batteh blog-o-rama

An amazing talk about motivation along with a stunning graphical display. Well worth the view!!

We were introduced to Settlers of Catan about 7 years ago by some colleagues at work and have been hooked on the game and German board games in general ever since. We have propagated the game to several other friends and family as well- now there is a copy pretty much everywhere we go. And we are always discovering that people we know are also into Catan.

I came across this interesting article in Wired magazine about the game designer, Klaus Tueber, and the design of Settlers.

Are you a Catan lover? How were you introduced to the game?

It’s that time of the year again. Don’t let the boss see you streaming the games as you “work”. The We Hate Tim league has been dominated by the Battehs so far:

John (2007)
Matty (2008)

So, here is your chance to be immortalized in We Hate Tim picking history. So let’s have another fun year in the 2009 version of the “We Hate Tim” league. Join the league, make your picks, and come back here to talk smack.

To enter, click the link below and read further for our league name and password (the usual, of course):

Our League

Or, if you have problems with the link above, enter through the main page:

Game Front: http://games.espn.go.com/tcmen/frontpage
Group: We Hate Tim
Password: timrocks

Ten entries are allowed so go ahead and use one to pick your underdog to go all the way. Also, be sure to come back here and join in the conversation through the NCAA tournament via the comments. Have fun!!

It’s that time of the year again. Time to constantly refresh your home page to see the latest scores, hide the streaming video when the boss comes by, and root like crazy for teams like University of Maryland- Baltimore County.

Last year we had a good time picking our teams and talking smack. I won’t remind you who was the picking champion but you can check out last year’s post to relive the fun. So let’s have another fun year in the 2008 version of the “We Hate Tim” league. To enter, click the link below and read further for our league name and password (the usual, of course):

Our League

Or, if you have problems with the link above, enter through the main page:

Game Front: http://games.espn.go.com/tcmen/frontpage
Group: We Hate Tim
Password: timrocks

Ten entries are allowed so go ahead and use one to pick your underdog to go all the way. Also, be sure to come back here and join in the conversation through the NCAA tournament via the comments. Have fun!!

When was the last time you wrote a song in honor of your team’s trade deadline pickup? Check out this tribute to Mark Teixeira from a couple of Auburn students (those Auburn kids have way too much time on their hands). Side note- I heard that Francouer comped some tickets for these kids to an upcoming game and that they might even perform before the game. Sweet!!

Fire up the random number generators- it’s March Madness time!! Last year we had lots of fun trying out various picking techniques (Matlab random number, zero points, etc.) but Danielle was the picking champion (check out last year’s post to relive the fun). I’m hoping Danielle will be back to defend her title in the 2007 version of the “We Hate Tim” league. To enter, click the link below:

http://games.espn.go.com/tcmen/group?groupID=9968&password=timrocks

Or, if you have problems with the link above, enter through the main page:

Game Front: http://games.espn.go.com/tcmen/frontpage
Group: We Hate Tim
Password: timrocks

Five entries are allowed so go ahead and use one to pick your underdog to go all the way (GT national champs!!). Also, be sure to come back here and join in the conversation through the NCAA tournament via the comments (and if you want a sweet new avatar to go with your comments as you mock the user who picked Winthrop to win it all, check out the post below).

The site upgrade has gone pretty smoothly. I think I’ve recovered all of the previous customizations. Plus, now that I’m running the latest version of WordPress, I’ve installed lots of new plugins and enabled some new features. Here is a rundown of some of the new features.

Avatars

If you’ve checked out a post with comments lately, you’ll see the addition of avatars (i.e. the small images identifying each poster). I know that you’d rather have your own personal avatar rather than the default one (even though the default one is super cool)!! There are two easy ways to get your custom avatar.

1. Register as a user on the site and email me a 40×40 pixel image that you would like to use as your avatar. Then just login and comment and you should see your personal avatar next to your name.
2. Rather than establishing your avatar on many different sites on the web, you can simply create a free account at gravatar.com and upload your avatar there. Your avatar will then appear automatically when posting a comment at a gravatar-enabled site (like this one), assuming you post with the same email address that you used to create your gravatar account. This method is especially nice since you can then use your avatar all over the web whereas option 1 only works for this site.

