Jon and I went out to East Metro to play disc golf. The recent rains made the place very muddy! This is certainly not a course that can handle soaking rainfall. Many of the paths between holes were stagnant rivers of mud.
Disc Golf 01/17/2010
New Orleans
Since I was driving out to Houston for Lone Star, I decided to head out to New Orleans for a vacation. Nick and Stephanie were in Lafayette, Louisiana at the time, so I stopped and ate lunch with them at Julien’s Famous Cajun Style Poboys Store No 1. Unfortunately, the store closed early for the holidays. So we all headed over to Olde Tyme Grocery.
I arrived at the Sheraton on Canal Street later during the day. Unfortunately, it was Christmas Eve and many restaurants were closed. But, I stumbled upon the Gumbo Shop. The line was down the street at 6:30! But I lucked out when they were asking for two people or less and everyone else was in a group with more than that.
The hotel was situated on the edge of the French Quarter and close to the river. And the view from the window was not so bad.
More details after the cut…
Union Hill Cemetery
It looks like, with the construction work going on to expand 1460, that a group of people took the time to clean up what once was a desolate cemetery.
links
The largest wooden brewing vessel built in America since before Prohibition link
Your Looks and Your Inbox link via
Fuel cell battery charger link via
The Rings of the Earth link via
Space armchair link1 link2 via
World Series Time Lapse link via
The Dijkstra-Zonneveld ALGOL 60 compiler for the Electrologica X1 (1964) link via
Scott Holden’s Tauntaun Costume link via
How to make your own pumpkin pie spices link via
16 Golden Retrievers Teach You About Atoms link via
Star Wars characters on Facebook link via
Customizable 3D branding iron link via
The making of Fantastic Mr. Fox link via
Industrial Thanksgiving link via
Excercise machine warning link via
Laptop steering wheel desk link via
Picasso Superhero images link via
Rotating kitchen art piece link via
100 days in Glacier National Park link via
When is the next total solar eclipse at my location? link via
The actual resolution of HD-DSLRs link1 link2 via
Images of Papua New Guinea link via
It’s a movie. You should do something. link via
It’s like Twitter, only we’ll charge people for it link via
How to Slice a Bagel into Two Linked Halves link via
Homebrew Kodachrome factory link via
Cooking with ratios soon to have iPhone app link via
Zombie outbreak simulator link via
Usefullness of finger in traffic link via
Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast” compressed 666 times link via
Photos of the year? link1 link2 link3 link4 via
Aliens cause global warming link via
Sorry I’m late link1 link2 via
Monks, with a vow of silence, sing Hallelujah chorus link via
Earth and Jupiter from Mars link via
Guitar Hero + Christmas Lights link via
Flying Spaghetti Monster treats link via
3D camera breaks world record with 158 lenses link via
Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement link1 link2 via
Canon Rebel XT survives 3,000 foot fall link via
Astrophotography and the sun link via
1665 photos taken with the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, was stitched together to create the world’s largest photograph weighing in at 26 gigapixels link via
Tiny gingerbread house that perches on the rim of your mug link via
70-Minute Video Review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace link via
Reflections on Disc Golf
I couldn’t really escape my reflection on some of the holes today. But it did make for an interesting picture…
Disc Golf 12/19/2009
We played at Old Settler’s Park today. The ground was not wet enough to be muddy but it was was still damp enough for discs to stick in the ground.
With all of the trees being removed, it looks like they moved hole 7 slightly to the right. The new mandos make it much harder…
And the Christmas signs are back up at the park.
As well as the tiny river which Chapel’s disc found.
Game Day 12/16/2009
Wow, its been a while since I have played Imperial. And, what is surprising, is that three of the people at the game have never played it before! In my opinion, this is the best of the rondel games. You just have to get out of the mindset that your goal is to run a country and win the game.
I was a little worried with how everyone else would play the game. It is hard to bet on countries and then watch as they are mismanaged. But it seems that everyone caught on and did well. I was able to reinvest my money often enough to jump out in the lead. I definitely had the most stocks. But this is not always a good thing. You want a lot of shares in the winning country and the second-most shares in the second-place country. But I was a little too spread out and had shares in every country. I did make one mistake at the end in buying a share in Austria. I should have instead bought another share in England and get a better multiplier (2x versus 1x). Oh well. I still one handily though.
Austin Photo meetup
Not one, but two different Austin Photographers meetups are scheduled for this weekend. One is on Saturday and one is on Sunday. How odd.
I started off in the Capitol Building. Which I have never been in before. So sad.
A few Christmas ornaments on a scraggly tree turn a little more interesting with a thin depth of field and Christmas lights bokeh.
There are these customized art sculptures of guitars around the streets of Austin. I played around with killing the background with my one 580EXII flash set on full manual power. I dialed the exposure down two more stops in post-production to almost kill boring urban background.
I also played around with a slow shutter speed (1/10 second) and dragging the camera downward. One neon light can turn into many…
It also works when you change the zoom as the picture is being taken…
We also played chicken with traffic while we took a picture of the Capitol building.
An urban mural turned more interesting with a picture of Frost Bank in the background.
The night was rather foggy out. Which was sad. What can you do? I still had a fun time though. And I also learned not to use the flash when taking a picture of something in the distance. The fog really reflected the light!
Game Day 12/09/2009
Big surprise, another game of Hansa Teutonica. This game was different from the start. On both sides of the “gain extra action” building, we placed different cubes. Which I think was a mistake. It takes two different attacks to finally be able to gain control of one of those roads. This is just too costly. If you only have to attack once, then it is not so bad. So no one was able to increase their actions that way in the beginning of the game (until someone finally moved away).
Wayne also was able to gain control of the top road in the game. This meant he was getting points whenever people were “popping” any of the three buildings to improve your abilities. I was behind and saw no way out of it. I needed to increase my color ability before I could place another person in the point building, but that would end the game since Wayne was too close to the game ending condition. Sigh. Still an interesting game though.
Quintessential Fall Dinner
Smoked Ham, stuffing, sweet potatoes, and cranberry sauce are all Fall items to me. And I can’t really name Spring, Summer, or Winter items either.