CLOP

What is CLOP?  CLOP is hard.

Clop
noun 
the sound a horse's hooves make against hard surfaces, such as packed ground, or the cobblestone streets of old London.

 Every horse person from a young age learns the gaits of a horse and how it moves.  When the timing of footfalls occur and names of each mode of movement.  The 4 beat slow walk.  The two beat diagonal trot and parallel pace.  The three beat canter.  And the four beat gallop.

We also learn the exotic gaits, such as the running walk, foxtrot, tolt, and fancy moves like the pasage, piaffe, spanish walk ect.

However most movements like jittering and spazzing around until you fall over are reserved for neurological or spinal issues that are best left to the large animal veterinarians.  Not in CLOP!

 

You play CLOP the unicorn helping your young man friend trying to get to a virgin damsel.  Unicorns and virginal damsels go together like peanut butter and chocolate, so he cannot deny her call. (We at VP are still looking for a unicorn with low standards.)  But instead of this young jakanape walking to fair damsel.  Because he is a solid mass of unmoving pixels, plus he's probably lazy.  He sends you, his kinetically animated, uncoordinated, top-heavy, unicorn friend.  Why would a unicorn be friends with this Casanova?  He probably has those lower standards we were talking about.

Seriously this thing's horn must be made of tungsten.   

You control the legs individually to make the unicorn move.  And boy does this sound fun, but it is not.  You would think a horse person has some advantage over the non horsey.  I mean, we did spend all those years learning horse gaits and all that crap I mention above, right?  Sadly the advantage is minimal.  It helps you, until you get to the hill.  The biggest problem in this game is keeping the unicorn's legs under him and him off his back.  You can fall on your face.  You can do that plenty of times.

It's until you get the thing on it's back that it's limbs decide to break themselves and all hope is lost.  The young lad shalst go unlay'ed this night.  And to add insult to injury he insults you when you fail.






 The meter at the bottom keeps track of how far you have gotten.  And yes.  That is a silhouette of the Andalucian Stallion Breyer model created by Chris Hess.

 Please don't tell me when you reach the maiden she runs away.

Also you may find the dragging yourself with your front legs is easier.  The back legs stretch out and you have a wider base to not fall over.  However the creator foresaw this and you will enter "LAME HORSE MODE"  where your stifles break and you become paralyzed from the loin down.  You cannot regain the use of your back legs in this mode, nor does how far you get count.

 

You would think a magical beast could just walk it off.

This game may seem impossible to finish.  And as far as I know it is, for anyone who isn't the creator of the game himself.  This was tweeted a year ago, so who knows, some brave unicorn hill-warrior may have shown that hill what for.

You would think that would discourage extended play.  But this game is addictive and insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.  So I've gone mad.  I'm off to go fall backwards off a hill repeatedly.

Have fun flailing, falling, and failing!

