Eccentric Flower:200911/Fun Things

Welcome to November. The weather is fabulous right now.

This morning, on some psychic impulse, I suddenly decided to take my camera with me. I should do this more often, because I got several nice new photos, including this one which I particularly like. Also, if you didn't get a good look at Nonelvis' spectacular jack o'lantern, here's a shot in the cold, clear light of morning after the revelry has ended.

I'd carry my little camera all the time - after all, its small size is one of the reasons I picked it - but a lot of days I simply don't want to carry anything at all. However, winter is coming on and not only is winter Lots of Pockets Season, but is also My Favorite Time For Photos Season, so expect the frequency to increase a bit. I favor blue-heavy pictures, making me Japanese in photographic disposition*, and winter is the time for those. Although you may get tired of pictures of barren trees. I, myself, never get tired of pictures of barren trees. Winter is when you can see whether a tree has good bones.

* This is a mostly unserious reference to the fact that Fuji photographic film is engineered to punch up the levels of blues and other cool colors, whereas Kodak film punches yellows, oranges and reds as far as it can, each reflecting the general preferences of its consumer base. I dislike Kodak film and have been buying Fuji ever since I first figured this out. Of course, this whole thing is an increasingly dated reference, as your children will have no knowledge of what "photographic film" was.

When I have not been playing online with Mel this weekend, or been doing other important things like giving the grass a final, very late mowing, or going to the mall because my beloved coffee maker of fifteen-some years finally died, I have been playing a game called Torchlight. Torchlight is a very, very well-designed game. It will not be to everyone's taste. If you played Diablo II and loved it, though, you want this game.

It is, in fact, designed by the people who did Diablo II, and you will be able to tell. They kept everything they did right, and perfected the things they didn't get quite right back then. The controls are minimal and very intuitive; everything is where it should be; and some nifty things have been added. (Example: everybody gets a pet now, and the pet actually does useful things, including its best trick: You can send it back to town to sell off its inventory without needing to leave wherever you are in the dungeon. It will get the cash and come back to you with the money.)

It is very mouse-dependent - there is no keyboard movement, for example - so if your carpal tunnel hates you, you might give it a pass. And it really is a fairly pure dungeon crawl - although there are quests and a storyline of sorts, the basic idea is "kill monsters, get interesting new items so you can kill bigger monsters," which will not thrill some folks. But it's a great game for the times when you just want to do that sort of thing for a while. And here are the two kickers:

1. This game has astonishingly low system requirements. The developers say they routinely play it on netbooks.

2. It only costs twenty bucks.

More like this, please, game developers. (Note: The Torchlight download server has been getting pretty well hammered. If you buy it from the Google Checkout - as ever, I suggest everyone avoid PayPal like H1N1 - you will get an alternate download link at purchase time which is much faster.)

If you are into well-designed infographics (The Church of St. Tufte), you will love the charts XKCD has made. (Big graphic; scroll around.) They don't really have much point, but they're wonderful to look at. The Lord of the Rings one is particularly excellent. The bottom row of items is mostly for people who complain every time Randall posts an informational poster without a "punchline." Some people are idiots.