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Saturday, July 11th, 2009
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7:30 pm - Betelgeuse! Betelgeuse! Betelgeuse!
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A few weeks ago I read a report that states the radius of Betelgeuse had shrunk over the last 15 years by more than 15%, and the decrease in size is increasing.
The average speed of the decrease in the radius is about 480 miles/hour. (This number is from Wikipedia, and I think the number is derived from the above link.) 480 miles / hour * 24 hours/day * 365 days/year = 4204800 miles/year. Betelgeuse's radius is 936 solar radius * 432450 miles/solar radius = 404773200 miles. divide that by the rate, and you get 96.3 years. So, if this rate of shrinking stays constant, we might have a supernova for Betelgeuse in the next century. Lots of assumptions here, of course. It's exciting to think that we may see it go in our lifetimes.
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| Monday, June 22nd, 2009
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10:25 pm
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Ok, I've joined Twitter (my name there is "minipete" for lack of better ideas) and I picked up an iPhone today. Now what? ;) (The iPhone will eventually replace my Madison number; I'll have two phones for a couple of days, but in a while I'll cancel my Madison cell #.)
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| Monday, May 4th, 2009
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12:31 am
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| Monday, April 20th, 2009
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12:13 am - I'm a bad fan...
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With the change in jobs to work at Wizards last year, I lost my email address of 10 years. I moved most of the important things over to my gmail address, but one thing I forgot was the "email me when you have a new album out" music mailing lists... so I totally missed Marillion's double album last year AND Fish's new album. Sigh. I picked them both up this weekend, some in CD form and others via iTunes. Very dangerous... Brilliant sales model by Apple here. Anyway, I picked the new Wishing Tree album and I'm trying out Threshold -- it's something that came up on the Pandora channel for Enchant, where I also got a taste of Porcupine Tree and Riverside. It's definitely in the genre that my tastes have moved to these last 5 years or so. (Alas, nothing new from Enchant -- although the old drummer guested on the Wishing Tree album, which is cool.)
so.. I have a bunch of new music from some of my favorite bands to try out this week! Yay!
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| Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
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12:20 am - the post where I ramble about TV for a while...
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We're thoroughly enjoying the new TV show Castle these days. I love mysteries, and this one is pretty refreshing in that it's a little more upbeat. (One thing I really disliked about Battlestar was how draining it became, especially once Baltar lost much of his comedic edge that he had in the first season or so.) There have been quite a few shows that I wanted to like -- I'm looking at you, Fringe -- but this is one that I do like.
A little sad that Life on Mars is ending with tonight's episode (which I haven't seen.) While the leads were ok, I'm surprised how much I like the secondary cast more in the US version than the BBC one. I think they were intentionally written to be more sympathetic in the new one. I'm not sure I liked Harvey Keitel's Hunt that much; I would have preferred the original casting of Colm Meaney much more for the role. Sigh, damned stunt casting. I've been comparing the ratings for Life on Mars with the ratings for Castle, and I've noted that Castle's ratings aren't dropping like LoM's did, so hopefully that means Castle will stay on for a while!
The last new show we're watching is "Lie to Me". I often associate actors very strongly to the roles they've previously played, so I was worried that I would have a problem with Tim Roth because of how viscerally I hated his character in Rob Roy -- fortunately that hasn't been the case. There are very few characters that can change how I feel about an actor -- I think a really good reference is the difference between Hugh Laurie in Blackadder and House, for example. House is so alien to how Laurie normally acts.
I've noticed that Psych is the best thing that's happened to the pineapple industry. Now that I'm on the west coast, it seems a lot easier to get a hold of pineapple. (Especially when compared to Wisconsin!) I think I've been snacking on one a week for a few months now. Yum! (For those unaware of Psych, somewhere in each episode is a pineapple, and much like a Hitchcock cameo, you're supposed to hunt for it in each episode.)
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| Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
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3:14 pm
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| Tuesday, March 24th, 2009
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10:33 pm
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Yesterday, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) gamescribe (the local star wars god; one of the people I knew by reputation before he was hired at Wizards several years ago -- obviously before I arrived at the company) remarked that while he didn't have a wikipedia entry, he did have a wookieepedia entry... As I had written a handful of star wars web articles a few years back, I was curious to see if I had one, and it turns out I do, but it's a stub. :)
So that's my new term for almost gamer famous - you're a wookieepedia stub.
Current flash game waste of time: Hex Empires
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| Friday, January 2nd, 2009
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6:31 pm
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So, with it announced that David Tennant is leaving the role of the Doctor, web sites have come up allowing people to bet on the next actor taking the role. It's been announced that tomorrow's episode of Doctor Who Confidential will announce the name of the new actor. I've taken the list of names and the odds from betfair.com, mainly to see if any of these guesses are actually correct.
( names behind cut... )
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| Sunday, December 21st, 2008
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1:10 pm
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Sigh. Our flight was cancelled, and we couldn't get a new flight out to Minneapolis until Christmas morning. Yuk.
There is something like 4 inches of snow out there and it is still coming. Crazy seattle weather!
I think we'll probably delay our trip to Wisconsin by a day as a result.
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| Saturday, December 20th, 2008
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9:33 pm
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We saw TWO snow plows here in Seattle! I didn't think they had that technology out here!
We braved the snow and went to Jenn and Kevin's place tonight; they're taking care of the cats while we're in Minneapolis and the Madison area. Originally they were going to make pretty much daily trips to our apartment to take care of the cats, but it's a bit out of the way with some nasty hills to be driving on while coated with the snow. Seattle is pretty hilly; on our way home we passed quite a few cars that just weren't able to handle it. We replaced the tires on the car right before the trip out, and we got some good all-weather tires that would handle mountain pass conditions in winter, so Unz the Barbarian was quite the trooper. I don't think we slid at all.
