When it does, you put the ball in the net fifteen times.
Sometimes you see Windows running (and failing) in places you might never have suspected.
Babies are like elephants, nice to look at but I don’t recommend ownership.
I saw this album cover meme a long time ago, I just didn’t put the result together in a single image and share it until now. I thought my result was interesting because it came out to a seemingly interesting and coherent result, and also because the picture that I got is of the Maracana stadium in Brazil. It’s a rather historic stadium that I’d definitely like to see a game in during the 2014 World Cup. Instructions are copy-pasted below:
1. The first article title on the Wikipedia Random Articles page
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random) is the name of
your band.
2. The last four words of the very last quotation on the Random
Quotations page (http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3)
is the title of your album.
3. The third picture in Flickr’s Interesting Photos From The Last
7 Days (http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/) will
be your album cover.
Note: We recommend you check whether the creator
of the image has allowed for your use via creative commons
provisions.
4. Use your graphics application of choice to throw them together,
and post the result.
Image is from flickr user rbpdesigner. The image wasn’t embeddable so I used a screenshot of it. This goes against the creative commons recommendation, but I decided I used a work around. That’s how the internet goes sometimes.
The World Cup draw this morning was great for two reasons. The United States were drawn into a group they can make it through. I fully believe the US is capable of advancing ahead of Algeria and Slovenia.
Secondly, we finally got to match teams to the group numbers we had for our tickets. I have tickets to six matches. I only have tickets to see one team twice, and that happened to be Brazil! Awesome! Here are the games I’ll be at next June:
- Nigeria vs. Korea Republic
- England vs. Algeria
- Ghana vs. Germany
- Netherlands vs. Denmark
- Brazil vs. Korea DPR
- Brazil vs. Cote D’Ivoire
It would have been really awesome if the England vs. Algeria game had been England vs. United States and the Brazil vs. Korea DPR game had been Brazil vs. Portugal, but I will in no way complain. We’re really fortunate to be going and we got some GREAT games.
Today Google has announced they’re running a domain name server free and open to the public. The Google blog post talks about how Google feels compelled to improve the speed and quality of domain name servers because it will help make the internet a speedier and happier place for everyone. That very well may be true, but I would assume there’s also another side to this not mentioned in the blog post. While Google may offer a great DNS for you to route your visits ESPN.com, Amazon, or Facebook through, they’ll probably also now have a guaranteed way to know every single site and page you visit. Google probably has lots of good ways to get most of this information from you already (through their existing services you probably use), but as a domain name server maps the name of every URL you type to the actual server hosting that site, this should guarantee they get all the information they want about your browsing habits. I can’t imagine that Google is not using this information to their advantage in some other way as well.
I’m sure there will be plenty of people that will immediately begin using the Google Public DNS immediately thinking it’s the greatest thing since slice bread, just like there is always a group of people that line up to buy the newest Apple gadget. This may be the best domain name server created, but you may want to stop and think about what other benefits Google may be reaping by providing this service.
Privacy is not dead on the internet, it is however very easy to unknowingly sacrifice.
Random thought, would it at some point be good for the Google homepage graphic to be Google with the two Os replaced by binoculars? Maybe that wouldn’t portray the right image 
.
I recently moved into a new apartment, so I’ve been doing a lot of unpacking lately. This unpacking also includes a number of boxes I’d had packed up and stored in Boston for a while, some of the boxes had even stayed packed for a while when I was still living in Boston. I think when you take your entire (material) life out of cardboard boxes you see a bit of who you are. I already know soccer is and always has been a big part of my life, this image might do a bit better job of highlighting that to others.
In this picture are a few different generations of Adidas Predators going back to the Predator Manias (I even have a few older pairs somewhere back home in North Dakota) as well as the the Nike R9 chrome Mercurial Vapors made for the original Ronaldo (those boots are painful to wear, but they sure are light). This is probably a bit over $1500 worth of gear, but it all got very good use…
VMWare Fusion Unity and Windows Live Writer for awesome client blogging on my Macbook
So I know this setup is a stretch for most people, but it’s something I’m pretty happy about. I’ve previously written about the fact that I think Windows Live Writer is awesome, and I still do. In fact my recent revival on the site is largely due to the fact that I recently installed a fresh build of Writer at work to post and revise, as well as test and help weed out any bugs/failures.
