Earth, Air, Water, Fire

To the Greeks, these were the four elements. They are usually the elements of mythology, and are therefore commonly used in Fantasy Fiction, of which I am a big fan. They are also the starting point for both and old and new game, called Alchemy. Alchemy was an old DOS game that was reborn as a smartphone game. You combine the different starting elements to create new elements. Now, different games have different combinations, but some are obvious, like water + earth = mud.

I recently starting playing such a game on my phone, which is one of the genesis points for the thoughts that follow.

Each Tuesday night, the Barony of Bryn Gwlad (Austin, TX) holds its fighter practice. At the age of 54 and after a rather embarrassing number of years away, I have been trying to get back into SCA Armoured or Chivalric Combat. Last night, for the first time since coming back, and after an embarrassing number of months fighting, I finally felt like my feet were not cast in blocks of concrete.

Now, I should explain that I have been taking it rather careful as I have been getting back into this endeavor. It is a strenuous sport, and the last time I tried to come back, I pulled a muscle and was unable to fight for several weeks afterward. But, in addition to being careful, I have just felt slow and old. Last night, I still felt slow and old, but I no longer felt slow and old and stuck in concrete.

That is the second of the genesis points of the thoughts that follow.

Miyamoto Musashi was a samurai who lived from 1584 – 1645. He was a supreme fighter and wrote The Book of Five Rings. Mushashi's five rings were Ground (Earth), Water, Fire, Wind (Air) and Void.

This is the final genesis point of the thoughts that follow.

To begin, let me give my own thoughts on Earth, Water, Fire and Air as they relate to fighting. My thoughts are not based directly on Musashi, though The Book of Five Rings had an effect on these thoughts.

For Earth, consider a boulder, it is hard, unmoving. It is not swayed or moved easily. Solid and unaffected are good descriptions of earth. Water flows. It can seem calm and suddenly move, but the movement is generally smooth and flowing. Water follows around the obstacles in encounters. It conforms to what it encounters and envelops. Fire burns, obviously. Fire is passion. In fighting, fire is the sudden and constant attack. Air provides no resistance to what come at it. Try hitting the air, and it doesn't work. Air as a fighting style is often described as not being there when the attack comes.

I am a large man, and I have always been an Earth fighter, solid, moving slowly, enduring attack, and then usually striking back. As I grew older, this has become more and more true. When I lost a step, it did not seem to effect me as much as others, because that step was never very fast to begin with.

My recent moment of enlightenment had to do with combining the concepts of Musashi with the combinations created in the Alchemy game.

If you combine Earth with Water, you get Mud. Mud still remains a type of earth, and yet it can now flow around the attacks of an opponent, but more than flowing around them, mud is sticky. Once you get into the mud, it can be hard to get out, mud sticks. This is a very appropriate metaphor in combat. To flow around your opponent and then stick while you defeat him.

Earth and Fire yields Lava, lava flows around obstacles, but burns them as it does. Lava is connected to Volcano, which can explode. To burn while flowing around the attacks of your opponent is extremely appropriate and many attacks can be compared to explosions. A volcano can rumble for years, and yet still explode suddenly. To be able to explode suddenly can be a powerful advantage.

By thinking about Earth combined with Water and Fire, the earth fighter has new ways to think about combat. The fighter need not abandon earth to see new ways to defeat his opponent by the introduction of water and fire.

I am still working on how to combine Earth and Air in combat. In the game, Earth + Air = Dust. I have yet to find a good way to use dust as a metaphor for fighting, but it may still come.

Littering

I thought that I lived in the enlightened 21st Century. When I was a kid, I read Arthur Clarke and Robert Heinlein and others and dreamed of the wonders of the 21st Century.


I grew up in the 60s. Way back then, way back 50 years ago, I learned to be respectful of the planet. Don't litter, don't pollute, and don't attempt to use up all of Earth's resources in my generation.


Am I the last one left of that generation?


Now, this may seem off topic, but I really hate smokers. Not only is their habit disgusting, but it seems to make them stupid. How often have a watched a smoker in a car in front of me drop a cigarette butt out the window without a thought, as if a cigarette butt isn't litter. One day I even watched someone open their door and dump their whole ashtray out on the ground at a stop light.


