Sunday, October 18, 2009

One wall down, seven or ten to go!

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Train Trip


Maybe I'll post pics from PAX this year, seeing as how we remembered to bring a camera this time. At the very least I have to share this one. Can you fit a 6 player game of Dominion into a sleeper car on a train? Hell yes you can!

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Thing I got from PAX

  • A hangover.
  • A bunch of free t-shirts.
  • A "1337" cap from Intel.
  • Some sweet castles gear (not free).
  • A lot of buttons.
  • Some new friends.
  • Some back talk from a Wizards rep.
  • A great time at the concerts and the con in general.
  • Maybe swine flu.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Omegathon final. Close to my heart.

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Wednesday, August 19, 2009

[blank] you I won't do what you tell me

Dear American Radio,
Please stop playing the subsection of Killing In The Name Of that your corporate overlords will allow you to spin. You get my hopes up, and then they're dashed.

That is all.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Drink up, comrades!

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

10,000 days

Today I am ten thousand days old. This seems significant.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Lammas

Today is the festival of Lammas, where we celebrate the star of Falcon Crest.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

The Associated Press: Calif. teen youngest to sail solo around world

The Associated Press: Calif. teen youngest to sail solo around world: "'We wouldn't be a family if it wasn't for our lord Jesus Christ,' he said, pointing up to the sky as the crowd yelled 'Jesus!'
...
"I'm hoping to set off on my next adventure soon — Mt. Everest or down to the Arctic Circle," Sunderland said."

OK, first, where did they find a crowd that was so into god that they "yelled 'Jesus!'"?

Second, for a kid who sailed around the world, his geography isn't all that sharp. Oddities of Maine and map projections aside, who the hell refers to North as down? And this is me being picky, but he does know he can't sail to Mt. Everest, right?

Saturday, July 11, 2009

That kid is back on the escalater again!

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Project Natal Demo (6/1/09) - Video - NBC.com

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Project Natal Demo (6/1/09) - Video - NBC.com

This looks surprisingly better than I thought it would. Watch the whole thing. Their little "We want to be the Wii" breakout game in the beginning is what I was expecting. Functional controls for games that were not built with this in mind, like Burnout as they show at the end, makes this actually interesting.


Thursday, May 28, 2009

Spelling Bee

The Spelling Bee is on today - I suppose it's over by now, but we're watching it as per usual for most live events on tape delay.

One of the words in the semi's this morning was "Santeria". I was hoping beyond hope that Dr. Jacques Bailly would read out the sample sentence, in his iconic monotone as "I don't practice Santeria, I ain't got no crystal ball".

The kid got it wrong.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Running Wk 5

I only got 3 runs in this week. But! I've extended my run by an extra quarter mile or so. I'm very happy with this.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Running, wk4

So, that push up thing didn't happen. Tues/Thur were my oversleeping days this week, apparently. Also, was going to run today, but slept in after returning from the hospital at 2 am and spent the morning taking care of the head injury victim.

Of interest this week: Mon and Wed I got a side stitch about 2/3 of the way through. This hasn't happened before. Anyone want to save me the trouble of googling it and tell me why?

Saturday, April 25, 2009

The stars at night, are big and bright...




Stolen from Dunford, who stole it from somewhere else. Nate Silver has a really interesting piece on what TX is actually allowed to do by virtue of it's "Hey we were a country before we joined up with you" deal, and what it's effects would be on national politics.

Running, wk3

Continued Success! I've been running out of steam progressively earlier, but I think it's because I'm pushing myself too hard early on. I'm fairly sure I'm getting faster, but that's of no consequence. Plan for this week: on advice of the internet (I know, a truly reliable source), I'm going to drop the Sunday run, and the Saturday as well. BUT! I will pick up other exercises on T-Th-Sa, be they just push ups and sit ups, or mayhaps a gym membership if I can figure out how to get the discount my health insurance promised me.

Oh, and the worst part of my running loop? It goes past a cookie bakery. I had to run through an aura of cinnamon yesterday morning for 30% of my path. So tempting!

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Running, wk 2

Keepin it up! Sun-Mon-Wed-Fri-Sat again this week. Monday morning I was feeling the after effects of a few too many after Zombie Jeebus Day at Steph and Tony's, so I skipped the morning and balanced out in the evening. I almost preferred that, but my work schedule isn't consistent enough that I could commit to a schedule and I wouldn't want to miss a day if I'm stuck at the office til 9. I feel like I'm improving, getting faster at least, but my endurance hasn't changed, which sucks since that was the whole point of this. I'll assume I just need to give it more time? I do feel just better in general though, more energetic in the morning after I get back (hang overs aside). Also, I think I need to start eating better after I get back. My current morning diet is just cereal and milk. Not sure what I'd do for protein though. Maybe I just have to start liking egg whites, if not semantic arguments?

