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Mass Effect 3 - First 3 hours...

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 04:09:19 -0600

I was late to the Mass Effect bandwagon. I bought both 1 and 2 for $20, brand new, on the same day and took my time spending 25 hours in the first one. I regret not being more meticulous about doing everything, because when I rushed through Mass Effect 2 in 41 hours (over the course of about 10 days) in preparation for the Mass Effect 3 release, I realized how cool the whole “save game transfer” system was… Anyways, Mass Effect 3 has been out for about 3 hours now and that’s how much play time I’ve put into it.

First impression right from the get-go, importing a ME2 save file is 100% better now. You are now able to choose from multiple saves from the same career instead of being stuck with the save from the exact moment you beat the game. In addition, you have a pretty sweet list of all the major decisions that will carry over for you to see. I think this did exist when importing a ME1 save, but I don’t remember it looking as nice. It’s also nice that your character starts at whatever level your saved character was.

The story starts and you feel right at home with the same epic Bioware story telling you’ve come to know and love. I have a Kinect, so the first time my FemShep gets to respond, I immediately noticed the microphone in the middle of the conversation wheel and thought, “Whoa, what if I SPEAK my response!?”, and proceeded to do so. The voice recognition works great for conversation. I feel like you have to speak louder that I’d like to, but that might be because I like to play my game a little loud. Using Kinect in combat proves to be much less useful. It’s almost always easier to just hold RB and select an option (let alone, hit a hotkey) than it is to try and yell your command and hope whatever you want to happen actually does.

The cover system is kind of “meh”. It’s my only gripe so far. They’ve definitely worked on it to try and improve it and you can tell it’s an even bigger part of the game. Moving from cover gives you nice little arrows to show which way you’ll leave cover, which is nice, but I’ve found myself rolling out of cover to just standing behind a short wall that Shepard wouldn’t couch behind no matter how many times (and how many different ways) I pressed or held A. I may just need to get used to some subtle changes that I’m not aware of yet. It’s not a deal breaker, but I’ve noticed it already.

Power upgrading has changed quite a bit. It seems like they kind of took ME1 and ME2 and picked the place right in the middle. There are more powers than ME2 for everyone, but it doesn’t feel like as many as ME1. Each power now has 6 levels. Each level costs that level number’s skill points to upgrade (i.e. a level 4 upgrade, costs 4 skill points) The first 3 are straight forward upgrades. The last 3 levels give you 2 options to pick from. It makes the upgrades a bit more complex, but also a lot more fun.

Choosing weapons is done the same as ME2 for the most part, except you have the option of choosing to leave a weapon type empty. Each weapon now has a weight assigned to it. The less weight you carry, the greater your power recharge bonus is. Maximum of 200%. There seems to be upgrades that allow you to make your weapons weigh less. I haven’t messed with the weapon upgrade system at all yet, though, so I can’t go into detail about that.

On that note, Mass Effect 3 has just finished installing on my Xbox, so back to the Citadel!

Tiny Tower vs. Dream Heights

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 13:55:45 -0600

So, I’ve spent a week or two playing Zynga’s newest game which is a pretty blatant ripoff of Tiny Tower. I figured, I really liked Tiny Tower, so I might as well give it a shot. I really don’t know how they did it, but Zynga just managed to sap all the fun and charm out of Tiny Tower. Every time I load up Dream Heights, I ask myself why I’m doing it. Tiny Tower let you collect their premium currency in game for free. Not the case with Dream Heights. After you spend your only 3 bucks on an elevator upgrade, you need to shell out money for any more. Zynga’s game just feels like a money grab where at Tiny Tower always felt more fun and quirky.

That’s about all I got on the subject. Just my quick thoughts. I’ll be deleting Dream Heights from my iPhone and iPad.

Messages Beta for OSX

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 19:36:44 -0600

I just downloaded the new Messages beta for OSX and gave it a shot. I haven’t used it all that much but I thought I’d share some of my initial impressions.

Pros

iMessage support. This was inevitable. Now you can send iMessages to iPhones, iPods, iPads and Macs!
Interface. Looks just like Messages for iPad. An improvement over iChat.
Simple. The iMessage stuff (mostly) just works as expected.