What are they thinking? Are they thinking? I think that smoking kills brain cells.


Then I was driving along behind someone and they threw a plastic wrapper out the window. I felt like running into them from behind...justifiable vehicular assault and battery in my opinion. Then they lit up a cigarette. Damn smokers again.


I grew up in California in the 60s. I was a Boy Scout. Littering is something that was knocked out of me more than 40 years ago. When I came to Texas 30 years ago, I was shocked to meet good ole boys who didn't seem to think twice about throwing beer cans out onto the side of the road.


Even the years of Don't Mess with Texas ads haven't seemed to cure the problem.


Yes, this is just a rant, and yet I don't really want it to come off as an anti-Texas rant. I have to assume that other places, at least some of them, must be just as bad, but I live in Austin, Texas, so that is the only place I can use as an example.


So, Texas smokers....quit littering.

So, I was reading one of those slideshow lists on MSN.

23 Great Road Trips Worth the Gas

Now, the ninth of the those Road Trips is Fort Worth to Oklahoma City. Now, I don't mean to insult either city (as a Texas Longhorn I reserve my insults for Norman, OK), but I don't see 200 miles up I-35 much of drive. Now, I should point out that they called them Road Trips, but it seems to me that a great Road Trip should also be a great drive.

So, what makes a great drive? I think we can come up with a few rules for a great drive, and hours on an interstate won't be part of it.

1. Scenery
   
   For me, it is hard to imagine a great drive through the Nevada desert.
   
   I need a quick sidebar here to explain that almost every year of my childhood I was tossed into the back of a station wagon and hauled from California to Utah. Most of those years that meant driving across Nevada on I-80...twice. The stretch of I-80 from Lovelock to Wendover is still, 35 years, my definition of a boring, depressing stretch of road, and the antithesis of a great drive. Close sidebar.
   
   Now, the scenery doesn't have to be spectacular, but it certainly adds to the pleasure of the drive if the scenery is easy on the eyes. Also, I don't much care what the scenery is, mountains, hills, forests, seashore, desert. Just as long as the views out the windshield are nice. Personally, I think that the best drives include scenery that is down right distracting, but that is just me.
   


2. A good road
   
   Now, there are two parts to this. First, the road needs to be in good repair, and well constructed. It isn't going to be a great drive if you spend most of your time dodging potholes. Treacherous is not a word that I associate with a great drive either. A road that is too narrow, or lacks any sort of improvements is not really going to give a good driving experience.
   
   But, I think a great drive requires more than a solid well maintained road surface. When driving, straight is boring, at least if it is too straight for too long. It is possible for a road to be too windy, though a windy road can be a fun all its own, but a great drive requires turns. A windy road presents us with continually changing vistas, which helps immensely with #1. A windy road also means that we work a little while driving, which, for me at least, increases the pleasure of the drive.
   


3. Light traffic
   
   Traffic will kill a good drive faster than anything I know of, so any truly great drive will have to avoid frequently travelled roads. If other people know about it and use it, then it needs to be removed from the itinerary. Now, sometimes, almost every road gets busy, so we should not remove a road from our list of great drives because we encounter traffic once, but the greater the traffic, the less great the drive.
   
   Another sidebar. I am a big fan of Top Gear (the UK version) and they are terribly annoyed with Caravans. In England they don't seem to have the huge motorhomes that we have hear, but they do have smaller ones, and it seems that every summer, thousands of Brits pack up their caravans (usually trailers) and campervans (motorhomes) and head out across the country. Unfortunately, they seem to clog up the very roads that the Top Gear presenters love to drive on. They tend to go slowly, and long lines of traffic get backed up behind them on Britain's smaller roadways.
   
   In the US, I think our trailer and mobile home campers tend to stick a bit more to the freeways, but I think you can see that spending your "great drive" going slowly behind someone pulling a camping trailer is not going to add to your experience.
   


4. Interesting places
   
   The places you can see from your car are one thing. The places you can get out and see along the way are another. They may not technically be part of the drive, but unless the drive is one of a few short hours, then drive is going to include stops, and interesting places to visit along the way are going to increase the enjoyment of the trip.
   
