I haven't been posting about Cal Rugby mostly because I'm no longer in the area. I tried to go to the UCLA tournament, but I'm kind of stupid so I showed up about 10 minutes after the tournament was over. I can, however, offer a brief summary of the season.

Cal took the national championship in a finals match against BYU with a final of 37-7. Cal took the 'Rugby World Cup' (awarded to the overall point leader in two matches against University of British Columbia) with two wins over UBC. Cal lost only one game by only 6 points, and that wasn't against another school but against the 2006 Rugby Super League champions.

In all, it was another excellent season. Goooo Bears!

Do you love to knulla? The owner of this particular automobile probably does.

I saw that outside a burger joint in Santa Monica. Camera phone + bluetooth laptop = win!

A hipster walks into a bar...

From Slaughterhouse-Five, Or The Children's Crusade : A Duty-dance with Death

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 1922 - 2007

This game reminded me of the oldschool game called Harmony. Good times.

I was going to post about Senator Chuck Schumer (D New York) and his imaginary middle-class friends, the Baileys. I got sidetracked, though, by the New Yorker caption contest.

Are you bothered by the radical liberal slant of the media? Or maybe a better question is: are you bothered by the radical liberal slant of people on the internet? People in general? The Bible itself? Well, now there's a place for you to write stuff: behold, Conservapedia. Note most of the touted 4,500 articles are a sentence or less in length and contain no citations (so there's plenty for you to do). For some reason, I'm reminded of Bender from Futurama: "Yeah! Well, I'm gonna go build my own theme park. With blackjack and hookers! In fact, forget the park!"

The debate pages are kind of interesting. As an example, the "Should Creationism/Intelligent design be taught as a scientific alternative to evolution in public schools?" debate manages to be pretty even-handed.

As part of the general effort to recruit new students, we had a graduate student research symposium today. After the symposium, we took the recruits on a photo scavenger hunt. It started on USC central campus, but then we hopped on the train up to hollywood and took wacky pictures. I mention this only as a vehicle to brag about my second celebrity siting. In front of the Kodak theater were David Beckham and Posh Spice. Woohoo.

I might even post some of the photos from the scavenger hunt if I can get them from the camera owner.

Update: here's the celebrity photo.

So thanks to Samay and a few other people, I was inspired to head over to LACMA (that's LA County Museum of Art) to check out an exhibit of Magritte and Magritte-inspired work. There was a pretty long line to get tickets (at seventeen bucks for students, 20 for general), and an even longer line to actually get in. this was at, oh, about 1:40 pm. Take note of that time before you click the next link.

About five minutes later, people seemed to be exiting the exhibit en masse. On their lips were incredible rumors of some kind of arthropod invasion. You can imagine what I did upon seeing that lines already close to my threshold for waiting were growing ever-longer in concert with the mass exodus AND the fact that nobody was getting in the door. It's true. I gave up and went to look at art with no waiting and no cost of admission.

Now, today, it's all over the news. Be warned. The ladybugs are back, with a vengeance.

ps I linked to LA Times because they, at least, got the story right. For some reason the A.P. thinks this all happened on Friday.

So I got a Nintendo Wii a few weeks ago. I have, in addition to wii sports, the newest Zelda game, plus two gamecube games. I'm posting about it now because I got it hooked up to these here internets and now have a ravenous hunger for friend codes. I don't even know what that means, really, but it grips me.

Remember, if your clothes catch on fire, Stop, Drop and Roll. Like a cookie monster. Unless you're in hell. I've heard it doesn't work there.

Witness my new-found prowess with photoshop and illustrator! Behold: my gorgeous poster.

Ok, here's the photo of the disasterous failure of the glass martini shaker.

And here are the dire results.

PS Thanks for the image shack idea, Ken. Also, from my initial observations, the bartender does pour into the pint glass first. This is consistent with my hypothesis, although it doesn't rule out many other hypotheses.

Google image labeler is a lot of fun, and it's right up my alley. Try to cooperate with an anonymous stranger on the internet. Also, "accretion" seems to be a popular choice.

And yes, I'm aware I'm voluntarily spending my free time enriching google share-holders. On the other hand, I just noticed I own like, 2% of one share of google.

Bed Bath and Beyond sells a very pretty etched glass martini set. Features include 4 uniquely styled martini glasses, glass olive toothpicks, and a glass shaker that explodes the first time you use it.

That's right. It shattered in my hand, producing minor lacerations in three places on my fingers. It wasn't serious, but it was kind of a downer on new year's eve. I'd stay away from this one. Also, I have pictures. Any recommendations for how to get them up on the webertron?

And a happy New Year.

Merry Christmas to all!

Ok, so I'm at a bit of a loss here, and I'm calling to the ether for help. My grandmother loves to play bejeweled. I want to give her another game for Christmas so she has some options. Can anyone recommend something?

Here's what makes bejeweled good for Grandma: large, colorful graphics (she doesn't see too well), no time limits, works by default, simple game play, flashy noisy rewards for doing well.

So. Any recommendations?

Ok, so:

 No  Points     Name                                                   Hp [max]
  1    3941946  Bentomere-Wiz-Elf-Mal-Cha ascended to demigod-hood.   283 [284]

I beat nethack. I only cheated a little. Nethack is aggravating and tough to learn, but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty fun. It's free and more than 20 years old: Nethack.org. You'll also want: Nethack spoilers

Happy birthday to me.