Author: Joe

Categories
Adventure Sports

Indoor Climbing

Recently I’ve been really into Ninja Warrior and trying to incorporate some new training techniques into my workouts that I see the contestants doing on TV. Since a ton of the people who advance were climbers, I really wanted to give it a shot.

Did a little bit of and found that there was a pretty cool looking indoor climbing spot in South Jersey, Elite Climbing. This was exactly what I was hoping to find, but didn’t expect to find in the area. They offered a pretty reasonable beginners session, so it seemed ideal for me.

Now I just needed to find someone to climb with. So, I went with Fierce. I figured if she wasn’t up for it, then probably no one else that I knew would be. She confirmed immediately and planning a day to go was the first priority.

Decided to go right from work on a Thursday which happened to be Students/Educators night. So much to our surprise it would only cost us $15 for lessons and a full day pass. Oh and we also got a 50% off for the next visit. Quite the amazing deal!

I have to admit I was a bit nervous during the lessons. I’m notoriously a big cry baby with heights, and I was feeling soooooo tired that day having gotten very little sleep the day before and leaving directly from work. My robot like routine was interrupted and I was feeling it a bit.

Of course, I had to climb first. The first attempt was only half way up the wall, then I had to let go and we lowered down. Letting go of the wall and trusting that you won’t crash to the ground took a little bit of courage. But once you’re dangling there for a bit, you trust the apparatus and your partner for the rest of the night.

My first couple of climbs I did pretty well, making it to the top with not too much effort. We easily did some 5.6, climbs, then moved on to some 5.7’s and I think we even did a few 5.8’s in there too!

But after an hour or so, I just ran out of steam. I was just plain tired and my fatigue had completely caught up with me. It was so apparent that all I could do was laugh at it and take numerous falls about half way up the wall as to when I would run out of my now limited stamina.

We would go on to climb for a little over 2 and a half hours! It was really awesome and I’m so glad that I was able to try it out. It is something that I will surely do again!

Categories
Video Games

Pikmin 3

Pikmin 3I was pretty excited to play Pikmin 3 as soon as it came out for the Wii U, well as excited as a grown man can get for a video game anyway. Pikmin 2 way back on the Gamecube was one of my all time favorites, so the third installment was a must play for me.

Turned out to be just as great as I was hoping. The whole mood and gameplay is still extremely unique and refreshing. While most games are quite violent and gory, this goes to show that a great game doesn’t have to be that way at all. The detailed worlds harken you back to when playing out in the yard was so much fun. Great stuff.

The little Pikmin are pretty amazing too. Despite getting hundreds of them, you do your absolute best to save any before nightfall. The pressure kinda does mount on you as daylight fades and you must call it quits for a mission. This whole timed aspect is kinda lost in most modern games, and while a bit challenging at times does really add to the gameplay a great deal.

My only regret is that I wish the game were a bit longer! I was able to breeze through it in probably 10 hours or so, but will be going back to collect the remaining fruit. You gotta collect all the fruit, it’s too much fun not to.

A very amazing and unique game, and easily one of my favorites.

Categories
Books

Going Deep

Going DeepLooking for some fine non-fiction to read at the library I saw former NFL wide receiver Cris Carter’s book, Going Deep: How Wide Receivers Became the Most Compelling Figures in Pro Sports. I always respected him as a player and later analyst, plus it sounded like it would cover the years that I was most interested in following the NFL.

Turned out to be a pretty interesting read. I think since his career really spanned my favorite years when football was so much fun for me to watch, that I really found it very interesting. There were a lot of great wide receivers that I had almost forgotten about over the years (I couldn’t name all the run and shoot Oilers anymore).

I really liked how he covered both the ups and downs over the years. His insight on teammate Randy Moss was interesting to read. As a long time Raiders fan, I was kinda bummed by how things had turned out with him, and was glad to get his perspective and opinion on it.

I really found this to be really fun to read and plowed though it very quickly. Good stuff.

Categories
Adventure

Tubing

I’ve been thinking of doing something interesting down the Egg Harbor River since it’s around where I work. So when the invite for some tubing came up, I surely agreed to join in on the fun.