CLICK'ETH ME TO FALL DOWN A HILL UNICORN FRIEND

~~~~~

If you would prefer something a little more human, try running and climbing with these two similar games from the same site.  And sadly, CLOP is the easiest between the three.




http://www.foddy.net/Athletics.html

http://www.foddy.net/GIRP.html

I would have made a video review of this game.  But you would have just seen a unicorn falling ass-over-tea kettle in the same spot over and over and over...

Visible Horse: Second Impressions

Alrighty, so the second and overdue installment of the construction of the Visible Horse is underway.  The problem?  It got finished a few months ago.  The other problem?  It wasn't my Visible Horse I helped finish.

Awhile ago my younger friend Sarah and I got together to put an older model of the visible horse together.  A friend of her grandmother's had a set they had held onto for years and gave it to the her since they heard their granddaughter was completely horse crazy.  I was asked to help since my friend's grandmother was there when I purchased my own set at the horse expo.

So with a bottle of gel superglue (get the gel kind, it doesn't melt everywhere), a nail file, and an unconstructed translucent pony of bones and innards we went to town!  And about 3-4 hours later we had this.



But in those 3-4 hours we had bodyparts everywhere.  And also the instructions...  You remember how I threw aside the instructions before?  Predictably that came back to kick me in the ass.  USE INSTRUCTIONS.  Learn from my hubris.

First thing to do.  Put the head and brain together again because this is the most fun, and (honestly easiest) part.

 

 :Insert bad Godfather joke here:

Next, check out the heart.  This model has much more fine detail than the one I have.  That's because this model was created around the 70's or 80's.  Since mine is newer, the molds have eroded some of the fine details away with every casting.  Oh the things you learn about horse-shaped-object molds from having friends in the model horse world.  (Looking at you Heather and Blab)

 :Insert bad Titanic theme joke here:

 Do you know your atriums from your ventricles?

Another easy part to find was the tongue.  And although it does snap together quite nicely, use the glue.  Otherwise it will have a tongue similar to a thestral's.

 After that we found the neck.  And the neck bones are admittedly flatter than anatomically correct on the model than in real life, but that's a nit pick. 

 

You can now have your in-construction model look like the LochNess Monster.

Next, find the lung parts, glue them together, and then make a heart-hoagie with the lungs as the bread.  The ripples on the lungs line up with the rib placement when it will be placed in the skeleton.  Love the detail.

 Fun fact.  This model is based off the anatomy of a male racing thoroughbred.  The average horse's heart is 6 lbs.  The average racing fit thoroughbred's heart is 8 lbs.  If this model was based off of the famous race horse Secretariat (in stud condition, not even racing fit), the heart would be 275% larger than you see here (22 lbs!).  Yah, almost three times bigger than this because of the X-Factor mutation that causes enlarged hearts founded in the famous stallion Eclipse.  For a better comparison for how large a normal horse heart is on its own, check out this screen capture from Inside Nature's Giants with anatomist Joy Reidenburg holding a horse heart. (Warning: Graphic.)

After that was all taken care of, we moved on to the  digestive system.  I'm showing these images also in case anyone attempting to make this gets as confused as we were as to how this section goes together.  The kidney bean looking thing is not a kidney, but the stomach.  There is the spleen and the liver, since we didn't bother painting anything it all admittedly looks like a giant pink mass.

I'm also showing these images  in case anyone attempting to make this gets as confused as we were as to how this section goes together.  There are strangely multiple wrong ways to put this section together that fit and could almost work.

 

This is the finished digestive system with a huge pile o'intestines.  Since horses are grazers and lack a multi chambered stomach, this is a large percentage of their internal organs.

And yes, the bulgy part in the back is the colon.

Now to connect the lungs and heart sammich' with the spaghetti like innards... Maybe I shouldn't use food as comparisons to their appearance. 

These are separated by the diaphragm, and the model structurally fits them together with the aorta connected to the kidneys.  They are laced through a section of the diaphragm.  And this is the weakest most ill fitting part of the entire model.  

Why is it the weakest part?  Because you need to put a  square peg into a round hole.

 

Square peg...

...Meet round hole.  

We can attempt to make this work with counseling.

To be continued until next time.  Will the aorta and the heart beat as one?  Will the skeleton prove more complicated than necessary?  And has Liz been reading too many comic books to end a post like this?  All this and maybe, possibly, sorta more in Part III of Visible Horse Impressions!

~~~~~

Bonus bad cellphone pic.  Brave came out recently and Heather and I were able to see it.  Angus is a very cool 3D modeled shire.  I just wish he was in the movie more.  I came across a Disney doll of their latest princess Merida.  I love her design, but boy did they screw up her doll.

 

Merida, quirky red head bad-ass.  

Pixar had to make a program from scratch just to animate her hair.

 

Merida's doll, with hours in makeup, a flat iron, and plastic surgery.

 

Angus is also a solid piece of cheap painted plastic.  Le sigh. 

He also should be at least twice his size to be in scale to the movie. :P

I'll be honest though.  If I was 7 I would still want it just for the horse.

Until next time!

Dominant White Standardbred at Fair Winds Farm!

So last week Heather and I met with the owner Mark Mullen of Fair Winds Farm in Cream Ridge NJ.  Last month a 95% white colt born out of the Brown mare Coochi Mama and the bay stallion Art Major.  Color genetics geeks know what that means.  A de novo dominant white mutation on the KIT locus! (Translation:  A new mutation/change in the colt's DNA caused a new white pattern)

Since I live in the state, and cool horse color stuff like this almost never happens here, I promptly called up the farm and asked if I could visit, take pictures, geek out over the foal and interview the farm owner.  They agreed to a meeting and with Heather as my navigator/photographer we head over to Cream Ridge.  After arriving we were allowed into the enclosure to get better shots and video of the little yet to be named KIT mutation.

