I Found a Frog: Episode 1

Herps of Minnesota: Cope's/Eastern Gray Treefrog

There's no reliable way to tell the difference between the Cope's Gray and the Eastern Gray Treefrog without counting chromosomes, and both are ubiquitous in Minnesota.

This frog is probably the most urban herp in the state, as well, and can be found stuck to office building windows at night, looking in over your shoulder, wishing it could come in and use your computer to look for rims on craigslist.

The Gray Treefrog is an almost exclusive insectivore, and is able to cling to almost any surface, including glass, using its mucous-covered toe discs.

I found this little fella outside the back door to my office, where he had just finished polishing off a moth. Spending 12 hours in front of a computer screen, at night, completely alone in a dark office building can get to you after a bit, so it's nice that I can step outside almost any time, and find an amphibious friend to hang around with on my break.

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I'm a bit behind

This list of the most important works of sci-fi/fantasy has been making the rounds lately (I got it from PZ Myers), and it fits in neatly with the agony of the Science Fiction/Fantasy Literature class I've been in. I'm not saying I know more than the professor, necessarily, I'm just saying I can't make that judgement based on the rather unsophisticated analysis and discussion in the class.

Ones I've read are bold, added some comments, as well.

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien [Read (the first time) in 3rd grade]
The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
Dune, Frank Herbert [Read (the first time) in 4th grade, buuut.... I don't think I had any idea what was going on]
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
Neuromancer, William Gibson [Since I was already fairly well steeped in cyberpunk as an established genre (see Snow Crash), I wasn't that impressed]

Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe [A revelation for me in the way Tolkien never was, Wolfe is probably my foremost literary idol]
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
Cities in Flight, James Blish
The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey. [Ugh, ugh ugh ugh. A friend of mine once remarked, after watching the movie Underworld "how do you make a movie about a secret war between vampires and werewolves so boring?" I have the same feeling about what McCaffrey did with sentient, telepathic dragons and their elite riders]
Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card [Read it first in Jr. High, and, in boot camp in San Diego, I was allowed to have the book in my gear because it was on the Commandant of the Marine Corps' Reading list. Probably owe Card a great deal for the mental trauma I did not suffer because I had this excellent novel]
The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson [I can recognize the importance of this as one of the first wave of post-Tolkien published fantasy, and some of the anti-heroic elements, but, just like Brooks' Shannara work from the same 2nd wave, it does not hold up for the modern reader]
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
Gateway, Frederik Pohl
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling [I read the first 3 books to try to understand the fad. Mostly, it just made me sad that Roald Dahl is still dead]
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice [Not a fan]
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin [I read this in 7th or 8th grade. I have a vague memory of what happened... and I'm pretty sure I didn't understand it]
Little, Big, John Crowley
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
On the Beach, Nevil Shute
Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
Ringworld, Larry Niven
Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson [Sorry Gibson, this is Neuromancer for my generation]
Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks [See above comments on Thomas Covenant.
Additional note a friend and I found when discussing it: Brooks uses the phrase "Elven longbows hummed about every other page. It's like punctuation to him]
Timescape, Gregory Benford
To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

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A Shoggoth in the house of Fox Sr.

Check this craziness. My father, the venerable E.P. Fox, goes to pour some drinking water for his crazy one-eyed dog, and stops to brush some plant debris, a dead leaf or something, off the dish. Little did he know that as soon as he touched it, it would spring to life and show itself to be a pint-sized Lovecraftian horror!

Oh no, it's ok, I'm not offended, "what the f**k is that?!" is a pretty typical reaction, and I don't think that kind of language is at all inappropriate here. I am sorry I made you spill your drink, though. Here, let me get you a napkin. Oh dear, we seem to be out of napkins, could you make do with this DEMON-FURRED, SLUG-BODIED, BETENTACLED DOOM BEAST?!

Whew! Ok, let's catch our breath here. In actuality, the thing is damn cool, and while I am planning on writing a Lovecraft Mythos short-story inspired by it (DOOM!), the world's coolest biologist, the infamous Dr. PZ Myers, graciously identified the critter in this post.

