The Ultimate Ultimate Site

When it comes to depth of content and information available, it's next to impossible for a site to be any better than the MAUL site.

If you are at all interested in ultimate frisbee though - or actually even if you just want to see something cool: definitely check out the Ultimate Handbook. It has a lot of good information on ultimate, but by far the coolest thing is the way they use Flash to demonstrate proper flow for various offensive and defensive strategies.




Find one of the 'fields' on the site and click on it (or this one):

Click "Load Stack Flow". Then use the VCR-style navigation buttons to see the action! Awesome.

Office Space

The next installment in the condo tour: The Office.

It's so nice to actually have the room for a dedicated office. In our last appartment we sort of started with an office, but it morphed into a storage area when we realized that it just wasn't practical living without ANY storage (no basement storage, nothing!). After a while of having my bike sitting next to the desk I think we just sort of realized that we were kidding ourselves.

Not the case here though! An office in all it's glory. The desk pictured is the one that the movers told Monica was "too heavy to carry up the stairs" - only to be carried up as soon as I got home by my neighbor and I. Now, while it's true that both of us are consistenly rated top 10 in the World's Strongest Man competition... it really wasn't that bad!

A little painting

Now that I'm armed again (Monica bought a camera for my birthday) I'm thinking of giving you guys a little visual tour of the condo. Here's my first installment:

After another painful Packers loss this afternoon, Monica and I painted our downstairs bathroom. Not that you can complain about a room in your house being too large but this bathroom is kinda out of control, so we went with a darker color (brown) to try to tame it a bit. We've also added a little cabinet, some bamboo blinds, and a couple of small pictures (not in the picture below). I think we're both quite happy with how it's turned out so far.



So, while covering an amazing amount of ground with the paint roller this afternoon I was thinking: I wonder who invented this marvelous invention that is saving the world millions (? at least very high thousands) a year. And why do we not have a national holiday for him or his face on a stamp or something!?! Well, it turns out we don't have a national holiday for him because he was a Canuck! Mr. Norman Breakey not only invented the paint roller but also a better way of tapping beer kegs! Of course, he didn't get anything out of the invention since it was immediately stolen from him.

If anyone's ever deserved to be on currency...

Blogrolls on Bloglines

To start: think about some of the sites that you might visit on a regular basis. There's Leslie's blog, Sheila's Flickr pictures, BBC for news, Dilbert's comic of the day... the list is already getting too long. What if I don't want to look at Sheila's Flickr site unless there's actually something new out there? or if I just want to take a quick look at cnn headlines before deciding if I need to read the article? Well, many of these sites put out "feeds" that can be monitored for new posts - these are fairly well known as "rss feeds" although there are some other names and processes out there doing the same thing.

Bloglines is a site that you can register for (for free) and customize to listen to the feeds you care about. Now, by going to that one URL I can quickly determine where the new content is and check it out without bothering to visit a bunch of places that don't have anything new at the moment - this is VERY convenient for even 5 or 6 blogs and feeds, but now that you have this ability: you can add many more blogs than you ever could have practically monitored before: all because you aren't wasting your time looking for new content that isn't there!

As for blogrolls. A blogroll is basically the list of blogs (and whatever else) you are monitoring. For example, instead of updating my "family and friends" list on the right: I am just importing the "family and friends" portion of my blogroll. So, whenever I add something there in Bloglines (Maighie and the Hungry Roo) are the latest, they were automatically displayed in my list here... that was nice for the Family and Friends, but if you check out the "Nerd" links on my technical blog: there is it VERY helpful!

Ok, quick and easy setup:

1. Go to bloglines.com and sign up.


2. To make your life MUCH easier, once you're signed up: immediately go to the bottom left corner of the page and click "Easy Subscribe Bookmarklet". After choosing the browser that you are using, you'll have something added just below the forward and back buttons that says "Sub with Bloglines".


3. Navigate to jimhalberg.com


4. Click "Sub with Bloglines"


5. Now it'll let you add your monitored feeds in different folders (convenient) or all in one big pile if you like too!

Another option (if you're at your PC all day) is to get a little alert thing (Bloglines Notifier) to let you know whenever something new is out there - I will warn you though, it can be pretty distracting if you're monitoring a lot of things: I had to uninstall mine to stop myself from constantly seeing what new was out there!

Happy hunting and let me know if you have trouble!

A quick update.

