One Bad Brute
Count Blockula presents to you the greatest boss in Super Mario Bros. Jump attack!
Flip Turns
A flip turn is really easy to do. Here are a few simple steps for doing the turn:
STEP 1: Approach the wall of the pool swimming freestyle. Begin your turn just short of a body length away from the wall.
STEP 2: Tuck your chin to your chest and roll your body into a ball, so that you start to do a forward flip in the water. Blow air out of your nose to avoid inhaling water.
STEP 3: Open your body halfway through your flip and extend your legs to push off against the wall.
STEP 4: Push off the wall in the opposite direction from the one in which you were swimming. You should still be on your back at this point.
STEP 5: Streamline your entire body and roll back over onto your belly as you glide. Your shoulders should be up against your ears and your fingers should be pointed. Begin kicking immediately.
STEP 6: Begin stroking with your arms as soon as your body breaks the surface of the water.
There are a lot of ways you can practice a flip turn as well. Start by doing flips in the middle of the pool. Don’t worry about exiting the “ball” position.
Once you’ve got the hang of that, start to open up the ball. You should almost be sitting, legs bent to about 90 degrees. Keep practicing.
Ready for the wall? This time stand in front of the wall, then flip. Don’t push off the wall. Simply stop your flip once your feet touch the wall. Repeat until you feel well acquainted with where the wall is and where you should be once you begin your flip.
Now that you have gotten a feel for using the wall, stand a couple feet back, and then jump into your turn, pushing off on your back. Remember your technique!
After practicing that for a while, start to swim into the wall. Don’t breath for two strokes into and out of the wall. Also, make sure you are pushing off on your back. Don’t twist around on the wall. Believe me, it pays to develop good habits early on.
Well that’s about it. A flip turn is very simple, it really just takes a ton of practice.
Steps from here.
Dual Meet #3, Sat. 20, 2007
Well, the third and final dual meet of the short course (yards) season is over! For once there was someone there who was older than me. Yay! Anyway, we did okay, as always. There are too many little kids who can’t swim fast at dual meets. Pretty much the only races our team won were swum by group four and five swimmers. Including me that comes to about… five people?
My times:
100 Breaststroke ~1:16
200 Individual Medley ~2:36
The 1:16 was not a best time, but it was not a worst time either. I’ve hit a plateau. Again. Oh well, my 200 I.M. time was very good. The 2:36 was 8 seconds faster than my previous time. All together, it was a very good meet.
When the Kraken Awakes!
When the Kraken Awakes!
by: |QKO| FluidG
Paul Brassington has posted an awesome diorama of vikings, centaurs and dwarves.
“In an alternate netherworld dimension, the book of the dead ~ the necronomicon, has thrust Vikings, Centaurs, Dwarves and other creatures of horrid evil into battle! Vikings attack a Dwarven SteadFast and a Kraken is awakened!”
See the entire gallery, here.
Cool Creation #2
Wow, that’s one innovative way to use Legos. The Broodspawn, Uploaded on January 15, 2007
by Arpy 2.0
Theft
No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Someone stole my graphing calculator. Yes, somebody stole my $100+ graphing calculator. Crap.
For 9.99
After receiving my allowance for December and receiving the latest LEGO catalog, I decided to purchase the Clone Troopers Battle Pack ($9.99). Then, a couple days later when I was completely bored, I decided to read the # of pieces and # of minifigs for all the Star Wars Lego sets. Now these two amounts caught my eye:
Clone Troopers Battle Pack – $9.99; 4 minifigs
Battle Droids Battle Pack -$9.99; 7 minifigs
That really got me thinking. So, how much were people paying for each minifig? Well the trusty TI-84 Plus Silver Addition (if you don’t have one you seriously should get one) soon gave us an answer. Okay:
Clone Troopers: 9.99/4=2.4975, that’s about $2.50 a minifig
Battle Droids: 9.99/7=1.427142857, that’s about $1.43 a minifig
So what did I do? I bought some books.
Gold Meet
Wow, I haven’t posted in a while. Sorry. Anyways, I’ve been getting ready for the biggest swim meet of the season (at least for me) Golds!
Now to the main topic: Golds! It was, altogether, an excellent 4 day meet, with best times all around. Though the meet lasted 4 days, I only attended the Saturday, Sunday and Monday sessions and swam 7 events over those 3 days – the 100 Breast, 100 Free, 100 Back, 200 Breast, 50 Breast, 50 Free and 50 Back. Here are a list of my times ( nearest second; min:sec):
50 Breast- :34
100 Breast- 1:16
200 Breast- 2:43
50 Free- :27
100 Free- :59
50 Back- :32
100 Back- 1:11
Along with best times in every event except the 100 back, the 2:43 in the 200 Breast was also a team record. YAHOO!!!!!! I also had the opportunity to meet two of the boys who swam in my events, Jordan and Joey. Jordan was a lot of fun to talk to, and we spent a lot of time discussing our races and swim practices. Joey, on the other hand, is extremely hyper. He went around the pool for about twenty minutes and, whenever he came to somebody he knew, he would start hopping and sing:
“I got a bunny hop-hop-hop!”
While showing off the bunny someone had drawn on his arm. Talk about crazy! I’m looking forward to seeing both of them again, either at Silvers, this February, or Championships, late February/early March.
Now, before I forget, some amazing kid did a freakin’ 2:22 in his 200 fly. That. Is. Utterly. Amazing. Seriously. The kid was 11! It’s outrageous! He’s faster than a 16 year old Varsity swimmer (and she’s the fastest flier on the team!!!) . Holy Crap!!!
School Lunches
Sorry I haven’t posted in 8 days, I’ve had a ton of homework and extra swim practices while preparing for the Golds swim meet this week end. But I digress.
School Lunches. A sorry excuse for a full sized meal. What I have noticed, though I rarely by a lunch at school, is that the portions of food that you are given are what most of us students consider average, at best. A small tray of popcorn chicken and some mashed potatoes is not enough to fill a hungry students bottomless pit of a stomach.
I have also noticed that the phrase “more for less” definitely does not apply to school lunches. For example, a school lunch, such as the one given in the previous paragraph, costs $2. One of those big Wendy’s hamburgers costs $.99. You could get a bigger lunch that actually filled you up for less money at a fast food restaurant. Also, the price for a meal (school) has also gone up about $.25 since last year. A school lunch is a measly excuse for a way to earn the school a *large* profit without spending a massive amount of money.
Happy New Years!
Happy New Years!!!
To celebrate the New Year a Jack Sparrow unit was released for Civ 3 on the Civ Fanatics forums, get it here.
Jack Sparrow: Parleley, parlelellyleloooo, par le nee, partner, par… snip, parsley…
Ragetti: Parley?
Jack Sparrow: That’s the one. Parley. Parley.
Pintel: Parley? Damn to the depths whatever man what thought of “Parley”.
Jack Sparrow: That would be the French.
[Before Jack steals the Interceptor]
Norrington: That is, without doubt, the worst pirate I’ve ever seen.
Mullroy: What’s your purpose in Port Royal, Mr. Smith?
Murtogg: Yeah, and no lies.
Jack Sparrow: Well, then, I confess, it is my intention to commandeer one of these ships, pick up a crew in Tortuga, raid, pillage, plunder and otherwise pilfer my weasely black guts out.
Murtogg: I said no lies.
Mullroy: I think he’s telling the truth.
Murtogg: If he were telling the truth, he wouldn’t have told us.
Jack Sparrow: Unless, of course, he knew you wouldn’t believe the truth even if he told it to you.