So, it's a Hag Moth caterpillar, not a slug as I had originally guessed. I don't feel too bad, though, since some research indicates that the hag moth caterpillar has developed shortened legs that resemble suction cups, and my locomotion-by-"foot" observation wasn't in great error.

Myers riffed on my old man's place of residence in his post, suggesting that the abomination might be the spawn of local crazy person Michelle Bachmann, and Eric Zaetsch expanded on that theory here. All in all, quite a good run for these pictures, as I am fully in favor of both PZ being awesome and Bachmann being dumped. I feel like I've done my part to encourage both.

Actually, I'm kicking myself for not posting it here first. A link from PZ might have meant my first reader! Nevermind the fact that it would have been the only post...

Links Edited: Blogger doesn't do Trackbacks? Que the Fark? I may have to take this dog and monkey rodeo elsewhere...

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Cone dodging with Mr. Erk.

So, this is a bit of a backfill of what had been a commentary-free post of pictures from a Minnesota Autosports Club Autocross Novice school. This was the first performance driving event for both myself and the Erk.

More pics and some commentary below the fold.

I was really happy with how the Erk did. I wasn't 100% comfortable with the state she was in when I ran (and I don't think we'll get there anytime soon), but, blissfully released from having to keep the car available for daily driving, I decided to jump in and have a go.

Two of my biggest reactions:

• 9 psi and 175-odd bhp are definitely not on the low end for this sport. Power was not a limiting factor at all.
  
• The car handled suprisingly well. It was quite neutral, I think I scrubbed all four corners at once more often than I found myself pushing. That's almost shocking for a car that's historically been limited by nose-heavy attitude and is currently riding on embarrassingly monster-truckish springs (see pics for body roll-alicious examples). What was the x-factor here? Course type or surface? Driver? I'm not claiming I'm so good I made up for the car, on the contrary, was I driving too conservatively in one way or another? Only further data will tell, I think.
  

But, did I win?
Well... it's not that kind of event, see, it's a learning experience and, um, everyone who improves, "wins." And by that, I mean no, I did not win.
You can check out the days "unofficial" results here.

So, yeah, low 30s out of 55 puts me pretty firmly on the low end of average, but, hey, I have to qualify my performance a bit. There's more to it than just the raw numbers.

1. 
   The Erk was the oldest vehicle running by a full 9 years. If that's not a striking example of how well those crazy germans know their biz, I don't know what is (that was an unfortunate rhyme). Take a look at the list from 33 down, and check out the number of post-2000 vehicles in there. It was either car or driver skill that made up that for decade or more, and one of us is getting our props. Check out a few things trailing the Erk: 04 WRX? 03 Is300? Yup, there ya have it.
   
2. 
   Despite the obvious suggestion in the title of the event, not everyone there was a novice, by any means. Some folks had run most of the previous season, and just never taken the 2-day course.
   
3. 
   Well, I talked a little about who was behind me, let's take a look toward the front of the list. We had two miserable punks freshly returned from the Skip Barber school with a pair of well-equipped M3s. Yeah, there are some gaps I'm gonna have a hard time closing. When those little bastards could keep the damn things on the course, they were uncatchable. Other than that, you can find a Porsche, a Lancer and some of its classmates, Elise, and, as always, some frickin' Miatas.
   
   
   
   
4. I wasn't being all snarky about improvement being the true goal, and if you check my individual runs, it was constant improvement with only one half-second hiccup on the way from my first run to a last run that was almost nine seconds faster (on a course with a rough median of 32-second range). Everyone else was improving too, comments from instructors had this as one of the fastest novice schools they've ever run.
   

Well, after ten times around the course, with the day getting quite a bit warmer in the afternoon, the Erk started persistently overheating, and had to be put to bed early. Looks like the fan wasn't kicking over to its highest speed, and the coolant soaked too much heat during the long staging waits.