Oh, I tried tying my house key into my shoe laces today so I didn't have to carry it, but it went flying about a block into my run. Is there an accepted solution for this? Or am I supposed to just grip it in my hand as I've been doing?

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Running, wk1

SO! I didn't hold to the every day ideal, but I have done the loop around our block 4 out of the last 7 days. I've not been strictly benchmarking myself, but I've been doing a bit better every day - a few more steps, or a bit faster pace. I realized both yesterday and today that I'm now that crazy guy who's jogging in shorts and a t-shirt when everyone else is walking around in a jacket. I blame that at least in part on the thin skinned bay area population though - it's never as cold as anyone seems to think.

This week's plan - keep on going! I'm not quite ready to extend my loop yet. Also, maybe try an evening run? I've been getting out early (read: 7pm), and it's staying light out later.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

xkcd - A Webcomic - Matrix Revisited

xkcd - A Webcomic - Matrix Revisited

"Today was the ten-year anniversary of the release of The Matrix"

This makes me feel old.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Penny Arcade! - The Seventh Spring, Part One

Penny Arcade! - The Seventh Spring, Part One: "...sustaining an entire universe mentally is taxing, and full responsibility for another person's enjoyment is never something I hoist willingly. I [do] my best to embroider the complexities of moving through public spheres, and the players didn't appear to entirely disgusted, so apparently my failure was not absolute."

Paraphrased from Tycho, on running a D&D game. I've run two long-ish games, Werewolf and D&D 3.5. In both cases, I was constantly told by my players that they enjoyed it, notably in the Werewolf game. Werewolf was particularly odd, as the game sort of went off on its own. I spent an entire summer planning it and got through all of 2 of the encounters I wanted to run in nearly 2 semesters of gaming.

The same little voice in the back of my head telling me I sucked and my friends were lying to me (I know, unlikely) is the only thing keeping me from starting a game out here. I always feel nervous DMing, and I always feel nervous talking to people don't know, so the combination of the two will surely cause me to collapse in a ball of introversion. I only know a scant few people out here well enough that I really feel comfortable with, and there's not enough of them to run a game for. My urge to game is slowly overcoming that, but not to the point that I'll run a campaign of my own design.

Solution! I got a copy of the first published 4e adventure (Keep on the Shadowfell) for free a while ago, and having listened to the PA/PvP podcast I know that it doesn't actually suck. From there, Thunderspire Labyrinth, Dungeon Delve, and who knows where we'll be by then. Now then, to find people who want to play...

Jogging again

Just back in from taking up jogging again. Gave it a shot yesterday, and I think I pushed too hard - I wound up doing mostly walking in between short bursts of running. Today I paced myself better, and jogged just about a mile straight through, before walking the last half mile of my route as a cool down. Still a little short of breath, but I feel a hell of a lot better than yesterday and I feel like I accomplished more. I'm going to push myself to do this every morning - I've no real excuse, it doesn't take that long (30 minutes including this blog post), and it's a good start to the day.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

4 semesters of Japanese and

4 semesters of Japanese and all the use I get out of it is pronouncing sushi names correctly.

Monday, March 9, 2009

c-o-m-c-a-s-t

Kimya Dawson should totally sue their asses.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

This! Is! Watchmen!

funny pictures
moar funny pictures

Going to see it tonight. Personally, I like Snyder's work. But he is a bit predictable. There will be plenty of slow motion fight scenes to be had, I can guess that much. And impossible, stylistic backgrounds, via chroma key. But hey, it's a comic book movie. It works. I read a review that called him a really fancy photocopier, rather than a director, but for this kind of adaptation anything less would draw complaints.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Confit byaldi

Anyone who's seen Ratatouille knows its namesake is a peasant dish, simple chopped vegetables. When Pixar had to fancy it up, who'd they call? Thomas Keller, which is perfect, as he basically spends all day making fancy versions of regular food and charging $250+ a head for it. It looked fun in the movie, so I've been meaning to give it a shot. I took the quick and easy way - I didn't peel the tomatoes/peppers in the "Piperade", and I didn't slow steam it in the oven, because I was a bit hungry and wanted to eat before midnight. Also I don't have a mandoline, so I hand sliced the veg on top, and it's thicker than it should be. Pics!