   A trip up the California coast highway (Highway 1) is nice. A trip up the coast with a stop at Muir Woods National Monument is better. It may be a nice drive with a good picnic spot, or a good restaurant, or a quaint B&B for an overnight stay, but something that improves the trip, while your not driving, can turn a nice drive into a great one.
   


5. A fun-to-drive car
   
   If you watch Top Gear, you might imagine that the only way to enjoy a great drive is in a powerful sports car. A Ferrari or Porsche may be an excellent car for a great drive, but I don't think it is necessary. All that is required is that you enjoying driving the car on the roads of your great drive.
   
   Back in #2 I talked about good roads, and the key thing is that you do not want to spend your drive fighting the road. You also don't want to spend your drive fighting your car. I don't think a Ferrari is required, but I don't think that a pickup truck or a Minivan is going to add much to the drive. They really key thing is that YOU enjoy driving the car on the roads that you take.
   


6. Tune-age
   
   Or should it be spelled tunage? I think music can be a great addition to a great drive, but upon reaching this part of the essay, I considered changing the title, but adding conversation to the title seemed overly long, and Sound just didn't seem to say enough. If you have a Ferrari, then the sound of the engine may be more than enough accompaniment to your drive, but in most cars, something else may add to the enjoyment of the drive.
   
   Conversation with a passenger may be even better than music. On a longish drive, a passenger gives you someone to share the experience with, which I think will increase the enjoyment of a good drive. If you don't have a passenger, then music can be another good addition to your drive. A specific sort of music is not required, just something you enjoy.
   


7. More than just A to B
   
   The purpose of a great drive is itself, the journey, so any truly great drive must be about more than just going from point A to point B. You may in fact need to get to point B, but a great drive is unlikely to be the fastest or easiest way to get there. The freeway is faster, but a freeway drive is something to be finished as quickly as possible. A great drive should be something that you enjoy, were the journey is the goal, and the destination is just the end of the journey.

Well, I think that finishes up my look at what makes a great drive. I haven't taken all that many, but the items above are the things that I can point to that have on occasion turned a trip from point A to point B into a great drive.

Buffet King

Buffet King
5451 N. IH 35
Austin, TX

I was looking for a Chinese Buffet that wasn’t too far from work, and I found Buffet King. I had noticed Buffet King a few months ago, before they open while visiting Office Max at Capital Plaza but never found the time to try it out. The restaurant is quite large and well appointed. That may not last (that being the way of buffet restaurants IMO) but for now, in its first year of operation, it looks nice. It is very bright with a lot of dark wood paneling. The price is about on a par with other large buffets, $8.00 without drink, and I had my buffet with only water, because they have made the awful decision to serve Pepsi and their only diet offering was Diet Pepsi…bleah. So, with one strike against them, I approached the buffet.

I was in the mood for Chinese, so that was where I started. For me, Chinese food means Sesame Chicken, Fried Rice, Egg Roll and Hot and Sour Soup. As I searched, I discovered that the buffet is huge. There were two long salad bars I one with green salad and the fixings, and another for fruit, pudding and the like. There were also two long buffets of Chinese with fish selections, various beef and chicken choices, eggrolls, won ton…well, all the usual Chinese buffet suspects. There were also enchiladas, pizza and sushi.

Well, as I said before, Chinese, for me, means Sesame Chicken and I had no trouble tracking it down, and that is where the first chink in the armor appeared. The Sesame Chicken sauce was red, and thin. Next to the Sesame Chicken was General Tso’s Chicken I which was closer to the right color for Sesame Chicken, but also very thin. The fried rice was nearby, but full of large chunks of onion, which I am not fond of.

Well, so they aren’t doing so well, but I find the egg roll and the Hot and Sour Soup and head back to my table. The sauce may be a bit thin and the color isn’t quite right, but it tastes okay, and the Hot and Sour Soup is good, not great, but good. The fried rice tastes good, but I have to fish out the onions. The egg roll is surprisingly good. Steam tables and heat lamps are not the best friends for an egg roll, and most Chinese buffets are plagued by semi-soggy eggrolls. These were above average on two different trips to the buffet.

