Water water everywhere

What do they got? A lot of sand. We've got a hot crustacean band.

"Under the Sea," The Little Mermaid

As I wrote last time I was in Florida, even though I live five minutes from the ocean in New Jersey, it doesn't tempt me. Today, I swam in both the gulf and a hotel swimming pool. Why I actually want to get in the water while on vacation, and not when it's nearby, I can't say.

I was at Delnor-Wuggins Pass State Park, (If you're wondering about the name, I think that the beach is named after a Delnor, and the pass is inamed after a Wiggins. There was a plaque just off a parking lot explaining it, but I didn't really look at it too closely.) which is very pretty, as you can see:

 The water isn't quite crystal clear, and there were a few leaves and dead bugs floating in it, but it was still pretty clean, and a nice shade of green. When I entered it, I rushed in because I thought it would be best to immerse myself in the chilly water immediately, but it turned out to be surprisingly warm. 

I was at Delnor beach to celebrate my aunt's 85th birthday, and it was a wonderful event, but I don't want to talk about it too much on a blog anyone can read, just in case some relatives or people at the party don't want names and details put where anyone can see them. (Not that I have anything bad to say.) I will note, since the conversation has come up several times in the last few days, that she is not technically my aunt, but great-aunt. I have decided I prefer to refer to relatives as "aunt/uncle" or "cousin," instead of "fourth cousin three times removed" or "former uncle-in-law." 

Following the party, I returned to the hotel, where, with more relatives, I went into the pool. That too was surprisingly warm. I suppose it's something to do with the fact the temperature is in the 80s most days of the year and the pool is in sunlight a large amount of the time is what makes it so comfortable.

Off we went into the wild blue yonder

(Homer's thoughts) Oh, glory of glories. Oh heavenly testament to the eternal majesty of God's creation. (Out  loud) Holy macaroni!

Homer Simpson, Treehouse of Horrors VI

I had several conversations today about how friggin' cool a smart phone is. Here's a picture I took with my smart phone, that I suppose I could have taken with any digital camera. However, I wouldn't normally have had a camera in my pocket at that moment:

In the past, my camera would have been in my luggage. But since my phone is also my music player, I had it while I was looking out the window at 30,000 feet.

For some reason, most travellers I know don't like the window seat. They prefer the convenience of being able to stretch whenever they want, and not needing to ask others to move so they can use the restroom. But, perhaps because I fly so infrequently, I like looking out the window. There's something amazing about looking at the roofs of buildings, then broad patches of land, then seeing clouds and the shadows they cast, and finally reaching the height where the clouds look like a strange all-white landscape. At one point we flew through a thunderstorm, which did generate a little turbulence, but also made a fascinating viewing experience. The sky darkened and it seemed like we were driving through fog. 

Everything about air travel except the actual flying is, at best, annoying, and at worse uncomfortable. I don't feel more secure because I was asked to take off my shoes. I don't think that giving out 20-cent packages of pretzels or some other minor snack was really bankrupting the airlines, and they should resume that practice. I don't know why they think someone should pay them $8 extra to watch episodes of CSI Miami on a tiny screen.

But the flying itself wants to make you say holy macaroni.

I'm leaving on a jet plane

THE GREAT problem is at length solved! The air, as well as the earth and the ocean, has been subdued by science, and will become a common and convenient highway for mankind. The Atlantic has been actually crossed in a Balloon! and this too without difficulty-without any great apparent danger-with thorough control of the machine-and in the inconceivably brief period of seventy-five hours from shore to shore! 

Edgar Allen Poe

Tomorrow, I embark on my first notable trip since last year, and what I think is my first time leaving the state since I went to New York City in January. I really need to get out more.

It's not a long trip, just a long weekend in Naples, Florida. This time, instead of driving down like I did last year, I'm taking a plane, which makes a lot more sense for a four-day trip. Because I liked being thoroughly connected during my last trip, I've decided to bring a laptop again. However, the laptop I took with me last time was a 17-incher with a full keyboard, and is rather heavy. It was great when I could throw it in the trunk of my car, but not if I have to fit it into a suitcase. So I picked up a cute little netbook. (I'd have picked up a tablet, but I really like having a keyboard.)

