Checksum Arcanius

The first in an upcoming series of long-overdue changes for this site, I took the new Arcanius symbol and made it into a favorites icon. Now what I want to know is when is the favicon thing going to be standardized so I don’t have to name it “favicon.ico” and the link makes sense…?

The Favorites Icon does need work, I’ve decided, but its a lot better than the faceless white page you’d have otherwise. Once again, comments and suggestions are welcome.

Other upcoming changes:

• Massive CSS Rewrite-From-Scratch (or at least Rewrite-Everything-At-Least-Once)
• Develop a unique site theme, that doesn’t look so out-of-the-box WordPressy (although I do love WordPress)
• Better menu locations for me
• Sparingly used graphics to spice things up

Bonus! I became double-plus un-lazy and uploaded another picture, this one of my final hang-outing with the new New Yorker, Maneesh. Enjoy!
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Eariler (hey, yesterday!), I talked about a doodle that I made during a meeting at work which I thought would be a perfect symbol for Arcanius. To please my ever-faithful audience, I decided not to be lazy this time, and actually upload it.
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Tonight, after a work (which included a particularly useful meeting in which I came up with a new design for the symbol of Arcanius), I went to Robinswood, where frisbee didn’t happen (Jacob showed up kind of on time, Lauren was pretty later, and others didn’t show), so I went with Lauren and picked up dc (of Carrots), and went to Dan’s place for some Texas Holdem, a style of poker explained nicely in this Wikipedia article. Lauren was first out, followed a long time after by dc, and Dan then made short work with me (him having 3/4 of the chips helped, I think, but I also made more mistakes and got worse cards). Oh well, it was fun, and it was also all of our first times playing an even semi-organized poker game. After Lauren got out she kept dc and I entertained with gossip about our graduating class and a variety of jokes. It was good to see both dc and Lauren again, since it had been a while.

I watched just a little bit of the Olympics tonight after getting home from watching the most boring Mariner’s game EVER. 9-0 Devil Rays. DEVIL RAYS! Well, thats what we get for loosing Lou and Freddie and Johnson and Griffey and Arod and…

Well, the Olympics didn’t put me in a better mood either, because the main event I watched (after an awesome sweep of the Men’s 400m by the US) was the Men’s Olympic high-bar. And I have lost all faith in Olympic judging. If judges were in charge of the more quantifiable races, they would never be closer than two or three seconds (20-30% error on the 100m)… In this case, they gave the Russian who deserved at least a Silver and made a good case for the Gold a lower score than the two who went before him who he made look like little children with the power and complexity of his routine. The crowd was right when they booed the decision, and the score adjustment was simply to appease them; it didn’t change anything at all. The Italian’s routine was also incredible, maybe a hair better than the Russians, but not by much. And Hamm’s, or whatever-his-sqeaky-voiceness-name-is, who somehow won the Silver and had the gall to defend the decision as well (easy to do when the same system gave you the gold in the all-around earlier), routine was also lackluster compared to the man’s he followed. How he outscored even the Japanese baffles me, let alone the Russian.

My dad suggested instant replay, and that may really be the way to go. Have the judges watch all the routines in person, then, at their leisure, they watch them again in slow-mo from different angles and all that. Then rank the routines, and give point values to each one. The top ranked ones win, with the points to break ties. Of course, considering how obviously clueless the judges seem to be, and how often manipulated they are, maybe there’s an even better solution… like maybe the crowd – they seemed to know what was up. At least their reactions make more sense.

A while back, I created a map of the states and countries I had visited. Since I visited Georgia as a part of the Titan Robotics Trip to the FIRST Robotics Championships, I thought I should update that map. Here it is:

This time, I decided to include states that I’ve been on the ground in, even if I’ve only been in the airport terminal. Doing it this way adds Illinois, Missori, and Wisconsin to the mix, which makes me feel a little bit better about my travel accomplishments. There is still too much white in there, though.

Up until about 6 hours ago, I hadn’t seen any of the Olympics this year. I more than made up for that tonight, by watching almost 6 hours straight of NBC olympic coverage. Sure, I channel surfed during the breaks, but most of the time was spent watching the athletes. Of Course, some athletes I watched more closely than others, but it the things they all do are amazing.

Today’s highlights for me:

• Men’s Swimming Medley Relay: US Team continues its dominace with a world record time.
• Women’s Beach Volleyball: Hot US women (Walsh and May, see above) defeat China. Take that, commies!
• Men’s 100m dash: Three US athletes advance, each winning their heat in under 10 seconds.
• Men’s Soccer: Iraq wins 1-0 to advance to semifinals. Shi’ites, Sunis, and Kurds in Greece all cheer together.

Too bad I wasn’t sleeping. My sleep schedule has got to be one of the most erratic out there.