Game Designers Rules Journal : games : CafePress.com

now here's a thoughtful gift, for me.

TV Links

awesome UK site with a whole bunch of streaming television shows, including Celebrity Deathmatch!

MaleContraceptives.org -- 'Dry orgasm' pill

Details about that short-term male pill that made a splash in the news (at least it did in Britain) last month. Warning: sex ed style diagram (in case you haven't had your coffee yet and aren't ready for a penis diagram).

The Devils Panties - Wednesday, December 25, 2002

is it too late for linking to old christmas comics? nah, it's never to late for a sexy barbie joke.

YouTube - Wii-diculous - Playing the Wii in a Movie Theater

now here's how video games should be played. of course actually going out and bowling, playing tennis, golf, etc. is better, but to be able to fully apply one's ADD and do all three without fighting traffic, that's cool.

Mercedes-Benz considers bringing compacts to the U.S. - AutoblogGreen

I just came back from an off-season vacation in England. While over there I became extremely jealous of the range of options they have in compact cars. Mercedes, Audi, everybody has really nice little commuter cars with a lot of class. It would be awesome if they brought some over here.

It's fun to stay at the... on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

damn funny blasphemy. damn good photostream too, I went back as far as this Family Planning Advice, which I'd heard somewhere before and I have to say is some of their best advice, even if they didn't actually give it.

YouTube - Chainsaw Wakeup

now this be good parenting

US Nationals - Table Tennis

Yesterday I competed in the annual national table tennis event in Las Vegas (anybody following in real time will note that I am back-dating this post). I went 7 and 3, and medaled (made it to the semifinals) in the Under 1000 event. Here are the scores from each of my matches.

I'm still not really comfortable playing in a tournament setting, and remained tight throughout all matches (except perhaps the semifinals with Aashay Patel, which I lost but was a very competitive match). Playing tight, well, it just doesn't work. Hitting well requires that you use your arm like a whip, driven by your body. If your arm is stiff it's like a bludgeon, and let's face it, clubs aren't the weapons known for breaking the sound barrier.

Details of a couple key matches to follow, should I find the time…

Funagain Games: Khet: The Laser Game

That game with a laser (formerly known as Deflexion) is back under a new name. Trademark issues or something.

The Frontal Cortex : You Always Get What You Pay For

hope this doesn't lower the quality reasonably priced eyeglasses purchased online.

Glassy Eyes | Shattering the Eyeglasses Scam

Here's the story that started it all. If you wear glasses, read this.

YouTube - SomethingAwful Physics

the joys of violence rendered up stick figures. and with mood music even.

Yorkshire Trip: 2006

Photos uploaded to Flickr tagged with 2006vacation and england. Also, here's our Wayfaring map of the trip. Well, that's what we were thinking about anyway, not necessarily where we ended up going.

“Speedflying” - Ben Saunders | Adventurer, Athlete, Motivational Speaker

wow

Jewel Staite ~ Notes

Kaylee (well, Jewel anyway) is going to be on Stargate. Is that part of your Sci-Fi lineup Josh?

Wagnerian rock - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

genre i didn't realize i was a fan of, but makes sense, i like mergers of old and new music (old as in past centuries).

Kitty-Ki

Our cat Fritz has gone international! Anybody recognize the language?

D/s Personal Training

Cybil's got this exercise DVD with a hidden track that almost goes here. Makes you wonder if the trainer engages in any such extra-curricular activity.

The Order of the Stick: Dungeon of Dorukan

Is it wrong that I think it's cool that there's a massive card game based on a webcomic that's based on a role-playing game?

Smart officially unviels the new FourTwo

2008 means it'll be available in 2007 here in southern California, right?

List of faux pas - United Kingdom

Mostly common courtesy stuff, but could be handy traveling outside of the mother country.

Who Wants to Be a Cognitive Neuroscientist Millionaire?

this would have been a pretty crappy article if some journalist with no clue had written it, but he wrote it himself, and it's a fascinating read.

GeekList: Bellies With Stars AKA History of the Geek

Sneeches are Sneeches and gamers are gamers, but god damn some of them are clever.

Mountain Man Dance Moves: The McSweeney's Book of Lists

here's an awesome xmas gift for someone who doesn't spend enough time goofing around online (and therefore hasn't read them already)

YouTube - Grand Theft Mario

Robot Chicken Rules. Can't wait for the next season to come out on DVD. Well, actually I guess I can, or I'd be downloading it with bittorrent.

waiterrant.net » The High Cost of Free Stuff

Waiter Rant with a new perspective on the Science Friday discussion of Conflict of Interest in Medicine. Well, not all that new. But interesting to hear the story from someone who works in an only tangentially related field.

smart forfun2 a monster good time - Autoblog

how did i miss this one?!

How Superman Should Have Ended

"If superman was that snide that would've been a better movie" -Cybil

Also must watch: Lord of the Rings, "imagine if we'd walked there." and Surviving an Alien Attack (did anyone actually watch Jurassic Park 3 to verify if Jeff Goldbloom was in it?)

National Games Week

Barnes & Noble has a bunch of board games (real ones, like Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, and Puerto Rico) out on display under a sign that says "National Games Week 2006". Given how much time I've been spending on The Geek I'm surprised I hadn't read anything about it. Anyway, I'm just psyched to be able to get some games with store credit.

HTML Dog

this site has been my go-to reference for stupid little xhtml/css syntax questions for several years now. looks like it's gotten a re-design to go with a new book. i don't need this level of reference often enough to justify buying a book, but if i knew anybody who was just getting into front-end development this is where i'd send them.

Wired 14.11: The Outsider

He jokingly attributes The Fountain's convoluted timeline to his family's habit of walking in on the middle of the first feature, staying through the second, then sticking around to catch the beginning of the first.

…now there's a proper plotline.

Jeffrey Zeldman Presents : IE7 CSS tweak show and tell

here's a starting point for some IE7 launch repircussions research, when/if I decide to care.

Particletree · Degradable Ajax Form Validation

I see a fair number of PHP forms in my near future. Now the thing about me and back-end programming, I'm extremely lazy. It's not what I do, so I don't care if I do it "right" I just want it to work (and not getting hacked is nice too, as I've learned). Thus far I've been so lazy I haven't bothered with validation, which is totally crappy. So here I am poking around google for the laziest possible solution. What do you think of this one? I'm looking for something re-usable that I can just hack the demo. Least amount of time/effort to setup possible. Other suggestions?

Love it or hate it movies (kottke.org)

a data analysis contest, don't see that many of those. and this one's on a totally relivent main stream topic.

Zipcar - Car sharing, cars by the hour or day

This is so like the shared community bike program they had at Hampshire. Except if they started up in 1999 this might have come first. Wonder what their association with the 5-college valley is, since they're rather conspiciously present in the small city / large towns of Amherst and Northampton. Could just be the colleges.

Makes me wish we lived in a real city. I went from living in a half-assed suburb (Wilton, ME - suburb of nothing, one hour drive from anything/everything) to living in a half-assed city (Los Angeles, CA - a city so poluted that nobody walks anywhere and its sprawling nature makes public transit difficult), guess I'm just a fool.

MaleContraceptives.org -- Prove that there is demand for new male contraceptives

Help speed the development of new contraceptive options for men by participating in a 5-minute survey!

We (the couple's we, not the royal one) beta tested this survey a few months ago, looks like they worked out a lot of the kinks from the earlier version.

Maps of War

History's becoming more interesting as I get older, perhaps because current events are getting worse?

Smart ForTwo

They're coming! Now if we can get the Fit in automatic (for Cybil), then we can get one of these and have 2 compact cars, one with carrying capacity, the other with 60pmg.

UC Berkeley on Google Video

Back to school with you. Berkely picked the winner.

