Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Wild Animal Park Early Risers Caravan Tour

link: Early Risers Tour photos

Last weekend for Cybil’s birthday we went on this awesome tour at the Wild Animal Park in San Diego and bought the photo set (we spend too much money there, since it goes back to the animals).

The tour we took is the best one the park offers (we’ve also taken the Cheetah Run, Medical Center, and Carnivores Tours). The Early Risers tour is the Photo Caravan, a talk with a bird keeper, behind the scenes with the Asian elephants, a private animal encounter, and brunch in the place where the original founder hit people up for money. All of that starts at 7:30am and is done before noon, so you miss the worst of the heat.

After the tour we went up to the Kupanda Falls Botanical Center, up above the Conifer Forest (map) and played Ra, which is this nifty bidding game that works surprisingly well with just 2 players. The top of the park is really nice. It’s a steep walk and there aren’t many animals (none if you go up as high as the Botanical Gardens), so there aren’t many people. We’re down at the park enough for tours that when we’re done we often just hang out and play board games.

I’ll fill in titles and descriptions of those photos eventually. In the meantime highlights are the cloned cow (with the short horns), the mean-ass cows with the nasty curved horns, and the funny anime/pokemon looking animal at the end is a Springhaas.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Desired Paths

link: Desired Paths

Don’t see so many of these here in the southwest where grass is worth so much green. But back east I’d rarely walk on paved paths, there’s almost always a shorter way.

Friday, February 29, 2008

Essoteric Celebrity Moment II

February 2008 has been a whirlwind. Started off by going up to SF to work with Adaptive Path every Monday for four weeks where I got to brainstorm with Jesse James Garret and had lunch with Peter Merholz and a bunch of other people from AP. So that sort of set the stage for this being an extraordinary month.

Now, I knew he was in town (I’m guilty of reading his livejournal in addition to watching his video podcast, and listening to the podcast On Board Games that he participates in), but when I saw Scott Nicholson of Board Games with Scott in the cafe where LA Games meets I was pleasantly surprised.

I even got a chance to chat with him a little bit, congratulating him on his new game that’s out in the fall. He said it’s not going to be for everyone, it’s a people-oriented economics game simulating the Tulip bubble market in 1637, but he’ll definitely make a video about it as soon as he gets a copy. Scott asked my name, and actually recognized it from when we corresponded via email back in September 2006. His email signature is where I borrowed the idea of providing a label for each of the several domain names in mine. Scott almost joined us for a game of Diamant, but opted for slightly more substance with Ticket to Ride (Diamant, now sold as Incan Gold, feels a lot like blackjack, even has gambling built in) .

So, that was my leap year. Not sure if anybody else will appreciate how cool it was, but just thought I’d share.