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]

I started following Newt Gingrich on twitter recently. I don’t agree with him all the time (my impression is that he’s a bit of an elitist), but he does tweet about some important topics (e.g. Iran, the new energy tax, health care reform) without an excessive amount of chaff. A little while back he tweeted about the stuff Obama is doing with health care and linked to his own proposal. I read up until this line: “Every American should be encouraged and incentivized to take personal responsibility for their health.” It seems to me that if the government has to “incentivize” people to take care of themselves, then there is something much more seriously wrong with the country than its health care system. And having the government try to fix it would probably just exacerbate the problem.

[Joe]

Humorously, the Firefox dictionary did not recognize the word “incentivized” and one of the suggested corrections was “collectivized”. Hmm…