more lichen

I applied milk to the bark I am growing lichen on.  The milk provides proteins for the lichen, and it also sticks the lichen fragments to the bark.

I'm unsure as to whether or not I can provide an environment similar enough to the outdoors where I had collected the samples.  It will be tough to tell if anything will happen or not since lichen grows incredibly slow.  It would probably make lots more sense to grow lichen in the outdoors.  Some day when I have a home with enough land for trees and rocks, I will have to remember this.

For now, I continue moistening the bark regularly in the hopes that the lichen will colonize it.

the day I became a lichen enthusiast

For the unaware:

Lichen is a symbiotic relationship between a fungus and a photosynthetic algae or cyanobacteria (photosynthetic bacteria).

This day on one of my many strolls I happened upon a rock.
the Rock caught my eye, as it was colorful and covered with lichens.
I thought not much of it, and continued on my way.

the Rock

In Oregon a week prior, strands of fibrous lichen decorated the conifers.
The lichen garnered my attention and curiosity.
The question was put forth: how is it that lichen reproduces?
I pondered this for a moment but ultimately thought not much of it, and continued on my way.

This day I decided to answer the question that had lingered subtly in my mind.

For the curious:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichen#Reproduction_and_dispersal

There is a place I go to sit in silence.

As I was wandering back home after a visit to the Place, a thought struck me:

I will grow some lichen of my own.

the Place {saturated}

I went back to the rock, and scratched the lichen from it with my key.
Carrying it in the palm of my hand,  I returned to my home.
The lichen will be crushed and mixed with distilled water (pollutants in the tap water will only do harm).
I will then apply the mixture to some special pieces of bark I have got lying around, and moisten it regularly.

the Bark, day 0 {lichened, moistened}

A new question has presented itself: Will the lichen that was growing upon the rock colonize the bark?
They are, after all, two different substrates.
Time will answer this one.

~swm

the Oregon trail ii / field work and Me

I just returned from the trip to Oregon.  It was interesting to visit because I got to see some parts of the States I had never seen before - Western Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Eastern Oregon.  The northern portion of Idaho along the highway is quite beautiful with lots of coniferous trees and mountains.  It was around an 11 hour drive from Bozeman to La Grande, Oregon.  I tried to absorb lots of the scenery, but also spent some time reading some books I got for free at the library here in Bozeman.

This trip was quite enlightening for me, because it shed some light on a question I have been carrying around for a number of years: What if I had a career doing field work?  I had this question because I was seeking a number of jobs that required working outdoors after I graduated with my Ecology (and Evolution) degree.  I was ultimately unsuccessful in becoming an ecological scientist for a variety of reasons, and became a baker for a few years instead.  While this was the experience that I needed to best move forward on my path, it did leave the lingering curiosity of what life could have been like for me if things had turned out otherwise.

I feel that it would be rather presumptuous - even downright ridiculous - to make sweeping judgments about the broad category of field work based on a couple weeks of my experiences.  Even so, I am confident that I have gained many valid insights.

one of my colleagues.  this man exudes science.

the Good (mostly)

Traveling is fun

It's lots of fun for me to see new parts of the world.  I have curiosities about them, and it's interesting to learn about how people live in other places.  There are also other things to observe, such as weather patterns, new species of plants, animals or insects, and the patterns, placement and type of landscapes.  All of the elements mix to create a whole new feel.

Self shot in the hotel we stayed at in La Grande

I stayed for 3 nights at a married couple's farm house.  The couple was retired, but make some extra money by renting out rooms in their home.  They showed quite a bit of hospitality, baking scones and muffins for our group.  It was much more homey than a typical hotel stay might have been, and I often chatted with the old couple as if they were relatives of mine.

The town I was staying in for these 3 nights was Halfway, Oregon - a town with a population of around 400.  A very rural place with some beautiful scenery and nature all about.  I am a city boy, so this was rather unfamiliar to me.  The night sky here was extraordinary; the Milky Way was in clear sight with the naked eye, along with countless stars and specks of light.

Beautiful sites and working outside

Nature is beautiful.  What more can be said?  Going far from civilization and deep into the wilderness is quite an adventure.  It is fascinating and even a bit mystical to absorb yourself into the quiet stillness that remote areas of the world can offer (unmolested by human Hands...  lovely).  

Natural environments tend to clear my head and pull me into peaceful reveries, but the responsibilities I had while working inevitably distracted me from any emerging trance-like states before I could sink too deeply into the peacefulness of my surroundings. This was no time for daydreaming - there was work to be done.

I didn't snap as many shots as I could have, but I didn't want to drop my phone into a river or get it excessively dirty.

It's awesome to be able to work with fresh air and sunlight on your skin - something that would not normally happen in an office environment.

