29 juillet 2010

19:11	"Fuck you bitches" Yes, cheap crowdsourcing is cheap.

18:58	@chartier sez: “CNN must still be polishing an "Android app steals all ur data" headline, and Google is finalizing its press conference plans. Just wait.”

17:20	“Great, even our beds could be causing cancer” Thus, as we sleep on our coil-spring mattresses, we are in effect sleeping on an antenna that amplifies the intensity of the broadcast FM/TV radiation Huh. Sounds dubious, but not altogether absurd.

17:09	“OhLife — Stupendously Easy Life Journaling” Every evening, at 8 p.m., you get an email asking you what your day was like. Reply, and send. That’s an excellent idea, and the site looks pretty. Not that I would ever trust a third-party with my diary.

15:16	I'm glad I hiked up the price of Unicode; I'm gonna be able to eat for the next two weeks.

14:32	“New Amazon Kindle announced: $139 WiFi-only version and $189 3G model” For the first time I can unambiguously write that the Kindle is a nice object. And it’s now quite affordable. Not to the point of having to lug it around in addition to my iPad, but for everyone who isn’t going to buy an Apple tablet, it’s time to get the Kindle.

28 juillet 2010

20:38	Corollary: If your iPad app doesn't have a "Retry" button for when it hasn't found the internet, you fail.

20:27	Still not used to having to count to ten after I turn on the iPad before I can use internet-based apps. Is it the same on iPod touch?

15:50	Still using target=_blank? Bear in mind that it completely craps out in almost all third-party iOS apps (Reeder, Twitter clients, etc.).

27 juillet 2010

14:51	Fuck shit ass. Magic Trackpad requires 10.6.4, i.e. an Intel Mac.

03:41	Sherlock 1.01 — It's just silly how much of a The Doctor they made him, but it's really, really well done.

26 juillet 2010

Limbo (360)

Let’s get this out of the way: Limbo is a terrific artistic achievement and, like Braid ~~a year ago~~ wow two years ago time flies, you absolutely ought to buy it, both for the exceptional experience and to reward the developers’ talent and originality.

It’s just that you couldn’t be blamed for not finishing the game. (But then I didn’t finish Braid either.)

The first third, or half, of the game, is an absolute masterpiece. The atmosphere is just fantastic — visuals, sounds, the universe, everything fits, and the controls are perfectly tight (and devilishly simple). I’m not sure I’ve ever been as scared playing a game before (well, I don’t play the Resident Evil games et al. because I don’t like them — but this is a simple monochrome 2D platformer, so it’s not really making it easy for itself to immerse and freak the player out). The first part has one of the most unnerving enemies I’ve ever encountered; the second part has the best non-speaking secondary characters; then… it all kinda goes to shit.

Some people don’t seem to mind that the puzzles become punishingly complicated, and maybe I’m a lazy casual gamer at heart, but what’s inarguable is that the environments become unoriginal, boring, pointless, and it definitely feels like they’ve been padding the game a lot to justify the price.

Limbo would be much better — it would probably be perfect, in fact — if it was half as long and $5 cheaper. But, as it stands, it’s still a must-buy; you can just use an online guide to power through to the end (that’s what I did and I have no regrets). Or you could stop playing, but you’ll want to see the end. Even though it’s short and, uh, doesn’t show much of anything. (That’s just a warning, not a spoiler.)

Demo: Kane & Lynch 2 (360)

The first game had two problems: outdated graphics and muddy controls. I really like what they’ve done to the sequel’s visuals (you’re basically looking at the game through a cheap camcorder, or poorly encoded news clips on YouTube, or something like that, the point isn’t clear but it works, although I’m not sure how annoying that gets after a while), but instead of fixing the poor controls they’ve worked around them in a pretty cheap and lousy way: tuning auto-aim to the max.

The default (at least in normal difficulty) is GTA IV-level aim assist, which is probably fine for the more casual audience (can the casual audience really be that interested in a game like Kane & Lynch?) but ridiculous in a game whose sole point is shooting enemies; worse, even if you turn auto-aim off, it’s still there — just weaker. And for me to notice auto-aim in a shooter, it’s got to be really conspicuous.

(Unlike, say, Halo — where I’ve never perceived aim assist but I’ve heard often enough that it’s there — the game doesn’t actually help you much at actually following a target while you, or it, is moving; it just snaps violently to the nearest target when you squeeze the aiming trigger, then leaves you on your own. Not that it would be very usable either if you could really turn aim assist, though, because aiming doesn’t zoom the view at all.)

It’s a pity that they’re wasting such nice visual and atmospheric effort with poor controls. On the other hand, that game seems to be much, much better than you could ever have expected of a sequel to the first Kane & Lynch, so it’s not really all negative.

23:20

“HyperMac Stand doubles as an external battery for your iPad”

The design is clever enough (except I don’t see much in the way of protective padding for the iPad’s front glass) and it includes a battery for when you’re using your iPad literally all day long (as I am), so it’s awesome, right?

Well, if I’m reading the info correctly, they didn’t care to pay Apple the dock connector tax, so… if you want to use the included battery, you’ve got to connect the iPad to the stand with a USB cable. That’s a great deal of inconvenience for no less than $130.

19:06	Warehouse 1.06–1.13 — Unsurprisingly, the show gets somewhat more annoying as it starts taking itself more seriously.