Tags and Tag Clouds

In addition to binning posts into categories, I now have the ability to tag posts. You’ll see a list of tags associated with each post at the bottom of the single page view. There is also a tag cloud in the sidebar showing the most popular tags. Click on any tag and see a list of all the posts with that tag.

Related Posts

At the bottom of each post in the single page view, there is now a list of “related” posts. Exactly how related these posts are will depend on the tagging and matching algorithm but the hope is that this feature will highlight some older posts with related content of interest.

Recent Comments

There is new sidebar content showing the most recent comments to the site.

Lightbox

Hate clicking on an image link in a post and then having to go back after viewing the image? Well, no more. I installed a lightbox plugin that loads the image in an overlay in front of the site that is easily closed to get back to the site. This plugin also allows you to group images and navigate through them using arrows on the side of the image (or the keyboard). You can check it out using the two image links below (curious about the strange camera below- come back soon to see the post or better yet subscribe to the RSS feed to get automatic updates).

Matchbox Pinhole Camera
Matchbox Pinhole Camera 2

Hope you like the new features. Let me know what you think.

It’s been way too long since this blog has been updated. Seriously, it was running on old versions of PHP and MySQL which were being deprecated by my hosting provider. Not to mention that it was stuck on WordPress 1.5. Anyhow, I spent the evening upgrading everything and now we are running the hot-off-the-press WordPress 2.1.1. I’d done some customization to the previous theme so some things won’t look quite right as I work through those modifications again. So far, so good…

Now that March Madness is over, it is time to turn to the next rite of spring- baseball. For many of us, the start of the baseball season is accompanied by another ritual- the start of the fantasy baseball season. With nothing more than bragging rights on the line, we obsessively research, draft, manage, trade, check box scores and the ESPN crawl, peruse injury reports, and watch “meaningless” games just to see how our teams are doing (heck, our “We Hate Tim” league is going on ten years with roughly the same group of guys). Baseball Tonight is must-see TV and we know players like Delmon Young and Steven Drew (they aren’t even in the majors yet) in the quest to find the next big star and that sleeper who’ll put your team over the top. Sounds crazy, right?
(more…)

The NCAA hoops tournament starts today and I hope you entered your picks in our ESPN “We Hate Tim” league. Inspired by Tim’s 1e6 picking monkeys, I decided to create a bracket using the random number generator in Matlab to pick each game (randint=1 means the higher seed advances, randint=0 means the lower seed). Kind of interesting (and ironic) that the random numbers picked Nevada to go all the way- must be some sort of Las Vegas conspiracy!! Your thoughts?

The link to the complete bracket is below (you can rotate the page in your PDF viewer using View-Rotate View):
Random Matlab Bracket

It is October and as usual, the Braves have won the division and are in the playoffs. Just as October baseball for the Braves is a fall rite of passage, so is the email exchange that occurs between Richie and me regarding the Braves’ playoff run. Now, we are no “experts” like those guys at ESPN, but we are real Braves fans- the ones that live and die with the team, that were Braves’ fans when they were bad (really bad- i.e. the “worst” in the “worst to first”), that remember Bruce Benedict, Glenn Hubbard, Chris Chambliss, Dale Murphy, Gene Garber, Steve Bedrosian, Al Hrabosky, Jeff Blauser, Gerald Perry, Rick Mahler, that remember the elation of Sid Bream’s slide to beat the Pirates (we GT boys were partying in the streets), and the heartache of the loss to the Twins (Lonnie Smith not running and Jack Morris outdueling John Smoltz) and the Yankees (I think Jim Leyritz cursed us- bad Mark Wohlers) and the Yankees again, and the Cardinals, and the Astros. This year, Richie and I will conduct our conversation via the blog- I’ve posted the previous emails and we’ll continue the conversation via the comments. Feel free to read through and join in the coversation!!

Richie started the conversation:

The Braves sure backed into the playoffs, thanks to the bullpen. They can only win in the playoffs if the bullpen steps it up.

My response:

I saw that the Braves lost their last few games. But, my impression was that they rested a bunch of the guys and played a ton of the rookies. Unfortunately, the Braves have Houston again in a short series. Their pitching scares me and they certainly have a good closer. The Braves bullpen will be key as runs will be at a premium.

