twenty years later...

It's amazing how some things stay the same after so long. Just a couple of minutes ago I popped a game into my nintendo (wii) and it didn't play. How did I fix it? I ejected it and blew on the game. Popped it back in and voila. Trick still works like a charm. If only everything were still that easy to fix...

Cuban banned for life from Olympics

My wife and I were wandering through nbcolympics.com today and I ran across a photo of a good kick to the face. I thought it was during a tae kwon do sparring match but as I looked closer, I noticed that one of the competitors had his helmet in his hand (not a good place for it to be) instead of on his face. I looked at my wife and told her, "That's a stupid place for your helmet to be, pointing to the competitor's hand. Then I said, "The helmet goes there," pointing to his head. Then I looked a little closer and noticed that the other competitor (the one that got kicked) had a tie on. So I thought to myself that's a stupid uniform to be sparring in. Then I looked at the heading. It looks like the Cuban competitor didn't quite like the way the match turned out. The other "competitor" (the one with the tie on) was actually a ref! The Cuban competitor will probably be expelled from the Olympics for life and most likely, his coach will be too. You can see the pictures and read the story here. The photo I saw was the third one shown in the gallery.

Merry Christmas

What's that in the picture you ask? Why that, my friend, is a kringle - a traditional Danish pastry. I told a couple of people that I was going to Racine and they all said that I had to go and get a kringle while I was here so that's what I did today. The one I had was cream cheese flavored. It was pretty good. Tasted like a Danish. It was HUGE! It cost me about $5 and was about the size of a serving platter. Well, that was my random post.

synth in

I get a complimentary copy of USA Today delivered to my room every morning and as I perused its contents I came across an article about photosynth, microsoft's new program. basically, what it does is it takes all the pictures you upload about a single subject and figures where the photographer is in relationship to the pictuer and basically stitches all the phots together for you. now this in itself is nothing new. what makes photosynth different is that you can zoom in on each of the components of the pictures. that's not explaining it too well so here's another description in microsoft's own words:

"First there was the snapshot, and then came video. Now there is Photosynth, a new service available at photosynth.com that will change the way you experience and share photos.

You can share or relive a vacation destination or explore a distant museum or landmark. With a nothing more than digital camera and some inspiration, you can use Photosynth to transform regular digital photos into a three-dimensional, 360-degree experience. Anybody who sees your synth is put right in your shoes, sharing in your experience, with detail, clarity and scope impossible to achieve in conventional photos or videos.

Synths constitute an entirely new visual medium. Photosynth analyzes each photo for similarities to the others, and uses that data to build a model of where the photos were taken. It then re-creates the environment and uses that as a canvas on which to display the photos."

The article mentions that this is just a beta program so there are improvements on the way. Some things that they are looking into fixing:

1) privacy - right now, any 'synth' you upload can be seen by everybody

2) it takes a while to upload the pictures and when you click to zoom in, some computers may take a while for the zoomed image to come into focus.

Check out the page if you have some free time. Kinda interesting.

deadly, clean service with a smile

I think that if I were to run a ninja training school I would send initiates to be trained as hotel maids to see if they have what it takes to be a ninja. Think about it, have you ever caught a hotel maid in your room? Yet when you leave the room and come back, it's spotless. I've only caught a maid in my room once (it takes a ninja after all) since I've been in Racine. So there you go. If you're in need of a silent assassin, put a want ad out for a hotel maid. In other news, I only had to work till one today so I've been spending time wondering around town. I've made stops at Toys R Us and Barnes and Nobles (got the zombie survival guide) and am now in the hotel recuping.

Packing

Gonna be spending most of the day packing and doing fun stuff. Gotta get ready for my trip to Racine, WI tomorrow. Work's sending me there to train some of their employees so they gave me a per diem check. I call it my GPS check (that's what I'm buying with it later today...well, and food). If you're interested, you can follow me on twitter.