Adventure

It's fun sometimes to go on an adventure and deal with the unexpected.  Unknown complications may arise, and it can be satisfying to work as a team to make adjustments to the plan and solve problems together.  Plus it can be thrilling to overcome adversity, which was rather common for our team.

Meeting smart, interesting people

Scientists can be pretty interesting people.  I enjoyed the company of my team.  It is fun to observe their personalities, and explore their body of knowledge, which can be quite vast.  However, I think that I naturally look to the good in people, and the same could be said of office environments as well.

the Ugly

Very little control over your experience

When you go on a hiking trip or to a park, you are the master of your experience.  You can walk wherever you please, seek out shade if you desire it, and come or go at any time you desire to.  This is not the case with field work.  While working, you will be required to complete the tasks that have been assigned to you, whether or not it requires standing steady in one place for several hours under the hot sun, in the cold rain, or between the branches of a conifer with a steady stream of bugs flying into your face.  

You may have to take a long and strenuous hike into your site when you are tired and just want to rest a bit - but if you are sluggish, it will just be that much later when you get to leave for the day.  After all, the day does not end for you at 5 P.M.  It ends when you have completed your duties.

Long hours

We would often begin the day around 8 A.M. to remove everything from our van so that it could be organized and prepared for the work.  We would then decide who needed what in what vehicles, and make sure we had everything.  If we needed more supplies, we would head to the nearest hardware store to pick them up.

After we readied and loaded our equipment, we would drive to the watershed of interest.  The drive to the watershed usually took around an hour, but once we got there it often took at least another hour of traversing the rocky mountain roads and surveying the environment for us to determine the best place for us to do our cross sectional river measurements and deploy our temperature sensors.  

When we found the right place, we had to set up all the equipment, take the measurements, and tear down. If our other team was not finished deploying sensors, I would assist them.  By the time we finished everything that had to be done at the site, the sun was usually setting.

Then we had the drive back to our lodging.  We would usually get something to eat for dinner at the local general store, which didn't have much (the population of this town was roughly 400 people).  Then we would return to our lodging, cook our food, and having a meeting where we had discussions about the day's work and entered data that we had recorded into a database.  By the time this was done, it was usually around midnight.

We'd wake up again and repeat the process the next day.  This was the most hours per day I've ever had to work for any job.  

Health risks and discomfort

When working in a field environment, you may be asked to do something that has an element of risk associated with it.  For example, wading into a river with rushing and deep waters.  Luckily, none of the rivers I waded into were too dangerous, but I could easily imagine circumstances where getting into risky situations might be necessary to get the job done.

I have grown accustomed to the amenities of home and civilization.  There are no toilets in the woods, and poopin' outside is not my idea of a good time.  This didn't happen to me, but if you get diarrhea and you're 5 hours away from a toilet, you are going to be doing some pooping outside.  Hopefully you have something to wipe with, and enough of it to adequately clean yourself...  Also, this would likely be a disruption in the work flow.  This can reduce the ability of your team members to complete their tasks as well.

There's no restaurants or grocery stores in the woods.  My breakfast and lunch meals consisted primarily of smashed and melted granola bars, which was pretty unappealing.  I could have brought some other items I suppose, and with more experience learned what sorts of foods would be good to bring along.  This didn't happen, though.  I felt that perishables or items that required much preparation or utensils to eat would be unsuitable.

Working under the sweltering sun all day without good proper nutrition for days on end was quite exhausting for me.  What's nice about working in an office is that you never really risk injuries, hypothermia, unsanitary environments, and so on.  Carpal tunnel is a risk, but it can be easily avoided with proper posture and ergonomic awareness.  If you have an office job, you can go out to eat, and it's easy to bring snacks or perishable things for yourself.  A fridge is much more reliable than a cooler with ice that is replenished only once every few days.

Working with your hands

I'm sure this one is great for some people.  But working with your hands is not something that interests me.  There is lots of jury rigging components together, making repairs, hammering nails, working with pliers and so on.  

I completely butchered hammering a nail into a tree a few days ago.  At my defense, I was knee-deep in flowing water, and had to hammer at a strange angle with tree branches in my way, but still - the nail was completely bent after I was done with it...  A cruelly twisted disfigurement of the proud and straight nail it once was.  It had to be removed and replaced by someone with a keener eye and steadier hand than myself.

a temperature logger we strapped to a tree.  I butchered hammering a nail into the side opposite from what is seen in this pic.  These are camoflauged so that curious travelers do not dismantle them.

It's dirty

Everything was dirty after the week was over.  Our vehicle was caked in dust and mud, even the interior had become sullied by our activities.  My clothes were a bit grimy from traipsing through the mucky wilderness.  My hands became dirty after handling rebar, the dirty equipment, and plunging them into the river waters to adjust rocks or get an accurate measurement for water depth.

