Local Wildlife
by Tim Faircloth on Aug 23, 2009, 4:29 pm
For those of you that didn’t know, I’m building a patio onto the back of my house. Nothing fancy, just a cinder block wall and a slab of concrete. It’s slow going, so the cinder blocks are just piled up in my yard for now… and have been for a few months. Every now and then I’ll get inspired to work on it and I’ll get a little bit done.
This weekend I had some free time and decided to work on it a bit, and as I was picking up one of the blocks I found a nasty surprise.
Being no stranger to indigenous creepy crawlies, I immediately recognized the two spiny eggsacks as those of the infamous Latrodectus manctans, also known as the Southern Black Widow. If you look closely at the picture, you’ll also see the mother lurking in the shadows of the web, keeping watch over her young.
These spiders are fairly common in southern Georgia, but I can’t say I’ve seen many of them in my time. In fact, the last time I’d seen one was down at the Fort Valley Gun Club when I was about 12. Luckily my dad was there to show it to me (from a safe distance) and promptly blow it away with the rifle he was carrying. Probably overkill, but it got the job done.
Sadly for this expectant mother and her young, she had precariously positioned herself between two cinder blocks… which I’m sure she thought were unmovable. Her hermit-like ways had left her ill prepared for discovery by an animal that could easily and quickly move the bricks together with a swift kick…
Yes, that black ooze in the center of the picture is what’s (visibly) left of the widow. Overkill? Probably, but I don’t take chances with dangerous critters.
Banner
by Tim Faircloth on Aug 18, 2009, 11:37 am
In case you haven’t noticed, there’s now an actual banner at the top of this page instead of the placeholder. I’d like to thank my girlfriend Erica for the time and effort she put in to making it.
What do you guys think?
Double Dragon
by Tim Faircloth on Aug 12, 2009, 4:13 pm
Despite the fact that I usually have the latest in console and PC gaming gear, I find that there’s no substitute for old classics. Lately, I’ve been playing Double Dragon on nintendo8.com.
I don’t know what it is about DD that makes it so compelling… it’s a simple side-scroller with simple controls (kick, punch, and move around), but there are subtle things that make it fun. For instance, after you’ve gained your fourth heart (you gain hearts as your score increases, which unlocks special moves) if you stand a certain distance from your opponent and kick him, the foe will double over in pain and our intrepid hero will grab him by the hair and kick him in the face a few times.
I think the most compelling part of the game is the fact that even though the enemies are cookie-cutter copies of a few basic types, they learn tricks as you gain hearts, which makes them a bit harder to defeat. If you can do a flying kick, they can do a flying kick — and they do so quite often.
Also, the gameplay is pretty much the same every time, but if you don’t know what you’re doing it’s rather difficult — though you can quickly learn the ins and outs, and it becomes fairly easy.
The reason I’m posting this, however, is to bitch. There are two parts of the game I think are unreasonably difficult, especially given how easy the rest of the game is:
- At one point in the game, you face off against two huge muscle-bound dudes that enter the field by bursting through a rock wall. They’ll knock you down with ease, and tend to double-team you if you’re not careful… oh, and they tend to duck your flying kicks.
- At another point in the game, you’re supposed to walk past a wall with bricks that shoot out and hit you pretty hard. Unlike most NES games, there seems to be no pattern as to when or where the bricks will come out, so you’re pretty much taking your hero’s life into your hands when you decide to move.
The problem is that these parts in the game come at inopportune times. The first time the two guys burst through the wall is at the end of a level when you’re low on health, and the moving wall comes at the beginning of a level that contains several guys with knives.
Just in case you’re wondering, I haven’t beaten the game (yet), but I’ve gotten incredibly close. Guess I’ll just have to keep on trying.