Ready to roast:

Closeup, just out of the oven:

My plating skillz are not quite rat level:


All in all, it came out pretty good. Erin didn't like it, but she doesn't usually like veggie dishes. Wiki says it gets better tomorrow, so we'll see then.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Clusterf#@k to the Poor House - GOP Govs at Odds

Important Things with Demetri Martin Power - Creedocide

Sunday, February 22, 2009

New kitty

Still needs a name...

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Chicken fried bacon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Chicken fried bacon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "'They've taken fat, they've double-coated it in fat, they've fried it in more fat, and then they've served it with a side order of fat.'"

Sunday, February 1, 2009

You've got red on you.


Aftermath of Evil Dead: the Musical last night. I've got a "before" pic as well, but it's stubbornly stuck on my camera, as opposed to my mem stick where I would have easy access to it. I'm not really spoiling anything by saying the finale involves a stage hand spraying the audience with a super soaker full of fake blood. I got hit dead on in the face. It was awesome.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Best Ginger Ale Ever


The one in the middle. It's made with honey.

http://www.tksoda.com/our-sodas/ginger-ale

That is all.

Monday, January 19, 2009

JoCo

Jonathan Coulton again on Saturday. And again, awesome. High point: my attempt at stage banter that was applauded and cheered by the crowd. JoCo has a song called "The Presidents", with one line for each of em. He doesn't play it often, as it's fast-ish and has, well, now 44 lines with no chorus. He's playing it now, since he had to change the ending (yay!), but he's not well practiced, so he messed it up a few times. Here's the vid:



(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lku2w2sTneQ)

At 1:45, after his second stumble, right before he restarted, that's me shouting "You want my iPod?" from the balcony. Everyone laughed. I love geek gatherings.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

NPH

Neil Patrick Harris hosted SNL last night. Between his work on How I Met Your Mother, and as Dr Horrible, I've been a big fan lately. Even still, I only stayed up for the monologue, so I'm lucky NBC cherry picked this clip as one to post on hulu:


Little known fact: NPH actually appeared as Mark, the character he's parodying in that clip, in the first touring company of Rent. When I turned it on last night, I even commented that I would kill to have seen him in that role, he almost seems more suited to it than Anthony Rapp, the actor who originated the role and played it in the film version.

Edit: some research shows NPH's recent popularity has spawned more youtube vids of him than there were last I checked. Here's "What You Own":



And audio only for "Take Me Or Leave Me", which isn't even a Mark song...



- Here's parts of that with video.

And here's Seasons of Love(Their Joanne is gratingly flat in the first chorus).
And here's a press reel in 6 parts hosted by NPH. I've not watched all of them, but the first one has his parts from La Via Boheme, which is what I was really looking for. Having seen it, it doesn't quite live up to what I'd hoped. The other bits I need to hunt down if they're in there are Tango Maureen and Life Support. I have an image in my head of him delivering the line "Maaaaaaaark, Maaaaaaark, I'm Mark!" that I need to know if he pulls off.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Evil Dead

Evil Dead

An hour drive for me each way. Worth it? Probably! It's running for a month or so, let's hope we get a Saturday night free to check it out. Oddly, except for the studying, tonight would be perfect =(.

Friday, January 9, 2009

The Dimes

Just making a note here to remind myself to look up "The Dimes". I like this Pandora radio thing, but it needs a built in bookmarking system to flag bands I like. Or maybe it does? And I'm just unaware of it?

Edit: also, "Bright Eyes"
Edit: and "Tarkio"

Thursday, January 8, 2009

funcheapSF.com {beta} » fun (but affordable) things to do in the san francisco bay area

funcheapSF.com {beta} » fun (but affordable) things to do in the san francisco bay area

I heard about this on KQED this morning on the way to work. On the one hand, things like this are why I wanted to move to a major metro area. On the other, it reminds me why I keep kicking myself for living on the peninsula. I expected for some reason that public transit worked here like it did back in NYC, and it's just not that way. I miss trains that run all night. Still, I do love my non-commute.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Friday, January 2, 2009

YouTube - American Tax Relief



"We owed the IRS two hundred thousand dollars, but we only paid forty thousand."
"We owed the IRS three million dollars, but we paid less than one million."

Why would you say that on television? Why would you brag about ripping off the government? I can acknowledge that there's some benefit in the IRS settling in cases like these: they get something rather than nothing. But how could a person look at this as anything but a point of shame? These people are smiling for the camera, wallowing in their financial ineptitude.