I had to wear waders for this job, so I could stand out in the middle of a stream with my measuring rod without subjecting my body to the cold waters.  By the end of the week, my wading boots were filthy with mud and rife with musty odors that come from leather and fabrics being kept slightly wet for a period of days without being allowed to fully dry.

Repetitive tasks

Our daily routine was more or less the same.  I only did this for two weeks, I imagine if I had to repeat these tasks for months that it would be mind numbing.  The task I probably spent the most time on each day involved holding a measuring rod steadily along a length of measuring tape.  The measuring tape positioned perpendicularly to the flow of water in the river bed, and was held in place by rebar that we had pounded into the ground.  

I would hold the rod steady for a few moments while one of my colleagues would read the elevation of the ground, which I would confirm by pointing at the measuring rod where the number I heard was located.  I would then report water depth if I was in the stream bed, scoot forward a number of centimeters, and repeat the process until we had spanned the length of the flood plain.  There is little room for creativity here.

Lack of opportunities

Field work positions are much harder to come by, more competitive to secure, and in general pay much less than computer science positions.  This is just another nail in the coffin for me.  I'd rather have companies fighting over themselves to hire me, and get to choose exactly what city I want to live in than be subject to the scarceness of environmental jobs, which ultimately require living wherever it is that you can find work.

Assessments and predictions

I was a bit naive in my desires for a career in field work.  Completing work based tasks in an outdoor environment is far different from taking a leisurely excursion to a nature site.   I thought I'd like field work because I enjoy being outside.  But working in the outdoors at remote sites fouls some of the things I enjoy most about the experience. 

One of the most enjoyable aspects of nature for me is the reverie - 

the peacefulness, the stillness, the quiet -

the state of mind that arises naturally when the flow of thoughts ceases and you become immersed in the natural setting.  Work duties and the presence of others can easily disrupt this experience for me.

While I love the outdoors, field work is probably not for me.

Two of the things I like the most about being outside are the fresh air and access to sunlight.  Being in a stuffy office with no windows for months on end sucks.  But I do not foresee that a dank and stale cubicle, separated from nature's gifts will become my permanent dwelling if I pursue an office based career.

As technology continues to develop further, I anticipate that personal mobility and freedom in the choosing of work locations/environments and time schedules will increase dramatically.  I have already witnessed employees at my previous workplace who lived where they chose to, and did not report into the office for work first-hand.  This means that if they wanted to, they could go to a park, pop open their laptop, and hammer out some code at their leisure.  For meetings, they simply phoned in.  These individuals had a high degree of control over their surroundings.

I think that it is plausible that I could secure a similar situation for myself.  Everything is becoming more portable, and communication between others continues to grow easier.  So why shouldn't it be commonplace for an individual to work where he chooses as technology continues to develop?  

In my near future, I see myself making bank while writing code, sitting on a towel over grass and beneath the shade of a tree in my back yard with a cold beer at hand, and all the amenities of my home within easy reach.  .

the Aftermath

The girls (both a few years younger than I) and myself got to head back home a day earlier than we expected to.  The original plan had been that on Friday we would go to a site 2.5 hours from our lodging (and in the opposite direction of Bozeman), complete our duties, and then begin the drive back to Bozeman.  This would have been a hellishly long day.  We were relieved that we could come home early.

on the way Home

I spent the last few hours of the drive reading.  One of the books I got for free, "Under a Calculating Star" by John Morressy, was quite engaging.  It is a sci-fi story about a legendary treasure on the quarantined and deadly planet of Borroq-Thaddoi.  I don't usually read much other than reddit or other internet discussions, but this book rekindled my interest in literature, at least temporarily.  I stopped reading right before I finished the book to give the girls some attention and conversation, as I had neglected interacting with them while I was reading.

The next day, I decided that the most exciting thing I could do would be to finish the book.  I did this even before I fired up my computer, which I usually do very soon after having awakened.  It was a beautiful day out, albeit slightly windy, so I went to the duck pond to finish the last few pages of my book.  The ducks were quite vocal today, so I got to hear lots of quacks as I read.  There were several very young ducks at the pond, and some very small birds too.

I enjoyed the ending of the book.  It was unexpected.  I am considering buying the rest of the books in the series, which was written mostly in the 70s.

This experience has left me with some new perspectives and ideas, which I value highly.  Even though it was not always comfortable, it was a bit of fun and it taught me lots about myself.  It represents a valid and treasured part of my path, just like every other experience I have had (including the humiliating ones).  There are no missteps to be taken here.

Good day.

