I wish everyone a peaceful 2010.
This is the first year that the New Year's Squid wasn't written ages in advance :) I almost forgot!!!!11!1!!!!one!!eleven!
But have no fear... here it is:
credit: Mark Norman, Cephalopods A World Guide
As always, you can click the picture to see the cuttlefish in their full glory.
I love finding this stuff on the web. If you click on the picture you'll be shuffled off to Animal Planet. Watch the video.
It's a vid of a diver breaking what I understand is the cardinal rule of diving: don't poke into holes with anything you can't afford to lose (like your hand, or your face).
It's interesting that the octopus goes for the mask. Although attacks by large cephalopods are quite rare, a common theme is that they go for the mask and regulator. I think that denotes a level of cunning that is rather scary.
Cthulhu's minions are coming, and now they have armour!
Something new in the world of cephalopods... Scientists have discovered Veined Octopuses (in the waters of Indonesia) using coconuts for protection:
The researchers noticed that the animals were frequently using their approximately 6-inch-long (15-centimeter-long) tentacles to carry coconut shells bigger than their roughly 3-inch-wide (8-centimeter-wide) bodies.
An octopus would dig up the two halves of a coconut shell, then use them as protective shielding when stopping in exposed areas or when resting in sediment.
Visit the National Geographic site, read about it and watch the cool videos!
Thanks to Kay Webster for this awesome birthday gift... The Cthulhuclava!
A lot of knitting work went into it... it's a bizarre pattern to be sure. Thanks Kay!
The 10th day of the 10th month for the 10-appendaged critters... Today is the day we promote awareness of squid and cuttlefish! Without squids, we wouldn't have had sepia, and we wouldn't have calamari. Cuttlefish, aside from being very intelligent, also happen to provide cuttlebones for parakeets and other pets.
Sepia Latimanus (photo from here)
Caribbean Reef Squid (photo from here)
Tonight is Nautilus Night, part of the three days of International Cephalopod Awareness Days. Despite the date, nautilus do not have 9 tentacles, but they had to be recognized somewhere and since nine begins with N, like nautilus... Today we recognize the nautilus, and the extinct cephalopods that went before...
Nautilus (photo from here)
Nautilus are the only extant cephalopods that have a full shell. Others have a cuttlebone or pen (squid and cuttlefish) or nothing at all (octopus).
It's 8/10, and that means it's the start of International Cephalopod Appreciation Days! This is the day when we all give thanks that cephalopods have not yet figured out how to eject us from the planet and take over think about our cephalopod friends (often over a plate of calamari rings).
This year, rather than being a one-day event it's spread over 3 days. Today is officially Octopus Day being the date most related to the number of arms of the recognized cephalopod.
Octopus vulgaris (photo taken from here)
I bought Spore last year through my Steam account. It was, in fact, the first game I ever purchased on the direct-to-drive system, as opposed to buying a boxed set.
If you've never heard of Spore, it is played as follows:
You start as a cell in the primordial pond. You can't even customize your looks initially, although you can in very short order. You eat to collect/grow DNA, and you find meteor parts to gain potential body-parts. You can build your food-eating and attack/defence abilities until you gain enough DNA to become a critter. This takes 10-20 minutes depending on how fast you are figuring out efficient movement, and how close you start to the multi-eyed, mega-mouthed monstrosities that seem to be nearby about half the time. Choices you make in this stage affect the next stage.
My most recent creature, freshly evolved and out of the pond.
You then grow legs and leave the pond. As a creature you have a nest, and you run around eating, hunting, and making friends with the other creatures on your continent. In so doing, you find other DNA which allows you to mutate into a more powerful creature. As you progress, your brain power grows and eventually you become sentient. You can rush through this phase in about 30 minutes, but if you spend an hour or two, you can collect the bulk of the body modifications and be pretty uber. In general, it's worth it to not be a minimalist here. Once again, choices you make as a creature affect the next stage.
Mastered my territory, ready to form a tribe
When you become sentient you form a tribe. The little video between the previous stage and this one is funny, and if you've ever seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, you've had the very same thought that is portrayed in this video, I guarantee it. As a tribe your goal is to gather food, grow your village, and ally with or conquer your neighbours. The first few times I played this, I found it took a long time, but I seem to be able to ace it in about an hour. In this stage, clothes make the (whatever) and you develop various clothing ideas from your own brain power and as gifts or plunder from neighbouring tribes. Eventually you will conquer the other tribes and unite your people into a civilization. Choices you make here affect your civilization in the future.
Full tribal regalia, ready to advance to civilization
At this stage, you own the world, but your civilization will be split into competing factions. Superficially, this part of the game works like a simplified version of the game Civilization with less resource management. Your goal is to overcome all your factions and make a people united under one (your) government. I did this in about an hour with the critters pictured here playing as a religious nutbag shaman and using a super-weapon. I've done it militarily in the past, but that seems to take longer. When the planet is united, you will develop space travel and make the journey to the stars!
My spaceship, ready to rock(et)
So, if you've read this far, you've seen that you can get from cell to space travel in about 3-5 hours depending on how efficient you are and how much time you spend dawdling in the various creature, building and vehicle creators. That's not bad for a game... but you're not done yet and we're actually at the point of this post.
I bought the game back in December and noticed that I didn't have a "completed" game, so I started fresh Sunday night. Monday morning, I hit the space stage. Cool. What I didn't realize (perhaps because I bought a direct-to-drive version and thus didn't have a manual) is that to get to the "end" of the space stage requires 275 command points. Command points are acquired by completing in-game certifications through missions, conquest, trade, and archaeology. It's a HUGE amount of work that seems to take hours and hours. Monday morning I hit space. I sunk no less than 16 hours in between then and the wee hours of this morning when I finally filled in the last evolution bar. And this was on EASY, presumably it would take longer across the board if I played on a less sucky difficulty level. It occurred to me, at last, why I don't play this game often: you can burn through the early stages but you NEVER finish the space stage.
Even when you get the 275 points, the game doesn't end... you can explore the galaxy, seemingly forever. That's kind of cool, but I just don't have the attention span for that. If I didn't have time off this summer, I'd never have seen the 275 points, let alone find out that it goes on forever.
Of course, the coolest part of the game is probably the creature creator. You don't even have to play the game to play with the creator. The creature creator allows you to build creatures (and buildings, and vehicles) and share them with the rest of the Spore world. If you are playing "logged in" to the Spore servers, your creatures will show up as NPCs in other people's games and theirs will show up in yours - this is a very cool feature. Also, creatures you've made (in the creator or from PREVIOUS GAME PLAYS) will show up in your own games as NPCs as well... so if you make the uber creature of ultimate death, recognize that you'll probably face him much sooner rather than later.
Each player who uses the online version has a few web pages. You can view my creations here. Most are from games, some are just from playing in the creature creator.
Anyway, so that's Spore. I am not sure if I like it or not. It's certainly got some fun aspects, but that final step... ugh. At least now I remember why I stopped playing it in the winter.
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