Easter is one of those weird holidays because it is one of the few holidays that doesn’t have a set-in-stone date. It’s not on a specific date, it’s not on a specific day of a certain month. The only hard-and-fast “rules” for Easter is that it always falls on a Sunday, on one of the thirty-four days within the range of March 22-April 25 (inclusive). As for how the date of Easter is calculated, it’s a very complicated and involved method that’s so complicated and involved that even Wikipedia doesn’t detail it. Furthermore, there has been controversy behind it many many times, including many attempts to “standardize” the date that Easter is celebrated, most of them to no effect.

Well, this year, Easter fell on March 23rd, the second-earliest possible date that Easter could fall on. Wow. However, today I was shown something that actually puts this date into some interesting context. The fact of the matter is that for everyone who went through Easter this year, they have gone through the earliest Easter that they will ever go through again in their lives. Wow! Here’s the facts:

Easter was on March 23rd this year, 2008. The last time that it fell on March 23rd was in 1913, meaning that no one under the age of 95 has lived through an Easter this early before. Furthermore, none of us will again, since the next March 23rd Easter will be in the year 2228 (220 years from now!). But what about the one possible earlier date for Easter, March 22nd? Well, the last time that happened was in the year 1818, and it will not happen again until the year 2285, 277 years from now! None of the over 6 billion people alive today have ever experienced a March 22nd Easter, and they never will.

Not that any of this has any practical importance, but it is interesting to think about.

Tags: dates, Easter, event, fact, holiday, interesting, landmark

I must say that I am. Granted, WordPress does have the best admin layout of any blog/CMS platform that I’ve ever used, but I have had my share of picky points to complain about here and there. But yesterday, the folks at Automattic released WordPress 2.5, which they have deemed to be the biggest UI change since 1.5 came out three years ago. The main attraction of 2.5 is a brand new administration layout that is much more user-oriented. It has a much nicer, better-flowing layout that also permits a nice amount of customization. (And the Dashboard is actually useful now, woo hoo!)

So, the good news with WordPress 2.5 is that it’s got a lot of great new features. However, the bad news with WordPress 2.5 is that it’s got a lot of great new features. That means that if you’ve heavily customized your WordPress installation with plugins or theme tweaks, you may need to think a couple of times before you begin the 2.5 honeymoon. A wide number of incompatible plugins have been listed by the community, and if you use some of the more popular plugins listed at the bottom of the page, you may need to hold your horses for a week or two until the authors start rolling out some updates. I know that I’m going to be holding off for awhile until I have a significant amount of time to dedicate to updating. Also, due to the size of this upgrade, doing a very comprehensive backup will be HIGHLY recommended.

However, congratulations to Automattic on this release, and I look forward to examining it in more detail.

Tags: 2.5, administration, Automattic, backup, blog, Dashboard, layout, release, upgrading, user interface, WordPress

This is an interesting movement that is taking place today, where many residents and cities around the world, including my native San Francisco, is agreeing to turn the lights off for one hour starting tonight at 8 PM. It seems like an interesting movement. If you are able to, consider doing your part for the movement, and help conserve energy usage by turning your lights off for an hour tonight.

Tags: climate change, Earth Hour, global warming, movement, San Francisco, Video, YouTube

It’s junior year in high school and graduation is *gulp* starting to appear just over the horizon. That means two things for the spring of junior year: tests and college research. I already took the SAT a few weeks ago, and I’m scheduled for the ACT in a few weeks and the SAT Subject Tests in a little over a month, plus I’ll likely retake the SAT in the fall.

As for college research, I’ve been doing that too recently, and am slowly but surely compiling together a list of places that I might be interested in spending four years of my life at. I won’t go into much more detail about this at this point, but you’ll likely be seeing me blog plenty more times about what’s happening with my continuing college search.

However, this week is Spring Break, and thus is the classic week for taking the opportunity to visit and tour college campuses. And since I live in the Bay Area (and cannot stop bragging about it), there’s a bunch of great colleges within driving distance of my house. So this week, I’ll be visiting a couple of colleges in the area, not necessarily because I’m interested in going there (some of them I am taking a good look at, while others are definitely not on my list), but to get the feel of going on a college campus and seeing what there is to see.