Fort Western - Wikipedia

Doing research for the other night's tanga.com puzzle, I got to exploring wikipedia (can't help it when you know as little geography as I do) and I happened upon this little bit of trivia: Fort Western, where my dad used to do the reinactment thing, is the oldest standing wooden fort in the united states. Pretty cool, eh?

Image:FibonacciBlocks.svg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dude. I'm feeling dumb right now. It took this diagram for me to finally recognize the connection between the Fibonaci Sequence and the Golden Section.

Eight Rooms, Well, Nine, but That's Their Secret - New York Times

Back in Maine, where the houses are older and barns are the default play-structure of choice, hidden lofts and crawl spaces are common. There are so many things that can be done to improve a home, from simply improving the insulation to installing solar panels, that this may never become a practical reality, but it sure would be damn fun.

This May Help Your Firefox Memory Leak - CyberNet News

Store Firefox to hard drive when minimize. 'Cause I lost the link and had to find it again.

Wind energy in the developing world | TerraPass

Wind turbines join cell phones in the global game of technological leapfrog. Some of us in the United States would like to be "off the grid", but it's an expensive proposition. Buying land, building a house, and then driving to work from who knows where, I don't see how it could be done without a high-paying job that you could telecommute to (and I'd rather not live in that kind of isolation these days). In India and other countries there isn't a grid, at least not a reliable one, so industry becomes self-sustaining out of necessity.

easy Drop Caps

I'm not a fan of the other techniques on this site using behaviour (javascript) to tweak presentation (css/images), but this one had me looking twice. It requires ZERO changes to the HTML markup, the script just runs and creates Drop Caps. If I were to impliment this on a project I'd probably have to make 2 changes:

1. Only add a dropcap to the first paragraph (could be accomplished via CSS from Applied to the Web and my next point).
2. Embed the dropcap via an image replaced span (<span class="dropCapA">) rather than an actual image element so that I can control the context in which they appear i.e., #content .dropCapA but not #sidebar .dropCapA.

In continuous text mark all paragraphs after the first with an indent of at least one en | The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web

I've gotta get my copy of Bringhurst back from my friend. If I'd had it when I commented that the last post to "Applied to the Web" was a little light, I would have seen that the meat of the subbject would be in the next post. Which it is.

Science Fair - The Mathematics of Cunnilingus

A comic strip with math and language jokes – new we're talking! I of course have to pick the most sexually explicit one I've read. If you'd prefer some nice friendly generation gap humor, there's always Join Myspace (which is not actually a promotion of that crap hole, but a joke about it).

A couple more must reads: Penny Arcade Parody and Substitute. In fact, there's a whole velociraptor theme running through these, including a delightful dig at stupid AOL users Search History being released.

Set opening paragraphs flush left | The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web

I'm puzzled by the short technical discussion here, maybe he's not done? The reason I'm puzzled is because he hasn't mentioned how he addresses this very issue on webtypography.net. The code he's using now is:

p + p {
    margin-top: 0pt;
    text-indent: 1.5em;
}

Which, in modern browsers pulls the 2nd and subsequent paragraphs up to touch the prevous, and indents it. That first bit is actually pretty ingenious. His default paragraph top margin is 1.5em, which is what obsolete browsers will see, and newer browsers get the better typography.

What he used to do, at least when the site first launched, is put a class="first" on opening paragraphs, which is what I do on my blog. Yes, I know this because I observed that he was following this typographic rule and looked at the source. His new technique, especially with IE7 on deck, is more clever and less of a maintenance headache.

Weird Al's White & Nerdy

absolutely spot on. scary thing is i think i've seen the original music video. not the whole thing mind you, just a little in passing while looking for tennis in a hotel.

Dan Osman Extreme Climbing - Google Video

ok, so I used to be a little reckless in my outdoors activities, but dude…

I imagine it's somewhat less reckless than it looks, when you've climbed something many times it becomes familiar enough that what might have been impossible the first time is simple. Then again, he died in 1999 doing some crazy jump.

Custom Dice

might just have to get some proper dice cut for dragon duel.

Tanga - One Big Huge Fetchin' Mystery

My poor recall of James Bond trivia forced me to pull up IMDB to solve this one. Still no idea what the site is about, except that they're giving away one boardgame every day for 30 days until they launch, and 2 of the 30 prizes will be Roads & Boats (new edition), and Settlers of Catan 10th Anniversary 3-D Special Edition Chest Set (via BoardGameGeek of course).

Travel Settlers Mod

Finally got around to building a Macro Photo Studio. Built out of a 16" box, which may be a little small for a full sized game, but should be just right for Cybil's product shots. I've still got shadow and light source brightness issues to work out (cheated using curves in Photoshop, but the green felt pieces in the plastic bag ended up darker than they should be). It'll get better with practice.

Anyway, the purpose of the photo setup was to take a picture of my minor adjustment to the travel vesion of Settlers of Catan. In the travel version the numbers are fixed, which makes the game far less variable. I decided to print out numbers and figure out how to attach them temporarily to the board. I was going to use velcro, but Cybil pointed out the sticky-backed velcro sticks harder to itself than the glue back does to plastic. She suggested sandpaper and felt, but I eventually settled on heavy leather backings that didn't wouldn't blow away as somebody walked by.

For the lettering I chose Adobe Caslon, bold, medium, and normal weights. It has nice energetic varience in the stroke width and reads well at small and large sizes. I made the most common numbers (6. and 8) the largest and heaviest, and the least common (2 and 12) small and light, using both size and weight to exagerate the indication of their probability. The only numbers that required re-working after my initial draft were the sixes and nines. I had originally used periods to indicate which was right-side up, but that was insufficient. The most space efficient solution ended up being to leave the periods on the sixes (6.) and underline the nines (9)

BoargGameGeek.com Thread: Podcasting

Ok, so I'm a little slow just finding The Spiel last night. From the discussion though it sounds like they require a little screening.

The Spiel: A Podcast About Games & the People Who Love Them

"Spiel" is german for "Game", but this is a podcast by a couple of guys in Indiana. It's going to take me a little while to catch up on this one, each episode is around an hour long, but it's got so many great segments it needs to be that long in order to go into any depth about individual games.

News and Notes

Discussion of upcoming games.

Backshelf Spotlight

Classic games (first episode was Cribbage and RoboRally – that's when I decided that I was hooked).

The List

They keep a list of all the games that they own but haven't played (70+ games). Before each show they play a game or two off "The List", these are recent games, no more than 3-5 years old. While not the well rounded review of someone who's played a game many times, they're great first impressions.

Truckloads of Goober

"Goober" is evidently southern slang for peanut and in this case refers to The Bits, this is a segment for those of us nerds who are fans of game components.

Game Sommelier

One of them comes up with a theoretical group of people, and the other has to name 5 games that those people would like to play.

Add and delete vertical space in measured intervals

The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web has a new entry that is exceptionally good. It's basically talking about the fundimentals of how to set up a baseline grid in CSS, without actually saying "baseline grid".

Beyond Monopoly! York UK

This is a boardgaming group near where we're staying on holiday in the UK that has a wiki and an embedded google calendar, both good signs. Only trouble is we leave the UK on the 2nd of December, their usual game night. I'll have to get in touch, maybe get on their mailing list, and see if anyone gets together to game between the "official" gatherings. Dragon Duel could join Dove's Cribbage in my games that have traveled internationally collection.

Wayfaring Map - Yorkshire Trip 2006

Gotta love google maps having UK roads this year, they didn't last fall. Still tricky getting it to acknowledge UK addresses, doesn't seem to like getting any more fine grained than postal code.

Actual Browser Sizes - Preview - Baekdal.com

Somebody finally answering the right question when it comes to web design vs. screen size. Nobody gives a shit how big people's monitors are – the real question is how large the content area of their browser windows are. Looking forward to the final report in November. Curious where the data is coming from (guessing his own site via the urchin tracker a.k.a. google analytics, but hoping it's actually coming from a site with a broader demographic).