It was in the mid 90's when we drove up.  Needless to say it was hot.  The most interesting thing to note was that although his dam did not like the heat, the colt seemed fine because his white coloration reflected the sun.  Another fun thing about the colt is that he appears to be Chestnut (not extremely common in standardbreds) on top of being Dominant White...  well, underneath the Dominant White, but you know what I mean.  The most amusing and neat part about his tiny bits of color?  His tail has a racing stripe.

It sadly might roan out and fade as he gets older.  But it is very cool.

 After petting the little guy, with Heather taking pictures, while I took video while he tried to eat my camera, we all sat in a field on the property to do an audio interview with Mr. Mullen.  As you may be able to tell I was excited and nervous to actually be there.  I even mispronounced Mr. Mullen's name in the beginning.  I don't have much audio interview experience as you may tell.  Talking to myself and a microphone, totally.  Describing equine themed plays and Broadway productions with close friends, yup.  Talking to living people who are respected in their industry who I only just met in person, had to get used to it.

Without further ado, there is the video with the audio interview!

Mr. Mullen does not own the colt, but takes care of the colt and his dam on the farm.  The owner, Pete Congilose, currently has a naming contest going on for the little guy.

 You can mail him at whitecolt@ustrotting.com to tell him your suggestions.

As of now White Knight and Blank Canvas are top choices.  So is Micky Blue eyes, but the colt is dominant white, so his baby blues have already faded to brown.  My horse crazy niece is obsessed with the Disney movie Tangled and wants him to be called Maximus.  Although I have no idea for a proper race name for the guy, I kind of hope his barn name will be Kit to stand for his new color mutation on the KIT locus. ;)

HUGE thanks to Mr. Mullen and the staff at Fair Winds Farm.  They were wonderfully nice and understanding of two horse crazed color enthusiast coming to their farm.  We will be trying to visit the little guy again after he is weaned in the fall.

Stephen Colbert Horse Ballet

Colbert Horse Ballet and Dressage Anthem

If foam fingers didn't spook horses, I would totally bring one to a show.  Click the link, watch, and enjoy.

P.S.  Wishing I wasn't busy this past weekend.  The USEF event was held practically in my backyard!
P.P.S.  I was dressed up as Obi-wan Kenobi for a Star Wars themed birthday party for the nephews. 

...May the force be with you.

Late to Memorial Day

Hi!

Long time no blog.  Really long time.

I'm not dead I swear, just in limbo.  Not THAT limbo, (notice the not dead part in the last sentence).  Or even THIS LIMBO .  (Though it is a really fun limbo that I've been playing, but I wouldn't play it around children or those stuffy Victorian women.  Violence and giant wasps and all that...)

A technological limbo,  I am making the switch.  I am officially a Mac!

 The computer.  But that is a nice Mac too.

I have stuff and things and random, so much random!  But my random is currently stuck on a hard-drive that I have slowly been coaxing onto a new computer.  It doesn't like change.

In the mean time as this was happening I wanted to share images I had been taking or random horse related stuff I would run into on my phone.  Since I am horrible about having my camera on me at all times.  I also found out that all the images I have been taking on my camera phone are irretrievable.

Was it something I did?  Something I broke?  Or did it accidentally fall in a toilet?  No!  They just made my phone so you can take pictures, but not get them off the phone.  Ever.  Did I mention my phone is old?  Ancient even.  The model before it didn't even have letters above the numbers just hieroglyphs.  So I may have to do a new thing where we look at out of focus blurry images from my phone taken by my camera!  It might suck I warn you.

It's Twilight Sparkle as a pinata!  If you squint your eyes and tilt your head.  More to come regrettably.

Also this.

It's a gray horse statue on the side of the road.  It's next to a landscaping company near my town.  Now I have passed by this thing for several years.  This guy gets dressed up for whatever holiday is on it's way and I've always wanted to take images of it.  But I almost never did because of the four lanes of traffic I would have to be crazy enough to be in the middle of to get a decent shot.

Yup, I'm that crazy.

 Notice the car on the far left going "FWOSH"

Thankfully there is a small patchy grass area between the 4 lanes and instant death.  So expect some fun images of this guy around the various holidays.  Happy late Memorial Day!  I hope to interview whoever dresses him up, but every time I visit no one is there.

Beautygirl1510 and I will have a post on the equine show Appasionata that we were lucky enough to see...  Right before it's US tour for this year was permanently suspended.  Yeah...