Cons

Buddy list is kind of hidden. Clicking the application icon in the dock brings up the window for all your open messages. You have to either right click and select Buddies or turn on the menu icon and select Buddy List from there.
Hitting the red X to close the messages window removes all “open” texts. It would be nice if things worked more like the iPad and iPhone, where your messages are eternally open unless you close/delete them individually. I feel like this is an oversight and will probably change when it gets out of beta. It makes the search box over your open messages kind of unnecessary. (You can get around this by keeping the app open. I’ll probably end up keeping it as a full screen app)
No iMessage status. You can’t see what users are available for chat via iMessage. I’m actually not sure this is really a con. iMessage’s are more made for an always-available type of interaction so this isn’t really something I care about but I have read others would enjoy it.

Overall, I’m happy with the app and will give it a shot for a while (over by current IM application, Adium). Download it here!

Why Apple doesn't release things until they're ready...

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 03:52:02 -0600

When iTunes Match finally went live, my iTunes Library was sent to the cloud for the last time and I was finally able to not worry about what music I had synced to my iPhone since I could grab anything I wanted to listen to on the fly. Yesterday, things didn’t go quite as well as usual and it frustrated me. It wasn’t Apple’s fault. I was in a less than ideal spot for 3G coverage at the time and that prevented the song I wanted to download quick enough to listen to without stopping. The problem cleared up as soon as I drove further down the road, but there were moments that I was actually angry at the phone and service.

I’m a patient person and very understanding, so my brief spout of anger surprised me a little bit. Thinking about it a little, it just reminded me about why Apple devices forgo features that aren’t at least 99% perfect. Apple’s hardware and software works so well together that the slightest hiccup causes hysteria amongst it’s users because we’re just not used to it. I’d say that’s a pretty awesome problem to have.

Photo

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 03:34:18 -0600

Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:18:00 -0500

Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support:

understatementblog:

The announcement that Nexus One users won’t be getting upgraded to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich led some to justifiably question Google’s support of their devices. I look at it a little differently: Nexus One owners are lucky. I’ve been researching the history of OS updates on Android phones…

So long Halo 3 Players...

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 20:09:32 -0500

Due to a general lack of interest (I’m assuming most players of Halo 3 have moved on to Halo: Reach by now) and a lack of resources, time and money, I’ve decided to discontinue Halo 3 Players in it’s present form. I would really love to rewrite the whole thing for Halo: Reach at some point in the future but I am not sure when I will be able to get this done so I’m not going to tease anyone by saying “soon”. I appreciate all the support from Halo 3 Players. We started out as the underdog and slowly but surely ended up being the most used Halo 3 stats app on Facebook. Halo 3 Players was my first “large” project and I had a lot of fun writing it. I hope to have just as much fun writing every else in my near and far future. I apologize for the lack of notice to the few active users Halo 3 Players still has.

Stay tuned here for more info on what I’m working on and if Halo: Reach Players ever does materialize, I’ll post about it here first.

It’s been a fun ride!

laurenashleybishop: usually i hate these GIF things. but not...

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 13:38:46 -0500

laurenashleybishop:

usually i hate these GIF things. but not this one. this is how you do it.

Secret Browser v1.7.0 Submitted!

Wed, 18 May 2011 00:13:00 -0500

UPDATE: Approved and ready to download!

After quite a long wait, I’ve finally deemed version 1.7.0 of Secret Browser to be ready for prime time! I’ve been spending a lot of time tweaking and testing to make sure everything works great and now it’s time for you all to have a go at it. What does 1.7.0 have in store for you?

Custom User-Agents! A very popular request is finally here! I’ve included a bunch of pre-made User-Agent strings or you can put together your own! You can, now, start tricking websites into thinking you’re using a different web browser or a different device all together! (Ad-Free Mode exclusive)
I’ve rewritten a TON of code so things work more smooth under the hood.
Cleaned up Secret Browser’s Settings page. All Ad-Free Mode exclusive settings can be found on their own page too.
An optional Forward button has been added to the smaller screened devices. This was another big request. Flip the switch on in your device’s Settings.app.
I’ve (probably poorly, I apologize) translated what few words there are in Secret Browser to 6 new languages. Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and German.
I’ve squished a LOT of little naggy bugs.
Rewrote the entire front page! I know it was ugly. I’m sorry it took so long. But the new front page is already live so you don’t have to deal with it anymore.

Hopefully it doesn’t take an eternity for Apple to approve. Keep a look out! It should be available very soon!

L.A. Noire Mini Review. Initial Impressions.