18:53

“How to restore the color of dingy old Lego bricks”

The plastics these [old computers] were made of is called ABS and to make it flame retardant (just in case it catches fire after a marathon session) the plastics manufacturers added chemicals that caused the plastic turn yellow or, even worse, brown over a long period of time.

Ooh, so that’s why. I always thought it was just natural for old plastic to do that.

A chance discovery was made in March 2008, by The CBM Museum at Wuppertal in Germany, that immersing parts in a solution of Hydrogen Peroxide for a few days could partially reverse the process.

00:36	Warehouse 13 1.01–1.05 — Really silly , but fun, and the stories aren't bad.

25 juillet 2010

	18:21 Edited with Snap Filters on my iPhone.

17:40

“Concerning FourSquare”

The problem is because people don’t think about what they’re doing. People are infuriating like that, but it’s the truth of the matter. People see the function to pair the FourSquare and Twitter account so they do, and they see the function to broadcast their check-in to Twitter so they do. They’re in an application context of closed friends, and they don’t consider that they’re spreading information into different places.

Several interesting, well thought-out points about developing a social network or any kind of online service that interacts with them.

15:06	The jumbo bottles of Coke Zero give me headaches yet I keep drinking them.

	13:27 Testing the You Gotta See This app. Meh.

24 juillet 2010

22:44

“Does Language Influence Culture?”

One of the key advances in recent years has been the demonstration of precisely this causal link. It turns out that if you change how people talk, that changes how they think. If people learn another language, they inadvertently also learn a new way of looking at the world. When bilingual people switch from one language to another, they start thinking differently, too.

The scientific studies mentioned in this article are as fascinating as they are scary. (By the way, I always thought that about being bilingual.)

21:11

“Apple attacks Droid X antenna”

This is turning into one of those charming cage matches in which wrestlers desperately try to maim each other with chains and chairs and blows to very private regions.

In a new video, posted to both its own Web site and to YouTube, Apple attempts to show that the dazzling new Motorola Droid X, which many seem to rather appreciate, also has something of an issue when it comes to being held in the Death Grip.

What this is turning into is a little kid who shouts "He does it too! And him! And him!" several hours after the matter has been settled by his parents — mostly in his favor.

We got it, Apple feels wrongly singled out in this matter, and at this point I have no idea and don’t really care one way or the other (even if it’s unfair, it still goes with the territory when you have the best, most adored phone on the market — and when you’re an arrogant ass about it); I just can’t believe they’re still updating their comparative page instead of letting the matter die.

(Yes, it’s only been a few days, but won’t you give the tech press a chance to move over already?)

21:02	"Daft Punk Helmet replica finally completed" Link is days old but I hadn't watched the video yet. Amazing and insane.

20:41	@TheMacalope sez: “Shorter Apple to other phone makers with antenna problems: "If we're going down WE'RE TAKING YOU WITH US."”

20:36	C'est de plus en plus le bordel, OVH, ou c'est juste que j'ai des serveurs dans chaque salle donc je suis touché par chaque incident ?

14:39	You Gotta See This! for iPhone 4 I like the idea but I'm hesitant to buy an iPhone app whose site crashes my iPad.

02:19	When you look at Flipboard… it's unacceptable for any modern Twitter client to be content displaying a bit.ly URL. Expand & fetch the title!

00:29	Guardian Eyewitness: Daybreak over Faulkland

00:26

“Tab Candy: Making Firefox Tabs Sweet”

Way geeky (as in, you will never ever see that in Safari), but nicely done, for power users who live in their browsers.

I don’t ever have more than four tabs open at any given time now (mostly since I started using Reader Helper, and recently replaced it with either Instapaper or Read It Later), but a few years ago I would have had wet dreams after watching this video.

(It would also be nice on an iPad, though. I’m sure someone will post a half-assed, unusable version of this on the App Store soon enough.)

23 juillet 2010

20:33	Mongrels 1.01–1.04 — Some good jokes, but mostly wasted potential and unexportable British pop references & guests.

17:34	"Mass Effect 2 Enters The Lair Of The Shadow Broker" That's a story-based DLC I'm gonna have to buy, unlike the others.

01:44	How did @instapaper think it was a good idea to have the browser actively prevent the user from interacting with the page while loading?

01:30	"High-Speed Robot Hand" More agile than a Cylon — especially the last bit, catching a cell phone (via Buzz Out Loud).

22 juillet 2010

21:42	On recherche un ou une japonais(e) avec un micro de bonne qualité pour finalement faire the appli d'apprentissage des kana.

21:21	Does Flipboard use a screwed-up font for titles, or do they actively replace hyphens with em-dashes?

20:47	"Nous avons procédé aujourd'hui au remboursement automatique [de votre bumper iPhone]." Euh, ouais, c'était la CB de ma mère, mais bon.

19:06	Flipboard doesn't mind showing me the same link a dozen times in my Twitter feed. Style over algorithm, I'm afraid.

17:43	Tried setting up a Behance portfolio for my LinkedIn profile, but the complexity and paradoxical limitations made me scream.

	Tarot Royal sur iPhone www.tarotroyal.com

14:10	The timeline seems inoderni... indod... oddly quiet today. Also, I'm still sleepy.

02:29	Flipboard's business model Give the app for free to make it up in volume, and become as powerful as Apple. Um, okay.