Month: September 2006

Playful Painter

ipod_painting.jpgToday I saw a website that was fun. It is Playful Painter which is a blog of sorts. The artist paints oil on masonite. Many of his pictures are computer related. The way I found out about it was watching commandN with Amber MacArthur. On her show, they featured a particular painting he did of the Firefox logo in the dock of a Mac.

There are several videos on his site. They are time lapsed videos of him doing the painting. Very interesting to watch. Not being a painter, I am always fascinated by oil paintings. They are built in layers. It starts all splotchy from the lowest layer and works upwards getting more detail as each color layer goes on. You get to see that in the videos.

Make sure you check out his All Paintings link.

Rounds 4 and 5

Round 4
My team took 1/2 point. Daniel the capitan tied his game. Daniel’s dad played for me this morning.

My son’s team took 2 1/2 points. Bringing their total score up to 12 1/2.

Round 5
My round
I fought very hard as black against an opponent that was closer to my abilities, though still superior. I got so excited when I came within 1 move of putting a mate on him. There was only 1 possible move he could make to stop me. Unfortunately, he saw it too.

I had to leave before Daniel’s game was over. Our other two players lost their games as well.

My son’s round
He ended in a draw. There was some confusion as to whether it was really a draw, but both agreed to it and signed their scorecards before the parent of the other boy stepped in. Because I was playing, I did not get a clear understanding of what happened. I will ask the teacher at class tomorrow. His team won 3 1/2 points this afternoon. Their final score was 16 out of 20 possible points.

Results
My team took 3rd in our division with 2 1/2 (or maybe 3 or 3 1/2 with Daniel’s game this afternoon) points out of a possible 20. Our average rating was 1085. Those who were not rated had a given rating of 1000, such as myself. We played against teams with ratings of 1270, 1380, 1596 and 1849 with a bye in the first round. The teams with 1270 and 1380 ratings were in our division. We had fun and are working towards stronger skills as we play more.

My son’s team surprisingly did not take 1st in their division. They took second. The team that took first ended up being an 11 and 12 year old team. My son’s team consisted of 7 and 8 year olds. There were 6 total teams in their group. Because of the strength of the 7 and 8 year old team and the few number of teams, the tournament directors decided to lump all the children together. I am sure some parents won’t be happy with that, but I believe all the kids get a certificate just for playing. Awards ceremony will be in a week.

It was a good tournament. Somewhat disorganized, but had a home town feel to it. There is a tournament this next weekend that we will play in. It is just Saturday afternoon.

The runner is back!

All through the week of being sick I did not feel at all like running. I could not even imagine what it was like to want to run. I thought maybe the desire to run was just something I made up and it was not a real desire.

Well, that was not the case. Friday night I started getting the drive back. Saturday I put in 5 miles and wanted to do more. Today I woke up with great anticipation to get in some free miles. Sunday is a rest day in my schedule, so any running on Sunday is free mileage. I got 7 and 1/2 of them in. I feel like a the cat who got away with eating the bird. Quite satisfied with myself.

Tomorrow I start the training week like normal. I will take my rest days of Tuesday and Friday. I am planning on running a 10Km. race next Sunday morning. So there will be another 6.2 free miles next week.

With the free miles that I have gotten and will get, and if I am able to stay on schedule, I should get just about 84 miles this month. That puts me right back where I should have been before having the schedule difficulty and getting sick. The extra mileage may come at the cost of 1 extra rest day. That will lose 3 miles if I have to take that. But I will still go over my 80 mile goal.

Round 3

General
Round 3 started on time. We arrived about 5 minutes late. My game was already underway. My capitan was there, but the other two were not. Each individual game gets to start when one player arrives.

My round
I fought a much better game as black this afternoon. I was able to build a very strong defense to protect my King and started working a good offense. It was obvious the line of offense my opponent was working, so I was able to protect against it while still chipping away at his defense.

But, it all came to a screeching halt when I could not get one piece moved. I had to sit back and be patient. Eventually he won in 27 moves using his original offense. I feel like it was a good game, he was just able to develope better than I could.

Our other team members arrived and lost their games pretty quickly. Daniel lasted longest but eventually lost his game as well. This was not a surprise as the team we were playing was a much stronger team. I am not sure how the scoring goes, but we are actually playing teams that are not in our grouping and their average skill level, which is a numerical rating, will be taken into consideration in the final tally for the diffenet groupings. We have now won 2 of our 12 possible points.

My son’s round
His team won 3 of their 4 matches this afternoon. He played as white. The loss was his unfortunately. He did not tell me really how it went, but the girl he was playing against looked like she had control of pretty much the whole game. I was able to see his match from my playing position.

His team also won 3 of their 4 games last night. The one they lost was the one in which we had to pull my son out of because of time. His team has won 10 out of a possible 12 points. Good job.

We each have a substitute playing in our stead tomorrow for round 4.

Excitement
No cell phones. No real excitement.

Round 5 has been moved up 1 hour to be played at 4. So out of the 5 rounds, 3 of them have had their starting times changed.