went gaming chez ironphoenix

We had a good crowd, with between 1 and 3 tables. I got to play 3 of my new games from Tanga, and learn a new game of ironphoenix's. In order, Aquadukt (I won, gabriel_le a close second), Set, Saga (won by Chris, me in second), Perikles (Andrew, me a close 2nd), 3 more games of Set at dinner, and Manila (me, then S).

I especially wanted to get in a couple more teachings of Aquadukt and Saga since I'll be teaching them at Cangames this year and I'd like to be familiar enough to do that smoothly.

*sigh*

The problem with buying and appreciating nicer ports is that it lessens your enjoyment of the lesser (that is, less expensive) ports.

Gah!

I just realized that the last weekend of March is Ad Astra! How'd it sneak up on me like that? Gah and double-gah!

Set Daily puzzle link

I mentioned this at gaming, the Set Daily Puzzle link is: http://www.setgame.com/set/puzzle_frame.htm

Laundry, *sigh*

I'm back from climbing, need to clean up and figure something out for dinner. Then, unless somebody manages to distract me with something, I'll be stuck with the joy of the accumulated laundry after two weeks away and none getting done. There's got to be something better than laundry tonight.

The evil that is funny youtube

100 vs 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C62usP1P0aU

Bless You: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzRH3iTQPrk

Pinky vs the man: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COkumQuCibU

Bench Seat Standard: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlmoQTSoQYo

Silver Rocket: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrPc9ARvoOs

Subtitles of beauty: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA1NoOOoaNw

So, which was your favourite? Funniest?

Installed Ubuntu

I downloaded and installed Ubuntu (7.10) to my home machine, dual-boot with Windows. Mostly the whole process went pretty smoothly, the only thing that took a bit of work was trying to figure out how to get grub to default back to booting Windows rather than Linux. The documentation was not clear, I'm used to better man pages, and there was mention of a configuration file but no information as to where it might live (yay for the power of find) and at best vague information on how to get it to do what I wanted. Luckily, my Unix experience came through and I invoked the powers of find and vi to triumph!

Now, the real question is how much will I use it. We'll see.

Climbing and Tape

A lot of climbers tape their hands/fingers for different reasons. Sometimes it is to support joints or tendons, sometimes to protect hands as a sort of glove for particular techniques (hand jams in cracks), and sometimes just to deal with skin abrasions or blisters.

I've had kind of mixed feelings about taping. I've decided, though, where my line is: I'll tape for skin protection, but not for joint/tendon support. If I'm climbing so hard that I'm having joint/tendon issues, then I haven't worked my strength up enough, and I need to back off and work up more gradually. Rest, heal, etc. But if I've got a blister or flapper and want to keep climbing, then tape to protect my skin is ok.

Lots of good pictures!

I feel a bunch of our pictures turned out really well! Now, I just have to select, upload, and build an LJ post of them. Yeeha!

Pictures of our trip (Grand Canyon, Meteor Crater, Petrified Forest, Painted Desert)

Here are a bunch of images from our trip, about 22 of them mostly around 1M in size. I took a lot more, but these are some of the nicer ones I selected out.

( lots of big pictures )