Sports: Beyond Being a Master

Some sports have their senior circuit or leagues. A place where the old guard can play against each other without the young whippersnappers getting in the way. Golf has the Champions Tour for athletes over 50.

In many disciplines you are considered a master at the age of 35 or 45. But what happens when you go even older?

Bruce Grierson wrote The Incredible Flying Nonagenarian in The New York Times which looks at someone who's well beyond being a typical master. Olga Kotelko is continuing to set records in track and field at the age of 91.

There's always someone out at the edge of the bell curve. Someone who's health, stamina, capabilities, and abilities put almost everyone else to shame. Olga is such a person. Not everyone will turn out as healthy and athletic as Olga. Hopefully though she'll help us learn how more of us can be that fit and healthy that far into life. In the meantime she'll just keep amazing us with her feats.

Games: The Pitch That Makes Boys Cry

Baseball is not as simple as it looks. There is a lot of strategy and skill hidden on that peaceful looking diamond. One of the rarest skills is the pitch called a knuckleball. The knuckleball dances in the air and is not only hard to hit it's even hard to catch.

One of the best knuckleballers at the moment is a Chelsea Baker. She's 13 and maybe the best little league pitcher in America. How good is she? Why is she so good? Ask ESPN who took a look at her in In a league of her own. The article is good - the video is even better.

 If you want to know more about this most elusive part of baseball give Project Knuckleball from 2004 in the New Yorker a read.

Who knows... in a few years a lucky major league team may have Chelsea on the mound making grown men cry with her knuckleball.

Games: So You Want to Play the Beautiful Game?

Here in Canada we look after our hockey prodigies. In the U.S. it's American football, baseball, and basketball. In the rest of the world it's football.

And what a system to look after and encourage kids with talent. Here in North America we can't even begin to imagine how much help there is. During the World's Cup the New York Times reported on How a Soccer Star is Made.

Too bad we can't do that much for every kid and in the particular area, sporting or otherwise, where they show talent.

Games: The Best Game Ever?

On Wednesday's the topic is games. Including sports, video games, and games people play.

For those of you who play video games I have a question. What is the best video game ever?

Maybe you like Civilization because of how it draws you in to build an empire and conquer the world? Maybe a game that changed the face of gaming. How about Doom or Quake? A best seller perhaps? Such as Super Mario Brothers or Tetris? Or a darling of the critics like Portal? (And if you know the game and the ending I dare you not to be humming Still Alive right now.)

How about a game that doesn't have the graphics to change the face of gaming? The graphics are just text characters re-purposed into walls and creatures? How about a game that will never be a best seller because it isn't for sale? This one is available for free so you couldn't buy it if you wanted to. As for being a darling of the critics....

Slate magazine made the case for a game called nethack back in 2000. Nethack is a descendant of rogue and other dungeon crawlers that were first written back in the days of text screens and terminals.

No graphics, no theme song, and no marketing. A text based dungeon crawl that's difficult from the beginning. If you play video games and want a true challenge... try nethack. Be warned. It's been known to take up a lot of time. The goal of nethack is to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor from the bottom of a dungeon and sacrifice it to your god. Doing so grants your character immortality. When you do this you are said to have ascended. Nethack is such so well known that in many geek circles having ascended is either a requirement or a badge of honour.

Nethack is a descendant of rogue. Rogue is the game that first turned a text screen into a dungeon crawl. Every game that has used roughly the same idea has been classified as a roguelike game. There are several lists of roguelike games available in case you want to explore other similar games for any number of different computers.

In terms of games that pack lots of information into a text screen and fully use the imagination of the player to fill in the blanks the roguelikes have had the upper hand for the longest time. (I'm leaving text adventures that don't use letters on the screens as symbols for another time). In recent years there is a new contender for the most complicated and involving game that works in text. The game is Dwarf Fortress.

Dwarf Fortress' programmers have not spent the time to add graphics or make the interface more user-friendly. Instead they've concentrated on increasing the games' scope and adding feature after feature. All within a text window. While you can play Dwarf Fortress as a hero or an adventurer the more popular mode is one in which you build a fortress from scratch in a world constructed before hand just on your computer. Dwarf Fortress is vast, hard to master, and apparently addictive. So far I've decided not to give into the temptation to get too involved.

In case you want to get involved here's a pointer to the Dwarf Fortress wiki to get you started.