When is a Sport not a Sport?
Teen Wolf
Somewhere near the start of the second half of season 3, I stopped watching Teen Wolf. Not because I wasn't enjoying the show, but because other things were taking my focus. This past weekend, I decided to start catching back up since season 4 is about to start.
To me, Teen Wolf is a fun show that is good for some entertaining diversion, there are no Emmy winners here (yet), but the story is interesting and I know some significant things were going down at the end of last season. Fortunately, I don't watch too much (if anything else) on MTV so I have been able to avoid spoilers.
The main sense I get from the few episodes I've watched is that this second set of shows is going to tend more towards the horror side of the supernatural rather than the fantastical. That's probably why I did not jump at watching the show when it first came out – I'm not that into horror.
The other problem I've found is that I guess I did not record all the shows. I'm going to have to find out where to watch them online so I can be sure to watch them all – I found full episodes on MTV.com. In any case, the show started up again this week and I hope to catch up soon so I can start watching the new season.
When is a sport not a sport…When it's League of Legends
Robert Morris University in Illinois is offering a scholarship for playing League of Legends. The first of its kind (as far as I know), the award, shows how esports are getting closer to mainstream acceptance. The story is being covered on Forbes and ESPN so it is only a matter of time before the NCAA starts regulating video game injuries. I know I've narrowly avoided many concussions after slamming my head into my monitor while dealing with AFK trolls.
I am not too sure about this scholarship though. I have always questioned the validity of calling video games a type of sport. I can see it being an event or a competition, but not really a sport. Is NASCAR a sport? How about horse racing? Or rock climbing? Even if those are sports, I've seen many people have issues calling cheerleading a sport, and that is much closer to a sporting event than a MOBA match – cheerleaders have to be athletic! I'm not sure I am ready to consider chess a sport or Jeapordy or Wheel of Fortune for that matter. I think there needs to be some new designation for esports to get them away from the sport concept. Certainly these are competitions and events that are watched by many spectators, but according to dictionary.com, a sport is “an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature”
The skill is there in esports, and the competive nature is there, but these are not athletic activities. I'd be more ready to consider a battle of the bands a sport than a video game competition – at least the band members are exerting themselves physically. So while I think it is kinda cool that a scholarship is being offered and competitions are being recognized, I still refrain from calling League of Legends a sport.
Building up my Deed
With the new Xanadu server, I decided to follow a plan put forth by KalinMenajin back in Janurary 2013. The post on the Wurm Online forums focuses on starting out on an Epic server, which is the PVP version of the game, but I think it should work pretty well on any server when starting out. The goal is to get a place that is near resources needed at the start of the game – iron, clay, wood, water. Once you've found a place, you tunnel a mine and use it as a staging area to expand.
The mine comes first since you need iron for most tools and basic items in the game. But in order to get a decent mine, you need to search for some iron, which requires the prospecting skill. Prospecting uses the pickaxe that you started the game with and a tile of rock. Xanadu has plenty of rock tiles in and near the mountains, but if you are in an area without them, you can dig dirt tiles down to the underlying rock. Since this can take a while, I chose to go find a mountain.
In the first few days of Xanadu, there was a scarcity of iron, but that was fixed in a patch. There is now plenty of iron to be had as far as I can tell – I found some in the first place I looked after the patch. So now that I knew iron was around, I wanted to ensure the other resources were plentiful.
Wood in the area around the Esteron spawn was primarily lemon trees. These are not very good for building as they do not produce many logs. The main trees that I've seen produce a lot of wood for building are cedar, pine, and birch, so I had to find a new forest. All the land from the spawn to the mountains to the north was populated with lemon trees so I headed west towards the lake, but all there was, were lemon trees. Fortunately, heading north around the lake, I finally found some other trees. Chestnuts at first, then cedar. These would be good for building.
Once I had wood and iron nearby, I needed to find a place for a mine and house. I decided on a little bay created where the forest met the mountains. It was pretty steep and would require some terraforming, but it was sufficiently far from neighbors and met all my criteria – wood, iron, clay, water.
I planted my tent and started tunneling to create my mine.
Core Challenge
The second day of my challenge went well. I plan on seeing this one through to the 30 day mark so am not too excited about having made 2 days in a row – it is but another start.
Core Challenge Day 2:
- 10 Push-ups
- 15 second Plank
- 12 Plank Reaches
#Wurm #WurmOnline #Xanadu #LoL #LeagueOfLegends