* “Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America” by Robert Charles Wilson. Excellent tale of post-apocolyptic America. Classic tragedy themes – the rise of an idealist to power, and his fall driven by his excessive actions in service of his ideals. All narrated by a friend in a folksy Twainish style. Very engaging. Amazon says 3.5 stars, I might nudge a little higher. * “The Manual of Detection”:amazon by Jedediah Barry. A clerk in a detective agency gets pulled into a conspiracy of murder and power. Oh and the boundary between dreams and reality is completely porous so this is a pretty odd read. The ending is all too neat for a premise this strange. Amazon says 4 stars, I don’t know. Some people will love this book, some will hate it. * “Fear The Worst”:amazon by Linwood Barclay. A straight-ahead mystery adventure, which was nice after the book above. A man’s daughter disappears and he gets caught up in murders and conspiracies and lies. A little too parsimonious with characters as the author makes nearly every acquaintance of the protagonist a member of the conspiracy. 4 stars on Amazon, yeah sure, tho this is brain candy and won’t stick with you. * “The Snakehead”:amazon by Patrick Radden Keefe. Nonfiction, the story of the human smuggling trade from China to the US in the 80s/90s/early 2000s. A little dated but a great story, man the money involved was phenomenal. 4 stars on amazon, I’d agree.

* “Pink Moon Cupcake Bakery”:http://www.pinkmooncupcakes.com/. My sister turned me on to this one, I never would have found the place otherwise. Awesome cupcakes in a quaint old town. * Lawns. My gosh do people love their lawns here. Even modest houses have gigantic expanses of grass, all lovingly tended. People spend half their weekend mowing. And the mowers! These things are nearly RV-sized. In Seattle, lawns are often an afterthought, and sometimes nonexistent – grass just doesn’t do as well in the climate. * The Ohio State University Hospital. We had an appointment there this week, the staff were unfailingly polite, honestly a better experience than that at the many other facilities we have visited.

Here’s a typical blog posting from the “USC community”:http://www.conquestchronicles.com/2009/9/20/1045207/play-calling-is-overrated. Whacking on Corp for Saturday’s loss. All the blogs repeat this theme as do the press like the OC Register. And I saw quotes from Pete basically throwing Corp under the bus.

Seems to me tho that “Corp was no better or worse than Barkley before him”:http://www.conquestchronicles.com/2009/9/20/1045089/comparisons-between-barkley-and. When you change QBs and results are the same, perhaps it is the other variables – receivers or coaching. And as I watched the game, the poor ball handling by Havili and McKnight, who both gave up unforced fumbles to kill scoring drives, seemed like the greater issue.

Of course as a Buckeye fan, this all just reaggravates the wound.

• Seen next to Ohio field: iCorn.com branded seed. Corn 2.0, CaaS, Semantic Corn can’t be far behind. #
• He got his freaking gift early RT @CoachSark: Happy Birthday to @petecarroll! #
• At&t coverage in ohio blows. RT @richtong: Best day of my life will be when AT&T loses iPhone monopoly. Worst getting worse. #
• RT @hallowindow: IT’S ALIVE!!! The new site is up and Hallowindow III is ready for preorder!!! http://bit.ly/NnCwg #
• Please be good: RT @WindowsGamer: BioShock 2 surfacing February 9. http://bit.ly/6kjV3 #

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Been digging around a bit for more trail resources. Came across some useful sites. A lot of these are primarily bike trails over old rail and canal ROWs but still pretty interesting:

* “The DNR”:http://ohiodnr.com/?TabId=11915 summarizes trails across all state properties, including length and difficulty. Helpful because trail length does not correlate with park size at all. The list is organize by county, so here is a “county map”:http://www.dot.state.oh.us/MAPS/Pages/CountyMap.aspx just in case you’ve forgotten the 88 counties and their county seats (which I had to memorize in 5th? grade) * “Buckeye Trail”:http://www.buckeyetrail.org/map-n-sections.html. A walking trail around the state, a lot of it on parkland, some on roads. Interesting and might be a fun way to see some stuff. * “North Country Trail”:http://www.northcountrytrail.org/explore/ex_oh/oh.htm. A trail through the state, connecting with neighboring states. Overlaps the Buckeye Trail but has some different elements. * “Miami Valley Trails Org”:http://www.miamivalleytrails.org/Interactive-Maps.htm. Nice interactive map of all the trails in southwestern Ohio.