~swampy

dream: 120617

I am tussling with an old friend (let's call him Wolverine).  We are belittling each other a bit, and fighting about how much money we make.  I violently move an elbow or some limb as we are grappling on the floor, and Wolverine gets a gash above his eyebrow.  We immediately relax, I ask if he wants a band-aid or something for the wound.  He agrees to this, and walks away to find a chair in my house to sit in.

The furniture and decor of the house I recognize as my own is quite strange, and actually appears nothing like my actual house.  The layout, however, is roughly the same.  The objects in the house are mostly transparent and somewhat crystalline, with tall points and many layered edges.  In certain areas it appears similar to how a series of panes of glass arranged in parallel might look.  The walls appear in this style as well.

I stand up and remove my glasses.  I notice that my vision does not blur, and soon realize that I am dreaming.  Since I don't need my glasses, I tuck them into my shirt pocket.  I am rummaging around for a band-aid near Wolverine, and he comments, "Oh, you got contacts?"  I reply, "No, I am dreaming."  There is a bit of a grin on Wolverine's face that quickly blurs and fades to blackness, at which point I awaken.

The Oregon Trail

Tomorrow I am headed on a road trip to Oregon.  It will take about 10 or 11 hours to get to our first destination, which I believe will be a hotel.  Then there will be 4 or 5 days of field work, traveling to various different watersheds in eastern Oregon.

I probably won't blog anything until I return from the trip.  I have drafts of a few more posts, but I will be waiting until I deal with all the photos before posting them.

review: calzone from Colombo's Pizza and Pasta

food.  calzone.  by Colombo's Pizza and Pasta

$6.95 gets you a calzone with 2 ingredients at Colombo's.  Each extra ingredient is another $0.50.  I got mine with broccoli, black olives, and mushroom.  Its other main ingredients were a cheese filling (mostly ricotta), and a cup of marinara sauce.  I waited about 30 minutes after ordering before I received it - if I decide to eat here again I will probably call in my order and arrive when it is almost ready instead of waiting at the restaurant for so long.

The visual presentation of the calzone was good.  Scoring the dough was a nice touch, and gave easy access to the interior, which consisted mainly of a ricotta cheese filling.  After opening the calzone up a bit, I poured the cup of marinara sauce over the inside.  The aroma was appetizing, and consisted mainly of ricotta cheese.

I enjoyed this with a Blue Moon: Summer Honey Wheat, a seasonal offering from Blue Moon in Golden, CO.  I felt that the light bodied and smooth wheat beer paired well with the fatty calzone.

The calzone filling was great with the marinara sauce.  It was all very delicious together.  The ingredients were cooked well, and the flavors complimented one another.  Unfortunately, the marinara sauce only lasted until I had eaten roughly half of the calzone.  From that point onward, there was no more sauce.  The calzone was still good, but felt somewhat incomplete without the acidic tomato sauce.

The doughy shell of the calzone was slightly soggy with oil on its underside.  There was a bit of an excess of the dry dough near where it had been pinched together prior to baking, but this is to be expected.  I ate the excess by itself and washed it down with the Blue Moon.  It was alright.  I felt that if I had combined a large chunk of the dough with the filling in my mouth that it would only have detracted from the filling, which is what I was most interested in tasting.

Rating

This would have got a near perfect score if it weren't for the lack of marinara sauce during the later portion of the meal.  Until that point it was satisfying and delicious.  Afterward, the dish was lacking a primary component of flavor that I expect from an italian dish, the tomato.  Colombo's Pizza and Pasta, your calzone has earned 4/5 sprigmeats heads.  I love you meespree.

~swamp

Dead magpie

This evening as I was walking downtown to get something to eat I came across a dead magpie lying on the sidewalk.  I stopped walking and observed for a moment in silence.  I decided that it ought to have a better resting place.  Near to me was an old and torn piece of paper that had been stapled to a wooden post.  It was no longer useful as an advertisement and I needed something to pick the bird up with, so I ripped the paper off the post and used it to wrap the bird.

I walked for a ways, pondering on what might be an appropriate site.  I didn't think about it much and just allowed myself to become drawn to whatever location happened to stand out.  Eventually I came across a tall pine with low lying branches.  This would offer adequate protection from most human activities.

I picked 3 dandelion blossoms, which were on the path to the tree.  I laid the bird down near a rock beneath the pine, and left the blossoms as an offering of peace.

Then I went on my way, towards Main street.  On the way, I came across a small burrowing mammal that appeared to be having seizures in the middle of a lane in a road.  I love these little critters - they are very cute  like a small cross between a prairie dog and squirrel or something of that nature.

I was a bit agitated because I didn't think I could do much for this one.  It seemed to have been struck by a vehicle and was probably better left dead than maimed.  I left it in the road and kept walking.  Some cars continued to pass by me.