Definitely a good time, though, and even though the Erk is now down for refitting until probably next season, I'm glad I took it out to get a taste of the track. Gives me a little better idea of what my effort is going towards.

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Well, I was inspired by a post I read over on the Quarter to Three forums to try and streamline the time I spend playing video games. The basic premise being that there are only two levels of quality in games: games which immediately (or quickly, at any rate) engage, amuse, entertain you and hold your attention, and those that do not. Essentially, there are only good games, which are great, and bad games, which are not great. With the sheer amount of games being release for the PC and the three consoles, mediocrity, adequateness and "pretty good" games have got to go. I don't have that much time.

So, who makes the cut, and who doesn't? Well, let me elucidate the concept by outlining some classic examples of both categories.

(list below the fold!)

Good

• The Fallout games - engaging and clever from start to finish, never a dull moment.
  
• Morrowind - In addition to being a great game in its own right, mods and vast item collecting potential
  
• Neverwinter Nights - Not the game, but the enormous community mod scene. No game has ever given greater fun/$ value.
  
• Gran Turismo # - leveling up cars: mm mm good
  
• X-Com/UFO unknown - I hate the genre-smash. If you're going to do the genre-smash, here is your target; be this good, or don't bother.
  
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 - I'm not a "gameplay guy," but this was fun gameplay, character leveling, and collectalishness to the nth degree.
  
• Any Monkey Island title
  
• Full Throttle
  
• Half-Life
  
• Ultimas VI-VII
  

Not

• Baldur's Gate 2 - look, I know, great story, awesome dialog, memorable characters... bottom line: combat in the infinity engine is as pleasant as being sodomized with a flaming pineapple. If that's your thing, hey, don't let me keep you from the produce aisle.
  
• Final Fantasy X - spent several hours enduring way too many cutscenes about this jackass metrosexual soccer player and his band of merry men to get to the classic FF overmap. It doesn't have one.
  
• Ultimas VIII-Ascension - It wasn't broke. They fixed it. These games represent 85% of all accumulated dissapointment in my life. Thanks, guys.
  
• Any MMOG - If my enjoyment of a game is entirely dependent on the people I play with, then the game is essentially removed as a factor, isn't it?
  
• Tomb Raider - I. Hate. Jumping. Puzzles.
  
• Blood Omen - Gave birth to one of my favoritest game series plotlines ever, but, goddamn, even the cheat codes couldn't make this much DSBS (Dungeon-Slumming BullShit) bearable.
  
• Diablo - ClickClickClickitClick itagainOk, it's dead! ....Click the next one!

So, last week's contestants yielded an even 50-50 split, with Rome: Total War earning a lengthy stay on my hardrive, and Fable going to the big uninstaller in the sky.

Rome is great, Shogun was great (I missed Medieval, may go back around and hit it at some point), I just dig this series. The strategic and tactical portions are both very similar to Shogun, with enough differences to make things new, and, I think, give each game a spot in my heart. The simplified strategic game in Shogun actually appeals to me a bit more, in its board-gamishness; having micro-managerial control of movement within provinces doesn't do that much for me, gameplay-wise, but I suspect it will add more to its longterm depth. Being able to hide armies in forests for ambush and block strategic passes were great additions, and the larger numbers of possible allies/enemies is nice too. As for the battle portion, man, I don't know if I just sucked a Shogun, but while that game had me dreading combat and using auto-resolve, this game has me rushing into ill-conceived attacks just to get to the goods. I'm typically anti-RTS, but I found myself in the kitchen the other night excitedly regaling my wife with a description of how my light cavalry broke the Gallic left flank and was able to envelope the enemy general and his heavy infantry against my spearmen. I'm sure that wasn't the highlight of her night, but damn, dat's good gravy.

