I think our baby is cute when sleeping…
I also think that she’s a future meditation guru..
And we have updated the wishlist on crabby.4101.org, but we haven’t updated the name due to: (1)time (2)technical detail (3)time I promise to upload more pictures soon
The baby has arrived! Squeeeeeeeee!
The vital stats:
birthday: 07-18-2006
birth time: 12:30 pm (on the dot)
weight: 8lb 5oz
length: 21 1/4 inch
sex: female
name: Aleah Hannah Elizabeth
We figure that she’s going to love us for that name. Aleah sounds great to us. We had a few other names in the running, but none really fit. Aleah did, so that’s what we went with. Hannah comes from Christina’s side of the family. Some form of the name has been with nearly every generation. Elizabeth is from grandma on mother’s side. We went with Elizabeth because we wanted something from my side of the family that was good and had great meaning to the family.
To close up, some pictures:
The first game I purchased for myself on the DS is Tetris. I have been enjoying the game and the new modes of play it offers. However, there is great fun in going back and playing Tetris in the original format: one screen, speed increases every ten lines, and it’s you vs the pieces till they win.
I will admit that the new tetris is not an exact copy of the original tetris released for the original game boy. A piece can be ‘flipped’ around when it hits the bottom much longer than the original. In fact, as long as you are flipping a piece, it doesn’t stick. You can flip a piece around until your thumb wears out. The same roughly applies for moving a piece left and right once it’s hit the stack. You don’t have much time before it sticks though and that time gets shorter the farther into the game you play. These changes might seem like a total re-work of the game dynamics… and you’d be right. They’ve also changed the game dynamic by giving you a ‘shadow’ of the current piece as it falls. As in you can see exactly where it will fall if you do a forced fast drop. (that’s one thing that hasn’t changed; if you know where the piece is going to go, do a force drop and you’re onto the next piece). There is one final change that makes all the difference: the speed of the game.
Level 0 is as slow as it ever was. Level 10 isn’t as fast as the original game boy’s Level 10… but it’s getting up there. But when you get to level 15+… the pieces don’t fall from the sky. They simply appear on the bottom of your screen. There is *no* time to move them as the fall. That’s why being able to continually flip and/or shift a piece on the bottom is crucial. Without that, you’d die in a heartbeat.
And the other thing: to ‘beat’ the classic tetris game, your goal is to get 200 lines. That’s certainly a change from the original tetris were beating the game was built around your score. I remember beating it with only 130-140 lines. Not so with the new version. It’s all the way to 200 or nothing.
Now, being the tetris fan that I am, I have played and played until I got those 200 lines. Christina thinks I’m insane. I tend to agree as I’m now playing on a newly opened option: unlimited line count. No stopping at 200 lines for me.
In fact, I think I proved my insanity today. I wouldn’t believe how many lines I got if I didn’t have a picture to prove it.
Although I have seen images of people with 999 lines. *that* scares me. And it’s my goal too.
Our fish were the first to be moved into the new appartment. Before we had a single box, the tank was setup, running, and the fish were exploring their new rock setup.
These are a few pictures of the new tank taken of the new tank.
First, a picture of our crab population. In this picture the fish have knocked their feeding clip off the side of the tank and the crabs have moved in to clean up. There was a good amount of food still left on that clip, which I later removed since we don’t want the crabs eating just leftover fish food.
Second, a picture taken with the camera’s flash. You are not supposed to take a flash picture of fish. It startles them and their eyes aren’t used to that kind of light. This was an accidental photo, but I’m not going to toss it out just because it shouldn’t have been taken.
The third shot is another full tank picture. You can see the color on the rocks better, although the picture is a bit grainy. Effect of a no flash picture.
Each picture is linked to larger ( > 2mb ) versions of the thumbnails; I’d say they are worth a look.
OK, Mom sent me to this site: http://laughstreet.com/index.html
to watch a particular video. I did. Laughed much. Then looked around and found some others that were worthy.  So you all have to go there and watch the following videos:
10 Things (***Â )
Llama Song (** Â )(and a very large ?????)
Numa Worldwide (***Â )(This one is for Mom)
Play (** Â )
Matrix Pong (*****)(seriously, you must watch this one)
Ping Pong Champions (**** )(as a counterpoint)
Drinking Song mess-up (** Â )
Torn (*****)(this is the one Mom sent me)
Kitty Cat Dance (** Â )(and again, ?????)
Quarters (** Â ) (I don’t know how to answer their question)
Robot Dance (**** )
If you happened to miss them in some alternate reality – Ballad of Bilbo Baggins, Crash Different, Karate vs Sumo, Real Life Simpsons, Chronicles of Narnia (which I don’t get but Kevin finds uproarious), Funny Cats
For the fun commercial, there’s Imagine Winning, Monthly Man, Excedrin RT, Car Dance, Suck it in
Well, I didn’t watch them all. And your taste in funny is different than my taste in funny. But really, watch the Matrix Pong.