Helio Gracie

This morning Helio Gracie died at age 95. He was the creator of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ).



It's pretty amazing to think that this guy was the founder of a martial art style. Most martial arts are so old that nobody could really identify who started it. He was a 10th degree red belt (which is higher than a black belt).

We had a moment of silence at class tonight in honor of the Grand Master and "bowed out" to a picture of him on the wall. Our instructor Brian told a story about Helio from when he was training with the Gracies. He recalled how all the other instructors, which they called Professors, had their own private offices with a private locker for them to change at, but Helio had his locker in the main locker room with all the students. When they break for lunch, everyone would hang up their gi and their belt on their locker door (to dry out I imagine). So you'd see all these white and blue belts hanging all down the line, but there in the midst of them all was the red belt of the Grand Master. Pretty cool.

Whistler

Had a great long weekend in Whistler. Five guys in a kick ass condo, lots of great sunny weather, expensive Scotch, cold beer, fancy meals, intense video gaming... oh, and skiing, too! Thanks Johnny O for organizing it.

the mountain (a mountain)


john w/ Greg in bg


me & greg


50 degrees on top

Totally Looks Like...

Even tho I don't know who all of these people are, this totally cracked me up.

Stop Motion

I've been doing some work for the Boys & Girls Club, so I was looking at one of their web sites and found this great little stop motion video. I really want to make something like this...

Rice Krispy Sushi Treats

Frequently for the holiday season, I like to make Rice Krispy treats and chocolate chip cookies. That's pretty much the extent of my baking skills. This year I received some divine intervention, as the heavens instructed me to make my Krispy treats in the form of sushi.



There were some nigiri pieces such as chocolate chip cookie, coconut w/ dark chocolate (Mounds bar), caramel chocolate chip, and milk chocolate almond. The rolls were 1) Pirouette peanutbutter topped with chocolate and almonds, 2) Kit-Kat caramel with more caramel on top, and my favorite 3) lemon bar with coconut and chocolate and cinnamon.

More-a Pandora!

If you're using Pandora, which you should be by now, then you will be surely be interested in this nice little application called OpenPandora.



It lets you do lots of cool little things with your Pandora station, the most useful of which (for me) is the ability to launch it from the Quick Launce tray and to minimize the player. Dang - look how small that is!




Works on Vista and XP, no Mac version (only for the Macbook Wheel).

I Made This

Ever wonder what you're friends and family do for work? I mean not just their title or whatever, but what they really do. Here's a recent project that I designed and built. I didn't build the whole thing - I can't do all of the functionality with this Silverlight technology, so I worked with a Developer at work who did the scary C# code.

Anyways, check it out. Take the test.

The New Macbook Wheel

Everything is just a few hundred clicks away...


Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Free Microsoft Software

A friend at MS sent this to me. Just a bunch of free little app's for Windows. Might be useful to some of my geekier readers.

A Sign of the Times

I was filling out an application online today and they listed "Transgender" as one of the Gender options. This may make you wonder "what the hell is he applying for!"... nothing strange, just some volunteer with kids. I'm not saying there's anything wrong w/ being transgender, I'm just saying I have never seen this option on a form before. Interesting... very interesting....

Mixed Martial Arts

I was watching some MMA bouts the other night and was thrilled to find out that one of my favorite competitors of all time was on the card - Yves Edwards. This guy has such a beautiful style, I just love watching him. He's always so calm and collected, strategic and methodical, creative on his feet and on the ground.

He used to be a really well-known lightweight in the UFC, but they didn't used to have a lightweight title belt, so he was never official crowned as the champ. Then when the UFC finally got their act together and started offering a lightweight belt, Yves lost like 3 in a row. I had been wondering lately what happened to him, then POW - there he was on my DVD!

Here is a little highlight reel I put together for you from the fight. Wait for the end!! Yves is the bald one btw.

Proud Pandora Subscriber

Some of you may recall the post I did in July about the Pandora music site. If you have not used Pandora yet, you should be ashamed of yourself. Stop being lame right now and type Pandora.com into your browser. Don't even read the rest of this sentence, just go there now. Why are you still reading this?

Anyways, recently they started incorporating audio ads inbetween songs and it really pissed me off, so I wrote them an email expressing my thoughts on the topic. The Pandora staff quickly responded and informed me that they do have a subscription option and it's only $3/mo.

Well, you now reading the ramblings of a proud new Pandora subscriber. This is a big deal for me because I have always been a devout advocate of free music. The subscription not only helps to keep Pandora online, but it also removes ALL of the ads from the page.

Before

After