Photoshop Levels Tutorial - Balancing Indoor/Outdoor Photos

Learned a new setting on my camera – white balance. But what about when you've got indoor and outdoor lighting in the same photo? I'm sure there's a "right way" to do it, maybe putting yellow filters on your indoor lights or something, but this video tutorial looks more like what I'd actually end up doing, especially since most of my photos end up on the web at low resolution.

GeekList: Soft boards

I've been thinking about producing a limited run of Dragon Duel games once I get the "Minion End-Game" rules sorted out. I found a place that can print the cards, I've got half a lead on getting dragon pieces made, and here's a collection of soft board games, maybe one of the designers can give me some advice on printing them. Oh, and then there's the custom dice, I'll have to think about that too. Gotta get the old Dragon Duel Journal up and running again, it'll be a good test of migrating from Blogger to Wordpress.

WATCHING LEBANON: Washington's interests in Israel's war.

A former intelligence officer said, "We told Israel, 'Look, if you guys have to go, we're behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later – the longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.'"

How long do you think before Mr. Hersh gets disappeared? Or maybe that's not an issue since nearly all sources cited are anonymous, giving them little credibility.

Couples Games - Our experiences with 2-player games

not alone in my board-game-geekness and having far more opportunity to play games with my significant other than with groups of friends, though that does appear to be turning around.

Vector Keira

from The World's Most Photorealistic Vector Art. Thanks Josh! The guys are always looking out for me and my Keira obsession, you rock!

Goggles :: The Google Maps flight sim

most entertaining google maps mashup i've seen. i'm not familiar enough with any of those cities at street level to navigate effectively, have to pull it up along side google maps zoomed out a bit. wonder what the exact starting lat/long are?

Update: plug "London, UK" into google maps and that appears to be the starting point for that one. New York starts out in the central park. This will be really killer when he makes it so that you can pick your starting point.

Board Games with Scott

This truly is the year of video on the web. The vidal sassoon student who just cut my hair was talking about putting up instruction videos on how to apply stage makeup. There are some things that are so much easier to teach via video than with text or images, like how to tie your shoelaces faster, how to make a paper airplane, or how to play a board game. This website, Board Games with Scott, uses video as the perfect medium for reviewing something as tangible as a board game. Being a teacher, he focuses on explaining the game mechanics rather than reviewing, since board game tastes vary.

The Games Journal - Archives

A magazine about boardgames. It retired last year but the archives are well worth a browse, assuming you take your boardgames a little more seriously than average folk.

Wild Chronicles - video podcast feed (FeedBurner)

Remember that video that passed around where those Japanese hornets massacre a hive of honey bees? If you do you need to download Hornet Hunters which puts that whole scene in context.

8 Invaluable Wordpress Plugins

I have too many projects on my plate, so of course I'm thinking about re-designing and migrating to a better blog system. Wordpress appears to be the app of choice among typography conscious bloggers, so it's probably the way I'd go.

Daily Show: Dr. Alon Ben-Meir

Part 2 (recommend opening in new windows). Continuing to try to wrap my head around what's going on, in as superficial a manner as possibe. Helps to have the buddy list open at the same time.

The Making of VIKTORY II

If I were to try out a war game I think this'd be it. Next time we have a game night we're gonna try out Settlers of Catan, which this is partially based on. It was also based on Axis & Allies, but long slow strategy games like that (Risk, etc.) have never had much appeal. But this game looks like it's designed to be fun from turn 1. I love games that support aggressive play, that was one of my key criteria in designing Dragon Duel.

I never took my game through the full production process, not sure the board design would survive. Fun to look at the iterative design process that produced the playing pieces, but that must'uv been such a pain going through so many rounds of fixes, watching the designer fix one thing while breaking another.

From a game rules design perspective the most fascinating thing to me is how he's taken the dynamic hex board idea one step further by revealing the board through exploration. That reduces setup time, and must effect early game strategy, where you can't just sit back and think about what you're going to do, you have to get out there and find out what's around you.

The Middle East Buddy List - Slate

So, I've learned my states fairly well. Still have some issues placing states like Arkansas and Oklahoma, but who cares really? I've been getting a pretty consistant mid-80's score on Europe, all of the mistakes coming from Eastern and Southeastern Europe, but this whole WWIII thing has me skipping ahead to the Middle East. Josh gave me the above "buddy list" link so that I could put the countries I'm learning in context.

Cybil Solyn: Hair Removal

Vagina on Cybil's website, finally! Turns out the idea of having one's anonomous private parts on a website (even only for educational purposes) is more appealing than actually doing it. We got as far as Cybil taking photos of two of her clients and touching them up, but when presented with the final images they each backed down. So I ended up grabbing some anime, and with Cybil over my shoulder, drew in various amounts of hair.

YouTube - Unnessary Censorship

Fucking brilliant. Drives home the point that the FCC only has control over the words we say (which is too much in my opinion) but doesn't have control over the concepts that we convey.

Rick Steves' Europe: Recommended Reading & Viewing

Plane tickets have been purchased. Have to re-adjust my Netflix que as the trip approaches.

Fresh Milk

…from a waitress (video on YouTube). One of Cybil's clients showed her a bunch of videos, including a new way to solve problems, Zidane style, and this octopus eating a shark. Also, for anybody that's caught the travel bug at all, there's Where the hell is Matt?.

Top Gear: New Compacts Test

The verdict is in, I have the taste in cars of a middle aged man's mother.

USATT Ratings Search: Nils Devien

New Rating: 972. So I get to play in at least one more under 1000 event. Wheeeee!

Save $200 in 2 minutes and have the worlds best writing pen

I've currently got a personal record going, I've used about a centimeter of ink without losing or breaking my current pen. If I can continue this streak until I've used at least half the ink in this cartridge, when I do eventually lose or break it I may just treat myself to this hack, or a space pen.

Special offer: redeem your old cell phones for TerraPass products

Kill two hippie birds with one stone.

Regrets Only

Nice to see people in my field making a statement against "an administration that has engaged in a prolonged assault on meaning"

Manufactum: Product Details - Forest Shadow Game

Dude. A wooden board game with an open flame. And with dice. Can't get much better than that. Looks a lot like Treehouse. Thanks for the link Jon!

Projects Wiki

Foo on backpack, I set me up a wiki. There were too many projects in my head. I got them on paper on the way up to Napa, but paper isn't dynamic enough to allow projects to grow and tasks to get checked off.

India, Ink.

A delightfully opinionated blog from a typographer in the trenches.

Place The State - Intermediate

Dude. Cybil and I are traveling enough these days that I really should learn my states. Scored a 78% first time through, by that was mostly using geometry, not geography. I'm going to do this once a day until I can beat Mark's 90% score, then move on to what I really want to learn – Europe.

New DVDs

• Master and Commander collectors edition
• Monsters, Inc.
• Scrubs third season
• Boston Legal season one
• Lord of War
• Indiana Jones complete collection

Either of you are welcome to borrow any that you like. Jeff, did you see Lord of War? I know it came up at work but I can't remember who had seen it.

Boob-U-Mentary

What a fucking shame. Terrible job too. Sorry.

Update: I will concede Jamais from Blowfish one point, albiet a cynical one. Fake boobs look good under clothing. Once she's naked you're already sold, so it doesn't matter that they look like crap.

California State Open June 24-25

Update: the new ratings just came out, here are the details of my matches. I went from 395 which was adjusted to 797 and then went up to 972 (Δ577). Looks like Michael was right that if you play too much better they refactor your rating. And it looks like they use those adjusted ratings to compare players. So the under-rated players who I lost to were adjusted higher, but luckily my rating remains under 1000 for at least one more tournament (Pacific Coast Open in Santa Monica near the end of August). I'll go through this post and update it with everyone's new rating.