I am also working on having another video up soonish?  Kinda, maybe...  We know my track record with this, it could be another several months given my technological luck.  Is is Equestriad the review I have been promising since the Mary King Riding Star vid came out 9 months ago?  Actually no.  It will be the first Obligatory Equine Episode!  Where an episode with a horse (or equine)  in it from a TV series is made fun of... I mean.  Deeply read into and examined... yeah.  You will find out what TV series it is from when it's posted!

I have some hopes for trying to get back on random-but-not-months-apart-at-a-time schedule soon and thanks to everyone for hanging in there!

I would like to thank cassiem from HGS for helping encourage me to post something.  ^_^  Thanks again!

Unicorn April Fools

So it is April first and I have an interesting product, and a product update, from the wonderful nerdlings at ThinkGeek.

Ever watch a horse movie or game and have something so wrong, so sappy and so annoying happen that you wish there was brain bleach?

Pegasus isn't a black Friesian!

 This isn't the story of Black Beauty, its 7 smaller horrible movies tied together by the same horse in every background shot.

 Dressage horses don't tölt!

 34 hours of my life I will never get back!  What?  I need to play it again to get video footage for a review?  And the new updates got rid of rainbows giving free money?  *&#^@#!!!

Well, ThinkGeek has a solution to that.  Just take Unicorn Chaser and it will make the world full of double rainbows.  That give you money.

 

 ~~~

And in other news.  Remember Canned Unicorn Meat?

   

Yay for parody laws.

Also conspiracy theorists believe Barbaro is still alive. :P

VP at the PA Horse Expo 2012

Ok, so this is about a month overdue.  But last month Heather and I went to the PA Horse Expo.  And we found out what happened to that horse from Family Guy.

Plush blanket-a-fications!

It's a blanket (for people and not ponies) that conveniently zips up into a horse head.  We assume this is supposed to be given as a gift to an unsuspecting recipient under their bed covers while they are sleeping. 

It also comes in bay.  And its soulless eyes follow you.

Speaking of dismembered fictional horses.  (Ok, that was an awful segue and I apologize.)  We got to see Tommie Turvey's red roan mustang stunt horse Blade.

 A.K.A the cute horse that got eaten by zombies in The Walking Dead.

Personal confession, I cried when Blade got devoured by a hoard of shambling undead.  It got to me, because in real life I hold a red roan near and dear to my heart.  It's kind of the same reaction I get when I watch that one episode of Futurama with Seymour the dog.  Because he looks like my Border Terrier.

Walking Dead is show so I know it's all fake.  They couldn't actually film a horse actually being eaten by those infected with the Z virus for the sake of entertainment (ASPCA has standards y'know). Since then I have met several other people who either ride or own red roans who also watch Walking Dead.  And all of them had the same reaction.  Those who lacked a red roan heart horse did not.  There is a psychological study in there somewhere...

Anyways.

We also got to see booths, Breyers, orange tack (Heather has a thing for orange tack, and I mean orange orange tack).  Something we noticed is that a good number of the booths had those animatronic life-sized shetland pony toys.  Hey it works though.  People come in to check them out, they model products, no clean up, and parents trick their small children into thinking they pet a real pony without fear of them losing any fingers.  

We all know real ponies eat children's fingers to gain their power.

There was a real horse who painted pictures with paint and a brush while sporting a tiny little blue barrette.

Micro fashion.  He has, how you say?  The MAGICS! 

We also got to meet this one leopard tiger horse with crazy mismarks in his pattern.  I've only ever seen pictures of him in Google image search so I kinda, maybe, sorta, geeked out over his somatic mutation.  I apologize to the lady at his stall for my geekout.  Your horse's color is really really cool.

And we also found out that Odd Job Bob, Tommie Turvey's gypsy cob, (hey that rhymes) was in a movie.  In a car.  And all we can think now is.  Eventually, for better or worse, we're going to have to review this...

...

~~~

Thanks to the very nice and people from Champion Saddlery for being understanding of the weird need to blog about the horse blanket in their booth.  

(No one pays me to link to them in my blog.  Check them out they were nice. :)

And a huge thanks to Heather for taking pictures because I always forget to bring a camera.

EDIT:  Ok change that to blame Heather now.  She told me I had to put a picture of myself on this blog somewhere, and she lovingly edited it for me so I would post it.  Here ya go!