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My morning article was late today because I’m still recovering.

The seahawks lost, again, and it was bad.  They could have won, but
they didn’t.  Senaca Wallace started strong, even had a decent day, but the defense allowed two quick touch downs in the 2nd and 3rd quarters and from there it was downhill.

Olindo Mare kicked 4 fieldgoals.  He missed two others.  If a single one of those drives had ended with a touch down the seahawks would have won.  Instead, they botched drive after drive and got stuck losing.

By and large the defense flopped.  They gave up a 1st and 40?  How!  To be fair, half their team is injured, but that was Seattle’s excuse last year.  How long is going to take before Seattle has a team that can actually stay on the field?

Grr.  Revised prediction: 6 wins, however many losses afterwards, 3rd in the division, 5th or 6th round draft pick.

I did a little hiking and birding at Hawk Mountain, PA.  I didn’t take too many pictures, but we did see a Bald Eagle.  Note to all the world’s less than in shape hikers, the river of rocks travel is a a hike over a river of rocks.  It’s 100% rock scrambling with a thousand foot elevation change thrown in.  Fun times, but not exactly the easiest trail.  When they warn you about rock scrambling…they mean it.

Oh to be a Seahawks fan.  It’s only been a week, so I’m deadset against revising my season expectations for last week, but well…we’re doomed.

Hasselback out.  He wasn’t getting much done before he left, but something tells me Seneca Wallace isn’t going to get us to the Super Bowl.  He’s a good backup actually, but a franchise quarterback?  Yeah, we’ll see.

Our defense was supposed to be good this year too.  Lofa Tatupu, Arron Curry, Kearny, Mebane, Hill.  How did Frank Gore run through the defense…twice?  If the defense had stopped Frank Gore we’d have won the game, maybe, but of course, that’s assuming the Seahawks somehow managed to score.  After Seneca Wallace tossed an interception in the third-quarter I put us down as doomed for the year.  Maybe a high draft pick will set us straight for next year…

Side note: I’m in three fantasy football leagues this year.  My first league is already a disaster.  I’ve lost the last two weeks with the fewest points.  In my other two leagues I’m the #1 person with the most points.  That shows you how important the initial draft is.  I’m especially pleased with my 2nd league.  I’m playing with people I haven’t played against before and I’m riding a nice streak of 2 games with over 30 points that my opponent.  Thanks Frank Gore…

Cheers Seahawks fans!  We’re going to have to put with another 15 weeks of this…

First weekend of NFL games!  I’m not the biggest football person, but I’ve been a Seahawk fan since time immemorial.  Each year I think they might finally win something.  That time they got to the Super Bowl, I thought my time had finally come…

Of course, they lost and badly.  The last few years have hardly been better.  Last year was an injury-filled debacle, the only upshot being a top draft pick.  They got Curry, a good outside linebacker and then got Max Ungar in the 2^nd round, making for a phenomenal offseason.  Once again, I’m thinking this might be the year.

Yesterday started off shaky.  Two interceptions, no points.  If Josh Brown hadn’t fubbed the field goal, they would have been down by three.  It sure seemed this was going to be a ‘rebuilding year’.

Rest of the game though, very awesome.  3 passing TDs, a nice long run by Julius Jones, some productive defense.  I always thought that the Seahawks needed a good Tight End to take the pressure off of their wide receivers.  They also needed some good wide receivers to take pressure off their running game.  With Houshmandzadeh as their big WR threat and John Carlson finally a good catching TE, they’ve got a team that can win something.  At least that’s my prediction.

The NFC West is such a weak division (49ers, Rams, Cardinals) that they are usually guaranteed a playoff spot, but the Cardinals are supposedly a good team these days.  On Sunday Arizona struggled against the 49ers, so I’m thinking the Seahawks are the team to beat in the division once again.  I’ve been wrong before, but I’m cautiously optimistic about this year.  Put me down as a believer, at least as far as taking the Division.  My current prediction, out in the 2^nd round of the playoffs against an NFC East team, but a decent showing.  That’s not quite calling us a Super Bowl lock, but c’mon, this is the Seahawks, they’ve been a bad team always.  I’ll take what I can get.