You know, it seems like, 2 years or so ago, I was really excited about Fable and Bard's Tale, and I think a lot of other people were, too. Then, well.... (sound of chirruping crickets)(no, crickets don't "chirp," they "chirrup." This is what you get from me, folks: pure Quality). Anyway, one day I noticed that Fable had apparently made its way to the PC, finally, so I, of course, decided to give it a shot. Wow, what a snoozefest. First of all, the setting... has no setting, at least initially. It's a medieval world with random monsters and a "guild of heroes" as a bad plot device. No history, no mysticism, no politics... blah. There's some passable collection components to the game, but not anything beyond the most basic, and the much-touted romance angle is a vapid mini-game with no appreciable impact on the character or the world. The missions are painfully vanilla -- collect some shit, escort some shit, kill some shit. Fable combines enough sparks of life, though, in its wide variety of passably executed half-ideas, to keep me in the game much longer than it did, because the real deal-breaker was the combat system. Boring, boring, boring. The camera sucks, control and targetting are vague, each weapon has one repeatable move and one special move only, and I could not for the life of me get any kind of sneak assassin attack to work. Tedious in the extreme.

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Moved this over from my barely-used, now-defunct livejournal. Post is backdated.
-Fox1

Well, forget using this as my domain front page, I'm using an email address at my domain on my resumes, and the last thing I need is a curious prospective employer checking my domain and ending up at a goddamn Livejournal.

Plus, having a domain forward here increases the chance of someone eventually reading this, and I don't really know how I feel about that. This was always more intended to be a semi-secret little place that I could type out random crap for the sake of doing same, in my never-ending quest to trick myself into writing. I dunno, maybe I should go whole hog and remove the small number of personal interests or whatever those are linked in my profile. Just on the off chance that someone decides to go through every Journal listed under Spaced or something like that. Alternatively, someone spending that kind of time on a task of such dubious worth has a good chance of being the kind of person I have no problem sharing my moderately private musings with.

(more below the fold)
The internet has very profoundly changed the way I look at writing in general, much to the detriment of my own endeavors in the field. I think, growing up, you obviously gauge your abilities in any particular area by what you have available for comparison; you probably do the same thing with your self-worth, too, no matter how much you recognize that as a Bad Idea, intellectually. Well, at Foxville High (note: not its real name), I was easily within the top tier of students, as far as literary and linguistic skill went. No matter the genre, I was better able to form my thoughts, turn a phrase or even crack a joke (a skill made noteworthy by my crushing inability to do so verbally) than almost anyone else I encountered. I'm not saying I was the best, my defensive inferiority-circling-back-to-arrogance tactic stopped short of that type of hubris, but while I would, from time to time, feel that someone else had surpassed my own efforts, I never felt overwhelmed by my peers' collective work such that they were in some nebulous realm above me that I couldn't force my way into.

I used to play the trumpet, too. May parents and I (note: 95% my parents) spent a pretty decent chunk of cash on my pursuit of that skill. No, not pursuit, that implies chase, and effort, and positive actions driving you forward, I was just good at it. Period. Very little effort was needed for me to improve at a pace that always brought me ahead of those around me, to the mythical pulpit of the snotty band kid: first chair (oooooooh). But, guess what, I'm no prodigy, and I wasn't gifted with any incredible innate skill that would drag me effortlessly of to Juliard or jazz clubs or... or one of those fucking ska bands or... something, and eventually, as the learning curve evened out and the field of musicians grew wider, I started to sink back into the pack. By the time I had those cursed metal implements of beautification welded onto my teeth, I had slipped firmly into mediocrity, and secretly welcomed the brass death knell of a senior year spent on the less mouth-destructive euphonium.

Anyway, the point of the horrible one-time-at-band-camp segue was supposed to be part of some larger statement about laziness or intimidation or something, but I started reading an article on Fark about Robert Downey Jr. complimenting some lady's rack on british TV, and that sort of stalled my interest in that narrative thread. Basically, as much as you can come up with an almost infinite number reasons why you shouldn't, if even the random forum members at somethingawful are funnier that you have any reasonable expectation to be, Tycho over at Penny Arcade has pretty much pegged the needle on the usage of unnecessarily large words, and the other (note: far more famous) Matt and his X-E has cornered the market on writing about.... random crap, you start to feel like there's not much left for you to contribute.

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