Monthly Hike: Sonoma Overlook Trail

For all its beauty and tourist appeal, Sonoma has an embarrasingly small number of public hiking trails (especially when compared to Marin County). Most of the land is privarely owned by vinyards, and the mountains that surround the valley are closed off to hikers. Sonoma Overlook Trail is one of the few trails that isn’t only open to the public, but is well maintained and advertised in various brochures. It’s a relatively short hike up Schocken Hill, close to the town square. The town graveyard is adjacent, and there’s an alternative way that leads through the old cemetery. The hiking is nice, and once you get to the top, you get a good 270 degree view of the town of Sonoma and the San Pablo Bay.

Victoria and I haven’t found much time to go hiking in recent weeks, and the month of February was completely rained out. So even though we’d hiked the Overlook Trail many times before, I decided to use the beautiful weather last Sunday for another visit, trusty iPhone in hand (which means crappy pictures). Here’s a few impressions from the trip.

Silent Reviews

• Rhythm Heaven – Yes
• Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist – No
• I Love You, Man – Yes
• GDC – Yes

Always Remember The Passion

As I was driving home the other day, The Almighty iPod Shuffle decided to take me on a serious nostalgia trip. After serenading me with a megamix of terrible songs from the early 90s (it turns out that I am not “too sexy for my car”), the “Travel Theme” from Ultima V: Lazarus came on. The Travel Theme, for those who don’t know, was specifically written for the Amiga port of Ultima V, and it was the only piece of music included with that version of the game. So the music looped when playing the game – over and over and over again.

Ultima V for the Commodore Amiga wasn’t a great conversion. It was over two years late (part VI had already been released for the PC, significantly advancing the state of the art); its primitive EGA tile graphics looked positively outdated at this point; and it lacked all musical variation found on the other computer systems, featuring that one single song instead. Oh, and it was copy protected! Ultima V on the Amiga came on two nastily protected 3 ½ inch disks, and it saved the only possible savegame on that very same, non-backupable disk! I’ve never been so afraid for my game progress in my life.

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Silent Reviews

• Sisterhood Of The Travelling Pants 2 -  Surprisingly Yes (as much as a guy can like it…)
• Futurama – Into The Green Yonder – Yes
• Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Blu-ray) - Yes

I’m going to stop posting about weekly TV unless it’s a big TV event (season opener/ending etc.), and only focus on media that’s readily available. We’ll see if there’s enough content to keep these reviews going (they’re already pretty content-free anyway, aren’t they?)

Bald Men In Videogames

GossipGamers has a comparison between male main characters from a multitude of modern videogames. And why the similarities are indeed striking, the article is missing the main reason why that’s the case: we simply cannot do good realtime hair in videogames yet. The limitation is slowly going away, and several games have made an effort to put some actual hair on their main guys. But it’s still a pain in the ass to do. That doesn’t excuse all other similarities or uninspired character design, of course. But it does lead to a certain character type.

Silent Reviews

• This Week In Nascar – Yes
• America’s Next Top Model – Yes
• Murphy’s Pub Trivia Night – We didn’t know much
• Fairfax Brewfest – Yes
• Elisabethtown (DVD) – Kind of…
• AIG – NO

Bristol Palin Breakup

Bristol Palin, daughter of Sarah Palin, and the father of her infant, Levi Johnston, have broken up according to People magazine. [...]
Bristol gave birth to Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston back on December 28th of last year. She is currently taking classes in hopes of finishing her high school education.

(Source)

I’m not here to gloat. I’m not here to judge or point fingers. Bristol Palin is a teenager, as is her ex(?) boyfriend. They have their whole life ahead of them. They’re at a stage in their life designed to figure out what and who they want to be. They are allowed to lead their lives the way they want. But boy, isn’t it obscene how badly the wholesome Republican world view is crashing down on them just a months after the GOP convention? And for that – that “wishful thinking” way of looking at the world, that “it’s gonna be perfect because we will it so” outlook on life, that hanging on to fairy tale values even when doing so might not be realistic or make sense – for that I award the first annual Jean-Luc Picard Facepalm Award.

Less than five months ago, the Palin family was presented as the perfect ideal of the perfect, ideal American family. Abstinence policies work! (Only it didn’t.) Palin’s daughter is going to marry her soon-to-ship-off-to-Iraq hero boyfriend! (Only they didn’t.) They’re going to raise the baby together! (Only they won’t.) “Vote for us! We’re calling it how it is, and our sense of reality is impeccable!”

And now what are we left with? Another teenage mother who is caring for her baby while trying to finish highschool. I’m sure she will do fine, the Palin family can offer a lot of support. Once again, it isn’t my intention to say “I told you so.” But I’m pissed. Not about the situation that Bristol Palin is now finding herself in. About a GOP who was either seriously believing their own hype, or trying to bullshit the country regardless. And too many people actually bought into it. Sad, sad, sad…

Silent Reviews

• This Week in Nascar – Yes
• Hell’s Kitchen – Yes
• Killzone 2 Demo, 1st try - No(will try again, though)
• America’s Next Top Model – Guilty pleasure Yes
• The Dark Knight (Blu-ray) – Yes! No! Some parts! I just don’t get it…
• NSCS Race in Atlanta – The end was kinda exciting…

BBelief 2008 – Looking for Testers

I’m looking for a few brave men and women (5 or so) who want to test a semi-finished version of my Beyond Belief 2008 Quake level. I’m expecting some brief feedback about difficulty, level flow etc. You need to have a beefy system since the level only has a “vis -fast” and is a total resource hog. You want to be a good player, as well, since I only have hard difficulty implemented right now.

If you’re interested please leave a comment with your email address (make sure to “encrypt” it so that spam bots don’t harvest it). I’d like to test the map in as many Quake ports and configurations as possible (classic plain vanilla Quake is out of the question), so please let me know what port you’ll use. I’ve mostly played and test in DarkPlaces, I’m interested to see how FitzQuake etc. perform.

NASCAR Haulers 2008

I’ve certainly bitched about Windows Vista in the past: basically, it’s Windows ME all over again. And I deserve every bit of grief that it gives me, because I’m too lazy dig out the old Windows XP CD and simply reinstall my laptop.
One of the nice Vista features is the gadget sidebar, though. Even if Vista keeps messing up the order of the installed apps quite often, there’s a little window that can play an image slideshow. Mine is set to shuffle through photographs of the past decade, which is a neat way of remembering occasions and rediscovering cool shots.
Which is how I found the following few shots, taken on my iPhone in Sonoma last summer. If you watched the timelapse video you can see me scatter about on the paddock

It’s a nice throwback to 2006, when I did my first ever NASCAR post about the trucks staying in Larkspur before the race. Some of these haulers are still current for 2009, some are reminders of days past – when Dario Franchitti was racing in NASCAR, Caterpillar was on the 22 car, and CGR, DEI and Petty Enterprises were seperate still entities.