“What is bolic?” you may ask.

It’s a word. Here it is:

That’s the standard word. Now comes the quiz part, where I draw bolic differently.

What are the words that each of the following drawings represent?

A.

B.

C.

D.

Answers

A. Parabolic
B. Metabolic
C. Anabolic
D. Symbolic (I would also accept cymbalic)

Any other instances of bolic that I should have used in this quiz?

Rather, I’ve adapted the concept for learning how to play a new game. This was inspired by my attempt to play Seven Wonders recently. The guy who brought the game did a valiant effort of trying to explain how to play, but I didn’t really understand it until after we played.

I call my technique “The Five Hows”. Other people may want to learn a game differently, but I have found this is how my mind wants to work. When attempting to learn how to play a game that is new to you, ask “How?” five times:

1. How do you win the game?
2. How do you that?
3. How do you that?
4. How do you that?
5. How do you that?

Just adapt questions 2-5 to refer to the answer given in the previous question, and that’s all there is to it.

I’ll give an example, using the card game Hearts.

How do you win the game?
By scoring the fewest points

How do you score points?
By winning cards of the heart suit (or the queen of spades)

How do you win heart cards?
By playing the highest ranking card of the suit that was lead. You take all the cards that were played that hand and count any points.

How do you play a card?
By laying it face-up on the table, following suit if possible. If you are supposed to lead the hand, you decide the suit.

How do you end the game?
When someone reaches at least 100 points, the game is over. That person is the loser.

More complicated games might require more hows, but you get the idea.

But in case you don’t get the idea: the idea is to start with the big picture and work down. Don’t start with the details of how to play, start with the reason of why to play.

If all else fails, just play a practice round.

Tomorrow is Christmas Adam, followed by Christmas Eve on the 24th.

Thanks to some commenters on my guest post for SCL, I learned about Christmas Adam – the 23rd of December.

In order to help you celebrate each day, I put together this calendar. Think of it as a post-Christmas advent calendar thingy.

If you want a printable version, for whatever reason, I have PDFs of Dec. 2010 and Jan. 2011.

I know it doesn’t make perfect sense, as Abel wasn’t descended from Cain, nor was Seth descended from Abel. But I wanted to keep it in line with common practice as I learned it from others. You are free to make your own Christmas genealogy chart should you disagree with this one.

And here’s the list, in case you need that:

• Dec 22 – Christmas Chaos
• Dec 23 – Christmas Adam
• Dec 24 – Christmas Eve
• Dec 25 – Christmas Day
• Dec 26 – Christmas Cain
• Dec 27 – Christmas Abel
• Dec 28 – Christmas Seth
• Dec 29 – Christmas Enosh
• Dec 30 – Christmas Kenan
• Dec 31 – Christmas Mahalalel
• Jan 1 – Christmas Jared
• Jan 2 – Christmas Enoch
• Jan 3 – Christmas Methuselah
• Jan 4 – Christmas Lamech
• Jan 5 – Christmas Noah
• Jan 6 – Christmas Shem
• Jan 7 – Christmas Arphaxad
• Jan 8 – Christmas Cainan
• Jan 9 – Christmas Shelah
• Jan 10 – Christmas Eber
• Jan 11 – Christmas Peleg
• Jan 12 – Christmas Reu
• Jan 13 – Christmas Serug
• Jan 14 – Christmas Nahor
• Jan 15 – Christmas Terah
• Jan 16 – Christmas Abraham
• Jan 17 – Christmas Isaac
• Jan 18 – Christmas Jacob
• Jan 19 – Christmas Judah
• Jan 20 – Christmas Perez
• Jan 21 – Christmas Hezron
• Jan 22 – Christmas Ram
• Jan 23 – Christmas Amminadab
• Jan 24 – Christmas Nahshon
• Jan 25 – Christmas Salmon
• Jan 26 – Christmas Boaz
• Jan 27 – Christmas Obed
• Jan 28 – Christmas Jesse
• Jan 29 – Christmas David

There should be 28 more entries (according to Matthew), taking you to almost the end of February. But I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

This is the blog that never ends. It just goes on and on, my friends. Some people starting writing it not knowing what it was. And now they keep on writing it forever just because

This is the blog that never ends. It just goes on and on, my friends. Some people starting writing it not knowing what it was. And now they keep on writing it forever just because

You get the idea. I was thinking about seeing how many times I could paste that block of text into a post, but I’ll stop there. I was wondering how long a blogger should keep blogging. It’s not like writing a book, where there is a plot and a conclusion. I just ramble about whatever I want, week in and week out. So the song sums up how I feel sometimes.