I played in my second tournament last weekend. This one was in Santa Monica, so I played in two events on Saturday and drove back down for another event Sunday morning. I was moderately successful, and my rank will certainly go up, but I didn't play as well as I could have. I wasn't looping, and I pulled a lot of my shots, worrying more about placement than hitting it cleanly. I also played very hot and cold, dominating one game and then getting shut out the next.

My rating going in was 395 after losing to a whole variety of players at my first tournament. For each event I'll list the people that I played along with their rank going into the tournament. The title of the event will be formatted like this: U1200, meaning "players ranked under 1200". In a week or so I'll update this post with my new ranking, as well as the new ranking of the people I played. What I learned, both from experience and from talking to people at the tournament, was that ranks under 1000 are very inaccurate. Players at that level either improve quickly or quit, and kids especially improve so fast as they learn the sport that their rank after their previous tournament doesn't mean much.

The events themselves were round robins for the first round, then playoffs for the finals. So you'd start out with a group of four and play each of them. The winner of each group of four would enter a single elimination playoff for 1st and 2nd place medals. Matches were best 3 out of 5, games to 11.

U1300 - Saturday at 11:30am

John Ezmirlian, before: 1126 after: 1109 (Δ-17)

An older guy playing pips-out, but with surprisingly heavy top and top/side spin. Also, being a veteran player he placed the ball well, and wasn't run around easily. There was something else odd, oh, I think he used a Seemiller grip. I beat him in 4 games, having choked and lost game 2. I thought I beat him by wearing him out, playing the corners, but I guess his grip might have had something to do with it.

Michael Cottingham, before: 1153 after: 1087 (Δ-66)

Michael's in a wheelchair, which makes playing him a unique experience. I learned later that he'd recently won a U1100 event, and travels from state to state gaining tournament experience. He plays pips out / anti-spin rubber. With his movement restricted to on the baseline at the center of the table he plays every ball crisply off the bounce, using everything that you throw at him against you. Serving against him the rule is that the ball has to fall off the end of the table, not the sides, which reduces the sneaky-serve options. His serves are brutal, loads of side spin. He got a disgusting number of free points. The first couple games were spent adjusting to this new challenge, and eating nearly every serve. Somehow I got up 2-1, which was lucky because he shut me out the 4th game, holding me to no more than 2 or 3 points. I don't know if he was playing better, or I worse. Probably a combination. In the end I dug out the 5th game win, being a rat-bastard playing balls high and wide.

Ann Dang, before: 718 (adjusted to 1099) after: 1126 (Δ408)

I didn't see Ann coming. She's an unassuming early middle aged asian woman, playing a no-frills pips-out game. She had next to no forehand, but a very strong backhand which she played from all sides of the table, moving to get into position. She played a lot of flat no-spin balls deep and low to the middle of the table. I had trouble finding weaknesses in her game, and probably should have just played my own game. I remembered reading that with players who are going to step around and play their forehand you should go ahead and play their forehand, forcing them into that wing and then bringing it around to their backhand with the next shot. I reversed the logic and pulled that off once or twice, but for the most part was unable to escape her backhand. Even then, I had ample opportunity to win the match, being up 10-8 for at least one if not two match points in our 5 game match. She went on to take 2nd place to her husband who got 1st. Even though this was the highest ranked event I played in, I think it was my best shot in this tournament, had I been able to put away the match against Ann. I'd played her husband before in the last tournament and think I could have taken him.

U1200 - Saturday at 4:30pm

Yoshi-Taka Moraka, before: 1021 after: 979 (Δ-47)

Yoshi plays with a penhold grip and has one of the more brutal forehand smashes I've played against. Warming up forehand-to-forehand I could barely keep the ball in play, and I have a very solid block. So when it came to game time I simply wouldn't give him that tight-to-the-body forehand that penholders so love, and won 3-0, nearly shutting him out the first two games.

Roman Gorbat, before: 0 (adjusted to 905) after: 869 (Δ869)

I'd actually warmed up with Roman before the event. He's a lefty, which always makes things interesting. We both have weaker backhands, making it a very close, if somewhat odd match. Usually when I'm playing somebody at about my level of skill I find a mental edge to beat them with (I like to play dirty, winning with cheap shots) but I couldn't find much of an edge here. I ended up serving to his backhand from the center of the table, but that's not a side or place I'm used to. Eventually I scraped together a win in 5 games, but I don't remember exactly how.

James Bae, before: 1046 after: 1128 (Δ82)

James and his brother Mathew both go to the same club that I do, and they have their private training with Dinh right before me. James beat me with his greater tournament experience, better serves, stronger forehand, etc. During class I've beaten the Bae brothers by getting into their heads, but he was having none of it. At least I scored a respectable 7 to 9 points in each game.

U1100 - Sunday at 8:30am

Keyln Roberts, before: 844 after: 784 (Δ-60)

Another older pips player, I've probably mixed up most of my memory of this match with the earlier one against John Ezimirlian. Maybe Keylyn was the guy with the Seemiller grip? I knew I should have started writing this over the weekend. Anyway, this one didn't take too long, my forehand down the line was landing properly.

Reetta Saikku, before: 0 (adjusted to 442) after: 442 (Δ442)

It was Reetta's first tournament, and I'm sure she'll step it up. As it was I was able to attack and put away most of her serves by the middle of the first game and won in 3.

Nolan Chang, before: 842 (adjusted to 926) after: 991 (Δ136)

Only fair that I'd get smoked by an under-rated kid playing at about a 1200-1300 level. I won the first game as he warmed up, wailing away but missing the table. By the second game they'd started hitting, and between his massive attack and dynamic variety of strong serves I didn't stand a chance. He won in 4.

Conclusions

I came into the weekend thinking I might stand a chance against some younger kids, but ended up picking on old men and cripples instead, while getting crushed by a couple boys and a middle-aged woman. Oh well, political correctness has never been a strong suit.

Application Independent Front-End Dev Environment

I've made significant progress in re-creating the coding environment that I once enjoyed in HomeSite (may it rest in peace), using AutoHotKey. Basically, I've set up all the HTML, JS, and CSS oriented key commands and a number of the tag completions so that no matter what environment you happen to be stuck using, anything from Notepad or UltraEdit, to a textarea in a browser (like this one on Blogger) you'll always have the same shortcuts available.

To be able to customize it for your own preferences (I use a DVORAK keyboard, so some of the keys may be a stretch on QWERTY) you'll want to download AutoHotKey and use that to auto-compile frontEnd.ahk. But if you'd just like to try it out stand alone, here's the compiled version: frontEnd.exe. Here are the key commands I've set up thus far:

Ctrl+Enter = <br />
Ctrl+Shift+Space = &nbsp;
Ctrl+Shift+. = &#8230; (ellipse)
Ctrl+Shift+- = &#8211; (n-dash)
Ctrl+Shift+a = <a href=""></a> //with all sorts of cleverness, see update below
Ctrl+Shift+p = <p></p>
Ctrl+Shift+u = <ul><li></li></ul>
Ctrl+Shift+e = <em></em>
Ctrl+Shift+b = <strong></strong>
Ctrl+Shift+l = <label for=""></label>
Ctrl+Shift+i = <input type="" name="" id="" value="" />
Ctrl+Shift+j = <input type="" name="" id="" value="" />
Ctrl+Shift+d = <div id=""></div>
Ctrl+Alt+a = <span></span>
Ctrl+Shift+t = <table class="" cellspacing="0"></table>
Ctrl+Shift+r = <tr></tr>
Ctrl+Alt+c = <td></td> //Changed do to Photoshop conflict: "copy merged"
Ctrl+Shift+/ = /* */
Ctrl+Shift+m = <!--  -->
Ctrl+Shift+h = <h*></h*> //*=user input
Ctrl+Shift+f = function *() {} //*=user input

While setting up the auto-completions of various tags I made some interesting observations that may be applicable beyond this little project. Say we're dealing with the auto-completion of a DIV tag, the resulting code will always be this: <div id=""></div> but where should I put the cursor after the auto-complete fires, between the tags, or inside the ID attribute? To answer the question I observed my own behavior in HomeSite. When I type the complete the complete tag, <div>, I am roughing out structure, not worrying about attributes yet, so I set up frontEnd.ahk to put the cursor between the tags. When I only type <div and hit the space bar my intent is to start adding attributes to the tag, so I put the focus inside the ID attribute.