On my second trip to the buffet and I tried some of the battered chicken that goes with sweet and sour, and I found the cream cheese wontons, which gets a big thumbs up from me. I tried a slice of soggy garlic head, and a Chinese donut, but for most of my eating, I stuck to the Sesame Chicken.

Two more things that I didn’t really try, one end of the restaurant is a big Mongolian stir fry bar, and the only thing I got from the desserts was a small bowl of ice cream. The seemed to have, large selection of cookies, but they looked store bought.

I walked out of Buffet King very full. I wasn’t the best Chinese I’ve ever had, but it was good. Nothing that I picked up was inedible, though most of it could have been better. I’ll probably try Buffet King again.

Great Austin Burger Hunt - Short Stop

Short Stop 12
3811 North IH 35

Sometimes, the exterior and the food don't match. Such was the case with Hill-Berts (link). Unfortunately, such was not the case with Short Stop.

I used to frequent Short Stop when I worked at Dell, not all that often, but quite a few times over the ten years I worked there. I thought I would give it a try and present the results to whoever may be reading these pages.

I ordered the standard double burger, my usual way, no pickles, onions or tomatoes. They do live up to their name, and the burger arrived quickly, with my order of fries. Opening a short stop is not for the faint of stomach. It didn't look good. The bun was nearly squished flat. Also, I am trying to figure out how they managed to wilt the lettuce before they put in on the burger, because I unwrapped it less than ten seconds after they handed it out to me, and the lettuce was already wilted. It was not a brilliant start.

But, my first bite raised the bar a bit. The meat was well cooked, and had a bit of crunch from being cooked on a flat top grill. A couple of more bites were enjoyed, but then I had to look for the cheese, which I couldn't taste. Well, the cheese was there, but it really wasn't doing much for the burger. This is the problem with American Processed Cheese. It is almost cheese in name only.

The burger was filling, but it was not something I enjoyed all that much. The fries were somewhat limp, but they were tasty, and they tossed some salt packets in the bag without me needing to ask for them, so thumbs up to Short Stop for that.

It the search for a quick and relatively cheap meal, Short Stop might make my list. In the search for Austin's Best Burger....it is at the bottom of the list so far.

Photography

Two different posts on Gizmodo got me thinking about photography today, and so I went in search of some Ansel Adams quotes. These quotes and more can be found on Brainy Quotes.

• A good photograph is knowing where to stand.


• A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.

A college professor taught me the first part of this. He told a story about a student how came back from Summer Vacation. The student was excited about a photograph he had taken, and when the professor say it, he was not impressed. The student responded to the professor's lack of enthusiasm with...

"I guess you had to be there."

Next quote...

• A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.

It seems rather inappropriate to add to any quote by Ansel Adams, but it seems to me that a great photograph also must express how you feel to the viewer. I am sure Ansel Adams would agree.

• There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.

Oh, it seems that he did.

• Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.

I think this may be changing, thanks to Photoshop.

• Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter.

I think that a lot of it has to do with the first quote, and with the long experience of someone with an incredible eye for a good photograph.

• There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.

I went searching for the last quote below, but the other seemed appropriate to go with it.

• Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships.


• The negative is comparable to the composer's score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways.

We sometimes get annoyed when we find that a photographer, or possibly just someone who found a picture, has altered that photo in some piece of software, and yet, what is photo software but a digital darkroom. I watched an interview with Ansel Adam's son where he talked about all the time that his father spent in the dark room correcting God's mistakes in tonal relationships.

Is it wrong to crop a photograph to make it better? What about the digital equivalent of dodging and burning? Obviously, Photoshop can do much more than this, but how much of what is done is just like the adjustments a photographer would make in creating a print from his negative?

It all started with this week's Shooting Challenge on Gizmodo. I followed the link to a blog about Black Card Photography and it mentioned that most photography contests will disqualify any photograph altered in Photoshop. But, I am betting that if you submit a print of a picture that you took with a film camera, that no one will complain if you massaged it in the darkroom.

This seems a little unfair.

Maybe, what is needed is a photo editing program that mimics only those techniques you can perform in a darkroom.