Today, I’m going to be visiting UC Berkeley, followed by Santa Clara University tomorrow, University of San Francisco on Wednesday, and Stanford University on Thursday (saving the best for last).

So that’s the majority of my Spring Break this week, which should be interesting…

Tags: Bay Area, colleges, Personal, Spring Break, tests, travelling, visits

EDITOR’S NOTE (What editor?): The purpose of this post is purely to vent. Nothing written in this post should (at this point) be considered as indicative of any future changes or announcements, but is purely for the purpose of me to vent about some stuff that has been on my mind.

I’m sure that if you’re one of the meager few whom have followed PreviewCast, you have noticed that its path has gotten considerably bumpy thus far. And I’ve got to say, I have spent many, many hours over the past weeks and months debating about PreviewCast, its purpose, and its place in life and on the internet.

Now granted, I do have to say this for PreviewCast: when we restarted it in July 2006, we really were moving into uncharted territory and had no idea how it would continue. In short: it was summer, and we were bored, and we wanted to start doing it again. We knew that in 2005, the show had fallen apart after 5 episodes when school started and life started, and so we sort of dealt with somewhat of a tension in terms of whether we would still make it when school started, and whether we would make it past the five episode barrier.

It was to our delightful surprise that this “second generation” of PreviewCast actually started to become successful and built a personality for itself. We consistently produced about thirteen episodes (twelve regular plus one special edition) from mid-July to the end of October, during which we also had one guest (Micheal Cottingham from phpBB who was on episode #006 during the AboutUs.org debacle). Then, we ended up missing about three weeks in November, partially due to the busy part of a school semester, but we re-emerged during Thanksgiving to record two great episodes (and then to completely reinvigorate a broken-apart website by rebuilding it)–including interviews with Leah Culver, and later in December, Adam Christianson. We had a lot of moments to look back on during our 2006 Best-Of episode, #018. Shortly after this, I got started on my second podcast, phpBB Weekly.

We went right on through the end of January, although some tensions did emerge as we started to tackle the question of “randomness” versus “decency.” Nevertheless, looking back, the early part of 2007 reflects some of my favorite PreviewCast memories. We had another hiatus in February due to the couple of weeks that I was sick in bed, but then we sprung back together in March when we had an interview with TalkShoe CEO Dave Nelsen, a special episode seminar at my school, and then a much-beloved April Fools Day parody of Diggnation (complete with the Stewarts Orange & Cream!!!).

We had a few episodes in April, but didn’t get anything done in May (again, busy with school, end of semester, etc.). However, we got going again around Memorial Day weekend, and had a nice set of episodes in June, including episode #035, which featured my favorite back-and-forth argument with Larry: a 30+ minute argument over Safari for Windows. Then, we had two episodes from the day of the iPhone launch–a day which I’ll never forget–in which Robert and I talked about the launch outside our Apple Store on a park bench and I then interviewed the folks in line. Looking back, I was really proud of my interviewing the folks in line, which gave me practice for some episodes some time later. July continued with our one-or-two year celebration, a Matt Mullenweg interview, plus an excellent experience covering WordCamp and interviewing people there. And then, we reached the peak of this running streak with our forty-second episode on August 7th when we covered the iMac/iLife/iWork special event one-hour after the keynote ended.

And that’s when it plateaued. School started. People got busy. I spent many weekends online trying to record an episode, but with no one becoming available. Sometimes, I didn’t really have time to record. We did manage to pump out three episodes in late September–one of which was an amazing interview with Lorelle VanFossen and my most favorite interview ever, but after that, we went back down into the ditches. Our feed was entirely silent for two and a half months. Although he was the co-host, Larry had only been on PreviewCast twice since April. Not that I blamed him–I understand more than anyone that as teenagers, we have a lot happening in our lives, and have significant time constraints to deal with. Nevertheless, it was somewhat irritating to me, and Larry and I exchanged numerous IMs and e-mails over the possibility of ending PreviewCast. But, we never really had the will to do so.

