It’s been a very long time since I did a post on the garden, and since they were always very popular I’m probably overdue for another!
Last weekend we bought a new whiskey barrel for our back patio, and planted a calla lily and some ‘red things’ in it. Our original barrel has this year been devoted to morning glories and some other type of flower at the base. Here’s a shot:
Some detail of the plants:
That light is solar powered. I expect we’ll have to move it when they grow in!
For the front yard, the first significant change I made this year was to remove one of the hedge bushes near our mailbox and letting the black-eyed Susan’s take over:
We also bought a ‘white bush’ (possibly a dwarf willow) and planted it near our steps:
It’s small now, but it’ll be bigger in a few years!
Lastly, in the ongoing struggle to control our ‘front garden’, we added more hosta and ferns. It’s slow going, but I think we improve it every year:
Incidentally this post was 100% done from my phone, which is what I plan on doing from Florida next week. How does it look?
Last week, Diablo 3 came out. I flitted over to the store on the morning of release and bought myself a copy.
As some of you know, I was a mad fan of Diablo and Diablo 2. Both were pretty roguelikes, which has always been one of my favourite genres. The latter in particular I played for oodles of hours, ending up with a level 96 sorceress, a level 9X amazon and a few other characters. This was no small feat, since levelling became torturously slow at high levels. I also had awesome gear, and had beat the highest difficulty many times over. What a game!
So my anticipation for Diablo 3 was high, to say the least. It was with great excitement I created my first character, Momomo:
Ok, she’s already level 41 in that screenshot! I did say the game came out a week ago surely?
I blasted through the normal difficulty quite quickly, finding it fast-paced and (frankly) quite easy. It probably took me about 16 hours to get to and kill the final boss:
That’s his loot in the above screenshot. A nice haul, wouldn’t you say?
Anyway Diablo games have never been about beating normal mode, they are about playing through multiple times at progressively higher difficulties, in which both the challenge and the rewards increase. Diablo 3 has 4 such difficulties (Normal, Nightmare, Hell, Inferno) and right now I’m half way through Nightmare mode. The going has gotten harder, but still not the level I’m anticipating!
This game is fun! It’s like ‘Gauntlet’ on overdrive, more arcadey and prettier than old Diablo, without sacrificing (yet, at least) any of the addictive qualities. It’s easy to lose hours just running around killing massive packs of monsters and sorting through the loot looking for upgrades.
The above shot shows that the game hasn’t abandoned character complexity, although I’m starting to suspect that amidst all those stats only two actual matter (DPS and HP). Character skills (of which there are dozens) are awarded automatically and cannot be upgraded via skill points like in D2. This means the five character classes are more homogenized within each other (for instance, in D2 the sorceress class alone had 3 or 4 viable ‘builds’ that were so different they felt like different characters), which is probably a change that was made in the interest of game balance. It remains to be seen how many of my skills will be viable at the level cap.
There’s Momo and Stefka (SFL) playing together! Diablo 3 is an online-only game, and obviously supports co-operative multiplay, which is handled very well with little noticeable latency or syncing problems. There are some issues however, especially that multiplay games are not really fun for either party when there are large level discrepancies between the players. But I suspect this is a short-term problem, since eventually everyone will hit the level cap (60) and farm Inferno together.
My biggest concern for the game at this point is with regards to longevity. It will take about 50 hours to get Momo to level 60. But how long will the game hold my interest then? The true appeal of Diablo 2 was farming for gear, and there was a mind-boggling variety available. I’m not yet convinced Diablo 3 has this variety and gear appeal (in fact I’m almost convinced it doesn’t), and the many words written on this exact topic in the last week by passionate Diablo veterans carry more than a grain of truth in my opinion. In addition, if the gear is not there then the draw for level capping additional characters is diminished as well (since it feels pointless).
But Blizzard is a smart company, with a lot invested in this game. At the very least, without a monthly fee their plan is to make money via a ‘Real Money Auction House’ (exactly what it sounds). This can only succeed if the items sold on the RMAH (gear) are attractive enough for people to buy. Therefore I think we’ll see some significant adjustments/additions to the gear in the game before too long.
But, as I said, that’s in the future. Right now I’m only lvl 43, and have a lot of playing ahead of me before I hit Inferno difficulty. And I’m still having a blast doing just that 🙂
Over the last year, I have received not one, not two – but three toy helicopters as gifts! I’m a veritable helicopter magnet! Here then, a review of each of them.
