It’s Alive in Sydney: My own private taxonomy fail

Just so that we are clear I’m not afraid of kickin’ my own moronic ass sometimes.

I thought I was all clever adding this picture to an Agamid group in Flickr as a bearded dragon:

Turns out it is Physignathus lesueurii lesueuri, an Eastern Waterdragon. If I’d paid any attention, I should have noticed the complete absence of beard.

I saw this little fella, and a few more (and a massive goanna, coming up) along Lane Cove River, in the Lane Cove National Park in North Ryde/Macquarie Park.

Thank you Jen 64 for pointing out my error. More on identifying subspecies of waterdragon over at Australian National Botanic Gardens website – note the face stripe goes eye-to-ear in this critter, distinguishing it from the Gippsland sub-species, you can also see some of the red underbelly if you look hard  (plus it was taken in Sydney, not Gippsland)

Chicks in chainmail fight Christ

Facebook, and a few other sites I visit, have been lambasted with lame “Chicks in Chainmail” banner ads for an online game called CIVONY.

I’d almost written it off as too lame without proper English editorial support (ProTip: if you wan’t English to be the primary language of your game, make sure you can speak it) but then I saw this on the message boards.*

Christ, level 10 hero vs. Elizabeth, level 5.

So I checked it out, on the hope

The game is a pointless timesink that is only suitable for people with lots of spare time on their hands (unlike any other MMO?). The frustrating thing is that to start of things build too quickly when you don’t have the resources to build, and then later on you have surplus resources, but build times take too long.

It reminds me a little of Legends.se (now Legends of Elveron) but with graphics, and not as well designed for “log in once a day” style of play.

I ditched the game about two weeks ago. Looks like they have put up some patches to fix the bugs. But I don’t think I’ll waste my time checking that back out.  I had way more fun with this game.

*There is also a thread (or several) bemoaning the total absence of buxom blonde viking girls from the game. A new FAQ now states “There is no queen. It was a maketing tool.” No!? For shizz?

Smarter than a 5th grader

A new Australian season is now accepting entries for contestants to show up the ankle biters as the ignorant poopy-pantsers they are over here.

It asked if I’d been on any other game shows. Australian Idol is not a game show. So let’s not even mention that.

Pine in the lungs

Creepiest story ever over at i09.
WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGE.

Some commenters over there havepointed out the original source for the story is an unreliable Russian tabloid, but still, inhaling a branch of a pine tree is a pretty big effort. And that’s a good 8 inches of lungs they seem to have cut out.

It’s just more proof that if we don’t kill those trees, they will kill us.