I began to reconsider my decision to leave the mammal a few moments after I had walked past it, thinking that I could move it out of the road.  I turned back to look.  It was no longer moving.  A magpie was pecking at its limp body.

review: Naked Noodle's Zorba the Geek

food.  penne pasta.  by The Naked Noodle, Bozeman MT


Main ingredients: pasta, tomato, artichoke hearts, capers, greek olives, feta cheese and a white wine sauce.

This pasta dish is served hot, is slightly acidic and has a bit of a strange aroma - possibly from some interactions between the capers, olives, and white wine.  The visual presentation of the dish is passable.  I got this in a to go box, so I could not have high expectations for its appearance.

The fruits and vegetables in this dish are fresh and satisfying.  I found the noodles to be a bit too limp for my liking.  When considered independently, the ingredients work well.  But there is something missing.

The noodles are relatively dry as I chew them, and the ingredients feel isolated from one another.  The sauce has been nearly completely divorced from the rest of the dish, and so nothing is trying it together.  The noodles or other ingredients are not coated by the sauce, and this remains true even after mixing.  Even as I deliberately combine the sauce with the noodles and other ingredients in my mouth, it feels as though they do not intermingle.

the sauce sits alone in a pool of its own self loathing

After I had eaten all the solid ingredients, a puddle of sauce remained in my to go box.  I didn't have a spoon or any elegant way to approach drinking the sauce, so I poured the remainder of it into my mouth.  It was decent, although it had cooled by this point.  It was a bit tangy and acidic.  Drinking it was definitely not an unpleasant experience.

Rating

This was an acceptable dish, but I would be unlikely to order it again.  The individual ingredients were satisfying.  The sauce, however, was ineffective.  This resulted in dry noodles and ingredients who could not easily work together to create one flavor shared by the whole of the dish.  Zorba the Geek, you deserve 2.5/5 swampmang heads.  (I'll have to apologize to my friend and fellow blogger, Charles, for stealing this rating system.  But I felt that the heads would be more apt than nipples or horse cocks for this one)

review: new belgium's 1554

Beer.  Dark ale.  5.6% abv

New Belgium is a brewery that is located in my hometown, Fort Collins CO.  There are many breweries there, and New Belgium is one of the most prominent.  It is funny, a 6 pack about 1 mile away from the brewery costs around $10.  In Montana, over 600 miles away from the brewery, the exact same 6 pack costs around $7.50.

1554 is one of several types of beer that New Belgium has created.  It is a personal favorite of mine.  This is a beer that I can drink bottle after bottle and never tire of.  It has been labeled as "enlightened black ale", and I am inclined to agree.

It is difficult for me to characterize the flavor profile of this beer - perhaps my vocabulary is simply not well developed yet.  That is something that will continue to grow with my continuing research of food and beverages - including critiques.  

This is a medium to heavy bodied ale which is quite dark in color.  I take a sip from the bottle, and notice about an inch of head as I place the bottle back down.  It tastes rather sweet on the front portion of the tongue and palate.  There is a definite chocolaty finish that is somewhat dry.  This beer is remarkably smooth - it goes down very easy and there is absolutely no trace of the "bitter beer" sensation or "blech" reflex.  How lovely.

Mmmm, now that's good beer.

Simply delicious.  It is not overly filling.  It could not be considered a meal, like Guinness Stout.  This is a beer you can drink as a substitute for an evening snack.  Even so, it would be an easy task to drink a 6 pack (or 12 bottles) to yourself in one evening.

This is an excellent beer.  Easily within my top 3 favorites of all time.

makes me smile

My Rating

How could I award any less?  This beer has earned what it deserves.  1554, as created by New Belgium, I hereby bestow unto you 5/5 horse cocks.

I have no idea what is up with this image.  I saw it on a bulletin board on the MSU campus.  I thought of a possible modification - horse caulk - in which the horse would share half it's body with a tube of caulk.  Perhaps I will create that image and post it on the bulletin board some day.

And with that I will bid you Good day.

~chugz's milk.  If you are my roomie and you drink from my milk carton I will motherfucking kill you.  jk.  I'm not jk.

my work 2 weeks into REU

So, I am participating in an REU this summer in Bozeman, Montana.  REU stands for Research Experiences for Undergraduates.

The project I am working on involves environmental modeling.  We are interested in fleshing out a working model for heat flux in watersheds.  What we are trying to do is develop a software solution that can correctly predict how temperature will change as water moves downstream in a watershed.

This is a rather complicated problem to solve.  There are numerous ways in which heat can be added to or removed from a body of water.  Some of these include evaporation, radiation, conduction/convection with bodies of air or the ground, and water removed from or added to the system via subsurface interactions.

