Monthly Archives: September 2006

Game Bookshelfs

Time for more large pictures… I used the Canon TS-E 24mm lens to take a panoramic picture of my game shelves. with available lighting. There is a large window in that room, but it is in a protected location and only receives indirect lighting. You can really tell how the light is stronger at one end and trails off to the end that has that large window.

Click on them for the larger versions. I try to cram as many games in those bookshelves as possible. So I usually sort them by size instead of similiar games or titles or authors or whatever. This causes problems for some of our game members.

Cafe Mangú

Cafe Mangu

I wanted to try out Dot’s new location for lunch today. Dot’s burned down last year. And they were trying to raise money for a new place in the interim. I read in our Community Impact Newspaper July edition that Dot’s had rebuilt a new restaurant in Pflugerville. I figured that it would be open by now. Sadly, it wasn’t. So I drove over to that African restaurant (Ts?). But it was closed as well. Gah!

On the way out of Pflugerville, I ran across Cafe Mangú. I had read about it but was unable to find it. It is pretty well hidden on the west side of 1825 pretty close to IH-35. The restaurant doesn’t even have its own parking. You have to park in the auto repair shop next door.

I ordered the Cubano and it was pretty good (although they used a runny mayonnaise sauce). The maduras (plantain banannas) were excellent. It has been a long time since I have had a Cubano. I miss South Florida at times.

links

How to remove logos from cell phones/PDAs with sugar link via

Probability and game theory link via

Lego Settlers of Catan link via

Countries ranked by balance link via

Wearing helmets more dangerous for cyclists link via

Bridge, by Wolfgang Kramer (use the cool Wizard deck) link via

World’s largest telephoto lens link via

“I’m waiting for the kind of Monty Python court case where exhibit A is a pot of cleaning fluid and exhibit B is a pair of my old socks,” he jokes. link via

Can you drive too fast for a speed camera? link via

Reverse engineering Patsy’s pizza link via

Weather forecast accuracy details link via

Man finds car seven months after loosing it link via

Disc Golf 09/16/2006

low lake levels

Today we took a road trip and went to a course out in Lago Vista that was new to us. John, myself, Mike and Jon carpooled there (meeting Jon at Starbuck’s of course). We arrived early, so we practiced a bit. When everyone else arrived we chose teams. But, instead of our usual process of flipping discs, John got out a deck of cards. We had decided to have three teams of 2, 2, and 3. I imagined that he would use sets of cards to distinguish the people like Clubs for team 1 and Hearts for team 2. Or, perhaps, he would use the rank of cards like Aces, Kings, or Queens. But he was determined to be different. The black Aces would go together, the red Aces would be a team, and the three Kings would form the last team. Okay. And after all of that, we still rearranged the teams…

Man, the lake is low! No possibility of water on our course.

group

Seven people is a lot to play with. But we played quickly today. Perhaps it was because the course was shorter than usual. Or the fact that we were the only people out there today.

obstacle

On hole 5, they had tied together with bailing wire a large vine that had been cut apart. It made an effective obstacle since the majority of people hit it.

hole no more

It seems that hole 6 is no more… I wonder why?

deer

There are an aweful lot of deer around here in Lakeway. Unfortunately, none of them chose to be targets for John when he was throwing discs. They stayed away from the course while we were there. Perhaps the Elk warned them…

curt shoeless

Curt was having problems with his foot today. So he took his shoe off and played with out it. It didn’t prove to be any handicap.

hole 18

I had a nice throw on hole 18. The tee is at the base of the hill and the basket is on the top. The basket is protected by cedar trees.

adam on tree

Adam looks like a Cheshire Cat, don’t you think? We went to a restaurant for lunch. And on our way home, we decided to take a detour to check out another close course in Leander. However, it was quite the adventure to get find it. The directions are truely atrocious: “Directions: At the corner of Osage Dr. and Bagdad Rd. West on 1431, go 1 mile past 183 and turn right on Bagdad. The park is 4 miles down on the left at the entrance to the subdivision.”

It didn’t help that John’s odometer doesn’t have tenths of a mile and I used it to measure out four miles. Eventually we gave up and turned around and started looking for parks. Not many people have heard of disc golf, so the general public turned out to be no help at all. We drove around some subdivisions a bit and eventually worked our way back to the corned of Osage and Bagdad. Of course, after all that effort, I finally noticed that the park was visible from that intersection.

The corrected directions should say: “At the corner of Osage Dr. and Bagdad Rd. … The park is … on the left at the entrance to the subdivision.”

tee one

The park is really tiny and crowded with residents. It is perhaps 200 feet on each side with a gated swimming pool in the middle of it.

