Tail Recursive

Here are some pictures from my trip to the Museum of Flight. I’ll try to post some more pictures later, if I can.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been getting a lot of comment spam about online poker. I’ve been manually weeding it out, but I’ve decided to turn on some filtering tools on WordPress to see if I can have them automatically elliminated. Send me a note if you can’t post a comment.

I just wanted to put up a quick post to say that I’ve just gotten back from a quick vacation to Seattle. I went up to visit my friend André, who lives up there and works for Microsoft. There is a winery outside Seattle called Chateau St. Michelle that has an outdoor concert venue in the summer. This weekend, they had a twofer: Friday was a recording session for Prairie Home Companion, and Saturday was a really great concert by Pink Martini. The concerts were fun, but there is a heat wave on the west coast this week that made sitting on a grassy lawn for a couple of hours a bit exhausting.

In addition to the concerts, André and I went to the Museum of Glass and the Museum of Flight. The Museum of Glass was a trifle disappointing, because two of the exhibits had nothing (in my opinion) to do with glass; but I think we just hit the museum at the wrong time. Karen LaMonte’s “Absence Adorned” exhibit was marvelous, amazing stuff. Also, the “hot shop” (an auditorium where they demonstrate glass blowing) was fascinating (if you look at a picture of the building, the huge metal cone is the roof of the hot shop). The Museum of Flight was a lot of fun, but we did not have nearly enough time there. I did get to step into a Concorde and see just how tiny the darned things are.

I will post pictures in a couple of days.

After a bit of a hiatus with the glass fusing (I’ve been super busy lately and not much motivated to hang around the joint while I wait for glass to melt), I decided to make a new bowl. This one started as a simple octagon of Bullseye tekta, to which I added an octagon and a border of iridescent glass. I tack-fused the whole thing and then finished up the slump today.

Read the rest of this entry »

I rode into work Friday for the first time since my crash (I’ve been trying to keep the pressure off my wrist, since it’s still bothering me a little). I managed to make it to work and back without embarrassing myself too much. The big news, though, is that Old Blue now has 500 miles on it! I will have to have some sort of party for it.

By the way, here’s a quick story on why I like my bike shop. I had to have my front wheel replaced after the crash, and I didn’t notice until a week later that they had forgotten to transfer the little magnet thingie for the bike computer when they replaced the wheel. The following week (so, two weeks after the repair), I went into the bike shop. Before I could even open my mouth, the mechanic looked up at me, said “magnet!” and handed me a replacement. It’s nice to find a business these days where they know you.

My friend André (aka. Ozymandias) has set up a new blog for himself. He’s currently working for the Beast of Redmond in the XBox Live group (where, I hate to admit, they are actually doing good things). He’ll be writing insightful things about the video game industry, and I’ll be posting harassing comments about how no one has written a good video game since Frogger. Read his posts to get a sense of how an industry, which makes more dough than Hollywood, works. Read my comments to see what happens when you let idiots with internet connections post comments on your site.

I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest this weekend with some friends. For a sequel to a movie made about a ride in a theme park, it wasn’t bad. It was entertaining and worth the price of a matinee. Still, don’t expect Lawrence of Arabia or anything like that.

That said, I have to say that this somewhat hefty vlog is the best review of the Pirates movie I have seen. It’s dead on, and the guy’s a ninja. How can you miss?

I got back on the bike this weekend, and went riding along Cañada Road with Erik and Susan (see the path using Google Earth). It’s a short ride (<8 miles unless you start in Woodside), but it’s really pretty. They close down Cañada every Sunday for bike riders, so you don’t have to worry about cars—just the insane roadies who are way faster than you are.
Read the rest of this entry »