I am working with another REU student on the computer science side of things to achieve our objective of extending and fleshing out the current model for temperature flux that has been put in place.  I have not seen this model yet myself, but to my understanding it is little more than a skeleton - very little has been implemented yet.

We have not done much work on the software side of things yet, aside from getting a basic model to run on our systems.  Most of my first week in Bozeman was spent familiarizing myself with the area and engaging in social interactions with the other REU students.

This past week, my REU partner and myself began doing field work.  We are playing the part of the hydrologist who is collecting the relevant data from the streams and rivers.  This week was only for practice. Next week we are taking a road trip to Oregon to do the real thing.  The sequence of events for gathering river data is roughly as follows:

1. Find an adequate spot in the river to make your measurements.  This should be somewhere that a sensor can be deployed for a long period of time (months) without being disturbed by people, animals, or the environment.  Additionally, the body of water should be well mixed.  The river banks should be uniform, and the river bed should be composed of rocks which are generally uniform in size and shape.  Riffles (steady water flow) are preferred to pools (water is not flowing downstream uniformly).  Obviously, finding an ideal spot to meet all these requirements is not always possible.
2. Once a site has been selected, pound some pegs which have been flagged with a fluorescent plastic into the ground.  These pegs should form a line that is perpendicular to the direction of water flow in the river.  The pegs will then be connected with a measuring tape.
3. Take elevation measurements along the cross section, including water depth where applicable.
4. Take water flow rate measurements along the cross section, including water depth where applicable.
5. Package, disguise and deploy the long term temperature sensor.  This will be securely attached to a rock or some object with wire.
6. Enter the data that was recorded into an Excel spreadsheet.

The entire process will take several hours.  We have repeated this 3 times at 3 different sites during this week.

I am looking forward to next week in Oregon.  I forgot to bring any books with me to Bozeman, and the drive will take between 10 and 11 hours.  Plus, there will be downtime at campsites, and driving to other sites could take several hours.  I found some random free books at the bookstore and in the computer science building that I haven't looked at closely yet.  They will suffice, regardless of content.

~chugstaz

review: diablo iii (one month after release)

Video game (hack 'n slash)

The highly anticipated sequel to Diablo ii (threequel to Diablo i?).  Published by arguably the most prominent and successful game company on Earth.  I spent years anticipating this one.

While this is (obviously) a very successful title with several million purchases, the game has some flaws in terms of game design.  I feel that most who would criticize this game because of unstable servers, lag issues, disconnects, or spotty services in general do not truly understand the complexities and technical challenges involved in providing excellent internet services to millions of subscribers.  Considering the sheer volume of players, I feel that the development team has actually done quite well in this area.  This review will be focused on game design rather than technical issues.

What works

Just about everything in the earlier difficulties works well.  For those who may not know, Diablo iii is broken up into 4 "difficulties".  I would use the term difficulty loosely here, and we will see why a bit later.  Completing the game on one difficulty unlocks the next.  Each successive difficulty contains the same content, but with bigger numbers, essentially.

Rapid character progression and abundant customization options

In the first part of the game, you get to level up your character.  Leveling up is pretty fun.  Your character has much more freedom in what abilities they can use.  You rapidly become stronger, and get to notice how much awesome your character is becoming.  There are no real penalties for sacrificing killing efficiency.  You can wear a hat because it looks cool, even though it doesn't give very good stats.  You can use an ability because it is fun or has good graphics.  Since there are different ways to play, the game is interesting and fun.

Death vs. progression is a function of skill/tactics

Action never slows down too much.  At times it seems like monsters may be spaced a bit far apart, so that it takes a while to start fighting the next monster pack - but not to the degree that it becomes annoying.  For the most part, you mow down monsters at a steady pace.  The only way you would die is if you make some egregious mistakes.  If you do die, it is because you were not paying attention, or you were not playing smart.  In other words, you were probably "standing in the fire".  

Item upgrades can be obtained from monsters you yourself have killed

When you kill monsters, they will often drop items.  Finding items that you can actually use, and make your character more powerful is actually pretty common.  It is important to note that receiving item upgrades from a monster you killed with your own hands is very satisfying, and actually plays a role in activating reward centers of the brain.  This sensation of reward is what keeps games fun, and is why people play them.

What doesn't work

The game changes dramatically at the end game.  The last difficulty setting is "Inferno", and it is played at maximum level.  At this point in the game, your character can no longer level up.  The only way to become more powerful at this point is by getting new items.

Slow character progression

Earlier in the game, you could make progress in half an hour or less.  Leveling up is quick, and results in a noticeable power increase with new abilities to boot.  It is also easy to progress through the quests, and get to see new content.  But in Inferno, it can take days to complete one "act" (one difficulty level is composed of 4 very roughly equivalent acts).  This is somewhat understandable, as there is not as much incentive to play after you have beaten the game on Inferno (so why not draw it out?), but it does result in an experience that is unpleasantly slow at times.  Additionally, you rely solely on items to become stronger in Inferno.  This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for...

