Ferrari owner driven by love of car – JSOnline

This has to be the second time in my life when I am willing to admit that a Ferrari looks great in any color that isn’t a shade of bright red. The first one I think was a black 250 GTO.

Space vehicle unveiled at EAA – JSOnline

Virgin Galactic owner Sir Richard Branson gets ready Tuesday to fly on Eve, the company’s second-generation launch plane, at AirVenture.

I am awed by the delivery plane, it is basically two small jetliners connected together, and flown from the right fuselage. Oh, and all of the control surfaces are hard-connected, it doesn’t use fly-by-wire, or even hydraulics!

xkcd – A Webcomic – Understocked

This is why the president needs to stay out of these kind of arguments.

Most Emailed Photos – Yahoo! News Photos

Uhm, ok, wow.

Wake up too early + song stuck in my head != fun

“Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking.”

– Clifton Fadiman

I am the Big Tuna.

This was pretty cool because it was unexpected, I was doing Firestone Challenge 3, shoot 61 or better at Firestone CC (I beat Tiger by two, so I think I shot a 59). And then *poof*, the achievement popped-up, I was so excited with how smooth the game went, that I didn’t realize that I had hit every FIR and GIR.

And without trying hard. I only used power boost for one lousy pitch shot.

Joe Walsh Executed To Keep ‘Eagles Greatest Hits’ Sales Ahead Of ‘Thriller’ | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

One ticket, aisle please.

One of the things that originally appealed to me about playing the Tiger Woods series of golf games is that a really shitty golf player like myself (never broke 100), can, with very little work, learn the game enough to hit monster 350+ yard drives and easily score par or better. Ask anyone that has actually played golf in real life about how it feels the first time you hit over 300 yards, the sensation is out of this world.

The problem is, it is not good enough. There you are, with your monster drives, still getting your ass kicked in match play by a girl that drives 275 yards but has impeccable approach and short game skills. You are so stoked on doing long drives that you can’t hit short irons worth crap.

Plus of course, you suck at putting.

I was having that problem last week: driving 50+ yards more than my competitor only got me to a much harder section of the course, a section bypassed by my competitor that was driving conservatively. From a normal drive, the second shot was ALWAYS on the green, or in a comfortable spot if a par 5. Me? I would over shoot the nice spot by 50 yards, which would put me either in a bad lie or even a hazard. My second shot would never fit nicely, so a lot of times the best I could hope for was par.

I shot a lot of pars.

I decided to check out the club tuning system and learned that in this game the sweet spot has an inverse relationship with the power of the club (how far it shoots) and its usability (how much you can fade and draw it). That is, if you are willing to sacrifice power, the sweet spot grows, which makes the club more forgiving. More less than perfect swings will translate in straight shots.

I took my driver and cranked it all the way down, to its minimum power. The sweet spot grew to about 80% of the size of the head. Translated: it became incredibly easier to shoot it dead straight. The tradeoff: at 100% the best I could hope was for 300 yards.

After some experimentation, I managed to crank up the power little by little, so right now I still get more than 300 yards from a normal swing, without using power boost at all.

Suddenly I started shooting 60s and a few mid 50-s.

The second thing I did was to list my clubs and their yardage, and to try to see if there was any overlap. I found two clubs with identical distances, which let me discard one iron and add one fairway wood. The result? More greens in regulation, and more Eagles.

I am still doing really stupid things, like every now and then I ignore my instinct to pick a 3-wood and land safe and instead try to do the hero thing with the driver. Almost every time I miss my target, which if I am lucky means only losing the birdie.

Something else that was hurting me, a lot of it due to the 2007 version, was not using draws and fades. Drawing and fading in 2007 was incredibly hard, it was only done during the swing. In 2010 you can dial-in draws and fade, which means that for once I can actually play doglegs the smart way instead of trying to brute force my way above them. I actually hated two courses in 2007 because they had really tall trees right on the inside corner of some doglegs, to discourage anyone trying to shoot above them.

Draws and fades also make it less overwhelming to handle play in very heavy winds. It is much simpler to have the ball turn into the wind to offset a crosswind, which makes drives more predictable.

South Park – Kyle’s mom is a bitch (NSFW) (via kanew1992)

I don’t understand why, but I started singing this song while playing Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10. Worse, I was actually doing great in the game, no idea what triggered this.