I realized shortly before I left for Boston that this would be my first time driving in a major north east city. It ended up not being too bad except for the lack agreed upon lanes in the city and the fact that I hate valet parking.

On Thursday night, I ran into Greg Miller and Daemon Hatfield, which I know from IGN’s Game Scoop podcast, in the elevator of my hotel. Very friendly people, their eyes lit up when I asked them if they were from IGN.

Wil Wheaton’s keynote was a sequel of sorts to his PAX 2007 speech. He talked about the culture and society that forms around gaming which was interesting.

The Penny Arcade panels were appropriately funny, but the highlights were definitely the concerts. The opening act for Friday night was The Protomen. For those that don’t get the reference (I didn’t figure it out till part way through the concert), they perform rock operas based on Mega Man. I had never heard of them before, but they put on one hell of a show. The second act, Anamanguchi, has an NES as one of its “members”. The mix of chiptune and live guitar was a lot of fun. I don’t know how well either band holds up outside of a concert. There’s just something to being able to FEEL the music while you listen to it. There were two more acts after that, but I decided to cut out. While the first day is shorter, I find it harder to get through than the second day of a con.

The Video Game Orchestra led off Saturday’s concert. Given the venue, they only had a chamber orchestra, but they did respectable versions of the Super Mario Medley and the Wind Garden theme from Super Mario Galaxy. They got an encore, but were apparently unprepared to satisfy the crowd chanting for Zelda (I may have had something to do with that). Next up were Paul and Storm, a comedic duo I hadn’t heard of. They were funny, but leave it to the PAX crowd to be funnier. I was in tears. They eventually told us to shut the f*** up, we didn’t listen. Jonathan Coulton closed out the night. He did all of his required songs including Still Alive. It was a great show, but I didn’t get to bed until 2am.

I skipped the third day of PAX.

[Joe]

Passage is a short ‘game’. It’s kinda one of those things that you have to make of it what you will. The creator, Jason Rohrer, was the focus of the most recent full episode of A Life Well Wasted. My understanding is that he’s drawn some criticism for selling out by getting a ‘real’ job.

A Life Well Wasted is a bit on the artsy side, but generally has enough substance to be interesting. It definitely has that documentary feel to it.

I could try to describe Love, but it’s easier to just point you to this gameplay video. It’s crazy that it’s all being done by one guy.

William and Sly is worth it just for the jumping, but the animation is good too.

As I remember, And Yet it Moves wasn’t in the massive indie game sale that Steam had recently, which was a bit disappointing. The good news for Wii owners is that it’s coming to WiiWare

[Joe]

From time to time I will still ask people not-so general knowledge questions when I have easy access to a PC. Possibly equally silly, when there is a topic of interest to me I don’t immediately look for a blog on the subject. After posting about a couple independent games a little while back I wised up and searched out TIGSource which has a very useful independent game database.

From TIGSource, I discovered Knytt and it’s sequel Knytt Stories which are both fantastic freeware platformers for PC by Nicklas ‘Nifflas‘ Nygren. Nifflas is currently working with Nicalis (confused yet?) on Night Game for WiiWare and a game known as Q for an as yet unannounced platform, though likely Wii. Q looks to be in the vein of the Knytt games and Night Game has similarities to Nifflas’ other game, Within a Deep Forest.

Nicalis is the company porting Cave Story, another classic freeware PC platformer, to the Wii. Recently, they announced that they will also be porting La Mulana to the Wii.

I’ve also heard that Iji is a good game, I just have to wade through the story elements.

[Joe]

On the Saturday before Easter I woke up to find Dad at the computer. He had been looking for a new trail to hike and found the Link Trail. According to the website, the Link Trail was created to connect the Finger Lakes Trail and the Old Erie Canal Trail. My understanding is that all three are part of the North Country Trail which is supposed to stretch all the way out to North Dakota. Parts of the Link Trail are along the road, so we decided to start at the closest non-road section which starts at the cemetery in Canastota. From there we walked to Nelson Road, which is about a 2 and a half mile hike, and back.

Since then we mapped out about 15 miles of the 39.1 mile trail over the course of around 5 hikes. The most recent, and furthest away hike we did was through the Nelson Swamp Unique Area which is the other side of Cazenovia. It’s been an interesting experience as the trail has taken us through people’s front yards, back yards, an “art” park and at one point through a cow pasture surrounded by an electric fence. Much of the trail is an old railroad bed and there are plenty of indications of that lying around. We’ve also seen some interesting plants which you can see below. For more about the trail and the sorts of things you can find along it, check out the blog dedicated to it.

[Joe]

At camp there’s a photo that has been there as long as I can remember. It’s so much a fixture at camp that for the longest time I never really thought of it as a real place or even a place that I could go to. It took on a sort of mythical nature. If you’ve seen Shadowlands, you have an idea of what I’m talking about.The picture is of a shear rock face with a tree in front and then a pool of water in front of that. Below is my poor attempt to photograph it while still in it’s frame.

It wasn’t until recently that I asked Dad where the photo might be of, to which he said Yosemite. I guess I had never really looked at pictures of Yosemite before, but now I’m reasonably sure he’s right. More recently, I ran across Trailspotting and specifically this post. When I saw that picture of the Half Dome, I knew what I wanted to do.

The hike starts at 4000 ft and reaches 8,836 ft, at which point you are nearly a mile above the valley floor. According to Trailspotting you have to hike in the 8 and a half miles and back out in the same day. In my current state of physical unfitness, I think that would be a bit much. My advisor says that there might be a place to camp along the way. I’ll definitely have to do some more research.

I’ve also decided to create a Google map of the places I plan to go.

[Joe]