Now, it’s interesting how this plays out–the feelings that I had and still have over ending PreviewCast somewhat reflects the feelings that I had in mid-2006 regarding my commitments with the phpBB MOD Team. I haven’t talked very much about the details on why I left the MOD Team in August 2006, partly because they were somewhat embarrassing circumstances. But it’s important to remember that at that time, I was in a very interesting situation. I had only become familiar with phpBB in June 2004, written my first very basic MOD in October 2004, doing a slightly more substantial MOD in February 2005, and then in November I grabbed an opportunity to apply to the MOD team, and I was accepted. However, I was only 14 years old, a freshman in high school, and with only a small amount of self-taught PHP experience, I was probably the least experienced person on the team and I was certainly the youngest person ever on the team. Plus, I had a very committed life–I look back on my freshman year as such a difficult year for me partially because I really overcommitted myself that year. By the time 2006 came around, I wasn’t being very productive towards the teams, I was having conflicts with other team members, and I was starting not to enjoy it very much. But at the same time, i was very reluctant to quit because there were some ways in which I liked being on the teams, and I certainly enjoyed having the status of being a MOD Team member. Nevertheless, things continued to deteriorate, up until the point where, two days before my sophomore year started in August 2006, I was asked to step down.

Quite frankly, I was only heartbroken about that for about a day. School started, I had recently gotten going with PreviewCast, and quite frankly, sophomore year was so crazy that I probably managed to survive because I wasn’t committed to the teams anymore. I ended up starting phpBB Weekly five months later, and I feel that I make a much better contribution to the phpBB community through that venture.

But I have a very similar feeling with PreviewCast too, and I think Larry does as well. We know that PreviewCast is not doing well. We’re all getting very busy, and as such, general interest and commitment in keeping PreviewCast going has been declining. Larry has not been able to make it to our usual 4:30 PM Eastern recording time on Sunday afternoon since last June (he was on once in late-December for a Boxing Day episode, when we recorded really early in the morning to adjust to his schedule). Even I have had to skip out a number of weeks because of things going on in my life, plus a number of our regular PreviewCasters have had life move on. Plus, we’re all growing older, and a number of things are coming over the horizon. Larry and Skoker are graduating in June (and congrats to them, by the way), and they’ll likely be moving on in life. I have ever-growing commitments in my life, plus my time to start college-searching has begun.

But yet, we really don’t want to let go of PreviewCast for whatever reason, and I really think that it’s because we have never done it for the subscribers, we have never done it for ad revenue, we have never done it for any self-serving reason whatsoever other than the fact that we have enjoyed doing it. PreviewCast has more or less been fun for us. In fact, sometimes when I tell friends or teachers about the things that I do, they often ask me what I do for fun–well, blogging and podcasting is what I do for fun. That is my hobby. And that’s why we have both been so hesitant to end PreviewCast or to disassociate with PreviewCast: we love doing it.

We have tried to restart the show back during Winter Break in December, and we’ve recorded a few shows, including a special Macworld 2008 set of interviews (#049), and an excellent fiftieth episode that we did in January. And then, once again, we have gone dormant. Part of that can be blamed on my recent Sojourn trip which has usurped a significant amount of free time, but then again, I have tried for these past few weeks to assemble PreviewCast episodes, and again have been met by a silent, already-committed internet.

I’m really trying to decide where to go and what to do. I really don’t feel like I can continue to work like this: trying to ask a bunch of people to try to come together for an episode, set aside my own time to prepare and be here to record an episode, and then see no results. At the same time, PreviewCast is a part of two networks that will only let the show stay around if we are somewhat reliable at actually producing content, which has not been happening. I really feel tempted to want to throw in the towel and say that PreviewCast is over due to a lack of commitment. But at the same time, I still want to be able to have some sort of a podcast where I can be able to offer my comments and opinions on tech stuff in a way that I can’t do it on a blog–but I want to be able to do it with someone and be able to do it regularly.

So, at this point I’m frustrated because of where PreviewCast has been going and yet continuing my continuous desire to have some sort of a teen-based tech podcast, regardless of whether or not it’s modeled after PreviewCast. I hope to be able to figure something out soon.