The concept that may be portable to other problems is to watch for clues regarding the user's intended next action, and where appropriate facilitate that next action.

Wish list, should anybody else decide to work on this:

1. Tag Wrapping: select some text, hit a key command, wrap the tag around the text.
2. Tag Insight: When < is pressed show a list of tags, filtering the list as you type (so typing <s narrows the list to <strong, <style) and allowing you to hit Enter to complete it.
3. Attribute Insight: When you place your cursor inside a tag and hit the space bar, a list of possible attributes for that tag appears, and behaves like Tag Insight.
4. List Wizard (New): An unordered/ordered list key command that makes each line of a multi-line selection into a list item.
5. Comment Toggling (New): Highlight code that has been commented out, hit the appropriate HTML, CSS or JS key command, and the comments are stripped out.

Update: I figured out how to wrap tags around highlighted text. Moved the logic to functions (with optional parameters even) so that the code is actually getting more readable as it expands. I have some ideas for new features which I've outlined in the comments, like an exceedingly clever anchor command that searches the clipboard and your selection for a web address.

Update: June 23, 2006 The anchor key command (Ctrl+Shift+a) has been updated to become "the ultimate (PC) blogger's shortcut". It searches your clipboard and the text that you've highlighted for a web address, and then spits out a full link element complete with pre-populated href (if it found an address), link text (if you had text highlighted) and a title attribute. It also moves your cursor into the next logical place based on the information that you provided. In order of priority those are: href attribute, in between the <a> tags, title attribute. It will occasionally freak out clobber the old contents of my clipboard, but I haven't been able to reproduce this in a controlled manner, so it may be user error.

Long Awkward Pose

gotta love a good head-fuck prank.

Paper Airplane - Google Video

video on the web is mostly just porn and funny stupid shit. ok, it's mostly just porn. but every once and a while there's something insanely useful where video is just the perfect medium, here's one of them.

Gristlestick: Mudflap

My brother's on his way to Alaska now. They've been writing music on the road, and composed a song about those siloette women on trucker's mudflaps while on the way to Bozeman Montana (middle of nowhere, north of Yellowstone).

Jet Beetle

Scroll down and check out all the pictures even if you don't have time to read it. Highlights include the "big-fire" demonstration (1/20th the full size?!) and the cop trying to come up with something to charge him with.

Commitment to Footwork

Much good table tennis advice to be found over at usatt.org, my favorite quote so far being the need to commit to "moving your fool self over there to get the ball".

Other tips I want to remember being:

• The Returns You Want
• Learn to Re-Loop
• Leftys
• Staying Focused At Tournaments
• Serving Seemiller Depth
• Service Returns 101: Stroke, Depth and Placement
• Service Returns 101: Spin
• Tossing High

Said list will change as my game advances.

SolynStudio.com - a call for feedback

While at the "Skin Show" in Vegas a couple weekends ago Cybil attended a couple marketing workshops that covered menu design in some depth. We were spot on when it came to most of the advice (thanks to Jon and his help with the copy!), but one place where we missed the mark was actually the website.

This location doesn't have a "spa" feel to it, it's not fresh and green like her personal website. It is instead a cozy, earthy space, saturated with colors from red and orange to gold. Her print material matches her studio, but I wasn't about to redesign her personal website, too much energy and client feedback went into that. What we decided to do instead was to purchase a domain name, solynstudio.com, to go with her business, and provide a way for people to share her menu online (or print and fax it), as the marketing experts advised.

Have a look at the mockup that currently resides at solynstudio.com and tell me what you think in the comments. It's basically a packed one-pager conveying hours, location and contact information, with tie-ins to csolyn.com, and featuring the menu in at least a couple formats. We'll be tackling the text this weekend, though there's not much copy that isn't tied directly to the design.

I guess what I've been struggling most with in this design is information density, visual balance, visual hierarchy, and establishing some sort of visual flow though the various pieces of content. So yeah, basically everything to do with with information design. I've made a lot of progress (it was originally a 50/50 split with no sub-divisions, all content on the same background color) but there's room for improvement. Pull no punches in the comments.

Torch My Ride: Arson for Hire

Ha! Maybe the fraud would be more convincing if people made sure that their spouse/children were in the car when it was torched? Did I just imply that anybody who leases a car beyond their means, specifically an SUV, should have their family roasted alive? Well maybe I did.

Letter From the President of GiftSongs.Com - The Personalized Song Company

Hey look, it's Mark from the Northridge club.

usatt.org rankings results for: Devine, Nils

this here's the nice little hole I've dug myself into, should be fun climbing out.

Sparks: Critters

Fun! Miniatures in font format. Imagine the game designing possibilities. I've always spent too much time on production, and not enough on playtesting, so resources like this can be extremely useful.

Video: Joe Hewitt Talks About FireBug

Worth a watch, I learned a trick or two. There are a bunch of command line / search functions that aren't obvious from the interface, but are extremely useful tricks to know.

Web designer's guide to print design : Mark Boulton

Where was this a month ago? Actually, this article wouldn't have helped me too much, I needed some solid basics like this Design Guide For Print, and these Blank Design Templates. But dude, I wish I'd known about CMYK's issues with orange (from Kurt Trew's comment) when I went about designing Cybil's menu. Still have my fingers crossed on that one. Hopefully the series that this article has started will cover these basic issues (picking CMYK colors, setting bleed and safety areas, etc.) in more depth than the few existing articles about print that can be found on the web.

Wooden Tool Box - Seconds - Duluth Trading Company

Finally settled on a toolbox after my old Rubbermaid one gave up the ghost (latches having broken years ago, the handle just snapped off). I was tempted to build my own, but not having a router let alone shop I decided to stick with the cribbage board projects. Coping/hand saws just aren't the same as a router and a table saw.

Lunacore Photoshop Training - Photoshop Tutorials

I'm always bookmarking photoshop tutorials, but rarely do enough work with actual photographs to put them to good use. There is one trick I've yet to figure out, not sure if the Realistic Clouds tutorial here will help… I want to create a "difference clouds" type effect, but at print resolution, at least 300dpi. I did a small thumbnail sketch for a recent design, but it ended up having a lot more texture than the finished piece, because I had trouble getting the built in photoshop filters to create the same effects at high res as they do for screen/web work.

Six Flags Magic Mountain : Tatsu

New Coaster, and I haven't even gotten a chance to go on X yet. Next visit's going to be fun.

Trisha Solyn's Reels

Here is yet another example of a case for launching first, with basic functionality, and refining later (though we haven't gotten to the refining yet).
Cybil's sister needed to share her film reel to get DP gigs and interviews (she's in the graduate program at NYU). I had just moved over to a new host that offered quicktime streaming, and allowed me unlimited domain names. So we all talked about it and decided it wouldn't be to hard to set up a website for her, but I've been busy lately so it wasn't at the top of my list. For several weeks I puttered around in my spare time trying to embed the streaming video, but not having access to the encoding software there was only so much I could do.
Eventually we decided to just post a page with links to download the files. That's what we should have done in the first place. Since they've been up (like 2 days) she's gotten one paid gig and the interview with NYFA that she's been trying to get for a while.

Kershaw E.T.

