I’m back from Shreveport, LA where I fenced in the Rose Condon. I fenced well, but had some bad luck. I ended up placing 19 out of 45, a dismal result. But it was a good experience. I saw some results from my training. I was able to execute actions that I had been working on, and it was a chance to get back in the tournament mind-set. My last competition was in November; I finished second. It was, however, a much easier tournament.

Pics from Rose Condon. (currently none from foil)

Google sent me this nice email at work:

Greetings,

Google is currently blocked from crawling your site by the robots.txt file that your server uses to control access by search engines. As a result, users who are looking for your site are not able to find it using Google. As you know, a large fraction of internet users use Google as their starting point and over 50% of search engines referrals come from Google. Google’s mission is to deliver the best search experience on the Internet by making the world’s information universally accessible and useful. We would like to include your site at http://www.ussaonline.org in Google’s index to make it easier for your users or customers to find your site.

To allow Google to crawl your site, add the following lines to the robots.txt file:

User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /

Once you have allowed Google to access your site it can take between 4-6 weeks for your site to appear in our index. For additional information on getting your site included in our index, please see: http://www.google.com/webmasters/.

Regards,

Raina

**********************

Raina Rathi
Google, Inc.
Business Development
[removed contact info]

If you do not wish to be contacted regarding inclusion in the Google index again, please send us an email so that we can remove you from our mailing list.

It’s the first time I’ve gotten an email like this from a search engine. Don’t they think that the robot.txt is blocking search engines for a reason? In this case, the site is a learning/classroom portal. There’s nothing there unless you’re a student with an account. I thought this email was a little silly but nice of them none the less. It’s nice to know google wants you. Consequently, if they want to index something, they should try indexing the main school site, United States Sports Academy.

I stumbled on these interesting color photos of WWI.

InsaneRobot (one of my BUDS) just started his very own blog, VirtualHigh5.com. He describes it as “The inter-galactic pit-stop.” Give him a visit and leave some comments.

I recommend blogging to everyone. Give it a try. It’s a lot of fun. Just be sure to link back to www.nicholasroussos.com. It’s only fair, afterall.

ScubaDiving.com features different underwater photographers. Check out this pic by Christa Loustalot.

Christa says:

I could not physically get down under the ledge where this guy was hiding, so I just set my camera down in front of him and hoped for the best!

Wow, great shot.

Update: Christa just dropped me an email. She’s posting a ton of her pics to her website, Photograsea. This pic of a Sea Turtle makes me feel like I am one, very nice photography.

Here’s my top 10 favorite meals of all time.

1. Veal Parmesan (w/out spaghetti, the way my dad makes it)
2. Pastitsio (goes well with a side of spinikopita)
3. Pepperoni and Sausage Pizza (from Benzi’s Pizza)
4. Totino’s Pizza Rolls
5. Chinese Chicken Lo Mein (from Panda Haven)
6. Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich on thick white bread
7. Country Fried Steak with white gravy (nothing like the next item)
8. A real good, thick steak (medium rare to rare, I’d like to have one right now topped with sauteed crabmeat and chunks of lobster)
9. Chicken Tenders with Ranch Dressing (perfect for any occasion)
10. Hamburger ketchup only with cheese, side order of fries, maybe a milkshake too (a true American classic)

What are your favorite meals?

A co-worker and fellow web designer just finished a redesign of the American Sport Art Museum and Archives website. It looks really nice. Seeing it brought to mind the art of Hiro Yamagata, a great artist who created artwork for the ‘96 Atlanta Olympics.

One of my favorites pieces by Hiro Yamagata:

‘96 Atlanta Olympics - Fencing

I also really like the swimming piece he did.

Here’s another nice piece from the museum’s collection.

Purple Fencing by LeRoy Neiman

Consequently, Purple Fencing hangs in my office

Want to waste a lot of time? InsaneRobot (One of my BUDS) tipped me off on this insanely complicated flash-based web game called Hapland.

Give it a try, oh and I assure you that it can be beat without the death of a single stick man.

Here’s a screenshot.

Pastitsio has got to be in my top 10 favorite dishes of all time.

The mother of one of my BUDS asks me for a pastitsio recipe everytime I see her. Of course, I always forget to get one. Well, I found a pastitsio recipe online at epicurious, who claims to be the world’s greatest recipe collection.

I wonder if my grandmother would be willing to put her pastitsio recipe on my blog. I’ll have to ask.

Rumored Nintendo Revolution mockup

I have yet to see an anonomous rumor like this prove to be true, but supposedly this is a mock-up for the new Nintendo. Well, we’ll see, we’ll see. via Engadget

Actually, the line drawings look much more authentic.

I thought I would share some great fencing photos that I found a while back. The photographer made a device that snaps the pic when the scoring box goes off. Basically, when one fencer touches the other, the camera takes a picture.

Here are two of my favs:

• Attack. Touche. - Check out how his off-hand is flexed and the look in his face. That’s athletic focus.
• Attack, no. Counter attack. - A classic example of a passato sota (or a duck). This is a hard move to pull off, just look at all the pics of the failed ones in this galley.

Google has a new movie search engine that is awesome. Just type movie: in the search box to get a list of movies in your area.

Or you can movie: movie title to get reviews for that movie (or an actor or a genre). Here’s a list of the best rated horror movies. via InsideGoogle

Oh and the offical Google Blog has an announcement on this too.

One of my BUDS was asking about Google’s Cafeteria. To my astonishment (since this is kinda old news), there wasn’t a good source of info on it. Here’s what I could find:

• SF Gate Article on the subject via InsideGoogle
• A Sample Menu from an actual day
• A picture taken by a visitor
• An account from someone who has been there - warning no straws

Here’s what I know: Googleteria is a free cafeteria for all google employees, their families, and any of their guests. It has gourmet food.

I’m going to try to get a response from the official Google Blog. I’ll update this post if I find anything out.

I’m pretty sure gmail is open to the public now, but if anyone needs an invite I have 50 of them. Just email me.

As promised, I’m now blogging from my new domain, www.nicholasroussos.com. I customized the look and bolted down the hatches.

Hope you like it, if not send me some hate mail at me@nicholasroussos.com.