Tags: comments, discussion, episodes, friends, frustrations, guests, history, MOD Team, MODs, opinions, Personal, phpBB, phpBB Weekly, Podcasts, PreviewCast, rant, tech, venting

On Saturday, March 1st, I took my very first full-length SAT. (Technically called the SAT Reasoning Test.) I thought that I had done okay on it, though it is a very long (and stressful) test, particularly once you get to around section 7 or 8 and your brain starts to say “Enough already!”

However, my scores came out this morning at 8 AM Eastern time (a time which I’ve been counting down to over the past few days in anticipation), and so here they are (note that all scores fall within the 200-800 range):

Critical Reading: 630 (85th percentile)
Math: 710 (95th percentile)
Writing: 670 (93rd percentile)
–>In the Writing category, I receive subscores for multiple choice questions (between 20-80) and the 25-minute essay (between 2-12), in which I got 68 and 8 respectively.

This adds up to a cumulative sum of 2010 for the test (on the 600-2400 scale), which is a pretty good score, although not as high as I was hoping. Except for math, the scores are somewhat below the average scores for some of the top colleges that I’m looking at, although they’re not too far off. I’ll have to decide later whether I want to give this test another shot or not in the fall.

I do have some more tests on the way. I’ll be taking the ACT exam on Saturday, April 12th, and then two SAT Subject Tests on Saturday, May 3rd. We’ll see how well I do on those…

Tags: colleges, Critical Reading, essay, math, Reasoning, SAT, scores, test, Writing

Another great one from my science hero, Bill Nye. The groove of this one is quite addictive, you’d think that the song here was originally written for the Bill Nye adaptation. Totally awesome.

Yes, I do promise that I’ll start getting some good content posted on this blog again. I’ve been REALLY busy with school stuff recently, but Spring Break is starting…

Tags: Bill Nye, climate, cold, hot, online, Video, weather, YouTube

Yes, I’m starting up yet another podcast venture. This particular one is being done in coordination with the Teen Podcasters Network. (If you haven’t heard, I became their “Lead Developer”–a very intimidating title–a month ago.) Well, we have decided to start a podcast for the network, which is being unceremoniously titled the Teen Podcasters Network Podcast, or TPNP for short. While we’re still figuring out how we want to lay out the podcast, it will likely be a less frequent podcast than the others (we’ll probably aim for producing it approximately biweekly), and it will probably hover more towards a length of 30 minutes instead of 60 minutes. On the show, we’ll be talking about podcasting, particularly for teenagers, news from TPN, as well as bringing on hosts from the network every so often to tell us about themselves and their shows.

Our first pilot episode is already online, so go ahead and check it out now!

Tags: Billy Hime, new, pilot, Podcasts, projects, Teen Podcasters Network, teens, TPNP

When it comes down to the primaries, everyone’s talking about big states, little states, blah blah blah. Leave it to Stephen Colbert to sort through all of it.

Tags: campaign, Clinton, Colbert Report, Indecision 2008, Obama, primaries, size, states, Stephen Colbert, Video

These are diary entries that I wrote throughout my ten-day Sojourn to the Past trip on February 14-23. Each entry is posted here two weeks after it was originally written, due to the provision that I didn’t have any computer or internet access during my trip. Be sure to check out my other Sojourn to the Past coverage. Enjoy.

I’m writing on the plane right now, up 30,000 or however many feet in the air, en route back to San Francisco. Aside from a near calamity with our return flights, today has been probably my favorite day of the trip, in which we really wrapped up and culminated on everything that we’ve learned over the past ten days.

We had another early morning, once again, and after breakfast, we went back to the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, but this time, we went inside. We were given special players and headphones which amounted essentially to a guided audio tour of the museum, which was a very big museum to walk through. Going through it was like walking back through everything that we had learned for one last time, starting with an exhibit on slavery and various defining events before the Civil Rights Movement began, and then going through further exhibits for each of the major phases of the Civil Rights Movement. The movement then culminated up on the top floor where you could see (through the plexi-glass windows) the two rooms in the motel that were restored to what they were like on April 4, 1968. The room on the left (room 307) was where Dr. King normally stayed (although he didn’t stay in that room in April 1968 because it was occupied), and was a fully made room. The room on the right (room 306) was the room where Dr. King was staying, and was recreated as it would have been at the particular moment, including the sheets partially uncovered, dishes left on the desk, etc. From the observing area we could also see the balcony where he was shot, including the spot where his head hit the ground. That particular spot had been permanently stained because of how much blood there had been, that they replaced that spot with a brick because the blood stain had been too painful to look at at the time.