The auction house is the only feasible way to get good items

In Inferno, almost every item that you find is completely useless to you.  Most of it is vendor trash (useless to other players as well).  I seem to recall a Blizzard developer "blue post" explaining that due to the Auction House (a system that Blizzard developed to replace 3rd party selling of digital items or gold to other players), the chances for good items to drop would have to be greatly reduced.  Otherwise, if you have several million people playing and they can all get good items easily, the economy would be flooded with great items.  There would be little incentive to play if your character so easily and quickly rises to his maximum potential by possessing the best items in the game.

This is a huge problem.  Remember how finding a sweet item upgrade from that monster you just killed activates reward centers in your brain?  Here's something that doesn't activate those same reward centers:  Playing the same content over and over for days to scrape together enough gold to buy an upgrade on the auction house.  If you can't beat Act 2, you have to play Act 1 over and over and over and over again until you get enough gold to buy the gear it takes to beat Act 2.  Total fail here.  Browsing through hundreds of item listings on the AH searching for an upgrade isn't fun...  It sucks.  

Some people like economics and playing on the AH, they are in the minority in my opinion.  The game is no longer about action and demon slaying, it is about finding good items on the AH.

Now, why would Blizzard do this?  I suspect the fact that Blizzard takes a cut of sales in the "real money auction house" is a large contributing factor.  Sure, the game is free to play and server architecture and internet services maintenance has a cost associated with it - but this seemingly innocent design decision to make some extra cash through the micro transactions really hosed the game's fun factor.

The auction house.  Get used to this if you want to do Inferno.

Death vs. progression is a function of YOUR ITEMS

Oh, that monster killed you in one hit before you even had time to react?  Guess you better farm gold for a few days until you can buy some better items.  This is literally the only factor of difficulty in the end game.  If you are not progressing, your equipment is not good enough.  If your equipment is very good, you can mash the keyboard with cats duct taped to your hands and still kill everything.  Fun, right?  No.  Pointless.  Getting killed in one hit isn't fun or exciting, it is tedious.

Ridiculous monster combinations

A little more background - there are packs of monsters ("champion packs" or "rare packs") in the game that have special abilities.  The application of these abilities ("affixes") happens randomly.  These are essentially just souped up versions of the normal packs.  In each successive difficulty, the champion packs gain an additional affix until Inferno, where they will have 4 affixes.

This wouldn't be so bad if some of the affixes weren't so overpowered or impossible to beat in certain combinations.  Take this for example:

Arcane, jailer, vortex.  Awesome.  So you get pulled into a pack of monsters (vortex) that hit like trucks, and then jailed (unable to move character).  Then the arcane sentries start flying.  All you can do is try to kill them before you die, but you'll die instantly if one of the arcane sentries hits you (these are basically purple lasers that rotate on the floor).  Normally you can avoid them without too much difficulty, but it is impossible when the monsters pull you to them and freeze you in place.  

So, what do you do when you encounter something like this?  Leave the game and start it up again.  Kind of lame, but it's all you can really do.  You don't lose much progress necessarily, but you will acquire less gold and fewer magic items for a period of time if you had recently killed any champion or rare packs.

Imbalance between ranged and melee classes

Just about everyone who got a melee oriented character to Inferno came upon the realization, "Oh...  This sucks."  You have to stand next to a monster to do damage, but monsters do ridiculous damage to you in one hit.  Enough to make it nearly impossible to kill them by standing there and wailing on monsters, which is what you like doing and had worked for the whole previous portion of the game.  The only solution here is to spend millions of gold on better items, or start over with a ranged class.

Additionally, some monster affixes such as "molten" or "plagued" unfairly punish melee characters.  These abilities place zones of certain death on the ground all over the place, which the monsters can just stand in.  You have to stand right next to a monster to kill it, but if you come anywhere near it you will die almost instantly from the zone of death.  Nice.  These affixes are essentially trivial to deal with for ranged characters, who have the mobility to avoid these effects (unless the champion pack also has abilities that cause you to lose control of your character).

Much fewer customization options

There are some abilities that just plain do not work in inferno.  The wizard's energy twister, or the witch doctor's locust swarm are examples of abilities that are generally never used in inferno, although many other examples exist.  You might have had lots of fun using cool abilities while leveling up, but they are just not worth it anymore.  Not fun.

Why is this?  There is a huge emphasis on defensive abilities, for one.  Your character is limited to using 6 abilities, and so lower priority offensive abilities must be sacrificed just so you can stay alive.  But at the core of the issue, progressing in Inferno requires peak efficiency.  Since it is impossible to balance a multitude of abilities such that all have equal efficiency, get used to your nether tentacles.  This will be your primary source of damage as a demon hunter in Inferno.

