Don't click this link if you want to get anything done this morning: Bloxorz. Great game. « via kottke »

I don't play or even much care about either of the games reviewed, and yet I must recommend the reviews of Yahtzee Croshaw. That should give you some idea of how much fun they are. Here's his BioShock review and his Psychonauts review.

Here's a NY Times piece that grabbed me, as I imagine it will for anybody else out there playing a fringe sport (and one without scholarship opportunties, at that): Odd Jobs Help College Teams Stay Afloat.

Nice shadow puppet interpretation of Louis Armstrong's It's a Wonderful World.

Just a small thing... I recently discovered that the handles on the Yukon GHD are at just the right height to assist with pistols (one-legged squats where your off-leg stays extended in front of you). I've tried various other methods of support without much luck, and had pretty much given up on this exercise, but this feels like such a good fit I'm going to start pursuing them again. Anyway, yet another exercise to add to this very versatile piece of equipment!

Great use of chains and spring clips as fractional "plates" for microloading.

(via the recently-upgraded Crossfit boards - looks nice!)

It's happened to me more than once that I've read a training article, said to myself, "hey, that makes a lot of sense", only to check the author after the fact and find out it was Kelly Baggett. So too with this Vertical Jump FAQ. No shortcuts, no fancy platform shoes, no ridiculous amounts of high-volume work, sounds... about right.

(Not that I've ever done any vertical leap training, which I'm sure is obvious to anyone who's watched me try to get up in the air.)

Okay, I probably shouldn't file this under "Equipment", but boy, this hill behind my daughters' school sure is good for some quality workouts:

Mixing in forwards and backwards (each direction), pacing, reps, emphasizing power or endurance, there are lots of workouts you can build on one of these things. It's only about 35 yards long, but at that angle, that's enough. In the me vs. hill matchups, the hill is undefeated. Wrecks me every time.

UltiVillage has a clip of Andrew Lugsdin making an impressive second effort after tipping the disc. Two things struck me:

1. He never slows, recognizing instantly (and crucially) that he still has a play.
2. I used to match up with that guy at Ow My Knee and No Borders back in the early nineties (he was better than me by some margin then, even before our career arcs diverged). All these years later, and he's still a total stud. Inspiring.

Awhile back I tried kludging together a glute-ham developer. The experiment was a failure, but I didn't realize how much of a failure until buying a real GHD. Night and day, even buying the cheapest one I could find, this Yukon GHD. It's quite nice for the price. The only problem I had was with the footplates, which are too small and too far away to fully engage. Here is my fix:

The pieces are made of 3/4" plywood scraps, and the carriage bolts go on either side of the footplate (so you don't have to drill through it). There are washers in all the obvious places, but also between the front and back plywood pieces that butt up against the edges of the footplate, preventing side-to-side motion. These are perhaps unnecessary, as you can really clamp these on pretty tight.

This modification makes a HUGE difference in the feel of the machine. The increased surface area accommodates my size 12.5 feet nicely, and the added thickness is great too, locking my feet in much better. I can use the GHD much more effectively now than before. I can't imagining owning one of these machines and NOT making this fix.

I previous posted a bit on our local box variant, and I've further refined it to incorporate the 1-pass-to-clear rule the Boston guys like:

...there still isn't a better warmup for an ultimate game than playing a good game of 3-3 or 4-4 hot box. And just to clarify for everyone, a goal requires TWO feet in the box, not one. We now play that to clear the disc only requires one pass away from the goal, so you can have two people literally play catch in and out of the goal to score multiple points in a row. It makes the game VERY fast-paced and exciting, requiring a lot more effort on the turnover to get back and cover the box because of the quick strike offense.

The wrinkle, and I really like this, is that if the defense catches it they can forgo the clear and score immediately. It's a great opportunity, as you generally catch the opposition all on the wrong sides of their men.

We still play one foot in to score, though.

Lifehacker posted a Songbird screencast (media player based on the Firefox codebase), eliciting a bunch of "not ready for prime time" comments, but boy, it looks like it's going to be awfully tasty when it's through baking.