After we finished going through the museum, we went into an auditorium at the museum where we were greeted by Rev. Billy Kyles, who had been with Dr. King that evening that he was shot in Memphis. He did talk briefly about the evening that Dr. King was shot, but he mostly talked preached about the importance of having dreams, following our dreams, “holding fast” to them. He frequently brought up his favorite quote from Langston Hughes: “Hold fast to your dreams. For if dreams die, you are like broken-winged birds that cannot fly.” His message was really captivating, and you could feel it when, after he spoke, we gave him an eight-minute standing ovation.

After that, we had lunch and the opportunity to personally meet Rev. Kyles, but then we moved on to the wrap-up activity of the trip, and probably may very favorite part of this trip. All 150 of us made a big circle around the room, and then we each had the opportunity to share the biggest strength that we learned and how we were going to apply it when we went home. However, many of us (including myself) took the opportunity to share a personal story of something that affected them, and how what they had learned on this trip had made them look at it in a different way. There were a number of students there that had been struggling to deal with divorced parents and who had had hostility to one of them, but who decided that they were going to apologize and reconnect to their other parent when they got home. One of them said that the trip had helped her get over the grief of having to watch her best friend commit suicide. One of them had talked about how he and his family had built up so much hatred and resentment towards African Americans because of atrocities that a few African American men had done to his family, but that this trip shattered his hate and that he was going to try to live a new life. It was very emotional for many of us, but whenever it got emotional, a number of friends came up to console that person. (And yes, there were plenty of tissue boxes kept handy.) But it was a very special moment for me in a number of ways. First, it really helped to bridge the connection between this trip, the civil rights movement, and everything that I had done, seen, and learned over the past ten days to my life today, and really made clear just how much all of it has to do with our lives. It also helped to remind me how we often make judgments based on what we see on the outside, but just how much more there is on the inside. When I learned about some of the stories that the others shared–these other people who had been complete strangers to me just nine days ago–I ended up looking at them in a completely different light. Even one of the students from my school, who I’ve known for a long time (she’s been a regular volunteer with the Aragon Peace Club), shared a story. She’s the kind of person that you can recognize at school by her big smile and always bright attitude, but she shared about the suffering that she privately goes through inside while her parents are constantly fighting, and she was one of the many who broke down emotionally. For me, those three hours in that circle was by far the most enthralling part of the trip, and probably the part that I will remember most of all.

After wrapping up the trip by singing “We Shall Overcome” as a group, we left for Memphis International Airport, where we proceeded with check in and then bought ourselves some dinner. We all had a flight from Memphis to Atlanta, at which point the Los Angeles folks connected on a flight to LAX, and we connected on a flight to SFO. (The New York folks are staying in Memphis one more night and are flying home tomorrow.) However, our group pretty much filled almost all of the Memphis-Atlanta flight. Unfortunately, around the time that we were boarding prior to our 6 PM departure, we learned that our plane had a fuel leak, and that they were waiting for maintenance to come and fix it. We were worried that we would get stuck in Memphis, but luckily, they were able to fix the fuel leak so that we boarded at 7:00 and took off around 7:20. (Due to the large size of our group, Delta made the very wise move of asking our connecting flights to wait for us. The San Francisco layover had gone from 90 minutes to 10 minutes, and the Los Angeles layover had gone from 60 minutes to -20 minutes.) However, when we arrived in Atlanta, we hurried to our gate only to find out that our flight had been delayed anyway half an hour, so we were luckily able to catch our breath before we had to board.

We’ll be landing in San Francisco in a couple of hours (around 1 AM local time, about 21 hours after we woke up this morning!). It’s hard to believe that Sojourn to the Past is now over, but boy, it was an excellent experience, and certainly one that I’ll always remember.

Tags: AirPort, Delta, diaries, Dr. King, dreams, flight, Lorraine Motel, Memphis, National Civil Rights Museum, Rev. Billy Kyles, sharing, Sojourn to the Past, Tennessee