Getting myself up to speed on MatLab for this fall’s classes, the activation fails on Snow Leopard with some ugly error message. Fix is easy – in the Java Preferences app on your system, make 32-bit Java the default. All is well after that.

Details on the “matlab support site”:http://www.mathworks.com/support/solutions/en/data/1-8GS5S1/index.html?product=ML&solution=1-8GS5S1

OK Central Ohio doesn’t have a lot of huge national forests or national parks, and so at first I thought hiking opportunities were constrained.

But now I’ve stumbled across all these “state nature preserves”:http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/tabid/860/Default.aspx and some of them are pretty darned big – plenty of ~100 acre preserves, and some huge ones – Blackhand Gorge at 956 acres, Cedar Bog at 427 acres, Lawrence Woods at 1035 acres! I’ve yet to visit any of these but I will get out to at least one in the next week.

* Crickets and Cicadas. Man I totally miss these in Seattle. Sitting out in the evening here, you almost need earplugs, the crickets and cicadas kick up such a ruckus. Very cool. * Lightning Bugs. Wrong time of year for them, but another great bug. Chasing these in the early summer is an experience not to be missed for any kid. * I have a love/hate relationship with WalMart. Hard not to love their prices. Easy to hate most other aspects. * “Mohican State Forest”:http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/tabid/5160/Default.aspx. On an early September weekday morning, the place was empty and I got a great hike in. An odd kind of place – mixed use taken to the extreme. A state park and forest, a resort, a juvenile detention center all co-located. Hunting and horseback and hiking and ATVs and bikes and snowmobiles all permitted. Again thankfully the place was empty this morning and so a good hiking experience. I don’t think I’d want to be there on a busy weekend.

While in Ohio, we are living without a cable or satellite feed. We do have an IP connection and so are playing around with how to watch ABC/NBC/CBS/ESPN content.

Attempt 1 is “Slingbox+SlingCatcher”:http://www.slingmedia.com. Slingbox in Bellevue, kicking the s-video output from our Tivo up to the net. Then Slingcatcher box here attached to TV. We have 6mbit upload speeds in Bellevue and ~6mbit download here. I chose s-video as a way to minimize the data rate and I wonder if I should have chosen composite video. Because the quality basically sucks. Audio is ok but video is pretty blurry and almost unwatchable. This is clearly never going to be a mainstream solution.

Attempt 2 is downloads direct to the AppleTV from the iTunes store. But totally fails on network tv, the selection is abysmal. and no live sports.

Attempt 3 is bittorrent+handbrake+itunes and playback from an appletv attached to the tv. OK this provides good quality results but a) no live content like football games, and b) is uber-geeky. I can manage this collection of software but no one else wants to take the time to do so. But I can batch up jobs and get a little done every night.

So we have a clunky way to get non-live network shows. But still no great solution for live sports – ESPN, etc. ESPN360 is just barely ok and I guess I can hook the Mac up to the tv. Wish I could get it on other boxes that I am willing to leave hooked up fulltime to tv – mactv, game console, etc.

* “Brutal takedown of Tressel over at Dr. Saturday”:http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/Deconstructing-The-grisly-demise-of-Tressel-Ba?urn=ncaaf,189322. Particularly on offense, Ohio State’s gameplan against the Trojans was utter rubbish, and it failed to meet the number one requirement of every gameplan: put your players in position to succeed * Pete says “Locker is better than Pryor”:http://www.insidesocal.com/usc/archives/2009/09/better-than-pry.html. Of course he will say that this week but it is up to Pryor to make that statement seem ridiculous. * “An OSU follower’s view”:http://www.elevenwarriors.com/2009/09/five-things-usc.html. Coaching breakdown, Pryor breakdown. And what irks me is the failure of the coaching staff to react to Pryor’s shortcomings in their gameplan. * “A general roundup of coverage”:http://www.elevenwarriors.com/2009/09/further-reading-usc.html * We “discover an entirely new brand of disappointment”:http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/Ohio-State-discovers-an-entirely-new-brand-of-di?urn=ncaaf,189030. Indeed

It was a great great game and I enjoyed the evening thoroughly up til the last minute. And man our team played hard and the fans gave it their all, so proud to be a part of the community. But I sure hope Tressel is learning from this and getting better, as he often talks about his teams needing to do.

