Month: April 2016

Geology Field Trip to San Rafael Swell

On April 2nd and 3rd I went on a geology field trip with my wife and one of her geology classes.  We made road-side stops at a few places along the way, but the main destination was San Rafael Swell.  In particular, we went on an eight-mile hike through two slot canyons, Little Wildhorse Canyon and Bell Canyon.

I had never been in a slot canyon before, so it was a fun hike.  There were a couple of places where we had to wade through some cold water, and ten or twelve places where we had to scramble up or down some rocks.  A few places made interesting puzzles in terms of figuring out the best way to get up or down.

The next picture should have something in it to show the scale, and if I were one of the geology students I would be busted for not including a pen or a shoe or something for scale.  I just liked the pattern.  (In case you’re wondering, this section of rock was probably two or three feet across.)

Just as we were finishing the hike we saw a bat flying around.  I took a couple of pictures on my phone thinking there was no way it would show up, but I actually got a more-or-less recognizable picture of a bat:


My New MUD

MUD stands for Multi-User Dungeon.  I’ve heard of people say that the D stands for Dimension instead of Dungeon, but I’m going with Dungeon, in spite of the fact that my first MUD isn’t a dungeon.

One of the great things about making a text-based MUD is that it lets me do all kinds of things with world-building that would be pretty much impossible if I had to have 3d (or even 2d) graphics for everything.  I’m fascinated with the idea of generating stories and emergent stories, and MUDs are a perfect platform for working with stories in that way.

I’m using Evennia to make my MUD.  It uses Python, which is my favorite programming language.  It’s powerful, well-designed, well-documented, and has a good community.