Kings of Colorado - a review

Kings of Colorado David E. Hilton 2011 Simon and Schuster First, I should admit that I am well acquainted with the author. We work at the same place, what one might call his ”day job” while waiting for his book to hit the bestseller list. Second, ignore the cover, this isn’t a western. Now, as someone whose general choice of reading material generally falls into a fairly well-defined genre, science fiction and fantasy, this is an important piece of information for me to pass along. Kings of Colorado is not a western, nor is it science fiction or fantasy. In fact, it is not something that I would normally have been attracted to, especially based on the book cover. But, “never judge a book by its cover” has rarely been more true than it is for Kings of Colorado. The story starts slowly with William Sheppard being laid off. This event isn’t really important to the story, but serves as the catalyst for William to record the events of his childhood. Back in the early 60s at the age of 13 Will Sheppard stabbed his father and was sentenced to two years at a Reformatory Ranch in Colorado. The author does an excellent job of creating a family situation where most of us might have reacted as the protagonist did. The father is abusive, not just of the son, but more importantly of the mother and it is the abuse of his beloved mother that pushes Will over the edge. Some might complain that the abusive father is an over-used plot element and they’d be right, but it works here, in part because it is not dwelled on overly long. We are quickly moved along through this dysfunctional family picture to the first crisis point and then Will begins his journey. A long bus ride from Chicago to the high mountains of Colorado ends at Swope Ranch, his home for the next two years. Swope Ranch uses the boys to break horses. Wild horses are captured and brought to the ranch where they are broken and then sold. There are several guards, one mean, one nice and the rest sort of in between. If this all sounds a bit formulaic, well…I could say it is, but it seems more formulaic as I write this review than it did while I was reading it. I suppose that I am saying that it works, and when the formula works then it isn’t a problem. The Ranch is no easy place. It may be called a Reformatory Ranch but there are few attempts at reform, though there is plenty of punishment. Fights are encouraged between the boys and some of the guards bet on them. Will develops a circle of friends and the story revolves these friends almost as much as Will himself. Will also finds a friend in the Ranch nurse who treats him after his first fight, and the series of injuries that mark his time at the Ranch. The climax of the story comes during a trip out from the ranch in search of some lost horses. Now, you have an idea about the story, but I will leave all the details for when you read it. This novel is violent. I would say this is the biggest reason why, despite a 13 year old protagonist, this is not a young adult novel. The violence is important to our understanding, both of how Will ends up at Swope, as well as how Swope affects him. Unfortunately, because of that violence, Kings is depressing at times. A few times I considered whether I really wanted to continue reading. Fortunately, the author has made Will a likeable enough character that I wanted to find out what happened to him. This points out one of the strengths of the novel, the characters. The author has created a believable and in a few cases likeable cast of characters. Yes, a few of them, especially a couple of the antagonists, are sort of stereotypically bad, but this works well, because the story is told exclusively by Will. We see everyone through his eyes. Those who torment him most are one dimensional to him, because he never gets to know them. Just as most of us never really get to know the people we don’t like. I found the story engaging and at times even compelling. The author has done a good job of keeping himself out of the story and letting Will come through as the storyteller. The story feels right. The characters aren’t forced in ways that feel unnatural. Without going into fanciful flights of prose, the author gives as details about the high mountains and horses that help the reader feel like they have actually seen, heard and even smelled Swope Ranch. After Will leaves Swope the novel moves along quickly giving us a brief glance at his life after Swope, until the day, decades later, when he finally feels compelled to write an account of his days at Swope Ranch. Will’s life after Swope is quite average. It was only after finishing the novel that it occurred to me that Will’s victory is more than just surviving Swope, it is managing to build and live a good, if average, life. Will has another moment of crisis after writing about Swope, but the depression that brings on that crisis seems more about being old and alone, his wife of many years having died a few years before, than it is about the tragic events at Swope. At that moment I felt greater sympathy for Will Sheppard than at any other time in book. After this crisis, the book ties up with a happy ending that would seem more out of place if it were happier. Now, that sounds odd to me as I write it, but it seems to hit the mark in its own way. I’d hate to give away the ending, so I won’t say too much about it, but Will returns to Colorado, and we get the sort of cathartic ending that the novel seems to need. Kings of Colorado is an impressive first novel. It is engaging and rewarding, but it isn’t a fun read. So, if you are in the market for something that is not a fluff read, check it out.