Nick was up for a hike around Lake Georgetown. Initially, I wanted to do the entire 26 mile loop in one go. But eventually decided to try an 11 mile segment. We started at 9:30 here. We finished at 13:40 here. Well, according to the mile markers. I suspect that they lie though.
Chaotic Shadows
When I noticed these shadows, I had to stop what I was doing and film them. I also like how there is chaos in the film grain and in the audio as well…
Chaotic Shadows from Mark Hamzy on Vimeo.
BGG.con 2010
Well, for this con, I had wanted to take portraits while playing boardgames. I brought the camera and accessories and packed them in a nifty travel carry-on luggage. Which I then lugged around the con but never got up the nerve to use. Sigh.
So, instead I will post about landmarks/sights on the trip up:
- Little Czech Bakery
- Geodesic Church
- Kitock’s
- Carl’s Corner
- Monolithic Construction (Geodesic domes)
- The point where you can see the downtown skyscrapers of Dallas
- Dallas Zoo Giraffe sculpture
And the boardgames that I wanted to buy after playing them at BGG.con:
- Master of Economy – This game is a interesting economic engine game in two parts. You build up your production capabilities and sell goods on the market. And you buy/sell shares in the four companies in the game.
- Troyes – This is a dice game. But there are ways to mitigate the randomness of the dice roll. It’s a meatier To Court The King.
- Navegador – The new rondel game. It’s thematic as well.
- String Railway – This is a cute filler game. You get the feeling that you are building a Japanese subway system at the end.
- Poseidon – A lighter/introductory 18xx game. The theme is ancient Greece.
- Alien Frontiers – Another dice game. I definitely want to try this again.
- Dominant Species – A meatier evo game. This game has many agonizing choices. Perhaps too many.
- 1865 Sardinia – Another 18xx game. The artwork is gorgeous (done by 18AL’s Koyro).
Links
Sesame Street Cupcakes link via
Creating Shazam in Java link via
The Bit-52’s The World’s Greatest Parts Band playing The B-52’s – Rock Lobster link via
Realistic Pac Man sculpture link via
My quest for the ultimate travel coffee setup link via
30-Minute Meals – Behind the scenes link via
100 million hand-painted ceramic sunflower seeds link via
The Grass Roofs of Norway link via
3D Dinosaur Bones Pancake link via
Why won’t the printer take the paper?! link via
Time lapse of a construction crew replacing some train tracks in San Francisco link via
The making of Sam O’Hare’s new tilt shift film, “Coachelletta” link via
Comparing Canon glass to Zeiss glass link via
Stephen Fry on language link via
Light painting an entire city link via
Chemistry of Cast Iron Seasoning: A Science-Based How-To link via
The Making of a Mind-Blowing DIY Sun Photo link via
How to poach a perfect egg link via
A Very Model Halloween link via
The First Photograph of a Human link via
This is Halloween (Marilyn Manson) link via
Fitting a tall cruise ship under a bridge by driving fast and sucking the ship lower in the water link via
How to make fractals without a computer link via
Testing the myth of the 12-year-old McDonald’s burger link via
Buffy!
Buffy!
VNC/KVM/RHEL/Win
I got a new laptop for work today. A ThinkPad W510. It came preloaded with a version of Windows with customized work software on it (such as Lotus Notes and a back-level IE). I deleted it and started from scratch. I first installed Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 6.0. Then I downloaded a bootable CD image of a lifeboat rescue installer. This will reinstall the work versioned Windows if you ever lose your hard-drive. I then created a new virtual machine with KVM. I attached the iso image as a virtual CD and created a 40 gigabyte blank file to act as a virtual hard drive. I then booted into it and waited a long while as it downloaded the necessary files and installed Windows. I did all this from home as my laptop was sitting in my office thanks to a remote desktop sharing protocol called VNC.
Isn’t technology cool now adays?
Gypsy Picnic Trailer Food Festival
After disc golf, we headed to the 1st annual (I assume) Gypsy Picnic Trailer Food Festival. I had high hopes for this festival. Trailer food is a hot trend right now in Austin. You can view a map with a lot of the trailers on it here.
Unfortunately, reality turned out to be complete and utter chaos. 🙁 Word of mouth and advertising worked much better than was anticipated. I have to imagine that there were over 20K people here. Parking was a nightmare. Jon and I parked over at Whole Foods and we walked over the bridge and down to Disch field. Once we got there, the place was already packed. Lines were incredibly long! We each split up into separate lines and waited for food. The line I was in was over an hour long. And that was just to pay for the food. I had to wait another twenty minutes for the food to cook! Also, with so many people using phones here, the phone was unusable. I could not call or text anyone. Sigh. I even got sunburned waiting outside so long…
I even saw a film crew here using a Canon DSLR as a video camera. I wonder where that video aired…
Another round at Pease Park
We got in another round of golf at Pease Park today. I wonder how long the course will remain open. The city intends to shut this course down due to erosion. Here Jon was throwing while clinging to the side of a cliff.
There was also an art construct along the river. At least I think that was what it was.
This hole is rather overgrown with fallen trees. You have to throw downhill through a pretty small window. Very tough.
Construction at Old Settler’s Park
There is some construction going on at Old Settler’s Park. We fortunately played after the fact. But it looks like a pipeline was put in. It runs across holes 3,4,5,6,7, and 8. This is probably a bad sign for us. They are growing the number of sports fields here constantly. And this pipeline is probably in support of some more buildings.
This line of flags is probably not related. Although it does peak my curiosity.
We could have played on hole 5 today. But some idiot parked his car right in the middle of the disc golf field! Just to launch his ultralight flying machine. Sigh.
AHS Oaked Porter beer brewing
A friend of mine is getting into brewing beer at home. And I wanted to see just what was involved in the process. Luckily, he was willing to invite me over to watch (and help — but mostly watch).
The first interesting thing was that he used an Igloo ice chest as a container to steep the grain in. He also used a very fine nylon mesh fabric to line the bottom. This was supposed to allow the wort to drain off easily (kinda like a reusable tea bag). Although we still had some small problems with the mass of the grain blocking the drain outlet.
Once the grains (mash-tun) steeped for 60 minutes, we drained off the liquid (wort) into a container.
We then poured the wort into a rather large aluminum stock pot and boiled the wort for 60 minutes. This is where the hops are added. And, depending on when they are added, that determines what function they serve. At the beginning of the boil, the hops are bittering hops. For the last 15 minutes, we added flavoring hops. And for the last 5 minutes, we finished off with aroma hops.
We then had to cool off the hops down from boiling to a temperature where the yeast can ferment the sugars into alcohol. This had to be done rather quickly. Which is difficult since water is a great heat-sink. So we used two sets of large copper tubing twisted into a radiator. One copper tube sits in a large ice chest filled with ice and water. The other tube sits in the stock pot. Water is then circulated from the outside garden hose to the first tube, through to the second tube, and then draining out to the yellow bucket. The bucket is just to capture some of the water runoff to be used for cleaning.
After the wort is cooled down to 70 degrees, it is then siphoned off into a large glass fermentation chamber. At the top of it will be placed an air lock which will allow the excess carbon-dioxide to vent off.
It was a pretty easy process. Perhaps someday I will get into it.