For months, Batman: Arkham Asylum loomed on my gaming radar always falling short of my interest.  As much as I love Batman, superhero video games are by and large awful, especially those that come during the movie season.  I fully expected Arkham Asylum to be some lame merchandising attempt not worth the time or effort.

In retrospect I should have been paying more attention. Instead of trying to create a Christopher Bale clone they made their own batman, with their own joker, their own harley, their own Arkham Asylum, and their own game.   I should have known Rocksteady got Paul Dini on board to write the story, (He’s the brain behind many of the best Batman: The Animated Series episodes.) or when Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy (voices of The Joker and Batman respectively from the animated series) signed on as well.  I should have known when they showed off their own version of Arkham or their own design of the bat mobile, or when they demoed a game that wowed everyone.

Instead of I was off doing my own things, assuming it was another piece of crap super hero game.  Only a few days ago when the reviews started to come in did I take notice.  ’Best Superhero game ever’, ‘A Batman game done right’, ‘A game of the year’.  My curiosity was peaked.  After watching Mark Hamill’s inimical Joker laugh in the trailer I had to pick the game up.

No complaints.  Not one.  They did a damn good job and managed to make something that deserves its part of the Batman Universe.  It has a story and it’s a good one.  The voice acting is predictably top-notch.  The visuals are stunning and creative.  They took bits and pieces of the comics, the tv shows, the movies and combined them into something that works very well.  Most of all they respected the universe while expanding it in their own way.  They didn’t try to retcon character histories or remake Arkham Asylum into something new.  They didn’t dabble with the Batman origin story in some unnecessary way or try to pull the Joker away from what he is.  They worked with the established story and setting and let it fill out the world they created on their own.  Everything from Iceberg Lounge posters on the wall to the chattering joker teeth toys, they spent an incredible amount of time making things ‘right.”

And best of all, they made a fun game too.  They made use batman’s detective work with the puzzles and pacing.  They made the enemies intelligent enough to require strategy.  They worked with batman’s tools to make them useful, but not overpowering (or underwhelming).   Exploring Arkham is a joy, the plot queues keep the player on track, and the combat/puzzles keep the player engaged. They really did everything right.

No one should be on the fence with this one.  It’s out for the Xbox360, Playstation 3, and the computer so there’s not much of an excuse for missing it unless you’ve got a Wii and nothing else.  (There’s always Wii bowling, right?)

I was so positive that Arkham Asylum would be trash.  I’m happy to say that’s it is not in the slightest.

I’m in two fantasy football leagues this year.  The second of the two has an autodraft, so I’ll just have to make due with the players I get.  Team #1 just had our yearly draft.  I’m feeling pretty good about how it came together.
QB: Aaron Rodgers
WR: Larry Fitzgerald
WR: Santana Moss
WR: Lance Moore
RB: Steve Slaton
RB: Marion Barber
TE: Greg Olsen

K: Ryan Longwell
DEF: Dallas

Bench QB: Matt Cassel
Bench WR: Donnie Avery
Bench WR: Michael Crabtree
Bench RB: LenDale White
Bench RB: Jamal Lewis
Bench RB: T.J. Duckett

Aaron Rodgers of Green Bay should be a pretty solid quarterback.  With all the Favre controversy swirling around it’s hard to remember that Green Bay has an up-and-coming QB that might be just as good.  For the bye weeks or if he doesn’t cut it I have Matt Cassel, Tom Brady’s understudy-turn-damn-good-backup.  A few years ago he was the lowest rated player in fantasy football.  This year he’ll be on the starting lineup for plenty of teams.

My starting WRs are all kind of meh.  Larry Fitzgerald is obviously top-notch.  (He was my #1 pick.  I was the 8th team in the queue), but I’m not massively thrilled.  The other WRs are all solid, if uninspiring.  The sole exception is possible Michael Crabtree.  He’s a rookie and almost went to Seattle (Go Hawks!) this year.  He’s likely to be a starter and if he does well than he will have a definite shot at my 3rd WR spot.