Back to the song itself – that’s about all one can do with that song on a blog. Post it and that’s the end.

But Twitter…

This is the tweet that never ends, it just goes on and on my friends. Some people started tweeting it not knowing what it was and now they keep retweeting it forever just because

If you use The Twitter, which I do not, then you could start that and people could retweet it and it could go on forever. Or maybe someone has already done that.

Oh, but that’s 180 characters. Twitter allows only 140 characters, so it would be

This is the tweet that never ends, it just goes on and on my friends. Some people started tweeting it not knowing what it was and now they

Maybe someone who uses Twitter could condense it so that it is under 140 characters but still maintains the rhythm of the original text. You know, so you can sing it.

And in case you have no idea what this post is about, some Space Ghost might help.

Or maybe not.

This is the song that never ends, it just goes on and on my friends. Some people started singing it not knowing what it was and now they keep on singing it forever just because

By the way, Space Ghost Cartoon Planet was much better than Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

The boys got a Lego Star Wars set for their birthdays, and this is how the set looks and what it does (except for the green plate – we had that already).

This is the Clone Walker Battle Pack 8014. See the walker in action! Watch it move!

(It’s a big file, so you might have to click to view it. That way it doesn’t slow down the whole blog)

Now only 146 more to go.

Anyway, the one contest in which I participated (along with other family members) was the sand sculpture contest. My brother-in-law spent some time that week browsing the internet researching sand sculptures, and he found one that was amusing. It was someone’s head.

You put a bucket on its side (mouth), pile up sand around it, and put seaweed on top (hair). Then you just have to make eyes and a nose somehow. Even though it isn’t 100% sand, you do use items that are normally found on a beach.

So when the announcer guy said “Today’s contest is the sand sculpture contest.” we were prepared. Then he added that they had a theme for the contest – the sculptures should be patriotic in nature. Or was it American? Either way, there was a specific theme and all we had were plans for someone’s head.

We went ahead (get it?) and built it anyway:

But to make it patriotic, we added some words: “God Bless America”

There, now it’s not just any lady – it’s Kate Smith!

Maybe not the most flattering representation of her, but an honoring tribute nonetheless. And very patriotic.

Plus the judges liked it.

On a totally unrelated note: Next year, if the theme allows, I have plans for a great Jabba the Hutt sand sculpture.

To make up for that, I am displaying some of their logos here. Your job for today’s post is to find the best web bowser logo.

No, I did not misspell “browser”. If you don’t know who Bowser is, then you probably didn’t appreciate today’s post.

This movie was made back during Christmas break, lest you think I have time these days to make movies. The boys got a Lego Space Police set for Christmas, and this is how the set looks and what it does.

Now only 147 more to go.

If the movie player isn’t working, you can save the .mpg file to your computer and open it with your computer’s movie-player software

Background Information: I always liked it in school when the teacher would want to fill some time and gave us the word find-type puzzles. So, many years later, I made a computer program (VB, for Windows 3.1) that would make a puzzle based on words that the user provided. It randomly picked layouts and directions and tried to fit the words in the given size.

Now, about a decade after I made that program, I finally ported the word search code over to a web page. There are some things to be tweaked, such as setting up a decent print page or providing better error handling if the person types too many words for the size of the puzzle.

In case you can’t tell, Some Fun Site is a close relative (cousin, I think) of Some Blog Site.

The company takes the carbon, usually from your cremation ashes, compresses it under high heat and pressure just like the earth did for real diamonds, and in a few months you get a diamond.

The carbon is the key. It’s a basic ingredient for life, and it’s the sole ingredient for diamonds. How better to preserve your memory than by using your carbon?

As you can see, the trial-and-error experimentation that they used to develop this whole process had some undesirable side effects. But eventually they got it right. Even though it took a long time. And was in a galaxy far, far away.