Tue, 17 May 2011 04:49:10 -0500

I picked up L.A. Noire at midnight and just finished about 4 hours of play. My initial impressions are definitely very positive. The game does a GREAT job of making you really feel like you are heading up the investigations and making a name for yourself. I’m INCREDIBLY impressed with the facial capture technology they used. It’s amazing the level of realism you get when it’s not just the mouth and eyes that move on a face. Every tiny detail of an actors face is captured and translated into the game beautifully. I could just watch the characters speak all day long. It’s a good thing too, because a large part of what you have to do is really watch people talk to you. I loved the idea from the first time I heard about the game but I was really afraid that the “tells” would be extremely easy to decipher. They really aren’t. And on top of that, if you suspect a character of telling lies, you have to have the evidence to back it up so it makes for some very challenging puzzles.. And it’s still quite early for me! Combat is pretty fun. Hand to hand seems a little easy so far but it Is still fun to watch. Ranged combat is a whole lot of cover based shooting but I found it pretty easy to line up enemies while in cover. Overall, so far, I’m loving the game and a can’t wait to get back to it tomorrow.

My VPS Search continues..

Sun, 08 May 2011 16:45:22 -0500

I’ve been with SliceHost for quite some time now. For “Over 4 Years”, according to my SliceManager. Just one slice that I run a Facebook application on and use it for some testing and playing around. I have had very few problems and when needed, their various support methods (forums, wikis, chatrooms, etc.) have all proven VERY effective and friendly. There is one problem. They aren’t cheap. Back when I signed up, they seemed very affordable for what you got, but over the last 4 years, nothing has changed. I still pay $70 a month for a 1GB slice. So I’ve been looking for cheaper options…

It all started a couple months ago when I was looking for a cheap server to host a small MineCraft server on. After doing some research, I decided on 123systems.net. Pretty cheap. 3GB for $30! I’ve had them for just over 2 months now and have decided to grade them with a “meh”. They haven’t been terrible at all but my MineCraft server lags pretty frequently (usually with just me connected) and I’ve run into a time or 2 where everything just went down for a little while. So I’m moving on and continuing my search…

Brohoster was my next try. I actually only kept them for about half a day. My problem with them was that they weren’t a full VPS. The MineCraft server was up and running right away and it was just a simple FTP to upload my old world. There wasn’t a whole lot of lag which was really surprising since I apparently had a 256MB server (compared to the 3GB on 123systems). If all I wanted was the MineCraft server, I probably would have found a way to keep this option, but the lack of IPv4 addresses means your stuck with whatever port number they give you. They also are unable to run anything that isn’t a bukkit plugin, so my Pro license for MyMcAdmin would be useless. Still, not a bad choice for those looking for just a simple MineCraft server.

My newest VPS choice is Thrust::VPS (Formerly Damn::VPS?). They actually have Xen servers (as opposed to OpenVZ) for pretty cheap. I ordered a 2GB server for $29. I actually made the mistake of not doing enough research about the differences between Xen-HVM and Xen-PV. For those interested, HVM is much more like having a real box of your own. There is very little done for you. You get a VNC address and you can mount one of a bunch of OS distributions that you have to install. I don’t necessarily have a big problem with this but I’d much rather take the easy road and not have to go through all that. I ordered my server late last night and emailed them about switching it over. They didn’t hesitate to get back to me and are currently taking actions to switch it over. So support seems good! More will come when I take a couple of months to test things.

If anyone has any other good suggestions for cheap server that can handle a MineCraft Server and some Ruby on Rails projects?

Adding internationalization to XIB files in Xcode 4

Wed, 04 May 2011 02:54:56 -0500

I want to post a quick Derrr post about localizing XIB files in Xcode 4 since I just spent a good 2 or 3 hours trying to figure out what I was doing wrong to find I wasn’t really doing anything wrong.

Localization of your Interface Builder files in Xcode 4 is a piece of cake, actually.

Select the file you wish to localize.
Press Opt+Cmd+1 to open up the file’s info pane.
Scroll down to the Localizations section and hit the + button. It just created an English localization automatically for you!
Hit the + button again to add as many new languages as you want. You’ll notice that the original file in files pane is now expandable has copies of your XIB with (SomeLanguage) appended to it.
You can now select each of these and edit the labels and other things you wish to localize.
Clean, Build, Run!

This is where I ran into problems. I changed the language on the device and ran my app to find it still very much in english. I tried everything from deleting and redoing everything to just banging my head against a wall until I thought something might have changed. In the end, after countless google searches, I found one suggestion to delete the app from my device (or simulator), clean and recompile and.. IT WORKED!

