Archive for the 'Entertainment' Category

June 8th, 2010

Mouse Packaging

Somewhere I have a pile of sticky notes waiting to be scanned. I’m not sure where, exactly. In the meantime, here’s the packaging from a mouse that I ordered from a company in China:

December 26th, 2007

Christmas Banqi Update

The Wikipedia article on Banqi is fraught with controversy (documenting many variants of the game and different translations of piece names), so I’ve written my own brief page about Banqi. My page includes instructions for the variant I play with my friends, as well as the current version of my custom board (which I intend […]

September 23rd, 2007

Lost Banqi Game

This is the way the board looked at the end of a recent Banqi game I played with a friend from work (Brian Jarvis). I was red. I lost. I don’t think I’ve ever played or seen a game that involved worse luck than this one. It was remarkable. I still enjoyed playing it.

July 25th, 2007

Jeff at Sizzler

Today I ate at Sizzler with my friend Thom. This particular Sizzler has hearts of palm (mmmm), which are the only reason I ever choose to eat there. Today a waiter named Jeff (or so he claimed, and his name tag looked pretty darn official) walked by and saw us playing Banqi. He was interested […]

July 24th, 2007

Another Banqi Board

There were some issues with the previous Banqi board I posted, so I revised it. This one isn’t quite as artsy, but I fixed some technical errors with the pieces, and used more of the available space for the play area. I intend to continue to improve this board, so I’ll probably post updated versions […]

June 11th, 2007

Ban Chi (AKA Banqi)

At my last job, I made some new friends who play a game (usually over lunch) they call Ban Chi (or Banqi). It’s played with a Chinese chess set (on half the board) starting with the pieces face down. A typical game takes around 15 minutes. They began playing Ban Chi after they got good […]

May 4th, 2007

Big Phone

I recently bought MacGyver on DVD. Part of the charm is the outdated high tech gadgets. We’ve only watched two episodes so far. From those, this is the most remarkable (to me) example of outdated high tech. I kinda suspect that one was funny even at the time.

April 24th, 2007

Rolling Rock

Rolling Rock beer has bizarre stuff printed on the back of the bottle, apparently worthy of its own wikipedia article: