2011 Tech Highlight (sort of anyway)

iPhone 3G

When the iPhone was first released I read this review:

“The iPhone is a piece of shit and so is your face.” The review influenced me so much that I never gave the iPhone a second thought.

However, through the years I have heard so many good things about the iPhone that when my Blackberry got “nationalized” earlier this year I thought that maybe it was time to get an iPhone and see for myself what the big hoo-haa is.

I bought a second hand iPhone 3G and was (un)pleasantly surprised by it. The phone is beautiful to look at and it works like a charm but the battery life was horrible. I had to charge the phone twice a day, but that was not the bad part…

I used the internet on the iPhone like I would use it on my Blackberry and in the first month I racked up a R900 data bill! Did I really consume so much data with my Blackberry? So I had to kill the 3G, turning the iPhone 3G into just an iPhone.

I also have a lot of documents on my phone and find it hard to navigate inside a lot of text without the help of some arrow keys. I really miss the slide out keyboard from my old phone.

So here is my suggestion for the ultimate iPhone: unlimited internet bandwidth like a Blackberry and an elegant slide out keyboard like the Sony Experia.

Now that would be a brilliant phone.

 

Bonus disappointment: my iPhone have not slipped any random sexual innuendo into my conversions yet.

 

 

Source: runt-of-the-web

 

I am the proud owner of: Xbox 360 and an iPhone.

Spot the geek - Friday Time Waster

Of these three celebrities below, can you spot the biggest geek? Hint: he runs his own gaming company.

 

Did you guess tough guy Vin Diesel? If you did, congrats, you got it. Of the three people up there, he is by far the geekiest. He likes to beat the shit out of people in movies and he likes to beat the shit out of people in games.

Vin started playing video games when he was young but he soon got bored with the one dimensional stories and switched to something with a richer and fuller storyline - Dungeons and Dragons. The nerdiest of nerd games.

He has been playing D&D for 20+ years now!

He always kept quiet about his dark secret until he heard that Steven Spielberg is working on the Medal of Honor games. That was his cue to come out of the geek closet and announce that he is going to start his own gaming studio – Tigon Studios.

Tigon Studio is dedicated to making games with great story lines. One of their first games was based on the Pitch black / Chronicles of Riddick movies, Chronicles of Riddick, Escape from Butcher’s bay.

I have noted before that games based on movies suck badly, but Escape from Butcher’s Bay is something else, it scored a whopping 90% on Metacritc. The critics and players loved the game.

Other games by Vin Diesel’s studio have also done well scoring (Wheelman) 65% and (Assault on Dark Athena) 80%.

Bonus geek fact: In the movie XXX, Vin Diesel sported a fake tattoo that read Melkor. Melkor is the name of one of his D&D characters.

Honorable Mention – Ice T

When Ice T is not rapping about shooting people, he is shooting people on Xbox. On his Twitter account he talks a lot about games and the games he is playing. Some of his favorite games include Call of Duty and Dead Space.

Buy your own super villain lair online now!

Have you been dreaming of becoming a super villain? Is the only think holding you back the fact that you don’t have a kickass stronghold?  

If you are going to demand that world governments bow before you and you are doing it from your mom’s basement, they are just going to laugh at you.  

What you need is one of these ultra modern real-life super villain lairs.

Image: Missle basis Properties

These innocuous looking buildings are actually nuclear missile bases in disguise! Above ground they don’t look like anything spectacular but below ground it is a different story. They consist of reinforced concrete structures that continues deep under ground where they used to house nuclear missiles.

Image: Missle basis Properties

The US army does not need these bases anymore and are selling them to the public. Misslebases.com has several of these old nuclear bases for sale. They go for anything from $200 000 to $2 million.  

Ultra luxurious on the inside, you can now send your demands to world governments in style!

Image: Missle basis Properties

Bono teams up with Spiderman

 

A Spiderman stage production with music written by Bono? Now, I have officially seen everything.

 

 

 

How to steal designs - a beginners guide

How to steal designs - a beginners guide

I recently needed to steal the look and feel from somebody else’s design, wait, I meant, I admired the look and feel and wondered what font they were using.

To find out what font they are using I found a tool on the website: http://www.identifont.com/

To identify the font they start by asking you various questions about the font, they also display images to help you understand the questions better.

After asking the questions they recommend fonts that are similar to the one you are looking at.

It is a quick and easy way to find that font you are looking for.

A tale of two New York cities

A tale of two New York cities

I imagine that the people of New York live their lives in absolute fear. They spend their lives running from cover to cover because at any given moment there is some monster mercilessly hunting them down. 

Alone in the Dark and Prototype are both set in the city of New York. In both games you wake up after being experimented on. In both games the experiment goes wrong and the citizens of New York get butchered. 

In part one of this article, I will review Alone in the Dark. Next week in part two, I will take a look at Prototype.

Alone in the Dark

I obtained a copy of Alone in the Dark and immediately regretted it. To be fair… I think the game was really designed for the X-Box / PS3 controller and not the PC keyboard.
To control your character is just impossible. Literally every key on the keyboard is assigned some action. Think I am kidding? Even the print screen button does something. Some of the actions are useless, for example x blinks your eyes (what!?).  Trying to hit all the keys you look like Jerry Lee Lewis playing piano. (Previous sentence might contain hyperbole)

The first level you play has you jumping from rock to rock like a Super Mario Brother and with the keyboard; it is just not possible to control your character. I kept falling over stuff and off stuff and soon just gave up.

Maybe the game gets better later on and maybe if I tried for 125 more hours to learn how to control my fall-down-drunk character the game could have been fun, but I simply don’t have the patience.

 

 

Alone in the dark still sucks.

Remember when I reviewed Alone in the Dark (AITD) and called it a piece of shit? The game really sucks but I gave it some benefit of the doubt, I played it on a PC but the game seemed to be designed specifically for a console.

Well, I played it on an Xbox and the game is still a piece of shit.

A hallmark of horror / survival games is the fact that the controls are hard to use. The developers purposely make you feel clumsy, you feel out of control, if that monster attacks now you won’t be able to escape, you will be doomed. This mechanic heightens your sense of fear, but the AITD developers confused fear with annoyance and mind numbing boredom. The controls for this game are so clunky doing the smallest of tasks is a chore.

Then for some reason the developers felt that it was necessary to spontaneously change the camera angle for no reason while you are walking. Walking along minding your own business and BAM suddenly you are staring straight up the dude’s backside. Or at his legs, or his forehead, etc, etc. it really sucks. This game sucks. Don’t bother spending your valuable resources on it. Don’t bother wasting your valuable bandwidth pirating it. Avoid!