I have 5 RBs.  That’s probably too many, but I want to see how everyone performs the first few weeks.  T.J. Duckett is a seahawk and they run a platoon system.  If he overperforms or turns into their red zone guy he could be useful, but I have fairly low expectations.  The only current benefit is that I’ll hopefully be immune to injuries.

TE: Greg Olson.  I had him last year and he was exceptional.  There happen be a handful of very good TEs out there, so it wasn’t as impressive a pick as in previous years, but I was happy to have him return.

K: Ryan Longwell.  He’s as good as anyone out there.  I tend to mix and match kickers based on who they’re facing each week, but he’s a solid starting kicker.

Def: Dallas.  Like kickers I’ll trade Defenses in and out.  I could do much worse than Dallas.

By and large I’m happy with my team.  I have less big names than last year, but I have less really awful players as well.  I could see the year being either pretty good or rather atrocious, but I’m confident I’ll be in the top half of the bunch.  Throughout the season I’ll be posting my progress.

Go Hawks!

I hiked Minnewaska twice in June, snapped a few pictures.

2009 is the quadricentennial of Henry Hudson’s discovery of the Hudson River. I’m sure there were plenty of natives who were rather surprised to find themselves discovered and named, but after four hundred years these things tend to be forgotten.

In honor of this particular bit of history a flotilla of ships has been traveling up the Hudson River including an old wooden galleon. I made my way to Newburgh landing this last weekend and snapped a few pictures as it passed by.

Stick a camera on a boat, set it to take pictures every few seconds, stich the images together into a movie, see what you get. Looks pretty cool!

Night Run Part I

Night Run Part II

I should do this on my drive to work. You’d get to see the town of New Paltz, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Bridge, and part of Poughkeepsie. I don’t think my camera has an interval mode though. Hmm. Research time!

/slow monday

How did I miss this? Gothic 4 is coming out.

That’s a computer game for anyone not in the know.

Why is this relevant on a blog about writing? Well, it probably isn’t, however the Gothic Series has been, by and large, and exceptionally well done take on a fantasy world. The story begins with a nameless hero who gets dumped into a prison colony surrounded by magical barriers. There are three groups within this prison colony and the player gets to choose who to trust and help. Did I mention that the mages that created the prison barrier are trapped inside? Did I also mention the prison colony has runes of ancient magic scattered about, a legendary dark mage lives within the area, orcs infest the land intent on the destruction of all humans, and, amogst all this, the layer character is hounded by the various monsters, gangs, and beasts of the area. Well, glad I did then.

I’ll save the rest of the plot for the dedicated player, but the nameless hero manages to free the mages and prisoners from the colony. His adventure in the next game follows his attempt to leave the island of the prison colony. This involves a number of other adventures, but more importantly, begins to dabble with the story of the dark wizard whose initial support of the nameless hero becomes questionable.

The third adventure, within the main kingdom, has the nameless hero finally resolve the orc human conflict, one way or another. All of the characters met along the way show up for the grand finale and peace or war falls on the world.

Fairly standard fare, by and large, by the world is realized with a great deal of creativity and originality. The low magic world of studious mages, varied cultures, and consequence is done with a great deal of artistry. The prison camp is oppressive and gloomy. The jungle followers have combined the best aztec mysticism with a ‘Kurtzian’ creepiness. The war between the prison camps is as petty and violent as any prison brawl. As the story expands it manages to preserve the details. The second installment has the trianing camp for the red wizards. They perform chores in the morning, growing herbs, and listening to readings. The minutae was impressive, the sort of details that fleshed out the visually, the same way a side comment or colour text does so in a written world. More than once I’ve used computer worlds as inspiration.

Needtheless to say, I’m pleased that a fourth installment is coming, alhtough it’s from a different developer and the third installment ended fairly conclusively. For anyone curious, a trailer can be found here.