Fractal Art

I discovered a freeware program called Apophysis that can be downloaded at apophysis.org
To read more about fractals, see Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal
Here are some fractals I created tonight. You can click on the thumbnail for a larger image. Feel free to use these as wallpaper if you like.

Red-letter day

Red-letter day

What Beckham's arrival will mean for MLS, U.S. soccer

Posted: Thursday January 11, 2007 11:18AM; Updated: Thursday January 11, 2007 6:23PM

	The first of many? David Beckham may not be the only star coming to MLS. AP

Mark it down: Jan. 11, 2007 will forever be known as the day that Major League Soccer truly arrived on the world stage.

David Beckham, the world's most recognizable soccer star, is leaving Real Madrid to join MLS' Los Angeles Galaxy in August on a five-year contract. And he's doing it the age of 31, it should be noted, not at, say, 35, when the world would simply scoff at a washed-up European star coming Stateside for a vacation and an easy paycheck.

Beckham's signing isn't necessarily a surprise. I wrote back in October that a team in MLS -- most likely the Galaxy -- needed to make it happen sooner rather than later. Here's what Beckham's arrival means:

• MLS just got noticed in the domestic and international realm. Beckham's signing isn't exactly the same thing as the Cosmos's signing of Pelé in the 1970s, but it's awfully close to it. Pelé was the greatest player the game had ever seen, while Becks has never been considered the planet's best player. But Beckham is a much better player than some of his critics are willing to admit -- while he has lost a bit of pace, he was still effective at last year's World Cup and remains one of the world's best free kick-takers. And let's be honest: the marketing opportunities here are enormous. Expect to see Galaxy jerseys with Beckham's name in every corner of the world.

• From a domestic perspective, landing Beckham gives MLS a credibility that it has never had with the American sports fan, who demands to see the world's biggest stars in the sports it cares about. Beckham is a great match for L.A., where Galaxy games will become A-list events with the celebrity sightings you usually associate with Lakers games.

• Beckham may not be the only star coming to MLS. Now that Beckham has decided to make the move, his stamp of approval for the league will make it much easier for other international stars to come on board. MLS's newly installed designated-player rule -- the so-called Beckham rule -- allows each team to pay an unlimited salary to one player. DP slots are tradeable, and the New York Red Bulls now have two of them. In other words, look for Bruce Arena's Red Bulls (and perhaps a few others) to create some major buzz of their own with a big-name signing or two: Ronaldo, the all-time leading goal scorer in World Cup history and Beckham's current teammate at Real Madrid, has long been rumored as a target.

• Will Beckham's signing make the soccer that much better around the league? Not on its own. He's only one player, after all, and MLS needs to continue making strides when it comes to youth development. But from a soccer perspective Beckham will be a useful player in the midfield of the Galaxy, which frankly needs the help after missing the playoffs for the first time in league history last season. The image of Beckham sending crosses onto the head of Landon Donovan for goals is the sort of thing that will be replayed on televisions around the world.

• Are there any possible downsides to bringing Beckham on board? Sure. Overspending on international stars is what eventually doomed the old NASL, and there's no going back for MLS after this move. At the same time, though, there appear to be more rules in place -- not least the league's single-entity structure -- which should prevent wild bidding wars between teams. As for other risks, is it possible that Becks could be a bust on the field here? I guess, but it's not likely. The league has a long ways to go, but it's still good enough that he won't be able to coast here. Besides, I also think that Beckham's pride will keep him from loafing. If I know him well enough, I think he'll try to show people in Madrid and in England that he's still worth something on the field.

Whatever happens, today is a red-letter day for soccer in America, for MLS and specifically for the Los Angeles Galaxy.

Find this article at: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/grant_wahl/01/11/beckham/index.html?eref=si_topstories

Legal Guide for Bloggers

Want to start a blog? Better read this first:

The Legal Guide for Bloggers

I wonder how many blogging faux pas I've committed.