Richie’s response:

Hopefully this season ending swoon doesn’t mean anything. Houston will be tough. I think the Braves are 3-1 or 4-1 against Houston in the postseason. But Clemens, Oswalt and Pettite will be tough. Hopefully Smoltz’s shoulder is fine, and the bats come alive.

My response:

I couldn’t agree with you more. I think game 1 will be big- if Smoltz pitches well and the Braves take the first one at home, they’ll have some confidence for the rest of the series. Maybe the bats will get hot all of a sudden and they’ll lay the wood to the Astros. Where is Mark Lemke when you need him?

Here is what Richie wrote today after the Braves loss last night.

Well, the Braves are up to their old tricks. Will Reitsma see the light of another playoff game? Hudson had too many walks. I hope Smoltz shuts them down, and they manage to get a few runs off Clemens. They can’t leave Atlanta down 0-2. It might not be as great of a pitchers match up as everyone thinks though, considering Smoltz and Clemens are both hurt a little. Who knows how Smoltz really is, plus he hasn’t pitched in so long. But he is money in the playoffs.

Cox was up to his old tricks yesterday. I don’t think he should have started Jordan over Langerhans. Cox is the reason the Braves have won 14 straight division titles, and I think he is the reason they’ve won only 1 WS title. He over manages in the postseason.

The Braves kill me in the postseason. I take every game way too seriously, but I can’t help it. I try to stay calm, but I get so worked up over every loss. And it always ends the same.

Read on for my response and more of the conversation (feel free to join in too)…

UPDATE: The Men’s Night Out/Madden Tournament has been rescheduled to next weekend, June 11th. It should be lots of fun- eating, drinking, PS2 action, competition, taunting, etc. Please RSVP again via the comments on this post (and by all means, start the trash talking immediately!!).

We went and saw “Revenge of the Sith” this weekend (sorry Matt and Anne- we couldn’t wait). I won’t get into any of the specifics in the post so as not to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it but feel free to post comments for discussion. I thought this movie was much better than the first two prequels- lots more action, less cutesy stuff, and more links to Episodes IV-VI. The dialogue was a bit stilted, but it is a Star Wars/Lucas movie after all. And, of course, Yoda rocks (the best character is he)!! Liz did notice one inconsistency…read comments for more (note comments may contain SPOILERS!!).

We sold the Grand Am yesterday. I put an ad in the paper yesteday and got a call about it in the morning. They came and looked, drove it around, and then bought it. Sweet!!

Our new Escape came in last week. So, we are now cruising in style. It is really nice to have a vehicle with a bit more room and a better view of the road. It is a sweet vehicle (eveyone should buy at least one)!! I’ll post some pictures soon.

We decided on speakers today. After listening to both the JMLabs and the Paradigms, we went for the Paradigms. At the last minute we decided that it was a better value to buy the Monitor 7s as fronts rather than the Mini Monitors with speaker stands. So our system consists of the Monitor 7s in the front, Atoms in the rear, the CC-370 for the center, and the PDR-10 subwoofer. Only the 7s were in so we installed them this evening. They sound awesome!! We can’t wait to get the others and have our first surround sound experience. Click the image below to see the speaker setup.

Time to start living in surround sound, baby!! We have been doing some research on stereo systems and have finally started making purchases to set up a surround sound system in our living room. We got a really good deal on a sweet Denon receiver (AVR-1804 Specs) and will probably be getting speakers in the next week or so. We are looking at speakers from the JM Labs Chorus Series and the Paradigm Monitor Series. Whohoo!!

Pepsi is again running a promotion to give away free songs on iTunes with codes from winning 20 oz bottles of Pepsi products. The stated odds are that 1-in-3 wins. However, there is a way to guarantee a winning cap by looking under the cap. This page shows you how to do it. Of course, if you are a winner and don’t plan on using the codes, I’ll gladly take them off your hands.

Check out DK’s new website Korporate Amerika with custom-designed skateboards and skate products. The designs are sweet, the price is right, and part of the proceeds go to support skating. It is time to reclaim skateboarding for the skaters. Skate tough, skate Korporate!!

A PDF file of the memory book that Dad and Karen compiled for Baba is now available from Lil’ Hanoon Productions. You can use this link to download the file. Right click the link and choose “save as” to save the file to your computer for future viewing and/or printing. To see a larger image of the cover, click here.