Reminiscent of this paratrooper knife I used to have (though I imagine less self-dulling). I dig knives with unique opening mechanisms, especially those where gripping the handle locks the knife open (like with a butterfly). In reality for actual outdoor jobs I prefer a straight sheath knife, and for handyman jobs the leatherman wave in its belt sheath. But I've been between pocket knives for a while now. Carried a leatherman micra for a while, then a mini-utility knife. Got annoyed with bulk/weight and the crappiness of a mini-tools. Next move will either be to shrink the size of my 3x5 card notepad and add something like the Tool Lite II Deluxe (which is so tiny it makes up for the crapiness, and has a flashlight which I've been missing), deciding to clip one somewhere, or just making sure I've got a blade in my backpack, glovebox, desk at work, etc (like Josh and his 17 Spydercos).

The Rasterbator

One of the few "modern art" devices I've ever found that appealing is when they take a photo of a flower or something, blow it up real huge, print it out in little pieces, and mount each piece separately with an inch or two gap between them. Here's a tool that facilitates this technique. And it sounds like one of my favorite pastimes.

Words I Can Easily Type With My Left Hand

My list:

• I
• a
• you
• keep
• pee
• pox
• quip
• yep
• yuppie
• joke

But then again I'm on a dvorak keyboard, intentionally designed to be balanced between left and right.

What we really need to play this game properly (i.e. as dorkily as possible) is a scrabble assistant program. Maybe Google Suggest will help…

MaleContraceptives.org

Not often that I encounter a website where I fully intend to read every word on every page. Here's one.

Town won't let unmarried parents live together

I have this theory that there is one particular war in our country's history that we might be better off had we lost it: the civil war. I keep telling myself that we aren't actually living in a country of "red states" and "blue states" as the media would like to simplify it, but that it's more of a "shades of purple" political climate. But the fact that these outragious injustices always come out of the south or the bible belt makes it difficult to temper my prejudice.

Kolibri Art Studio

The paintings page on this site continues to garner attention, specifically the Lillian Shao. A representative from Kolibri Art Studio was the latest in a string of people, dealers and individuals, to contact me regarding Cybil's favorite painting (my favorite is the Tomasz Rut, 'cause I'm an ass man). This representative was kind enough to IM me, rather that call my cell, so I thought I'd repay them with a link. Cybil isn't really thinking about selling her painting, but everything has a price, right?

Cybil's New Studio

 

A full post with pictures of the location will follow later, for now you'll have to settle with a tricked out google map.

May 22 Update: Here's a photo I snapped of Cybil in her new studio. It's still a work in progress, but mostly functional.

May 31 Update: here's a jpeg of The Sign that's going to go over the door. The printer said go for it, make it full color, so full color it's gonna be. Two feet tall and three feet wide of intense red, orange, and crazy fonts (Baka and Corky).

2008 Honda Fit Hybrid to get Insight engine

"Guess what happens to fit perfectly between the front wheels of a Honda Fit… the Honda Insight's hybrid powertrain."

gristlestick

My brother's band's album is out. Based on the new songs on Myspace, the production value is top notch, lyrics are much crisper than the earlier songs they posted to myspace.com/gristlestick. Oh, and everyone's singing now. Update: they've got some Lyrics up on the site, and their album Flesh Tunes is available for purchase from CD Baby.

SFBags - WaterField Designs

Some good lookin' bags and gear cases. But I don't think I could bring myself to carry a wallet that's not made out of dead animal skin, sorry Josh.

Powazek: Just a Thought: The Art of No

That's one I need to work on. When a client comes at you with what appears to be a stupid request, instead of saying no, or giving up and saying yes, ask why instead. I'm beginning to formulate a unified theory of client stupidity (which needs to be re-titled if I'm going to publish it), connecting all stages of client feedback under one concept … clients are incapable of abstract thought. More realistically, it's that we as designers/developers deal with this shit every day, so we're capable of abstracting concepts, and visualizing possibilities, whereas our clients are doing this for the first time, and are only concerned with their data as it appears immediately in front of them.

all in the head - Five Most Important Considerations

These are spot-on the questions that I asked my two most recent freelance clients at the start of those projects. Of course the last – on measuring results – remains the most difficult for me. If I were more business oriented, or my freelance projects were more direct-sales in nature this would come more naturally.

Using the universal selector | Bite Size Standards

Universal selectors rock. They're great for equalizing browsers by defaulting margin and padding on all elements (this is now the first line of every stylesheet I write – no surprises that way). And as I've mentioned before, they're a great solution to margin issues such as the "Liquid Layout Gutter Dilemma". And here's another one I'm not sure if I've mentioned here… I use it as a debugging tool. Not sure what attribute is causing that annoying gap? Try * { margin: 0 !important; }. Not that? try * { padding: 0 !important; }. Granted, it's a ways down my list of CSS troubleshooting tricks, but it's can be a handy tool at times.

Fixed: IE 6 min/max-width hack ~ Authentic Boredom

A minor technical note, but if you plan on hacking max-width for IE6 (and shouldn't you be? it is the perfect compromise between fluid/fixed width) then here's something to keep in mind.

iFox - Firefox Theme

It's been a while since I've checked out the firefox theme scene, but the default theme has been pissing me off. Since I installed Tab Mix Plus (Session Saver leaks memory) I've been frustrated with the lack of contrast indicating the current tab. The iFox them satisfies this requirement, as well as fending off a little bit of the mac envy.

Introducing DOM Builder

We all know that innerHTML is wrong, but it's faster. Faster to code, faster to render. And it's easier to read the code. So I've just been sticking with it except when forced to branch out (adding rows to table). Now here's an option that's making me re-think doing it the right way.

Yamaha - SVC-100 Silent Cello - [Sam Ash]

If I could blow our entire tax return on a birthday present for my brother I'd get him this.

Consumers Most Wanted - 2006

Guess it's inevitable living in LA that cars take on a greater role in your life. I've never seen a car as anything more than a means of transportation, but my car, old breaking down too often lately piece of shit that it is, has become an extension of my personal space, and has even been used as a woodshop (see above). So I've subscribed to a couple car blogs, and actually took this survey. Oh, and one last thing, you know the Toyota Prius is the "Most Significant Vehicle of the Year". It has shown that a fuel efficient vehicle sold at a premium can be commercially viable, signals what I hope is the beginning of the death of the fucking SUV, and opens up the market to European style vehicles like the Honda Fit (on my short list for next car).

Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis

makes sense that it would translate into a good video game. it's an extremely individual, intensely mentally focused and physically fast paced. It's also got great ebb and flow in its rhythm. and there's just so much variability between shots with such precise control over speed, spin and placement.

i've been sticking with it, going to class every monday evening, drilling with the ball machine once or twice during the week, and playing competitive games on saturday. i've still got a long ways to go, but now that i'm finally learning correct form and have a good coach progress is rapid. can't wait to learn a proper "loop" shot!

A List Apart: Articles: In Search of the Holy Grail

Snapshot: "Many articles have been written on the grail, and several good templates exist. However, all the existing solutions involve sacrifices: proper source order, full-width footers, and lean markup are the usual compromises made in pursuit of this elusive layout."

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

The Gospel is here! Check out this customer image to see how they pulled pulled off making it look like a hard-bound book with a noodley page saver on Amazon (also note the "shoddy construction" review). Maybe if it does real well they'll put out a quality edition. But then again, at this cheapass price I wouldn't mind giving a few copies to a friend who travels for her job and having her place them on top of the bibles in the hotels where she stays.

stock.xchng is no longer free

The last remaining high-quality high-volume free stock photography site is no longer free. Figured it was just a matter of time, but it's a shame when an open community gets bought out and they immediately begin charging money for photos that people uploaded without intent to sell. You know somebody's getting ripped off. Not that the photos are that expensive, but working as I am on internal facing projects there's zero budget for such things, so even $1 is $1 too much.