David Beckham expected to sign with U.S. Major League Soccer

This is a HUGE deal!
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2786923

It's official, he's going to play for the L.A. Laxatives, er, Galaxy

http://cbs.sportsline.com/soccer/story/9923369/rss

The Red Carpet is no longer safe

Punk´d Red Carpet Fun Watch Video Clip

A Riddle with 22 Legs

My kid brought home some math homework tonight. Here's the assignment:

A Riddle with 22 Legs
I counted 22 legs in my house.
All the legs were on cats, people, and spiders.

How many of each creature -- cats, people, and
spiders -- might be in the house?

See how many different ways you can
answer this riddle.

There are many possible answers.
How many can you find?

How do you know you have all
the possible answers?

So I start thinking to myself, okay a spider has 8 legs, a cat has 4 legs, and a person has 2 legs. I divide 22 by 8, by 4, and by 2 and find that I can't have more than 2 spiders, I can't have more than 5 cats, and I can't have more than 11 people.

So, I explain all this to my kid and explain to take the number of spiders and multiply that by 8, then the number of cats and multiply that by 4, and the number of people and multiply that by 2 to figure out the number of legs. I also explain that you'll never have more than 2 spiders, never more than 5 cats, and never more than 11 people, so find all the combinations within that range.

After about an hour of my kid finding the same combinations over and over. I think, maybe I can do this in an Excel spreadsheet but then I'm having the same problem as my kid, I can't keep track of all my answers. So I get thinking, this is why we invented computers, so we don't have to figure out mundane crap like this. So, here are the answers and the code:


Answers:












You cannot have more than 12 possible combinations (as long as you're using positive integers) because you can never have more than 11 people; (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11)
there are 12 numbers in that sequence.

There is no way in heck I would have done that problem without writing code.
Why aren't they teaching my kid Java yet?!?

public class riddle22 {
   public static void main(String [] args) {
       int x;
       int y;
       int z;
       int total;

       for(x = 0;x < 3;x++){            
        for(y = 0;y < 6;y++){                
         for(z = 0;z < 12;z++){                    
          total = (x * 8)+(y * 4)+(z * 2);                    
          if (total == 22)                        
          System.out.println
          (x+" + "+y+" + "+z+" = "+total);                
        }             
       }         
      }     
   } 
} 

No. 2 Florida 41, No. 1 Ohio State 14

Congrats to Urban Meyer
The big story in this game is Urban Meyer. Nobody had even heard of Urban Meyer until he took the Utah Utes to the Fiesta Bowl to bust the BCS. I am happy for Urban, I just wish he had stayed with the Utes a little longer. It's nice to see a good guy win. Good job Urban!

Norm Chow interviews with the Arizona Cardinals

This may be of interest to BYU fans:

Click here.

Which bandwagon should you join?

My favorite team, the San Francisco 49ers, is out of the playoffs this year. The NFL has a site set up to help people, like me, decide which team's bandwagon to join. Based on the five questions I answered, they picked the Philadelphia Eagles as my bandwagon team. That's good, because I like Jeff Garcia and I think they have some former BYU players on their team too. Go Eagles! Find out who your bandwagon team is by clicking here.

Celebrity Gossip

Britney doesn't eat broccoli

My sources tell me that the "Princess of Pop", Britney Spears, refuses to eat broccoli. Spears joins former President, George Herbert Walker Bush as famous people and celebrities that refuse to eat broccoli.

Why I took most my videos off YouTube

You may or may not have noticed that I took all of my Monty Python and Battlestar Galactica videos off of YouTube. I took a closer look at their copyright warning and realized that even the stuff where I took the photographs myself but used someone else's music was a violation of copyright law. I realize that the likelihood of anything happening, other than YouTube removing the content, is probably quite slim - considering that most of the stuff on YouTube is in violation of copyright law.

So, from now on, when I stream copyrighted stuff on my blog, it will be a link to something someone else posted on YouTube. I will continue to take videos of my kids and photographs of the mountains and post the videos and slideshows on YouTube. It just looks like from now on I'll have to use music which I write on my own if I want to choreograph it.

SRV - Voodoo Chile

This is one of my favorite church hymns, too bad they took it out when they updated the hymnals. Is Voodoo Chile like some really killer Texas Chile? Is there a recipe for Voodoo Chile up on the recipe blog?