Although I do suspect that it was when I was trying to take pictures of Comet Lulin...
February 2009 Archives
I messed around with long exposures and light painting myself into a picture. For the first picture, I put a 2-stop neutral density filter on in order to get a 25 second exposure time. I then ran around with a Canon 580 EXII flash and strobed myself a couple of times. For the second picture, the room was completely dark. I used the studio strobes for an initial picture. And then ran around strobing myself. Hrm, now that I think about it, that sounds pretty kinky.
Too bad it didn't last long enough. Ephemeral beauty...
The attendies were in the mood for TtA, so TtA we played. This game was interesting in that only one attack was made during the game. And absolutely no wars. Which is good, I guess, since I spent the whole game behind militarily. Also, there were no colonies that were up for grabs. It seems that I was the only one drawing them and I discarded them since I couldn't fight for them. Mike was ahead for most of the game. But I finally got my victory point generation going with 21 victory points a turn. It took me a while to catch up, but I finally did. And when the final scoring came around, I stayed in the lead (probably because I drew most of the scoring cards and decided which ones to put in).
I received this call on my phone about my long lost Wraith. What Assholes!
Shelby Super Car Ultimate Aero link via
A 1474 megapixel image of the inauguration link via
OCR and Neural Nets in JavaScript link via
The next step in bus ads link via
Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den link via
Bill Cunningham on the Inauguration link via
Water powered jetpack link via
There can only be one! link via
A watched pot never boils link via
Electromagnetic spectrum link via
Energy scale orders of magnitude link via
Unfolding the Earth: Myriahedral Projections link via
Disney Duck Family Tree link via
Mat made of moss stays alive with the help of bath water link via
Japan sewage yields more gold than top mines link via
Test Your Awareness : Whodunnit? link via
Twitter Chatter During the Super Bowl link via
The salvage of flight 1549 link via
Raving rabbit cookie cutter link via
Trying to make a toaster from scratch link via
Japanese Neon Lamp Fights link via
Japanese Kitchen bladesmiths link via
Tonight was a repeat of last week. We played the same two games as we did then. First of was Merchants of Venus with five people.
And then we played Race For The Galaxy. Not that much to add this time around...
Well, I keep playing around with my self-saucing pudding recipe. I want to balance the major flavors in this recipe. Right now, there is Molasses, Chocolate, Chipotle, and Beer. I wanted to sneak in some coffee in there as well. So I added three teaspoons of instant expresso coffee grounds. But I couldn't really taste the coffee. I think that there is a bandwidth problem for taste. You can only fit so many flavors at one time. And the coffee was not intense enough to be seen with the molasses in the picture. I think I am calling this recipe complete at this point.
When I was processing the picture, I noticed quite a bit of difference between a single image and the HDR merged pictures. The single picture is washed out and has a yellowish tint to it.
Continue reading Chocolate Chipotle self-saucing pudding refined.
Time for some yard maintenance. Its been a while since I installed my sprinkler system. I have noticed that the heads are sticking and not popping up like they should. So I went out and bought a new batch of heads.
Replacing them has been a real pain in the neck! Most of them are stuck in the earth. When you unscrew the head, the top part comes off and the bottom part is still in the ground. So you have to grab it with pliers and slowly rock it back and forth in an attempt to remove it. It is like pulling teeth! Then you have to screw the new head in. Which is not as easy as it sounds. Next you run the system to see if the heads are on tight. If so, you remove the sprinkler tops and let any dirt in the lines to flush out.
After doing ten of them, my hands are torn up. I have four blisters on one hand. I can see that this is going to take a while to finish.
Since Marty was planning on playing games at Great Hall Games today, I decided to join him. So we played at a nearby course, Bart. Bart is a pretty odd course. It is in a run-down and abandoned park. The course needs some serious grooming (which was not that bad of a problem in the winter). And it needs a couple of baskets
For lunch we went to Hoover's. Mmm, good, old-fashioned, country cooking...
Spring is when weather gets dicey here. High wind, flash floods, tornadoes, hail, you name it, start coming out of the woodwork. While it is technically Winter, the weather has been very springlike. Warm and in the 60s/70s. So I guess it is no surprise when one of these babies just pops out of nowhere. It sounded like really strong winds outside. And I was greeted with this image on the radar.
I went to Gumbo's for lunch today and was met with a traffic jam. Fortunately for me, the car ahead of me was able to pull into the road. And I was able to squeeze into the lane after a couple of cars slowly moved forward. There is a railroad crossing on 620 right next to IH-35. Apparently, there was a gravel train just sitting on the tracks. So I nosed out into the opposite lane and drove a tiny bit until it turned into a turn lane. I then continued into the the shopping center on the other side of Gumbo's and the train, parked the car, and walked upto the train. Since it was stopped, I hopped across one of the connections and walked the short distance to Gumbo's. It was nice and quiet there for a while. Until the train finally left.
First up was a two player game of Race For The Galaxy while we waited for Jon to arrive. I started off with the New Sparta home world and a bunch of useless developments. However, I soon drew the New Galactic Order. That was just too tempting not to use. So I spent all of my cards to lay it down. Now I am looking at a +4 on military worlds and no cards in my hand. So I am reduced to trying to draw military worlds. Which, I learned, is hard to do. I certainly suffered for it. I eventually ended up with a +11 military ability, the Galactic Imperium, the Rebel Homeworld, and the Rebel Base. But it was just not enough points for the win.
Next up was an old Avalon Hill game that I just recently came across. I played it during the Lone Star convention and fell in love with it. At least enough in love for the $80 going price for it on eBay. This is a shipping game. But based in space with a Science Fiction theme. It also has a dice component to it. You roll a number of dice that is your engine level. The sum of these dice is how far you can move. And you pick one of the dice as your "navigation number" which is sometimes important along some switching segments. So the randomness of the dice is not that painful usually but it can be critical sometimes. It is more about establishing profitable trade routes. The first person to $2000 will win the game.
So, towards the end of the game, I count up my money and add it to what I will get on the next trade that I will get when I land on the planet. And it comes out to $1999! Argh! One dollar short of victory! If I had only have known on the turn before that I could have traded an artifact in for half value. I also have in front of me two unused I.O.U. chits from way back when I discovered those two civilizations. Sigh. Sadly, this money does not count for the win. Fortunately, Jon finds out that he is also short to win on the next turn.
So it comes back to my turn. I need to roll one 5 on four dice to activate my tele-gate and make it to the planet to trade the goods in for the win. I roll the dice and no 5 is rolled! Argh! Fortunately, I also have the mulligan drive artifact and can re-roll one die. Which comes out a 5!!! Woot! How dramatic of an ending...
We finished up the night with a light dice game to counteract the meaty dice game. Man, its been a while since I have played To Court The King. It seems that the dice god was favoring me tonight. I started off strong and kept progressing up through the levels. I reached the King first and was easily able to roll the best set of numbers for the win.