I was planning to throw the netbook in my suitcase, but now I'm not sure if I can or not. This "helpful" page from the TSA tells me, with capital letters DO NOT pack laptops in checked baggage. Later, when giving tips on checked baggage, it suggests you should "LABEL your laptop computer." So I'm throwing my computer in my backpack, and hoping it's not too much of a pain to get through security.

I hope an extra weight in my backpack is the worst thing I experience at Newark tomorrow.

Number nine. Number nine. Number nine.

How long till my soul gets it right? Can any human being ever reached that kind of light?

Indigo Girls, "Galileo"

I have just finished playing 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors, an interactive novel/adventure horror game. I knew that it was my kind of game when one of the characters used the phrase "saponification." For those who don't feel like Googling it, saponification is the the process through which fat is transformed into wax or soap. In the conversation the characters were having, they were talking about it happening in to a human corpse, which keeps it from decaying.  (Wikipedia tells me this form of saponification is known as adipocere, but the game doesn't get into that level of distinction). Later in the game was another esoteric word, which I can't mention without giving away a major plot point. I bet that sort of conversation never crops up in Kirby, Pokemon or your typical DS game. 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors is a horror game, and it does have some gruesome imagery and blood, but it's also got existentialism, strange conspiracy theories, shout outs to Kurt Vonnegut, and some beautiful literate imagery.

For those unfamiliar with the game genres, an interactive novel is something like a choose your own adventure series on a computer, with pictures, sound and some minimal animation to go with the words. You go through a story, and at certain points you have to make a decision, which will both affect which future decisions you have to make, and the ending of the story. Because of this, they have a fair amount of replay value. Adventure games, strangely, don't involve adventuring. They involve solving puzzles. 999 weaves these together.

If you want a demo, you can go to the game's website. That "M" on the box means the game is meant for adults, so if you're under18 you'll need to lie to play it. The demo is somewhat different than the real game, but gives you some of the flavor of the introduction.

The story is told from the point of view of Junpei, a young college student. One day, he comes home to his apartment and finds a mysterious man in a gas mask, who quickly tranquilizes him. Junpei wakes up in the crew quarters of a ship, with a locked door, with a bracelet with the number '5' locked on his wrist. Then the window breaks, and the room starts filling up wirh water. He must figure out how to get out of the room, solving a series of puzzles to do so. (Don't worry, you can't die during the puzzle solving sections.)

Once Junpei escapes the room, he discovers eight other people on the ship, each wearing a bracelet with a different number. One of them is a girl he went to grade school with, and hasn't seen for years, but discovers he still has a crush on. The others include a giant man with amnesia, a woman in her 40s who is wearing far too little clothing, a blind man and his pink-haired sister, and several others.

The group hears over a loud speaker that they were brought here by Zero, to play the Nonary Game. Different rooms on this ship have different numbers, and there are rules for how the group must go through.
If they can find the correct door, they can escape. If they can't the ship will flood. The group needs to figure out what to do. But quickly someone dies, and the tension ratchets up. Why were they brought here? Who is Zero and what does he want with them? Can they escape with their lives?

As I said, each play-through gives a totally different experience.

The first time I played it, I was in a game filled with conspiracy theories -- about whether the Titanic ever really sank, about whether a mummy could exist, if scientists had perfected the Ice-9 that Vonnegut wrote about (ice which doesn't melt until it's 96 degrees). There were several other out-there theories. When I played that version, I didn't like the one character who struck me as cold, manipulating, and possibly in on the conspiracy. Also, I died rather horribly at the end.

Fortunately, I could play it again, armed with what I had learned the first time. (The game lets you fast forward through text you've already seen, but not puzzles, so if you play it several times, you'll need to keep escaping from the same rooms.) It let me correct a few choices I'd made before. And I learned something about the character I didn't like which made me now think of them as a poor victim, clearly not part of the mystery. Plus, this ending was different, with multiple people dying horribly in totally different circumstances.

I played it a couple of more times, trying to build on what I had learned. (One of the times I died, I said to myself "so that's what that puzzle represented.") Then, I looked up how to get the "good" endings, with the best possible solutions.

I don't want to spoil it for anyone who's planning to check it out. I found the ending very satisfying. Strange, but effective.

Sometimes you need to read a book multiple times to appreciate the details. In this case, you see different parts of the book each time you play the game. I like the effect.

