Space Filled!

And how!

Empty Space...

Perfect for new couches! Very excited -they come tomorrow.

And yes, that is indeed the sun setting inside our house. Saves us a
bunch on gas.

Bad First Dates Gone Good

Dr. Rachel is at it again...this time for Match.com

A Splash of Color

The ColorSplash app turns your photos black and white and then lets you color in whatever you want. This picture is from our wedding (thanks Kevin Keelan!) I made the obvious choice of what to color here, but I'll play around with some less obvious choices.

Running

I blogged last November about how using Runkeeper on my iPhone might make me exercise more. Now it's working. This week I ran three times, the last two over 3 miles! Here's my latest run.

I am now officially in 5K shape. Well I guess I need to run another .08 miles but I can probably manage that without walking or throwing up.

Me Wanty.

Just noticed the new Macbook lineup. With an education discount, you can get a Macbook Pro for only $1099! Other than a slight increase in processing power and the aluminum chassis, the low end Macbook Pro doesn't look too different from the Macbook Amateur. Are there other differences?

Best. Tennis. Video game. Ever.

When I first played Wii sports, my favorites of the 5 included sports were bowling and baseball. That's because they had the best controls, controls that made sense for the sport. Bowling mimicked your hand going back and forth and releasing the ball. Baseball was based on timing your swing to hit the ball in various directions, just like real baseball.

The other three sports were not quite as realistic and I've since been waiting for standalone games to do a better job. Tiger Woods 2010 using Wii Motion plus is apparently the closest any game has come to feeling like an actual game of golf (unfortunately I got Tiger Woods '09 last fall and haven't played it enough to warrant scrapping it for the new one just yet). Wii Sports boxing was a mess and I'm looking forward to the game that uses two Wii motion plusses to accurately measure punches.

Wii Sports tennis is perhaps the most disappointing because I was looking forward to it the most. It uses timing of strokes to dictate the direction you hit the ball, like baseball. But unlike baseball, in tennis you are constantly moving your body, repositioning yourself to change your angle on the ball, and the direction (not timing) of your swing dictates where the ball ends up. As a result, this doesn't feel like the real thing, and it's most evident when shots don't go where I mean them to go. One good example is the inability to, when at the net, consistently direct your shot. Because you can't move your player, and direction is based on timing, most of time my net volleys that should be winners either go out of bounds or bounce harmlessly back to my opponent.

Naturally, I was excited to try out one of the tennis games that uses Wii Motion plus for more accurate control. I opted for Grand Slam Tennis because I'm partial to EA Sports over Sega. I don't care about the cartoony look or the somewhat less complete career mode. All I care about is control. And because of how it controls, this is the greatest tennis video game I have ever played. All my strokes go where I mean them to go. Here are two examples: In one instance, I received the ball crosscourt on the left side of the court and lined up for a forehand (with my left hand). I decided I wanted to go for a winner down the left sideline, so instead of stroking across my body left to right, I turned a bit to the left and stroked forward on the left side of my body, similar to the actual tennis stroke. It worked perfectly! In another case, I was at the net and was able to perfectly execute a backhand volley into the corner for the win.

Son of a Who?

So I put this book "Heart-shaped Box" on my to-read list a while ago
because NYT recommended it as a good horror novel.

I finally got around to reading it a couple weeks ago and enjoyed it
immensely. Thrilling page-turner yada yada yada. While reading, I
thought, "this is really good! I should look up this Joe Hill and see
if he's written anything else!"

That's when I discovered Joseph Hillstrom King is the son of Stephen
King. Apparently he uses his middle name so his success is of his own
creation.

And it worked - I liked him before I knew he was the scion of greatness!

Painting!

Here are some before pictures of the wood part of our house. It really needed a new paint job.

Here's how it looks after:

Now you can't immediately tell that half of the house is wood and the other half aluminum siding!

Netflix Ratings

One thing about me is that I like pretty much every movie or tv show that I see. Knowing this, my friend Dan recently asked me why I bother to rate things on Netflix.

First some clarifications. While I do like pretty much everything I watch, I don't choose to watch everything. If there's something I don't think I'll like, I won't watch it, and won't rate it. For example, I despise "The Millionaire Matchmaker", everyone on it, and all it stands for, so I don't watch it. When I do find myself watching it, thanks to Rachel, I make snide comments about Patti the matchmaker the whole time. If I were ever forced to watch an entire season of it, I would probably rate it 1 or 2 stars.

That brings up the Netflix rating system. They only let you rate something 1 to 5 stars, which corresponds to Hated, Didn't Like, Liked, Really Liked, and Loved. Because there are three positive ratings, it's not quite a ceiling effect, so there's still room for comparisons. While I wish they let you rate half stars, (allowing for even more room), I still find there is a noticeable difference between my 3-, 4- and 5-star rated movies. Either way, it's not like the system is Like vs. Not Like and I'm rating everything Like.

Now on to why I bother with the ratings:

1. Every time I watch something new, I rate it, so rating reminds me of what I've seen.

2. Related to #1, rating things also lets other people know I've seen something, and how I felt about it.

3. On Netflix, how similar your tastes are to that of your friends is determined by ratings. The more you rate, the more accurate the similarity estimation. For example, based on our ratings, my brother and I are 95% similar, suggesting that taste in movies is partly genetic.

4. Netflix uses your ratings to suggest other things you might like. Like with #3, the more you rate, the more accurate these suggestions will be.

Women. Always Making Babies.

This is our aquarium. As of about a week ago, we had 5 male platies (those red fish), 6 neon tetras, a chinese sucker fish, and two male guppies. We only have male fish so they don't mate and make babies. The tetras are not live bearers so I guess that means it doesn't matter what sex they are.

Then, last friday, we discovered this:

That small orangeish blob to the right of the bottom black part of the heater is a baby fish, a fry. We did not put it in there. And there are at least 4 more. Upon closer examination, one of the guppies is obviously a female.

So basically, our two guppies were in the aquarium making babies, and I saw one of the babies, and the baby looked at me!

You Asked For Cute

I'll give you cute.

The Daily Kitchen Meeting

Laundry!

Milo helps prep lectures

Little does he know I'm not really using that book!

I win again!
Doug 4, Milo 673

Lazy Wednesday

The Love Doctor is in

Rachel got interviewed for a very timely article in the Syracuse newspaper!

Check out her sage advice.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I still love you Darwin

I read these two NYT articles on Darwin: one has a positive tone and the other's a little bit negative. If we're picking sides, I'm more with the former. The main feeling I get from the latter essay is sour grapes. It's like the author is frustrated that he wasn't around back then to think of such a "simple" idea himself.

Oh, the Squirrellity!

While trapping squirrels for behavioral research purposes in California, I was asked more than once by the locals, "Are you going to eat that?". Little did I know that these men in their pick-up trucks were merely Brits on vacation.

Save a Red! Eat a Grey!