Update: I was decieved. Between the evil that is Websense restricting what I can see at work, and the Stockxpert.com pages that I ran into during the v.6 upgrade, stock.xchange remains free even though it didn't appear that way last Thursday.

The Typography of Girls' Asses

'tis a shame.

Orgasm Girl

OK, even though this isn't blocked at work I think I'd better save it for later. The game's official website is www.orgasmgirlgame.com, but websense has that blocked from here.

Oglala Sioux Tribe on the South Dakota Abortion Ban

A truly righteous response.

Couples Cribbage a.k.a. Dove's Cribbage

Do you enjoy playing cribbage, just playing the game itself, the rhythm of the counting, the flow of the game from stage to stage? Is cribbage as much a social occasion as a competition? I myself have said yes to these questions, and having grown up with the my dad and his best friend chanting out the scores of their hands in the background while us children played in the other room, I suspect that my dad would say the same. But, while our significant others may know how to play the game, and indulge us by playing, they eventually tire of losing every game.

I have come up with a solution. It is a cooperative version of cribbage where both players peg using the same track. It's like team cribbage, minus the other team, and with 6 card hands. I made Cybil a board specially designed for Couples Cribbage that is shown above, shaped like a dove (my pet name for her).

Since it's a travel sized board (7" by 7¹/₄") it'll be flying all over the place this year. Puerto Vallarta, Mexico in May, Napa Vally in July, Vegas I don't even remember when (we don't drink or gamble, but catching a show and staying in a hotel is definitely a good time), and York, England in November.

Might as well throw in a couple construction notes. It's made of red oak and hand polished with teak oil. The entire project was completed while hanging out of the back of my hatchback, sitting on the tailgate. The pegs are brass with sparkly colored glass caps (sparkly being the operative word when talking about Cybil's taste in jewelry), bought them at thegamestore.com.

What's My Line?

Last night Cybil and I went to an ACME comedy theatre production of "What's My Line?" where a panel of pseudo celebrity guests try to guess the contestant's profession by asking yes or no questions. Vint Cerf (one of the founders of the internet) was a contestant. Brilliant guy. He talked a bit about Google Mars, but I didn't get a chance to ask him about the rumor that Google is buying Sun.

Oh, and for any fellow character actor fans, our celebrity sighting for the evening was Greg Germann.

How to spot a baby conservative

"Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative." (emphasis mine)

Remind you of anyone?

AskOxford: Frequently Asked Questions

Have a grammar question eating away at your soul? I know I did, but not anymore!

And for you typography geeks out there, here's a shorter version of "quick brown fox…" that contains all 26 letters of the alphabet in 28 letters:

brick quiz whangs jumpy veldt fox.

PostSecret - Pinky

I forget what reminded me of this site, PostSecret, but the above linked little slice of Vegas I find especially poignant. And hot.

The New Yorker: Troublemakers

If you're going to read this article don't be a jackass just read the first two paragraphs. As any good essayist, Gladwell begins by eloquently summarizing the opposing view.

Bottom line, if I had to give one regarding the dog breed issue, would be that dog temperments are more a reflection of their owner's personality than the dog's breed. The lesson regarding the ban on pit bulls in Ottawa is that generalizations based on prejudice make crappy laws, but that generalizations based on facts, followed up by preventative actions (also based on facts) make meaningful laws.

The New Yorker: Million-Dollar Murray

This "power law" distribution approach to solving society's problems is a hard one to wrap your political beliefs around. It's big government handing out special favors to a select few. It's effeciency over fairness. Placing fixing the problem above the American dream of rags to riches. But more than anything I think it's cold rationality trying to fight the hot emotions of politics. And clearly it is emotions that rule the current political environment in the US.

darice.org * got everything - Grey's Anatomy

Found this blog via a liquid layout site (of which it is a prime example, check out how the photo is handled). I'm not usually a fan of black on white, but this site puts content first so effortlessly that I don't mind the stark contrast. I think the meatiness (the proper term escapes me) of the serif font helps. Oh, and the "ColorZilla" plugin informs me that that's not black, it's #222.

I'm linking to this particular post to save myself the effort of linking to all three Grey's Anatomy blogs. We just started listening to the podcast last weekend, and last night I watched all the special features on the Season 1 DVD. It really is the best show on television right now. Put it this way – Battlestar Galactica we only watch each episode once.

Jason Gaylor » Blog Archive » Fresh Foliage Photoshop Brushes for High Resolution [Part I]

Never can have too many killer hi-res photoshop brushes, even if they don't work in photoshop 7.

Rakehell Review: Never Seduce a Scoundrel

Let me just say that writing is damn hard work. It doesn't help that I wouldn't let myself cop-out and just write a plot summary style review, but still, it was more difficult than it should have been. Maybe I should get in on some writing project like the "zombie wikipedia" thing that Josh is participating in, to keep my writing skills fresh.

New Scientist - Eyes are fooled by spinning, curving balls

an evolutionary explaination as to why side-spin fucks with people so delightfully. can you tell i've got that table tennis itch?

Northridge Table Tennis

It's going to happen. I'm going to play for real, and get my ass kicked by pre-teens.

Confessions of a Car Salesman

Read this and you might be able to put yourself in the shoes of a car salesman. This empathy thing is hard for those of us with autistic tendencies, but at the very least we can use the inside information to our advantage, and just buy the damn car online. Understanding that it's not the salesman's fault that he is the way he is doesn't make him less of an asshole, it just lets us understand why he sucks. And maybe, just maybe, the internet can force the car sales industry to change, or at least re-build itself better after online sales have destroyed it.

Berkeley Course Podcasts

You can audit Berkeley courses for free, how cool is that?

Inline formatting model

If I manage one of these days to read and actually undestand this document it will probably go a long ways towards my being able to make vertical-align behave.

Movie Themed Font Downloads

The perfect link for a mainstream movie fan and a type-geek with little regard for intellectual property laws.

Censored Rut

Somebody at work didn't approve of the artwork that I had as my wallpaper.

Cybil Solyn: Skin Fitness Blog: Moving in!

We finished moving Cybil into her new studio last night. Taking her first clients today. Still have some finishing touches, glass shelves for product display, handles on the cupboards, but it's all operational. I'll post more photos when it's done.

Cybil Solyn: Skin Fitness Blog: Moving in!

We finished moving Cybil into her new studio last night. Taking her first clients today. Still have some finishing touches, glass shelves for product display, handles on the cupboards, but it's all operational. I'll post more photos when it's done.

The Other Family

Going to start this out with the via, and let it be a warning to you. This link is via glassdog. These comics are fucking hilarious, and completely offensive. Not just incest humor, but extra smutty, faggy, and just all around raunchy incest humor. Bil Keane (the guy who does Family Circus) would roll in his grave if he were dead yet.

Interior Design

We're right in the midst of getting Cybil's business up and running. It's been lots of fun dabbling in different design fields. I've been doing print work, designing her menu and her signage. This weekend I worked on the interior design of her studio. I spent Saturday morning in the fabric district downtown looking at raw silk, which we're using to cover the back wall of the studio (hiding the black water pipes that run outside the walls).

Here's a photo of the color palette we're working with:

I did my best to correct the colors in the photo. Please excuse the bad indoor lighting and the flash. Cybil works in a very low-light environment, so it won't look nearly as washed-out. In fact, the next thing we're doing is un-screwing the lights that are built into the ceiling and hanging paper lanterns.

Oh, and I might also note that the painting looks phenomenal set against this palette.

Sean Morey '95 is Bowl-Bound

Yeah, that's right. This guy I didn't know from the year before I started at Hebron Academy is going to that game I don't watch. But you can see the windows of my dorm room in the banner at the top (corner room, 2nd row from the top, 3rd, 4th, and 5th windows in from the left).