A fairly nerdy day in New York City

'Cause everyone's your friend in New York City/ And everything looks beautiful when you're young and pretty/ The streets are paved with diamonds and there's just so much to see/ But the best thing about New York City is you and me

New York City, They Might Be Giants

It's been a while since I'd really gone anywhere, so I decided to take a trip to New York City.The result turned out to be fairly nerdy, though I definitely had fun. If you enjoy video games, I went to the Nintendo Store. If you like strange foreign cartoons, I saw The Illusionist. And to round out the day, I stopped at the Complete Strategist, one of the biggest hobby shops on the East Coast.

Here's the day, with some pictures.

Getting there:
The weather was in the high teens and low twenties, which made walking a little unpleasant, but also helped keep the crowds away. On the train up, there were empty seats, which is a nice thing. When I go in the summer or spring, I find that by the end of the trip it can be standing room only, but in this case I was able to get there and back without sharing a seat.

There were some kids in front of me on the ride up there. One of them, who I guess was about seven, had a cute morbid streak. At one point, the train tilted a little to the left as it was going over some uneven ground. "We're all going to die," the kid said. "We're all going to die." Just before we were about to enter New York, when we paused in the tunnel for a minute or two (I assume to let some other train pass), he turned around and said to me, "Mister, do you think we're trapped underwater?"

When I got there, I was surprised at how little snow there was on the ground. It snowed in New Jersey four weeks ago, and much of the ground is still piled up. In New York City, it's largely melted or cleared away, though you can still see some patches, such as on the New York Library:

 But most of the other places have only relatively small patches of snow and ice. Because of this, I mostly walked the streets and put up with the cold, rather than take the subway (though I did a little of that after seeing the movie, when it was getting darker and windier.)

Thank-you Mario, but our princess is in another castle
My first stop was the Nintendo World Store in Rockefeller Plaza. It's a two-story affair dedicated to all things Nintendo. It's nice, but I was hoping for a little more.

The store has two stories. The first is dedicated to DS games, with a special section for Pokemon. The second has Wii games and other merchandise. For both, there are a lot of demos available, probably a dozen DSes and Wiis loaded with the popular games to try. There was also a small exhibit of Mario games and merchandise through the years, clothing, candy, and dolls of the more popular characters. I bought myself a Goomba cap and this completely awesome baby Bowser.

Note the adorable little bib Bowser has, with razor-sharp teeth.

I had been hoping the store would have a slightly more exotic selection: obscure games from Japan, titles that got great buzz but have been hard to find, etc. But most of the selection was what you could find in any store that sells video games. So that was a bit of a disappointment.

L'illusionniste
My next stop (ignoring lunch and stuff) was the Paris Theater, where The Illusionist was playing. This is a French film (though there's very little talking, and some of that is in English or a very thick Scottish brogue). I saw it at the Paris Theater, which was an unusual experience for a modern movie goer.

The theater has only one screen, and there's a curtain in front of the screen drawn before the movie. Furthermore, the place is carpeted, there are no cupholders on the chairs, and there were no clips asking patrons to turn off their cell phones or visit the lobby and buy snacks.

The coming attractions also looked interesting. There was one for Home: The Movie a documentary. The premise seems fairly ordinary to me -- we're destroying the environment -- but the images on the screen were totally gorgeous. There was another documentary called The Last Lions, about a female lion whose husband, head of the pride, was killed, so she was driven out and has to struggle to raise her cubs. It's narrated by Jeremy Irons, who seems to like this plot. 

I'm glad I saw The Illusionist, which isn't likely to come to Monmouth County. It's set in the late 50s, and involves a past-his-prime magician, whose act is losing favor to things like rock bands. After he gets a temporary gig in a rural village in Scotland, he shows some kindness to a young girl, who becomes a fan.

I know this sounds like the typical "young girl gives old man a new lease on life" plot, but it's not. I don't want to say how it verges from that -- too spoilery -- but don't go to the theater expecting to see that.

Is it really complete?
The Complete Strategist is on 33rd Street, a block away from the Empire State Building. Given how niche the roleplaying, wargaming, and other hobby games are, I'm surprised they can afford to stay in what must be a pretty expensive neighborhood, though I'm happy to go there every few years.

They have a very extensive selection of RPGs, some of them rather old. There are plenty from older editions of games, and some cutting edge ones too. One of the books I bought was for a game called Exalted, a system and setting which is simultaneously fascinating and infuriating. They had both the first and second edition of the book, which are entirely different. I also picked up a copy of Spirit of the Century, a pulp-action game. I actually bought it because a few months ago I purchased a game called Diaspora, and the authors of Diaspora heavily recommended Spirit of the Century. (They practically assumed you had read it.) Maybe I'll write more about those if I think there's anything worth putting on the blog.

