Desktop Wallpaper by Art Lebedev

Take a look at some of these interesting and original images, available in many resolutions and suitable for your desktop. Look closely, and in each you will find Art Lebedev's logo - their barcode. I'm rather partial to the Abbey Road image, myself...

Why is the Water so Damn Cold?

That is the question we have been hearing and asking ourselves over the last week or so. Well, here is a good esplanation, as Ricky Ricardo might say.

The short answer is: "It's the wind, stupid!". These winds should die down within a couple of weeks or so, and then that top layer of water can absorb some of the sun's rays, and it'll get better. I'd like to usher spring in with my spring suit - is that too much to ask?

Lunch Break Surf Report

What a Monday... I tore myself away from the desk at just after 1:00 and made my way down to D street. The waves were small, but fairly consistent. The weather was beautiful (as usual), with only a mild onshore breeze to give the water a bit of texture.

And in the marine biology department... I saw several of the jellyfish which I've heard about the last few days. At first, I thought that that they were small plastic baggies of some sort. These jellyfish normally live far off shore, but the continuous on shore breezes have blown them to our local beaches.

At least they don't smell bad, like the tons of squid washed up on the beaches over the winter!

Lunch Break Surf Report

Today, the sun was shinig and the waves were still of decent size, even though the swell is subsiding a bit. Thre was still a good on shore breeze blowing, but much better than Wednesday. The water temperature is still damn low, at 56 degrees F. The sun was shining and it was simply gorgeous out. I caught more waves today than I have in recent memory - what a way to close out the week!

Photo Albums Added

I've added a new section to the web site where I'll be putting up collections of digital photos that have been taken over the last few years. Most of them are family pictures taken during special occasions or vacations, although there are a few of the more common day variety mixed in as well.

Here are a few samples from our vacation to the UK:

The Two Towers DVD Release Dates Confirmed

According to ComingSoon.net, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers thetrical DVD release date is set for August 26, 2003. Furthermore, there will be an extended edition released on November 18, 2003, which is rumored to contain an additional 48 minutes of movie cut from the theatrical release plus the usual gobs of features. This is the same pattern used for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring as well, so it must have worked out well for them the first time!

Lunch Break Surf Report

D street beckoned for us this afternoon, and we heeded her call. The Good: there was still some swell in the water producing some good sized waves. The Bad: the water was colder than it was during the winter, and the winds made things fairly choppy and shifty. Managed to shoot down the face of the wave for my final ride, and the speed was pretty amazing. Hopefully the wind will die down in the next few days, and maybe the water will start to warm up again.

Bob was also caught surfing D street this morning. See the pictures below:

vs. Monsters

vs. Monsters is a 24 hour role playing game written by Philip J. Reed, which has been released as a free PDF download. What exactly is a 24 hour rpg? See Phil's description for his take on it.

Free Bitstream Vera Fonts Released

A nice set of free truetype fonts has been released. The Bitstream Vera Fonts include serif, sans serif, and monospace version of the Vera font, including bold and oblique faces for each. While these fonts were developed specifically for the Gnome desktop environment, these fonts work spledidly with and operating system/desktop environemnt which supports truetype fonts.

About This Site...

This software used to generate the site you see before you is called pyblosxom. Pyblosxom is an implementation of blosxom, written in python instead of perl. Each story you see is a simple text file created by the author (that would be me), which is then picked up by pyblosxom and presented to you when you visit the site.

The server itself is a dual Pentium II 400Mhz machine running Linux and the Apache Web Server. The server is very stable and has had some fairly remarkable uptimes (the amount of time between reboots). It serves as my company's web site, which we host ourselves.

The conent of the site is purely personal in nature, and will focus on my interestes: family, friends, games, computers, surfing, and the odd joke/rant. I don't have any master plan as to where this will head, so it should be an interesting ride. Should you have any suggestions (other than "Bugger off!"), please feel free to drop me a line.

Lunch Break Surf Report

I made it back into the water today after last week's storms made the waters unsafe (for those wary of high bacteria levels, at least). The wind was kicking up pretty badly, which made the water very choppy.

Bob and I stayed out until a clean-up set rolled through and cleaned my clock. Taking this as a sign that my lunch was over, I paddled in. Not a real productive session, however it was good to get back in the water after a week off.

Bloodbowl League Night #2

Friday night saw my wood elf team ("Mother Nature's Sons" - [team roster]) go up against Grant's orc team ("The Iron Horde"). My team was short two players due to injuries suffered from the first league match, so I started off in a fairly grim situation.

I ended up winning the game by a score of 2 - 1, but suffered a fairly critical set back. Grant decided to foul my Wardancer late in the game. He killed him. He's dead, Jim. etc. Le' ouch.

Let's just say for the record that it is probably a very good idea that we only play one league match a month... ;>

First Post!

This is simply the first topic to be posted in my blog. It's primary purpose is to see if the damn thing works or not, so please bear with me while I get things sorted out.