Jon OOB

Jon managed to throw out of bounds into a condominium. Mike then proceded to throw his disc into the side of one of those buildings narrowly missing a window. He ditched that disc.

no trespassing

Oh yeah, now you tell us that this is a private park.

Pilates workout

For my Pilates class tonight, I had a real workout. I was the only one to show up tonight and so my teacher, Joey, took this opportunity to show me flow yoga. You see, I am a big fan of working on “core” in yoga. This is the strengthening of your abdomen and back muscles. Because I constantly request a hard workout, I was shown one tonight.

In flow yoga, you move from position to position while breathing. On your drawn in breath, you perform one pose. And on the exhalation, you move to the next pose. Together, these poses are called a Vinyasa.

Joey felt that a warm environment would help loosen and stretch the muscles. So he turned off the ceiling fans and the air conditioner. Now, I didn’t mind that so much. But I do question how much warmer my muscles were. There is not that much range in muscle temperature. Too cold and you experience hypothermia and die. Too warm and your brain cooks and you die.
Anyways, back to the sweat…

We started out with 5 Sun Salutations called Surya Namaskara A. We then moved on to the next more complicated series called Surya Namaskara B. And, after that we moved to different stretches and poses.

This was the most I have ever sweated. Not like its an accurate measurement, but it felt like I sweated 1/2 liter of water in an hour. I went through the following stages of sweat:

  • my arms and legs are getting sweaty now
  • ok, they are covered in sweat
  • my mat is starting to get wet
  • now my chest is starting to sweat
  • I am damp now
  • my shirt is starting to stick
  • gah, every part of the shirt is stuck to me
  • I feel like I participated in a wet tee-shirt contest and all I got was this soaking wet t-shirt

I was certianly not ready for that. And if you think that yoga can not be strenuous, then you must try this out!

Besides being draining, my real problem was controlling my breath. I am not used to breathing like this. I started to breath in and out a little more quickly than I should have. Which caused me to hyperventilate. You can catch your breath in the last down dog pose of the series, but it is hard to breath normally in this unnatural position. Also, in the poses, you are stretching out. You are supposed to use your breath to help stretch out. And this extra effort is taxing you and making it more difficult to catch your breath.

The other time I was alone with Joey, we did a more strenuous version of Pilates. And on that day, I had a pretty wicked charley horse. I was limping for a couple of days afterward. Between those two days, I think that this day was the toughest.

New toy, err, not yet

Ahhh… a new toy arrived. No, wait. I don’t own that toy yet. I have been intrigued by the tilt/shift lenses that Canon makes. You can read more about them and what they do here and here. So I decided to test drive one out by renting it from this store. RentGlass.com has a cool model. Very Netflix like. Their only problem is that they have very low inventory. So you have to fight over renting one. You get notified over email that a lens that you are interested in is in stock. So you hurry up and try to rent it. But 99% of the time, someone else got lucky and rented it first.

TS-24 sample

My first picture was one of Roads and Boats. I set up the tripod against the table. The camera was positioned about three feet above the table and was pointed downwards at a 47 degree angle. This is a fixed (or prime) lens, so I positioned the box on the table mostly in the field of view. I then adjusted the shift to move the box into the frame.

There are two problems with this lens. The first is that it is manual focus. You can overcome this by repeatedly half-pressing the shutter while moving the focus around. The familiar red boxes will light up when a focus lock is detected. However, the focus can get squirley when the lens plane is moved around. The other problem is that the minimum aperature is f/3.5. This is 2/3 of a stop bigger than a f/2.8 lens. Which requires more light to shoot and looses out on bokeh. 24mm is a pretty good field of view if I wanted to get this to take food shots, or architecture shots. The 45mm version has a minimum aperature of f/2.8 which is the minimum that I want, but it is not an “L” lens. The 45mm would have a smaller field of view as well, so I would have to possibly stitch pictures together.

TS-24 sample histogram

Although I will admit that the histogram looks suspicious. Small range and some blown colors.

Disc Golf 09/15/2006

weird sign

At our weekly game at Old Settler’s Park, we came across some weird signs. Perhaps they were for a tournament. Four groups of people who switch against each other at each hole? Strange.

Long throw on hole 1

On hole 1, I had my longest throw yet. Right in line with the hole. Just way off to the right. It looked like it was going for the lake. And I was not even trying my hardest.

This week was a repeat of last week! John and I were competitive at first. But I pulled ahead. John made a run for it on the last three holes. However, I remained in the lead at the end. Good game, John.