Max Raabe

They found it! We were out to lunch at work a little while ago at a sushi place. They were playing this insane cover album, some kind of orchastra playing britney spears, etc. Our waiter couldn't tell us what album it was, but 23 minutes into an annoying britney spears groundhogs day Coverville Jeff found it!

Shovelglove: Functional Sledgehammer Exercise

This has to be the geekiest excercise routine I've seen. Well, maybe my table tennis robot is up there. Anyway, Cybil's personal trainer (who like Cybil is intellectually engaged in a field where few are) says that this would indeed be good excercise, but warns that the motions involved could easily strain the body. If you've ever put in a long day with a shovel or axe I'm sure you'll agree that she has a point.

Dionysea Green by Tomasz Rut

I remembered that she was in a tube in the closet and suggested to Cybil that we get her framed for Cybil's new studio. So we brought her to the Frame Store in Encino and had a really classy frame designed by Luben Romanov. I never realized before what an art it is to design the right frame for a painting. We agreed upon this pair of interlocking hand-finished Italian frames, with a lush skin-toned matting, and a thin gold-painted bamboo inner frame. With the frame she's a little over 4 feet tall 3 feet wide, and so very very naked. The framing really just makes her skin tones pop.

One last thing: the glass. We have five paintings in our one bedroom apartment, but they're all behind mediocre glass. It's UV coated, but the coating has long since worn off, and the glare is pretty bad. This new frame was done with museum quality conservation glass. It's amazing. Unless you catch it at the exact wrong angle – there's a fluorescent bulb at a sharp angle, and you're standing at the opposite sharp angle – you can't even tell there's any glass.

Political bias affects brain activity, study finds

I coulda tould you that. Back when we had cable TV, if George W. Cunthair came on I couldn't bear to listen to him speak for more than a minute, regardless of what he was stammering.

Sex before stressful events keeps you calm

I gotta line me up some stressful events. No, scratch that. I gotta line her up some stressful events. That's better.

Kevlar Work Utility Pants - Duluth Trading Company

If I wore jeans, these'd be it. Look to be nearly the same cut (gusseted, etc.) as my Fire Hose Pants, which are comfortable enough to lounge around the house in all weekend.

Spice Cookies

Makes 48.

Ingredients

• 1 ³/₄ cups all-purpose flour
• ¹/₂ cup cornstarch
• 2 seaspoons baking powder
• ¹/₂ teaspoon ground cloves
• ¹/₂ teaspoon ground cardamon
• ¹/₂ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¹/₂ teaspoon ground nutmeg
• ¹/₂ teaspoon ground ginger
• ¹/₂ teaspoon ground allspice
• pinch of salt
• ¹/₂ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 cup buttor
• 1 ¹/₃ cups light brown sugar
• ¹/₂ teasoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon finely grated lemon rind
• ¹/₄ cup whipping cream
• ³/₄ finely ground almonds
• 2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar

Baking Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F
2. Sift the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, spices, salt and pepper into a bowl. Set aside.
3. With an electric mixer, cream the butter and brown sugar together until light and fluffy. beat in the vanilla extract and grated lemon rind.
4. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture alternately with the whipping cream, beginning and ending with flour. Stir in the ground almonds.
5. Shape the dough into ³/₄-inch balls. Place them on ungreased baking sheets about 1 inch apart. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until golder brown underneath.
6. Allow to cool on the baking sheets for bout 1 minute before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Before serving, sprinkle lightly with confectioners' sugar.

gristlestick update

My brother's hitting the road with his band in June. They've posted 3 more songs to their page. Nice music with nasty lyrics. Good stuff.

CUZZI Computer Desk STS 5801A

Cybil ordered this desk for her new studio. We almost went with one that was 18" by 24" (this one is 4 inches deeper), but we settled on the CUZZI because it looks a lot more stable. Also, the dark cherry matches her other furniture. We'll be hiding it under a curtain (draped over the top shelf) but clients will still have to look at the thing when she's doing their paperwork, so not looking like crappy dorm furniture (relative to other compact desks) is a plus.

Wicked Worn + Bulletproof Liquid

As a follow up to my latest re-design (which I still haven't gone back and made the final revisions to) I offer this article and demonstration of a technique that I developed in the process of coding this site: Wicked Worn + Bulletproof Liquid

12 Habits in 2006

There's been a whole lot of new years resolution crap kicking around the web this month. It is as easily ignored as all the "best of 2005" crap. New Years resolutions are bogus. Good intent, zero execution. But this article stands out in that it sounds like it could actually work. There's a system behind it, a form. Things get written down. And if there's one thing I've learned it's that the only way to get anything done is to put it in a list.

Gristle Stick

My brother's band. He's the one in the middle, on the bass.

NOTEPAD v3.4: Auto-detect the UTF-8 files without BOM

The day job requires two things of an editor, and historically UltraEdit was the only editor to achieve them. First, it needs to save UTF-8 files without leaving a BOM. Second, it needs to open UTF-8 files without any effort on my part. It appears that Notepadd++ has just added this second feature less than ten days ago.

I've really never been satisfied with the current alternative to UltraEdit that I've been using at work. Enough so that I still use HomeSite most of the time at home, a long dead program but the best front-end dev environment. The editor I've been using is PSPad. It's got multi-language color highlighting, but it is really flakey. It also has custom key commands for tags, etc., but you have to write them yourself in a raw text file, they don't always work, and they like to eat text. I keep hoping I'll find a program that fixes these problems, this might be it.

Jon, I'll run this through your UTF-8 encoding test files and let you know how it goes.

Grid Paper Generators

If you've ever wanted some kind of specialized graph paper, for note taking, gaming, or game design this website's got what you're looking for. It's got everything from hex grids to calligraphy guides. You can adjust paper size, grid size, line weight, and color.

This time around working on Wizard's Duel I'm trying to spend less time on production and get to playtesting faster. I'll figure out what works and what doesn't work more quickly, that way I can toss it and try something different without throwing out much time or energy.

Impulse Based Movement

A description of the movement system that could finally* make Wizard's Duel a reality. What I'm going to change from this system is the very last sentence, "The impulses on which a piece moves are typically spread over the turn as evenly as possible." I will differentiate the distribution of moves between predators (mostly sprinters) and prey (distance runners). I also hope to come up with a clear visualization of the impulse system, since I will have the luxury of a custom board which is unavailable to piecepack games.

I came very close to this movement system almost two years ago when I last worked on this game. I had the idea of splitting movement into two phases: Sprint and Endurance in my blog post: Wizard's Duel Turn Sequence. The impulse system will allow for much more fine-grained control of movement, and let me present it in a visual format on the cards.

*I only have documentation of having been working on it since at least 2001 when I wrote the little javascript game at wizardsduel.com, although in reality I think it was conceived about 5 years earlier around the same time as Dragon Duel.

The banality of evil is matched by the banality of heroism

æand here we have evidence, in the form of a reality telivision show: Derren Brown: The Heist. I'll have to tie this with my human behaviour theory that attempts to explain why rich brats steal. But not now. More important things to think about. (games, of course)

jonplummer.com

He's back! To launch something, just to launch it, plain HTML, no frills, no forever fussing over the design and growing tired of it after a week (even if it's better than what any of the rest of us could do), is a good step. Now if he'll just acknowledge that he hasn't the time to build something himself and just sign up for a Flickr account, then we'll see something. I guess it's a question of whether the project is the project, or the content is the project. If a project never reaches completion, does content stand a better chance? And if so, can an imperfect medium be tolerated? Looks like he may have finally said yes.

Bundles Of . . . Misery

what i've been saying all along.

Edge Question 2006: "What is your dangerous idea?"

Jaron Lanier: Homuncular Flexibility

Once you've read it, imagine this concept in the hands of the people at Nintendo. Now how's that for a dangerous idea?

Not that far fetched actually, from what I've read about Nintendo's future plans, moving out of the television and into the 3D space of your living room is the next frontier.