* “L&P Cake and Candy Shoppe”:http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&client=firefox-a&ie=UTF-8&q=bakery+bellefontaine+marion+ohio&fb=1&split=1&gl=us&cid=1148308129879636741&li=lmd. Seriously maybe the best frosted sugar cookie ever. * “Crum Strawberry Farm”:http://www.pickyourown.org/OHcolumbus.htm. After eating their strawberries, I resolve to never buy grocery story strawberries again. * The entire scene Saturday night at the Horseshoe. The tailgating, the friends and family, the stadium, the game. Tough ending but what a night. I thought last year’s Penn State game was the craziest ever but this was over the top. We sat down for maybe 5 minutes the entire game, the south stands were hopping all night long

• RT @elevenwarriors: RT @marcushartman Ohio State 8-0 against freshman QB in last 5 seasons. 5 TDs, 8 INT. 51% completions allowed. #
• RT @asackofseattle: Cooler Planet has it’s best month ever – way to go guys! #
• On the ground in the Midwest for this Saturdays game – go bucks! #
• Successfully reloc’ed household to Ohio for a month. Flying with 2 dogs is trying. #
• @calbucci thanks. Not really off, just different! in reply to calbucci #
• Sw flight lax to cmh: “Hahaha. All in usc clothing having good time except for dude in troy smith jersey with 5 seats empty on either side” #
• @swludwig thx. Good to be in the land of liquor drivethrus… in reply to swludwig #
• At the ‘shoe – 3+ hours til kickoff #
• AT&T network blows at the ‘shoe #

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OK OK, Pryor has made some ill-considered comments this week, but he is not alone. MOTSAG has these choice words from Matt Barkley:

Among other things, Barkley was asked by a reporter on the field what he had learned about himself as a quarterback.

“That this is fun. This is easy. This is what I was made to do,” Barkley said.

I asked Barkley if there was anything that was difficult.

“The run up the tunnel at halftime,” he said. “That was brutal.”

Perhaps the Buckeyes can provide him some lessons in humility on Saturday. All in the name of helping his further development as a person.

One total winner in this group, and the others are reasonable as well.

* “The Family Trade”:amazon by Charles Stross. A fine alternate worlds tale from Stross, nice to see the obvious use of world tripping explored – crime. Amazon gives 3.5 stars, and the series doesn’t seem to improve from there, but I found it engaging. Even so-so Stross is better than 9/10s of the dreck in the science fiction section * “Classic British Literature: Works of G.K. Chesterton”:amazon by G.K. Chesterton. The Father Brown stories are very engaging mysteries with a nice central character. Yes this is all very dated material but enjoyable. * “The Tourist”:amazon by Olen Steinhauer. Excellent tale of a CIA agent dealing with betrayal at many levels and his own secrets. Much more intriguing than your typical espionage tale, tho not so obscure as LeCarre. Emotionally crushing ending. Amazon says 4 stars, I might go 4.5

* “It is my bet you will see a physically dominant performance by Jeff Byers and his crew, and they will lead USC to a lopsided USC win.” via WeAreSC.com - Hogue Report: SJSU edition * “Song Girl Monday”:http://www.trojanwire.com/football/song-girl-monday-9709.php. Why would you think to throw your cheerleaders in water to get their pictures? There is just no morality in Southern California. OSU has to win just to protect the moral fiber of America. * “SC line back at full strength?”:http://www.ocregister.com/articles/practice-state-dowd-2555273-play-carroll. Maybe.