The location of this fine adventure was the Winding River Campground in Mays Landing. It was pretty simple to get to and also very simple to do. Just go inside, pay to rent a tube ($15 plus a $5 deposit that you get back when you return the tube), fill out a form then you wait for a van to come and pick you up. The van kinda reminded me of Tony Mocelli’s van in Who’s the Boss. It was a short ride and he dropped us off at a little park and then the mighty river would take us back to the campground where our car was parked.

The river itself was pretty nice and seemed clean to me. There was an occasional floating plastic bottle, beer can, etc. but not too much stuff. The water temperature wasn’t too bad either. I was expecting colder water, so it was nice to be a bit warmer than expected.

The actual adventure took a couple of hours. I’m not sure exactly when it began, but I’d say it was 2.5 to 3 hours total of tubing fun. I really enjoyed trying to steer around a the river by paddling with my hands against the current at times. It was difficult in spots, but I seemed to get better at it as the day wore one.

I also really liked helping others navigate and get unstuck from branches too. There were some tricky spots, but I was able to steer a defeated tuber to safety during the second half of the adventure.

What really surprised me the most was the level of river people. The majority of them seemed to be very strange and from poor reality TV. Many even sounded to of had accents of sorts I couldn’t determine. I’d say they were river folk.

A gentleman with magic marker on his head was a very close talker to my tube, but I was kind and attempted to educate him of the finer things in life such as the amazing film Milo and Otis. I’m not sure he understood it’s importance to society, but oh well I did try.

There was also a very strange man who helped give me a push off into the right direction. Though he nearly stole one of my fellow river travelers, apparently it was just a joke and she was released to freedom.

All in all it was a pretty powerful experience and one that I would like to try again.

Categories
Books

The Eye of God

The Eye of GodWhen in doubt at the library, I tend to pick something with a fancy cover. The Eye of God fit that bill and turned out to be pretty good too.

It did a good job of mixing up some truth with fiction. So while I know it’s fiction, there is some sort of realism kinda to the plot. The plot also mixed up tech with religion, which tends to be interesting to read.d Thankfully there’s an addendum at the back that explains what was true and what was made up.

The pacing was pretty cool, and I found myself really reading that extra chapter to see how things turned out towards the end.

I was also glad to read the alternate quantum physics ending (makes sense if you read it). It made me happier for a few of the characters in the end.

 

Categories
Adventure Design Development

Creative Programming for Digital Media & Mobile Apps

I really wanted to take a course on Coursera this summer to learn something new. Learning stuff for the sake of learning is great. So after checking out what was being offered this summer, Creative Programming for Digital Media & Mobile Apps from the University of London International Programmes caught my eye. It sounded like some fun stuff.

The course was pretty nice. No additional materials were required besides downloading some open source software (Processing, Audacity, etc.). With video lectures posted every week and discussion forums to ask and answer questions.

The first week of the course started a bit rough. Setting up a working environment can always be tough, and it seemed that many were having similar issues in the forums. There were some coding errors in a few of the early examples that were giving me issues. Most notably the javascript examples. This was a pain to deal with, especially early on. But luckily, I’m a skilled enough coder already to of figured out and fixed it for myself. If I wasn’t already comfortable coding, I probably would have left the course though.

The remaining weeks the coding issues disappeared and it was much easier to follow along with the lectures. The video lectures were great and of very good quality. The instructors were easy to follow and a bit funny as well.

The quizzes and assignments were great too. Though I really aimed a bit too low with my first assignment, doing the peer reviews really had me step up what I’d do for my final assignment.

With the suggestion of a friend I decided to re-create Donkey.bas (the original DOS game) using Processing. I found a video of it being played on YouTube and just went from there.

It does have some gaming flaws as speed picks up still, and has been formatted to a mobile devices screen size. But overall I thought it turned out ok, and kept the cheesiness of an early 80’s DOS game.

All in all I was very satisfied with my experience with taking this class. If you’re into learning something new and don’t really care about a degree or grades to prove it (so overrated to me), then I can’t imagine there’s ever been a better time to gain new knowledge. It’s really an amazing time to be around with all the information so readily available.