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Y’aarrgh!

broderic on July 14, 2006

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. It was an uninspiring sequal. Very long and drawn out. It matches the Matrix middle movie in terms of boringness when it should’ve been like Spiderman 2.

It is the anti-“Superman Returns.” Nothing in the first 2 hours, then bang, an awesome sword fight for 20 minutes. Slow then fast, but it ultimately slows down again.

I don’t understand why people are pissed that this was a cliffhanger of a film. You should already know that once a sequel is being made that there will be a trilogy. This film felt like a bridge, and ended with a pitch for you to see the next film. They should’ve of freeze framed the last shot and flashed onscreen, “See you next July, suckas!”

Blah.

2 of 5 stars.

Le Tour 2006: GC standings blown up again

broderic on July 14, 2006

What a day of racing! An American sandwich of Landis and Leipheimer surrounding the eventual stage winner Menchov. He outsprints Leipheimer to get the stage win, but Landis gets the maillot jaune.

I mistakenly thought that yesterday the GC contenders let it slip away, but they waited until today to, once again, shake things up. It was 6 hours of hard racing, up 5 mountains, and finishing on an uphill climb. The main group destroyed by the hard charging of team T-Mobile, up the Col de Portillon, but they couldn’t maintain the pace which was picked up by Rabobank (I fly their team colors on my helmet!). Team Rabobank lead out the eventual winner of the day. And the race is once again on.

Unfortunately, it looks as if team Discovery Channel have come crashing back to earth. George Hincapie getting dropped early on the Portillon and finishing well back. Popovych finishes later as well. The team that was so good with Lance Armstrong as the leader has broken asundered and will now have to settle for stage wins. Armstrong was their motivator and without him they are struggling. They have regressed back to being spectators in this race. Perhaps, a stage win later, but they are not the monster team like years past.

It always amazes me that men on bikes can average 19mph up mountain passes. I can’t even maintain that for 10 miles on flat land with a tail wind. These dudes are amazing.

That’s it for the Pyranees. Some flatter stages ahead and next week, the Alps. It has been a surprising Tour.

Le Tour 2006: Up and up and up they’ll go

broderic on July 13, 2006

Stage 10 was the first mountain stage of this year’s Tour. And what a Tour it has become.

There are no clear favorites, yet, and today’s stage produced a long breakaway with the finishers climbing right up the podium and into contention for the maillot jaune.

I think the main contenders (Landis, Hincapie, Kloden) let today’s break gain too much time. They are minutes off the lead. It may be too much to regain that and today we may have seen the winner of the Tour.

Tomorrow more climbing!

But can he do the job

broderic on July 12, 2006

Everyone who watched the 2006 World Cup Final between Italy and France are still wondering why Zidane headbutted the Italian opponent. It’s still a mystery and unfortunately a sad coda to a brilliant career.

Here’s a video of an amazing Zidane goal. Fucking awesome.

Urban Commute

broderic on July 11, 2006

Yesterday, I was in Arlington, VA for a technical workshop. I left my home hours before I really should’ve in order to avoid DC traffic. I was down in VA before 7 am, so I went looking for breakfast. After eating, I walked around the hotel to kill more time. I watched as the commuters began to arrive. The hotel is next to a metro station so there were plenty of commuters walking to the metro to get to work. There were other commuters riding bikes as well. I found this a
fascinating sight.
My commute is nothing more than a 45 minute/30 mile drive alone in my car. You don’t see many people at 70 mph.
After the workshop ended, I stopped by a Starbuck’s and again watched the commuters, and shoppers too, walk from the metro station to wherever they were going. That’s what’s missing in my commute. I saw cute girls, fat girls, happy girls, foreign girls. You don’t see that at 70 mph.

Le Tour 2006: The first week

broderic on July 7, 2006

Tomorrow’s stage is the first individual time trial of the Tour. It is expected that the main contenders for the Maillot Jaune are to make their moves. They’ll try to gain as much time tomorrow and then hold off and onto that time during next week’s mountain stages in the Pyrannees and the Alps. Good luck to them.

Yet, it has been interesting so far. The most surprising is the fact that a world chanpion, Tom Boonen, is in yellow. This hasn’t been done since Greg Lemond did it a long time ago. Booned is a sprinter. He’s in yellow. He has not won a stage yet. Today should’ve been it, but he lost again to the mad Austrailian sprinter, Robbie McEwan. McEwan leads in the green jersey race on points. He’s already won a stage at this year’s tour in a big bunch sprint. He looks and moves phenomally fast. Sprinters are the scariest mothers in the peleton. No fear just go fast. Anyway, Boonen missed being a yellow jersey stage winner, and tomorrow he may just lose the yellow. He’ll just have to settle for working to get the green off of McEwan.

The rest of the tour is going as planned. The days are flat, there’s a breakaway, it’s chased down and then the sprint to the finish. Except for stage 3, Esch-sur-Alzette to Valkenburg. This “flat” stage had a cat 3 hill at the end of 200 km of riding. The Caulberg is only 800 meters, but has a 7% grade. Steep. And it probably hurt the sprinters, because a surprise winner of the stage was Matthias Kessler.

It’s been amazing so far. A tour without Lance. It’s been interesting and hopefully the next two weeks will be awesome.

iSight Martians

broderic on July 7, 2006

I’m just posting this link so that my astronomy obsessed older brother might be able to concoct one of these things. It would also be cool to pass along in an iChat video conference feed. Looks pretty cool and possibly easy to do.

iSight mashed into a telescope.