I'm here at some conferences... in the snow. My poster's almost done, and I'm at New Brunswick right now. I would have posted from AAG, but the line to use the free internet access was never shorter than five people. Tomorrow, I present the poster at 1:00 at the AAG, so I hope it doesn't rain. I don't want to be carrying a five foot poster in the snow/sleet/rain.

I can't use my middle name.

Why are all the evil people the ones with a three word name?

• John Wilkes Booth
• Lee Harvey Oswald
• Mark David Chapman
• John Allen Mohammed
• John Lee Malvo

If I go by "John Joseph Reiser," does that mean I have to shoot someone?

Research.

While Kate and Steph are off nude sunbathing or something down in Florida, I'll be here doing research for my senior seminar.

I'm doing a study of rail lines in Southern New Jersey, finding the number of households within a certain distance, calculating that distance from the rail line to each house and estimating the amount of people in those houses. I think that as I get more done, I'll post it online.

Oh, do you know those "Images made with Math"? Visually interesting abstracts generated from a computer, they're the pinup of mathemagicians. I've been using Spatial Analyst quite a bit, and I've generated plenty of pinups. For example, here's one. It's an allocation from a cost distance road network added to a straightline distance from the same road network... which is basically a surface that's the approximate distance from the rail line (not shown) using the road network. If you're not on the road network, you take the shortest distance to the road network and continue on to the rail line from there.

Sunday will be River Line's time to shine!

Weirdo in the Geography Lab

There's this student - I think he's anthro - he comes in here, uses the computer for about 10 minutes. Before leaving, he curses in frustration a few times, bangs on the keyboard as he's logging out and leaves.

What an ass.

Update...

Just after I posted this, two non-Geography majors (I think education) walked in and were in the middle of conversation. Referring to the construction taking place across from Robinson Circle in the old parking lot:

"What are they doing out there?"

"I think they're making the parking lot bigger."

At this point, I had to intervene. First off, that's where the Education building is going. Secondly, you don't rip up an entire parking lot and dig a big hole in the center to make it larger.

I feel that today is going bring a parade of asses.

CAP Center

Rowan's CAP Center (where we went for Senior Seminar tonight) is a place where students can receive help on writing resumes and applying for jobs. Carol, an employee of the center, gave us a presentation on how to write your resume and conduct yourself at a presentation. Now, this was not caused by Carol - she's just the messenger - but most of today's "tactics" for getting that job you oh so desire require you to act like your employer is the all foreseeing governmental entity Big Brother from Orwell's 1984. "Don't get too personal, they'll think you don't have a structured home life." For about 20 minutes, she emphasized that you should be on perfect behavior and look impeccible. Considering businesses can't ask you certain questions like "Are you a citizen? Are you married/gay? Do you have children?" because they are too personal and could unfairly have a negative impact on your interview. So, to compensate, they will scrutinize your appearance, so you better look good.

This is why I hate most conspiracy theorists. They think the government is using the black helicopters to come after you and that the CIA spooks are hiding in John Q.'s closet. The businesses are the ones you have to fear! They're out to make a buck and don't give a damn about their workforce unless they need a boost in PR or can somehow increase profit from it. The government is often bloated, and sometimes fails in its responsibilities, but I'd rely on that before I'd ever trust Conglomo.

More on blogs.

LiveJournals, actually. (Bobby Miller, Riggedproductions.com)

Tiffany Werline. Tiffany Werline. Tiffany Werline.

Considering my last post will hopefully rank my site higher than gay porn sites for searches on "Sean Fischer," I will now attempt to do the same for Tiffany Werline.

Tiffany Werline, as you may or may not know, went to our high school and was Miss Deviler January 2003. See the "centerfold." Big Version (100kb)

A search on Google for "Werline, Tiffany" yields the Vineland Police Blotter (twice, actually). Isn't reminiscing about high school fun?

(PS. Tiffany Werline. Werline, Tiffany. Tiffany. Werline. Werline.)

Sean's favorite websites.

My roommate Sean Fischer's favorite websites.

• Women Doing Time
• Fat Chicks in Party Hats
• Men Who Look Like Kenny Rogers
• Landover Baptist Church

That's about it for now. I might add more later.

When people blog.

Blogging has allowed a growing multitude to express themselves in many new and exciting ways. Personal publishing gives the common man a voice with which they can, in some way or another, change the world.

However, being realistic, we all know that's not entirely true. Besides some more well known bloggers, most of the blogging community is filled with losers. Losers that tell you all about themselves. If you compiled all the LiveJournal, Blogger, and Xanga blogs into one book, it would be incredibly large and even more boring.

There's a former roommate of mine - who will remain nameless - whose blog I read on occasion. I ask myself "why?" every time I finish the page. Mind you, it's not why am I reading this? it's more of a why the fuck would you post something that damned pathetic? First off, a page filled with diatribes on how you drink too much and how your life sucks is not a weblog. It's a call for help. Secondly, the highlight of your day should not be the fact that the high school "bicycle" let you know that she wanted to ask you out. Considering she's "asked out" plenty of other guys, it doesn't make you special. If it did, I'd be up for a "Breathing Air with Excellence" award.

I'm not posting this to bad mouth this aforementioned fellow. It happens that his blog signifies everything right and wrong with the web. I personally feel that you shouldn't read about how "life sucks" or "this person/that person hates me" or be exposed to the countless spelling and grammatical errors on the web (I hope this is error-free) but you can - if you have imagination and squint a little - derive a little comedy and drama by listening on what Joe Everyman has to say. Even if it's sad or just pathetic, it can still be interesting.

Bloggers have been credited with breaking stories before the mainstream press (I've sort of done that. ) and have been credited with a change in social interaction. I tend to ignore that, considering with any new widespread technology, there will always be some form of change in our social network and in the manner in which we communicate. I feel that those that just talk about their lives (however boring they may be) are doing something much more innovative than those breaking news stories. By posting about plebeian life, they are not only giving themselves some meaning, but they are adding to the growing social network of the internet.

River Line is about to open.

The River Line is set to open this coming weekend. I really hope that the line is successful and revives talk of a rail line from Glassboro/Elk to Trenton. The ultimate regional rail experience for me would see commuter rail service from Millville to Camden, via Vineland, Glassboro and Woodbury. I believe that rail line would benefit many of the citizens that live in the area and would help revitalize Camden. In fact, this is the topic of my senior seminar, in a roundabout way.