I

Let's play dress up

Wearin' her wig hat and shades to match/ She's got high-heel shoes and an alligator hat/ Wearin' her pearls and her diamond rings/ She's got bracelets on her fingers, now, and everything/ She's the devil with the blue dress, blue dress, blue dress,/ Devil with the blue dress on

Mitch Ryder and the Detroit

I think that playing Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies was the first time I've ever really understood why little girls like to dress up their dolls. Whenever you get a new piece of equipment, you can put it on your character, and it changes the 3D model of them on the screen. It can give them an entirely different appearance, and is one of the many charming, simple elements of the game.

Let me give you some examples. Since the DS doesn't allow you to take screen captures, these were done the old fashioned way, with a digital camera, so you can see some screen lines. But they're still good illustrations. Here's the avatar I used as the main character in the game:

When you start, you choose your basic appearance. I chose a silver mohawk and large eyes for this character. You can see he looks pretty intimidating with his sword and shield and powerful armor. But I can also dress him up in a spear with bright red clothing and give him a crown and different type of shield and gloves:

Here's another example, how another of the characters I designed looks in two different outfits. Obviously in one she's wearing a skirt and breastplate, and in the other robes. While she has the same headband and shield, notice her footwear is different.

Seriously, this dress-up thing is addictive. For some time, I left my character in a Flamenco Shirt rather than slightly better armor, because how cool is it that someone would go out fighting dragons and mummies in a shirt normally worn on a dance floor? At another point, I found out that it would be possible to outfit my characters with cat ears, if I went searching for certain hard-to-find components to build them. I spent quite some time searching. My goal had been to outfit my martial artist with cat-ears to complement the cat-tail fan she was wielding, but it turned out they were a bad fit for her powers, so I gave them to the blue-haired priest shown above. 

So, besides a fashion simulator, what is Dragon Quest IX? It's a computer roleplaying game on the DS. As the number implies, there have been eight previous ones, in Japan at least. Not all were released in North America, and this is the first one I've played. Now I'm debating whether to track others down.

DQIX, as I mentioned above, is made of a lot of simple components. If you've ever played a CRPG before, you know the formula: go on quests to help villagers, fight monsters, collect treasures, go up in levels, improve skills, and defeat the big bad monster that threatens the world.  But it wraps this basic formula in a very, very polished shell:

• The music is simple and catchy. While there's much to be said for clever, elaborate scores in video games, I found myself humming the background tunes to DQIX several times over the last few weeks. Similarly, the graphics have a charming, cartoonish quality. Wikipedia and fan sites tell me that the same composer and animator have been in charge of the series since the beginning, and I can see there's a unity to it. The monsters are all in the same sill style.
• Someone put a lot of work into the translation. People in different towns talk with completely different mannerisms, sounding suspiciously like Australians, Cockneys, Welsh and a bunch of other different nationalities. The monsters' names are often bad puns: you might face a Meowgician (cat-sorcerer, obviously), Scarewolf,  or Coolcumber (a vegetable with an attitude).
• The mechanics are pretty easy to follow. With one exception, there's no need to read the manual (though it may provide some helpful tips). And that exception -- the exact effect of different attributes -- is pretty self explanatory, though I wouldn't have figured out the difference between Agility and Deftness on my own. But everything else is pretty easy to follow. When you level up, the only choice you sometimes have to make is how to assign skill points, and it's done in a really straightforward manner. If you've played games with weird webs of special skills and abilities that are never properly explained, this is a pleasant relief. Similarly, the combat options are pretty straightforward -- do you attack, defend, cast a spell or use a special ability? Who is the target of your decision?
• The longest cut scenes last two, maybe three minutes. Many games are horrible with cut scenes. The worst example I've encountered -- and I am not making this up -- is Xenosaga. There, you'd play a level for about 15, 20 minutes, then it would ask if you wanted to save, then it would show you an hour long non-interactive cut scene. Then it would ask if you'd like to save again. Then you'd play five more minutes before getting yet another hour long cut scene. If I wanted to watch a movie, I'd get a movie.