First off, the presentation last weekend went well. There were definitely improvements that could have been made but I think all things considered Rob and I were pretty happy with it. It will be nice to have it out of my hair for a while here though. Getting ready for those presentations really wasn't taking too much time... but it will be nice to be able to spend it elsewhere for a bit.

Second (how did I save this for second!?!) it's my birthday! For anyone in the Madison area, Dan McNeil (a friend of mine and co-birthday boy) and I will be headed down to the Nitty Gritty (downtown location) for a few drinks this evening. I know Dan is planning on making it down there pretty early (530) but I think I'll be arriving shortly after 7. I'm hoping that doesn't throw too much of a wrench in the works but hey: it's my birthday I can be late if I want to!

Monnie gave me my gift this morning and we've replaced our digital camera! So, you'll probably get some more pictures out there on the Flickr site soon.


Some changes to the blog:

• New links: Definitely check out Maighie's blog and Flickr site. and the Roos have a blog now too to discuss their culinary delights!


• Some of the links on the right here are now being imported from my blogroll (on Bloglines). It's handy to have it automatically updated here, but even more handy on the jameshalberg.com blog where there are many more to be maintained. If you guys want to know what blogrolls are all about definitely post a comment to let me know. They're really handy and I'd love to share...

Huge storm over the corn fields of ... Louisiana?

I recently received some VERY impressive pictures, purportedly from Katrina rolling in. I was thinking to myself: "That's terrible that this farmer lost his entire corn crop... wait a minute, corn?"





They certainly are impressive and well worth checking out. After doing a little searching though, it looks like they are actually from Iowa! Anyway, the photographer (Mike Hollingshead) has some incredible photos on his site (and one terrible animated image of the words "Extreme Instability" but I'll give him a pass).

One of the photos looks a bit like one Sheila took in Brookfield a bit back!

Sheila's:

Hollingshead's:

Potato Salad, Potato Salad, my kingdom for some Potato Salad.

Yesterday, after a combination of checking out the Roos new culinary site (setup recently by Carissa) and finishing off the leftover potato salad: I decided to acquire more. and where better than to make my purchases than on the internet?!?

Initially I was quite excited to find some on Shopzilla. When I saw that my 'hit' was actually a book about potato salad I was kinda disappointed - that is, until I thought about how great a book about potato salad going on various adventures and solving crimes would be. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a cookbook - booorring.

So, I turned to the conglomerate that I should have tried in the first place: Amazon. Good old trusty Amazon came through for me, offering me several vendors from whom to procure my potato salad.

Right off the bat, I found the good stuff: Imported potato salad! I like the imported Guinness and the imported Hyundai is still in the driveway, so maybe it's worth giving it a try. Well, this turned out to be a CD from everyone's favorite band: Potato Salad.

Just as hope was fading, I saw a most appealing picture: King's. Things were going well with the King's and I until I read the description: "If it were any better, you'd want to eat it by itself!". Well... I kinda do want to eat it by itself, so I guess that one's out.

Well, maybe the internet isn't the best spot to get my potato salad. I guess I'll have to just check out the grocery store.

Sports Illustrated "Fan Value" baseball statdium ratings

Wow! Sports Illustrated has recently published their "Fan Value Index" for each MLB team and guess who come in at #1? You guessed it... or actually, you probably didn't: The Milwaukee Brewers!

I don't think I can provide a solid "value" list, but here's my ordering. So, it's pretty arbitrary but here you go...

I've been to home games for every team in MLB but three (San Diego, Washington, and Cincinatti) have new facilities since I saw them. I'll leave those three out.

1. Boston Red Sox
2. New York Yankees
3. San Francisco Giants
4. Milwaukee Brewers
5. Chicago Cubs
6. Los Angeles Angels
7. St.Louis Cardinals
8. Atlanta Braves
9. Toronto Blue Jays
10. Los Angeles Dodgers
11. Seattle Mariners
12. Arizona Diamondbacks
13. Texas Rangers
14. Florida Marlines
15. Pittsburgh Pirates
16. Baltimore Orioles
17. Detroit Tigers
18. Colorado Rockies
19. Oakland Athletics
20. Philadelphia Phillies
21. Chicago White Sox
22. Houston Astros
23. New York Mets
24. Minnesota Twins
25. Kansas City Royals
26. Cleveland Indians
27. Tampa Bay Devil Rays