Author Archives: Mark

Disc Golf 03/07/09

hole 5
hole 6

I went to play some disc golf before watching the Watchmen today. It was a nice day out and I haven’t been to the Luthern Church in a while. Its a really short course and easy to make birdies.

small flags

There were these small orange flags on the course. I wonder what they were originally used for?

bent pipes

And there were a number of bent pipes sticking in the ground as well. Weird.

New Sonic

There is a new Sonic right next to the Church. Which is just what the world needs…

Hidden cross

You know, I never did notice this hidden cross before. It is located near the three large crosses. Churches seem to love cross iconography.

New neighbor

Snake

I woke up to find this snake warming up on the driveway. It took probably 8 years before I started seeing squirrels in the neighborhood. And now I am seeing a snake. Will it never end?

Game Day 03/05/2009

Game #1

Age of Steam: India

I got lucky to play one of my new Age of Steam maps. This one is about India. There are a couple of changes to the rules (of course). The first is that a die is rolled to simulate monsoon rains. Depending on the roll (0:0, 1-5:1, 6:2), money must be payed for upkeep to your tracks. The killer part is that this happens *before* you collect income. How painful. Especially since I rolled a 6 for 5 times during the game. The second rules change is that no dice are rolled for goods production. Instead, goods come out when unique players connect to the corresponding city.

In this game, I struck off by myself. And was fortunate enough to be left alone. I was also able to secure the Engineer for first the three rounds. This allowed me to get my engine level up which I used to make long deliveries. I jumped out far ahead of the others and stayed that way for the entire game. There was one moment during the game where I was set up to make a couple of 5 long blue deliveries. The turn before Jon took Urbanization. I was worried that he might spot the Urbanization that would ruin these deliveries. But he didn’t. Phew. Then Marty gets first choice of actions selects an action and then takes it back to perform the harmful Urbanization. He was in last place and that Urbanization really didn’t help him. But it was a hurt the leader move. However, it really didn’t hurt me all that much. I was so far out in the lead and I was more worried at that time of finding other deliveries to make. Those were the last of the good deliveries in that area and I needed to branch out.

The Space Game

The Space Game #1
The Space Game #2
The Space Game #3

I have been playing around with a Desktop Tower Defense clone game. This one is space based. And is quite fun to play. I just wish that the screen was bigger…

It took me a while to figure out how to survive some of the tougher levels. You need to upgrade the mineral miner. This brings your minerals from 80 mpm to 200 mpm! This is a 2.5x increase. This will help you get the income stream necessary to build the weapons necessary to stay alive. The other tip is to turn off the miners when you are severely under attack. Running out of power is to be avoided at all costs!

Homemade chocolate milk

chocolate milk

Since all chocolate milk made in America (and pretty much everything else) is made from High Fructose Corn Syrup, I make my own. I take a quart milk bottle and drink off about 2 inches of headroom. I then pour in two tablespoons of Hershey’s Special Dark Cocoa power. And then add 60 grams of Blue Agave sweetener.

Blueberry sourdough pancakes

blueberry sourdough pancakes

I was in the mood for some pancakes. I also wanted to try a sourdough version. There is quite a bit of discarded sourdough mixture when I go through a couple of feeding cycles. So I searched around for a basic recipe and found this. It seemed that you mix flour, milk, scrambled eggs, melted butter, and baking power together and cook them. I took the sourdough mixture and poured off the hooch (water/alcohol) and then poured the thick spent flour into a bowl. I added one scrambled egg, two tablespoons of melted butter, maybe half a cup of extra flour, and enough milk to bring it to the desired consistency. Turned out great! But maybe I was just hungry…

Ghost players

Ghost players #1
Ghost players #2

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.