As a combination of the last two, it's a game which is always moving. If you're in a fight that's boring, you can probably finish it in 30 seconds and get on to exploring for a hidden treasure grove or finding the iron ore you need to make a magic boomerang, because you want to see how your Sage would look if she was holding a boomerang instead of a bow.

Summary: If you're interested in an RPG for the DS, this is a good choice whether you're a hardcore fan of the genre or not (though since it's been available in the US for months, and was available as a Japanese import before then, you probably own it if you're a hardcore fan. It's also a great choice if you want a game where you get to choose your characters' outfits in detail, and don't mind killing monsters along the way.

The Art Detective

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.

Michelangelo

The Art Detective is one of the most compelling collection of mysteries I have read in the last few years. Its tales are thrilling despite the lack of murder, violence, or even theft (with one possible, indirect, exception). And the fact that unlike most detective stories, these are non-fiction.

Philip Mould's website, if you're interested in acquiring British portraits

The Art Detective: Fakes, Frauds and Finds and the Search for Lost Treasures, by Philip Mould is exactly what the name says, stories of how people in the art world examine paintings and decide whether it's a genuine article or a cheap imitation. Since these works can sell for millions of dollars, this is a serious market.

The Art Detective tells stories of how Mould and others make special finds, and demonstrate their authenticity. 

This is surprisingly gripping, and more than money might be at stake. The proper authentication can lead history books to be rewritten, literally. Historian David Starkey revealed that a painting everyone assumed had been of Lady Jane Grey (sometimes called the "Nine Day Queen," a claimant to the throne after the death of Edward VI) was actually one of Henry VIII's wives, because of the jewelry she was wearing. That picture had been a standard in English text books.

As Mould tells it, finding the authenticity of a picture is a combination of intuition and research. There's a difference between the work of a master and an imitator that anyone versed in the work can feel. In one chapter, "The Norman Rockwell Hoax," he tells of a Rockwell painting that everyone knew had to be authentic. Rockwell had sold it to a friend, whose children had given it to a museum to put on display. But many of the people who saw it were bothered for some reason. They chalked this up to the possibility the canvas had been damaged when it was shipped to an international exhibit, damaging the vibrancy of the work. As the title suggests, there was a much better reason it didn't feel like it was painted by the master of Americana. But intuition isn't enough. Modern science lets art experts determine the age of a pigment and frame, details of what had been painted over, and other things essential to proving a piece is genuine.

Once an artist is finished with a painting, that doesn't mean the picture will stay in the same condition forever. In the late 19th and early 20th century, when there was a vogue in America for classic paintings, many tried to to touch up the details that had faded due to smoke and dust accumulating on the varnish. Then, to hide their touch-ups, they had to paint over parts of the picture where something looked incongruous. The subtle details a master might place on the folds of clothing or clumps of trees became streaks of black or green. Sometimes it was even the artists themselves who "ruined" a work. Rembrandt, who made his living as an art dealer as well as a painter, often had his apprentices repaint his works that weren't selling, turning artistic self portraits into something that might move faster. (Rembrandt, by the way, painted wonderful self portraits. I remember seeing one in the Frick Gallery in New York City a few years ago. He looked both prosperous and extremely sad.)

Also, as Mould notes at some points in the book, a lot of information needed to determine a painting's history isn't available on Google. Trying to track the authenticity of different works took him from library archives where one of a few known copiers of a work existed to small towns in Vermont to Nassau in the Bahamas. Other researchers had to parse everything from bizarre 18th century banking records and speeches Queen Elizabeth I delivered to the House of Lords.

Each story is mesmerizing. Perhaps that's to be expected. In The Art Detective, you travel around the world, deal with works worth millions of dollars, and get a taste of both the big picture of history and intimate family moments.

While this book is factual, I feel like I'd be giving away too much to go into details of his finds. But here are a few teasers:

• How the author wound up in the middle of Vermont in a snowstorm, and how he found a collection worth millions by a man who hated to spend money on anything.
• How the author discovered a work he thought could be an early Gainsborough even though it was attributed to a different artist; and how it helped reinterpret that landscape painter's early life. Also, this story had a moment which made me feel so sorry for Mould and his hard work in making this discovery.
• Why generations refused to believe that a picture was by Rembrandt when it turned out the be the genuine article.
• How paintings can suggest details of the love life of royalty. 
• A classic Antiques Roadshow story where a find made while on a fishing trip turns out to be worth a fortune.