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.