Even if it was a few hours of wasted time, I did find some other useful tools for making the localization process much easier in the future. The problem with the easy method above is that if you need to add a button or make some changes, you have to do them to ALL your localized XIB files. But you can easily find a lot of information on using ibtool to automate the process a bit with scripts. This post had a lot of good great information on the subject to I suggest you check it out if you want to make your internationalization life a LOT easier.

iOS consolidated.db "flaw"?

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 18:13:11 -0500

I’m kind of getting sick of the big hoopla about the recently discovered (even though it wasn’t recently discovered at all) consolidated.db file which sits quietly in a publicly available iOS directory and is backed up every time you sync your phone. The file in question keeps a running log of dates, times and locations according to your GPS and wifi radios. I am all for getting up in arms if Apple has been actually collecting and doing something with this data without anyone knowing about it but the fact of the matter is, they aren’t. What really sucks, is that I have a feeling that this “bug” will get plugged with a future version of iOS and I personally think it’s a neat feature! I just pulled up a map of the last 6 months of my life and thought it was pretty damned cool. I agree that there should definitely be some sort of opt-out system that would purge this cache every so often, but I don’t want to have to do that. I’ll worry about my own security and make sure my iPhone and it’s backups stay out of the hands of wrong doers (heaven for big they see the extremely vague representation of locations data that I just saw on the map I made).

Bottom line. This is probably some oversight bug where a line of code wasn’t written to purge old location data. That’s perfectly plausible. But the data is so vague that it doesn’t really matter much. And without access to your computer or phone, no one can get at this information anyways. So plug the hole, Apple, but how about an opt-out strategy? I like it.

Hooray, iPad!

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 23:00:01 -0500

I finally got my iPad 2 last week and this post is coming to you straight from it! I really love it for just about everything. My MacBook Pro hasn’t gottten a lot of love over the last week and I can see her getting delegated to mostly development work and gaming. I do, unfortunately, feel the sting from the lack of Flash a little more now than when I just had my iPhone, but that doesn’t mean I think the iPad needs flash, it just makes me want all videos to go to h.264 even faster than I did before since that’s the only thing that I run into flash for.

Anywho, that’s all I got for now. I’m going to be able to test Secret Browser out a lot more on the iPad now that I actually have one! More on that soon!

Going back to unjailbroken

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 01:17:28 -0500

I really do love all the nifty features and tweaks that jailbreaking allows. I’ve dabbled many times. But every time I do, it just eventually reminds me how amazing Apple’s attention to detail and their refusal to release features until they “just work” really is. There aren’t any jailbroken features that I have found that work 100% of the time and/or work as intuitively and without fail as if Apple would have implemented them. At the end of the day, stability and intuition are more important than themes or “quick reply” to SMS.

I’m not going to go back to my pre-jailbreak backup either because I’m going to see how well iPhone Explorer works with restoring my Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies (among others) save files.

Can’t wait to see what iOS 5 has in store for us this summer! I’m probably going to write a post about what I’d love to see eventually.

Prompt for iOS. Get it!

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 19:18:15 -0500

Prompt for iOS. Get it!:

Anyone who needs to SSH to a remote server on any sort of frequent basis should really download Panic’s new app, Prompt. It’s $5, but well worth it because it just works. For those with jailbroken phones, you can even ssh to your own phone instead of using MobileTerminal! DO IT!

Two quick questions

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:17:00 -0500

1. Why hasn’t Apple already implemented a “quick reply” feature for SMS in iOS yet?

2. Why are the only “quick reply” SMS addons for jailbroken devices included with huge SMS replacements like BiteSMS or iRealSMS? Can’t we get a small, light weight, stand-alone addon?

Flash on Android Tablets

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 14:46:00 -0500

Flash on Android Tablets

Running a Minecraft server is a lot like flying the Millenium Falcon

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 16:04:00 -0500

minecraftteacher:

What I mean by that is that there is always something wrong. Some component that’s malfunctioning. Some part you thought you fixed that breaks just when you need it. And far too many little knobs and switches that have to be set just right. But when you’ve got everything patched up just right, it’s the sweetest ride in the galaxy.

(Even if it look like a piece of junk…)

Truer words have never been spoken.

iOS 4.3.1 Untethered Jailbreak Released!

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 17:14:26 -0500

iOS 4.3.1 Untethered Jailbreak Released!:

The newest version of iOS has finally been jailbroken in a much more convenient, untethered, version for all devices but iPad 2. iClarified.com has a great walkthrough tutorial on how to accomplish it.