Previously I’d said that if I could run Writer on my Mac to do my blogging, I would. Well now I’ve made that statement a reality. I’m running Windows 7 Ultimate virtualized under VMWare Fusion 2. On my virtual machine I installed Windows Live Writer (Wave 3) and when I run the application in Unity mode it works almost exactly like a native Mac application.
It looks something like this:
[update] I happened to forget the disclosure I had intended to include. As I am currently employed by Microsoft, it’s likely that my opinion on anything involving software will be interpreted as biased. While I do work on the same team as the people that make Writer and I know plenty of them, this site has absolutely nothing to do with my job or employer. I’m under no obligation whatsoever to talk about software, I just happen to like Writer. It’s a simple application with a well defined purpose which I believe it accomplishes quite well.
Yesterday, Sounders FC announced their list of protected players from the upcoming MLS expansion draft, here’s a list I think is at least as equally interesting. Here are all the players on Seattle’s roster not listed as protected going into Wednesday’s draft.
| # | Name | Pos. | Age | ht | wt | status | pre. club |
| 28 | Terry Boss | GK | 28 | 6-3 | 205 | S | New York |
| 16 | D | 22 | 5-11 | 165 | D | Wake Forest | |
| 1 | Chris Eylander | GK | 25 | 6-1 | 185 | S | Seattle |
| 2 | Michael Fucito | M | 23 | 5-9 | 165 | D | Harvard |
| 26 | Taylor Graham | D | 29 | 6-4 | 190 | S | Seattle |
| 15 | Stephen King | M | 23 | 5-8 | 153 | S | Chicago |
| 9 | Sebastien Le Toux | F | 25 | 6-0 | 165 | I | Seattle |
| 24 | Roger Levesque | F | 28 | 6-2 | 174 | S | Seattle |
| 27 | Lamar Neagle | M | 22 | 5-11 | 165 | D | UNLV |
| 23 | Sanna Nyassi | M | 20 | 5-8 | 145 | D/I | Seattle |
| 7 | James Riley | D | 27 | 5-10 | 150 | S | San Jose |
| 20 | Zach Scott | D | 29 | 5-11 | 175 | S | Seattle |
| 12 | Nathan Sturgis | D | 22 | 5-10 | 150 | S | Salt Lake |
| 8 | Peter Vagenas | M | 31 | 5-8 | 157 | S | Los Angeles |
| 5 | D | 25 | 6-2 | 185 | S |
Kansas City |
Possibly the biggest name on this list is defender James Riley (who started 27 games this season at right back). Others listed that saw a the pitch a fair bit are Sebastien Le Toux (who had a 2 goal, 2 assist game towards the beginning of the US Open Cup but didn’t score much in the MLS campaign), Roger Levesque (who scored the winning goal in the US Open Cup final), Sanna Nyassi, and Peter Vagenas.
It would seem Riley is the most likely Sounders player to be at risk of being selected by Philadelphia, as he’s a defender with good experience. This of course will depend on Philadelphia’s defensive needs and the availability of good defensive talent from other teams.
As far as I understand the rules of the draft, Philadelphia can only take one player from Sounders FC and may not take any at all. I would prefer the latter.
I went to the MLS Cup final last night at Qwest Field. The game had it’s ups and downs, but any match that ends in penalties is interesting. I have a few thoughts I’d like to put down at some point in the near future, mainly “Why it sucks to be David Beckham” and “A “List of things every ignorant American should know about football (soccer)”. I won’t supply a report of what happened at the game, you can read the MLS Cup final game report for that, the reporters are professionals after all.
For now I leave you to ponder, what is going on with these awkward posed photos MLS has on their website. They look like strange, forced senior pictures for old dude professional athletes. Personally, one thing I think American sports do really well is post championship celebrations (think Michael Jordan holding the NBA Finals trophy, with a cigar in his mouth, soaked in champagne.) These post-MLS Championship photos are nothing like that, and don’t really cut it.
Also, to Real Salt Lake fans, good work traveling to the match to support your team, congrats on the win, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re tone deaf.
Suggestions for future writing/discussions are always appreciated 
This part of the celebration however, was done pretty well.
