Monday, September 24, 2007

Nikon D300 On Order!!!

I have this camera on order from my local camera shop. It should be in stock by November! Look here at KenRockwell.com for a very good overview. Look here at NikonUSA.com for more info. Oh ya, and here is the lens I'll be using which is also reviewed here at Ken's site.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Briscola

Briscola The Classic Italian Card Game



Briscola is a very famous Italian card game. Briscola is a classic Italian card game. Briscola is very popular in Italy, Portugal, and Spain; but can be enjoyed by anyone with a deck of cards. Briscola is a multi-player game for two to six players.

The original game of Briscola is played using an Italian deck containing 40 cards of four different suits; cups, coins, batons, and swords. But Briscola can be played with a normal deck of card by removing three cards from each suit. The deck contains the ace through seven, plus the jack, queen, and king. The eight, nine, and ten of each suit have been removed. The ranking of cards for any given suit from highest to lowest is ace, three, king, queen, jack, seven, six, five, four, two. However, only certain cards have point values, the remaining cards have no value.

Card Points: Ace 11; Three 10; King 4; Queen 3; Jack 2, the remaining cards have no value.

Learn more about Briscloa here: http://www.pagat.com/aceten/briscola.html
You can find a downloadable game here:
And here:
You can play online here:

Monday, September 10, 2007

That's here. That's home. That's us.

Our mission is to awaken the broadest possible public to the wonders of nature as revealed by science.




From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on the mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel, on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity--in all this vastness--there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbour life. There is nowhere else--at least in the near future--to which are species could migrate. Visit...yes. Settle...not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling, and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Four Eyed Monsters .com


Watch Section 2<<~>>Watch Section 3
See the story of the film created in Episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8

NY Times Article

Mr. Crumley and Ms. Buice spoke about their 14-month ordeal making "Four Eyed Monsters," which dramatizes how they met online, and in which they co-star. The movie was well received at its Slamdance Film Festival premiere in January and screened at 16 other festivals. But like so many independent labors of love, it has yet to attract a theatrical distributor.

"If the result was going to be this," Mr. Crumley mused, "a film with no distributor, no way for anyone to ever get a chance to see it beyond those who saw it at a few festivals, would I have done it? That's a tough question to answer." Ms. Buice added: "The answer is, 'no,' it's not O.K. for our film to have been mildly successful on the festival circuit. But otherwise, it was just a jaunt into the abyss and now we have financial hell to pay."

The first-time filmmakers used their $10,000 in savings to begin production and borrowed $55,000 on seven credit cards to complete the film. Ms. Buice's parents have contributed $20,000 more for film festival travel and living expenses.