Cutscenes and constantly being taunted by the villain for a particular Act

(Storytelling)

Diablo iii has lots of cutscenes all throughout the game.  The action will stop for a moment, you will lose control of your character, and the scene will begin.  If there was an option to disable cutscenes, this would have been alright.  But there is no such option.

Diablo iii is a game that's designed around redoing the same content over and over and over again, hundreds of times.  Cutscenes get dull around the second or third time.  By that point I'm playing to slay beasts and demons, not for story.  The cutscenes have to be skipped every time.  Even this wouldn't be all that bad, but  for some reason Blizzard decided to add cutscenes right before and even during boss fights.  This means that every time you die fighting a boss, you have to skip the cutscene.  

During the fight with the last boss in the game, there is a point where after you damage him enough, there are 2 cutscenes right in a row, so you have to skip the cutscenes twice...  Why not just make this one cutscene?  Or better yet, don't put cutscenes in a boss fight.  No one wants to see the same cutscene on any boss kill attempt after their first playthrough.  This gets annoying very quickly.

Add to that the fact that the added enjoyment via the cutscenes is modest at best even on the first playthroughs of the game, and you've got a real failure of a design model.

Allow me to digress for a moment, and discuss a different game: World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King era.  This was, for me, a pinnacle or very high point in video game storytelling.  You see the villain sprinkled throughout your journeys in Northrend.  He is always doing something badass, but he gives you some space;  you do not interact with the Lich King is not in every single quest.  This results in an experience where by the end of the expansion, you really want to kill this guy.  He is a villain you love to hate.  You've witnessed a wide breadth of atrocities he has committed.  You are ready to bring him to Justice.

The same can be said of FF7 with Sephiroth, and FF3 with Kefka.  The story was done excellently in both of these titles.  The gradual interactions with the villain helped to establish a personal and emotional connection to them.  It made them feel like a real person.  When it is time to fight them, it is Sweet.  Thrilling.  Gratifying.  You are putting the entity responsible for vast devastation and great evils to justice.  

How does this work in Diablo iii?  Every 2-5 minutes you get this from the boss for that Act: "Hey, hero...  What's up?  You destroyed my ballistas/demonic contraption/battle lieutenant but I totally don't even care.  You'll never defeat me."  Every. 5. Minutes.  (I'm slightly exaggerating here, but this is what it feels like when you are on an Act for the 50th time).  It's stupid.  

I get the feeling that the developers were attempting to establish this personal connection to the villain, but this was a total failure.  It's not going to work on content that is designed to be repeated hundreds of times.  Additionally, the span of an Act is only a couple hours...  This is not enough time for this design model to work.  Wrath of the Lich King could take a few weeks to beat for a relatively normal player, and the same could be said of FF7 and FF3.

And when you finally do kill the boss of the Act - who gives a shit?  In this game, his death does not persist or matter in any way.  You will probably just vendor the worthless magic items he dropped, leave the game, remake it, and kill him again.

Rating

For all its flaws, Diablo iii is still a fun game.  It is worth playing, and worth the price tag.  This is just not the game that I was hoping it could be - the game that I could play for days on end without tiring of it.  Perhaps that is because I am growing up now, and am not entertained so easily by video games.   Although, I honestly doubt that factor is large enough to explain the bulk of my concerns with this game.

Some of the issues will undoubtedly be improved as time goes on and Blizzard continues to improve the game.  This review is as of 6/15/2012, one month after release.

I don't have a strict rating system in place yet.  For this one, I'll use nipples.  Diablo iii (as of one month after release), I hereby grant you 3.5/5 nipples.

~swamp

the state of things / introduction

Hello there.

I would like to take a moment to introduce myself and express my intentions for this blog.

My name is swampmang, and I am an undergraduate computer science student currently living in Bozeman, MT.  I was hired to do research in environmental modeling here for the summer.  This is a particularly exciting opportunity for me for several reasons.  It allows me to experience working in new environments, with new objectives, and with new people.

These new experiences and interactions give me more information to make a better decision about the life and career I want to have, which is why I chose to leave my (better paying) job at home in Fort Collins, CO to do this.  I am also interested in environmental science, and this is giving me the opportunity to work in that field.

I will be using this blog primarily as a means for creative outlet, which I feel promotes good health.  I have not had the chance to write much code  or design software recently, which I feel are both very creative tasks.  Most of my work lately is taking measurements.  Being outside is nice, but the work itself leaves very little room for creativity.

So what will I be writing about?  I plan on writing about my experiences, posting pics from my travels, and reviewing products, systems, or ideas.

Good day to you.
~swampy