Sailing with Rick and Ken

Three layers of clouds
Originally uploaded by buckyreed

I helped Rick and Ken move the boat further back in the slip this past Saturday while the weather was nice. It rained like hell all day Friday, but was beautiful for several hours on Saturday before getting ugly again. We used that window to go out into the ocean for a quick sail. The rainstorm was blowing in from the north, but clouds seemed confused about what kind they were and the wind didn't know if it wanted to blow or not. By the time we got back the temperature had dropped and the storm was clearly on its way.

Legoland

Picking on Einstein
Originally uploaded by buckyreed

Volvo Parking Only
Originally uploaded by buckyreed

I went to Legoland this past Saturday with Holly, Katie, and Ken. We had a blast riding the rides, eating lots of bad food, and basically acting like dorks. We asked Katie to drive her Volvo so we could take advantage of the front row parking reserved for anyone in a Volvo. If you ever built Lego models as a kid then this place is heaven. There are thousands of excruciatingly detailed replicas of Vegas, DC, New York, and even Albert Einstein's nose!

Giant Joystick

Giant Joystick
Originally uploaded by buckyreed

Life-sized Asteroids
Originally uploaded by buckyreed

An exhibit by Mary Flanagan called [giantJoystick] just opened in the art gallery in the Calit2 building at UCSD. She has it hooked up to a game console with a bunch of old 8-bit Atari games that project onto the wall of the gallery. The joystick is so big that it takes two people to play: One to move the stick and one to hit the fire button. I played on my lunch break last week for almost an hour and still couldn't get enough of it. Unfortunately the students have discovered it too, so now there is contention for the big stick.

Interesting Super Tuesday Statistic

I have been obsessed with the primaries this year and have been following the races closely. I spent last night glued to the tube and the internet as the results came in for the twenty odd Super Tuesday primary states. After enduring all of the hype and inane commentary from the talking heads I finally found a statistic that speaks volumes: In the 19 states that had both a Republican and Democratic primary there were 14,460,149 combined voters for Obama and Clinton versus 8,367,694 voters for McCain, Romney, and Huckabee. 73% more people came out to vote for the two Democratic candidates than for the three Republicans.

Does this mean that the Democrats are more determined to win the presidential election this year? Does this mean that the Republicans are uninspired and lost without the Karl Rove machine driving them? Regardless of who gets the nomination in either party I feel that this disparity in voter turnout gives hope that the Democrats might not screw it up this time.

TV B Gone

TV B Gone Kit
Originally uploaded by buckyreed

TV B Gone
Originally uploaded by buckyreed

I am really looking forward to the Super Bowl this year now that I have built up my TV B Gone kit. I ordered it from Make Magazine after eating one too many meals in restaurants with blaringly loud TVs. It is basically just a universal remote that turns off any television by cycling through all of the various manufacturer's OFF codes! I soldered it together this morning and am now trying to figure out how to fit it inside my old Nokia cellphone. The LEDs are infrared, so the only way I could check to see if they all worked was to look at it through the viewfinder of my camera. You can try that with your TV remotes; It is pretty cool! Now I'm off to the gym where I can test it on lots of TVs. I'm going to try to hit the sports bars tomorrow and see how well it works in the wild. Hopefully no one will notice why the TVs start turning off during exciting parts of the game.