Monday, June 21, 2021

Trail 10 - Shady on a hot day

This past weekend, Allie and I drove a bit.  The destination was Meyer Ranch Park (backup link)  From the book, 60 Hikes within 60 Miles for Denver and Boulder, this is entry #10. Though the book lists this trail as being in the Foothills of the Rocky Mountains, for all intents and purposes, this is in the Rocky Mountains.  The entire park is west of the Legault Mountain Peak (9045ft).  The drive here is a bit longer than places I would call "Foothills".

Meyer Ranch Park is worth the longer drive.  This is a great place for a hot day.  Most of the Lodge Loop Trail (that forms a full circuit at this park) is shaded under tall trees.  The trail itself is very well maintained.  The uphill portions aren't steep.  Overall, Allie and I really enjoyed this location and will definitely consider coming back.





Though Allie and I originally intended to visit this park earlier in the year, we were unable to get out to this beautiful location until the very last day of Spring (or the first day of Summer by a certain reckoning).  However, this was the perfect day.  With temperatures in the 80's and 90's in Denver, a shady hike in a wind cooled valley exceeded our expectations.  

By my information, a visit to this park comes with a likelihood to see wildlife.  Unfortunately, on this day, we did not catch any glimpses of mountain critters.  

As an unexpected coincidence, we finished our hike at nearly noon.  After our hike, we headed back into Denver Metro for lunch.  We decided on a famous restaurant that we haven't tried yet, Cherry Cricket.  


The burgers at Cherry Cricket were good.  I did something that is surely a sin somewhere to someone; I tried the Impossible Burger (veggie) with bacon strips!  Yummy.  Also, while we dined, this sucker visited us in the adjacent fish tank:

 

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

Fun and Important Words: Highfalutin


Highfalutin is a word with mysterious origins.  Typically, the word means pompous, arrogant, haughty, pretentious or excessively ornate or bombastic, often in reference to a manner of speech.[1](1)  However, how such a word came to mean such things is not known definitively.  The alternative spelling of "hifalutin" doesn't offer any clues, either.

It's common for dictionaries to claim it highfalutin is derived from the words "high" and "fluting".  Although this may make sense, it is actually not likely according to other sources.  Long before highfalutin was first recorded, another term meaning something similar already existed, "high flown".  It seems more likely that highfalutin is a corruption of high flown.

I've used highfalutin from time to time.  However, my use of the work tends to carry an ironic tone.  

Between the spellings, ngram shows that highfalutin is a lot more common than hifalutin, these days. The rise in use of highfalutin also seems to roughly coincide with the reduction of usage for the term high flown.
Fussbudget
Gobbledygook
Highfalutin
Malarkey
Newfangled
Roust
Twitterpated
Whatchamacallit
Whopperjawed

Tuesday, May 25, 2021

Elite Dangerous Odyssey: Trying to start a bar fight, and figuring out free camera


CMDR FCSUPER and DE CYPHER try to start a bar fight, and then figure out how to use free camera while walking around on the concourse. 

Intro/outro music Orbit Dance is original music, © 2021 by Matthew Lorono, All rights reserved.

Monday, May 24, 2021

The Balance Pin Incident: First CMDR in Elite Dangerous to Destroy His Own Ship from Another commander's Ship


This is the story of how the CMDR FCSUPER became the first CMDR in Elite history to target, attack and destroy his own ship by firing upon it from another CMDR's ship.  Special thanks to CMDR DE CYPHER and CMDR FOLEY10 for their help!  

On May 23, 3307 (2021), while on board CMDR DE CYPHER's Imperial Cutter named Big Bad Wolf, CMDR FCSUPER targeted, attacked and destroyed his Sidewinder, called Balance Pin.  This is the first time in Elite that a CMDR fired upon and destroyed his own ship from another commander's ship.  That part didn't actually take that long.  Once he successfully destroyed the Balance Pin, the journey really started as they all try to figure out what's supposed to happen next to recover from the self-inflicted loss.

Intro/outro music Orbit Dance is original music, © 2020 by Matthew Lorono, All rights reserved.

Thursday, May 20, 2021

Leftovers Law #34 ~ Everything is better with little bits of crispy pig sprinkled on top!

Crystal Forests have became Crystal Barrens in Elite Dangerous Odyssey

Crystal Forests have became Crystal Barrens in Elite Dangerous Odyssey!  You can still start up and play in Horizons to get your G5 materials for now, but even that source might be going later this year!  Load up now (in Horizons) before they're gone completely!

Hip 36601 C1A site 5 Polonium
Hip 36601 C1D site 3 Ruthenium
Hip 36601 C3B site 5 Tellurium
Hip 36601 C5A site 4 Technetium
Outotz LS-K D8-3 B5A Site 15 Yttrium
Outotz LS-K D8-3 B5C Site 3 Antimony

(1) 📌 Song info:

Title: Escape
Artist: Sappheiros
Genre: Melodic Chillstep

 
(2) © License:

You’re free to use this song in any of your videos, but you must include the following credits in your video's description (Copy & Paste):

🔻
"Escape by Sappheiros" is under a Creative Commons license (CC BY 3.0)
Music promoted by BreakingCopyright: https://bit.ly/b-escape
🔺

 
(3) 📞 Contact links:

Sappheiros
https://soundcloud.com/sappheirosmusic

BreakingCopyright
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BreakingCopy

We're creating an awesome community ❤
Thanks for your daily support! 
BKC

#breakingcopyright #copyrightfree #audiolibrary

Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Suburban bird of prey tries out a new hunting style - Hide-and-seek


This suburban predator is trying out a new hunting technique called Hide-and-seek!  However, the tasty bunnies that are hiding from him don't seem to want him seeking them.  This was recorded a couple of days ago in Colorado, of course.

Saturday, May 15, 2021

We, Terrorized Part 3 ~ Re-imagined Jack Nicholson's 1963 movie "The Terror" as a silent era film


This is Part 3 of the amazing adventure of Lt. Duvalier as he searches for the Baron's castle in search of answers about the mysterious Helene.

The Terror is a 1963 movie that Jack Nicholson (yes, *that* Jack Nicholson), Francis Ford Coppola (yes, *that* Francis Ford Coppola) and others may wish to forget they made, but something about this movie works as a silent film stylized to fit the 1910's.  This movie has been re-imagined as that serialized black-and-white silent film.  Jack's acting style of his early career seems appropriate for this reinterpretation.  What results is a film that will terrorize us all, "We, Terrorized"!

The Terror is a public domain film with expired copyrights.  All music is also public domain, being entirely from the Silent Film Era prior to 1923.  This silent film adaptation, "We, Terrorized Part 3", is wholly an original work that is Copyright © 2021, Matthew Lorono, All rights reserved.