Here's a fun video of occasional driving conditions in nearby Portland in Jan 2007. It wasn't that bad here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qofe64lIvNg
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| Friday, November 21st, 2008
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8:37 pm
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I finally succumbed to the lure of the XBox. We are doomed! Just working on unpacking it, and I already have an inch-long paper cut.
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| Wednesday, October 29th, 2008
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9:36 pm - Barack Obama Political WHAT??
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8:07 pm
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Gen and I went to Hot Iron this evening, our local neighborhood mongolian stir fry restaurant.
Here is her fortune cookie message:
"You would do well in the field of computer technology."
Somehow, I got two messages in my cookie:
"Look with favor upon a bold beginning."
"You will be recognized and honored as a community leader."
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| Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
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10:33 pm - The end of D&D Miniatures
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It was announced today that the skirmish part of the D&D Miniature line is ending, and that miniatures will continue in a different form:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4news/20081021
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4news/20081023
I still have my job, I'm still working on miniatures, but the direction is purely geared towards the roleplaying game.
Obviously, I am a little sad. I never will have any particular impact with the miniatures game; the first released set that I would have designed would have been Feywild, which would have released next year, but that is the first set that is taking the new direction. I did put the freelance guidelines together for the restats, and I have been working on some design and development of the older stat cards, but ultimately, that is the work of my freelancers, and they're all a great group of people.
It's that great group of people that has really drew me to the game. I've been involved with the D&D Miniatures community since the tail end of the Chainmail days. I found the maxminis website shortly after the line was released, and one of the first trades I did was with some guy in Milwaukee named Chris Tulach. He started running tournaments there, and I showed up and met some wonderful people. banantalis, horizonwalker, iuztheevil, skerrit, etc. Chris made an open call for judges when he was the head judge for Gen Con 2004, and I answered it. I ended up judging for the next three years as well.
This game was also how I was first introduced to Misty Mountain in Madison, back in the old location. One of the players I met at these early Madison tournaments was spkelley. We'd end up spending a lot of time talking at Gen Con 2004, and one of the things that came out of that was the formation of our Living Force group -- featuring such crazy people as wombats, krewtroll, the_rodge_man, and other scum and villainy. Basically, the miniature game is ultimately responsible for introducing me to a lot of my friends.
So, obviously, I'm not happy about the decision, but that's life. I do think the quality of the upcoming miniatures is looking really good -- I can't think of a bad sculpt in the first two sets of 2009, and the production paint samples for Dangerous Delves looks fantastic.
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| Tuesday, August 19th, 2008
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1:15 pm - vacation
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I'm briefly in Madison for a quick post Gen Con vacation; Thursday I'll be heading out to Minneapolis to see more friends and family, and then back to Seattle on Sunday. It's been a bit odd to see all the construction around town; buildings missing like Ogg, Peterson, and a slew of buildings near Union South. The old hilldale theater is gone. The building where University Square was is almost done; we went to the food court there for lunch today. I expect it to be quite a popular place once the students return.
The plan is to relax and learn all the new board games that I have access to right now. The big one from the show was Agricola, which is fantastic -- I ended up playing it (I think) four times during the evenings at the show, thanks to doubtofbuddha. Mark R., who was up from Cleveland and is also staying in Madison, brought a couple more games. I played 1960, a game set during the 1960 election (Kennedy and Nixon). Not bad, but restricted to only two players. Both are from Z-Man games (some being repackaging from Europe) and they are 3 for 3 with me when you include Pandemic. Fantastic board games.
I'm looking forward to trying out Alchemist from Mayfair in the next few days; it looks like a game I'll enjoy. Mark has brought some other games, but the names are currently escaping me.
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| Tuesday, August 12th, 2008
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8:32 pm
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Heading out to GenCon tomorrow, and then a week long vacation in Madison and Minneapolis to see friends and family. It'll be the first time that I'll be back since I moved out here in January.
Looking forward to it!
I'll be in Madison between Sunday evening to some time Thursday, when I plan to take a greyhound to Minneapolis. Erk, I haven't ridden a bus from Madison to Minneapolis since about 1999 -- that's something I'm not looking forward to. Not sure what I'll be doing just yet; I think I'll be going to the Minnesota state fair that weekend; I don't remember the last time I went there.
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| Friday, June 13th, 2008
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1:37 pm - brains...
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| Monday, June 9th, 2008
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9:19 pm
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I had my camera out on the table today at work and I accidently caught myself on the power cord, causing it to fall. Now the lens is askew and won't retract; not sure if it can focus properly anymore. Grrr. It's five years old, but I really didn't want to get a new camera just yet. Heck -- my microwave is 16 years old. If it ain't broke... Well, now my camera is broke. (I had the camera out to try a new way to do miniature art orders; I think it's going to be a big improvement on how to communicating miniature poses to the concept artist.)
Left work at 8pm tonight to come outside to see my rear tire flat again. The Renton roads are littered with broken glass on my route, it seems. The bicycle place was closed so I'll have to fix it tomorrow; I did get about half way home before the tire was too flat.
At least I didn't have to walk home in the rain; it started raining just about the time I got home.
Work has been good, but incredibly busy.
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| Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
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8:32 pm - How could I not be aware of this until today?!?
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| Friday, April 25th, 2008
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8:17 pm - music community networking
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Due to all the CDs I picked up, I remembered an invitation to an online music tracking/social networking thing that mr Tulach invited to me shortly before I got to Seattle. (I didn't really have time to look into it until now!) It's actually quite impressive; it's supposedly able to get your iTunes information and basically analyze it (which hasn't quite worked for me yet because they've had some server issues the last week.)
The place is last.fm and I'm ptlee on there.
It's like myspace, but with a purpose. ;)
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hungry