I decided to test each of the helicopters on a course of my own devising, otherwise known as ‘I Am Maru book and cat ring toy’. Here’s a shot of the course:
The intention was to take off from I Am Maru, fly gracefully through the air, and land inside the ring toy. Helicopters would be rated therefore not only on fun, but also on control. This is important when you’re dealing with a helicopter!
Helicopter 1: Execuheli
The first copter I tested, a gift I’ve had for over a year, was the Execuheli. This helicopter is about 8 inches in length, has 2 rotors but no rear blade, and features LED lights both in the front and rear. The charger requires 6 AA batteries but the heli charges very quickly. It was manufactured in China.
The above shot shows the (wireless) controller. The stick on the left controls the rotor speed, and the stick on the right controls the orientation of the copter. Which means, in principle, you can control the flight of the bird by changing direction with the stick on the right. In reality… not so easy! But first, an action shot:
Yes my friends, there we have Execuheli in flight! You can see I had modified the course a bit, specifically by adding a tower of Star Wars tins, but this was a moot change since this helicopter was beyond my control! Oh I could get it flying easily enough, but where it went from there was entirely up to it! The right stick felt more like a binary toggle switch between ‘on the bleeding edge of control’ and ‘utterly out of control’ and tiny twiddles of it led instantly to spectacular crashes.
Verdict: Execuheli leaves the ground, but rarely made it back alive 🙂
Helicopter 2: Stinger
The next copter, a gift from my brother, was a marvel of miniaturization called Stinger.
This baby is tiny – only about 5 inches in length, and features 2 rotors, a rear rotor, flashing LED’s and gyroscopic control (although, to be honest, I’m sure they all feature that). It is spectacularly lightweight – it feels like nothing in your hand. And it’s very, very pretty. This little marvel was made in the PRC.
Stinger flies with slightly more control than Execuheli (perhaps due to the rear rotor?), and responds better to slight adjustements of the controller. Unlike the previous copter, I was actually able to keep this guy aloft for relatively long periods. Here’s a video of the action:
You can see the flight is smooth, stable and almost under my control. At least until it attacked me in the bollocks.
Verdict: A clever and fun little toy!
Helicopter 3:i-helicopter air
To the last of the three, one of my Christmas gifts, is the pompously named i-helicopter air.
You’ve probably seen these advertised: helicopters that are controlled by your i-device (iPhone, iPad, iPod). The copter itself is by far the largest of the three I own (probably over 10 inches in length), which means it is also the heaviest. Strangely it also has the least amount of tech – missing a rear rotor and only having one (non flashing) LED. It charges from a USB cable, and took by far the longest to charge as well. This helicopter was made in ??.
The above shot shows the i-helicopter air and the controller, which is to say KLS’s iPad. The helicopter itself came with the IR transmitter you can see plugged into the iPad, and the control software had to be downloaded (free) from the App Store. I’ll admit I was nervous, since the reviews are bad and many comments say the helicopter simply doesn’t work, or when it does the lag is so great that it’s uncontrollable. It was with some hesitation that I fired it up the first time.
But I was to be pleasantly surprised! Not only did it work, but the helicopter flew gracefully and with great stability. Granted the control was almost nonexistant (it doesn’t turn, for instance), but it was stable enough (unlike Execuheli) that it could just hover without moving quite well and look good doing it. Yes there is a control delay, and yes the lack of turning is an issue, but the stability of this helicopter was perhaps the greatest and it was the only one I successfully landed.
Verdict: Gimmicky control, but well built craft.
Overall, there is a clear winner here between the three, and that is unquestionably Stinger. It was the most fun, had the most flashing lights, and had the best control. It was also the smallest, which made the technology seem even cooler. These things are sold under zillions of names in gazillions of configurations, but I’ll conclude based on this test that at the very least you should look for tail rotors and lots of flashing LED’s if you’re in the market for a toy helicopter.
That said, I must be honest and admit that all of these toys contain a high level of frustration since ‘controlling’ them seems a crapshoot at best. This is true of all helicopters though, and faulting them for this is like faulting a fish for swimming. Helicopter toys are by their nature very difficult to control, and it’s a marvel that any of these (especially the tiny Stinger) do the job as well as they do.