Game Day 09/14/2006

Game #1

Merchants of Amsterdam

Tonight we concentrated on older games. And first on the table was a game that I don’t think that I have played yet (sad but true). This is a majority game where there are three main areas where you fight over (the city of Amsterdam, the four seas, and the commodity market). On a player’s turn, they flip a card over and assign it to one of three places. One place is the discard pile (no one gets to use it). One place is on the auction block (everyone has the chance to bid on it). And the other place is only for the current player’s use. For the auction, this game has a rather unique auction clock. It slowly counts down from 200 to 50. The person who stops it first gets to buy it. And since I have heard stories about how fragile it is, I decided to keep it safe. I would start it ticking and then someone would shout out “stop” and I would stop the clock. The only problem was if multiple people said “stop” at the same time. And to resolve that tie we used modsies (much to the chagrin of Gravitt).

In this game, everyone bid way too much for cards. But since everyone was doing it, I don’t think that that mattered as much. Prices were relative. The final scoring round was very tense with Jon winning the game.

Game #2

Ursuppe

Ahhh, Ursuppe, the game of poop… teheheh… how I love to say that. Excuse me, sir. Please take that chit somewhere else… hohoho.

Its been a while since have played this game. And of course you forget which combinations of genes you should go for. Adam went for tentacles and substition, Jon went for movement I and Life Expectancy, Mike and I went for Parasitism. Which put fear into the others. And, of course, we ran into a rules question. The rules state “For each Foodstuff cube less an amoeba needs a foreign amoeba on the same square, who’s owner pays 1BP to the bank instead.” Mike and I took that to mean that one person could pay 2BPs for us. While everyone else took it to mean that we needed two amoebas for 1BP each.

Still a fun game to play after all these years.

Ichiban

Ichiban in Austin

Ichiban is currently my favorite place to eat lunch. And it is certinally the best lunch-time sushi restaurant (my favorite for dinner being Musashino). What won me over was its close proximity to work (an hour lunch including drive time is easily doable), their sushi combination lunch, and their friendly sushi chefs. The restaurant has changed management during this year. And because of that, the experience has suffered. But let me describe what you used to get.

Smoked Eel salad

You would be greeted with a very excellent smoked eel salad made with cucumbers, daikon, seeweed, and other green vegtables. I have yet to find a close match in grocery stores so I could make my own. I order the Sushi combo “C”. It comes with miso soup and a salad. The salad is basic, but the carrot-based dressing is divine. I should try and replicate that recipe sometime.

Sushi C

The sushi “C” combo has a salmon roll and six pieces of nigiri sushi (salmon, two tuna, snapper?, krab, and shrimp). Also accompanying the combo is some tsukemono which is pickled vegtables. The japanese sure know how to pickle things. I don’t like pickles but I love this.

And after the meal, you would be given something for dessert like a piece of fruit (orange or watermellon) or the tasty mochi ice cream.

Of course the occasional treat from the chefs were good tasty surprises.

Game Day 09/09/2006

Game #1

Blue Moon City

Mike had us over for the college football game (#1 Ohio State vs. #2 U.T. Austin). I was hoping for a nice lively game on Mike’s new HD-TV. But with Vince Young gone, U.T. was playing poorly.

John brought Blue Moon City for us to try. This is another new Knizia game (surprise, surprise) that uses artwork from his Blue Moon series. It was a nice game. And one that I will play again.

You move your piece around the board and try to build (cities?). When all of the spots on a tile are filled up, crystals are then awarded according to the majorities. Completed tiles also give bonuses to orthagonal tiles (snowballing the crystal income). In the middle of the board, you offer your crystals to the obelisk for one of four needed spots. The person who completes four spots wins the game. Pretty simple.

Blocked TV

Oh yeah, perhaps I didn’t watch the game because the view of the TV was blocked! Flawed!!

Game #2

Tichu

Mikey likes Tichu now! So I am obligated to force him to play. And Gravitt gets caught in the cross-fire. I’ll turn them both into Tichu players yet…

This was a painful game for me. There was a lot of random wishing. Jon started it out by wishing for an Ace and playing a straight. Unfortunately, I had the Phoenix and could satisfy that wish. Next, John wish for a four out of me. And then John wished for an Ace out of me. Sigh… We seem to be regressing here…


09/09/2006 The scorecard for a game of Tichu

GT or T bet made or lost

This team scored more points than the other or one twoed

GT/T Team #1 GT/T GT/T Team #2 GT/T
MarkH & JohnG Jon & MikeCh
  45    
55
 
  80    
120
 
  80   T+ 420  
  -20 T-   620  
  20    
680
 
 
120
    680  
 
305
T+ T- 595  
T+ 435    
665
 
  450    
850
T+
  490    
910
 
 
550
    950  
 
615
    985  
  655    
1045