The chiwawa is off the lease! Join Steph, Geoff, Tiernan and Murph for talk about gaint ducks, Great Gatsby VS Iron Man and a pecular game called Candies Box.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Friday, May 17, 2013
Hatin’ on Eight
By Geofry “Geodude”
Lawton
Last month, I was
treated to a demonstration of Windows 8 on my campus. It worked
smooth, and the tiles were… attractive, I guess. It seemed like
something that would be fun to mess around with at least. The cloud
storage seemed like it might be useful, although only marginally more
useful than gmailing something to oneself, and it requires dealing
with Microsoft accounts, which are downright infuriating. Ultimately,
there were three reasons that really sold me on moving to 8, and only
one of them was in the pitch I got.
- You can still use the normal desktop.
- My school computer lab was giving away free upgrades to students.
- I was running an install of XP that was completely broken in bizarre ways on my netbook.
So, I figured I
had nothing to lose and much to gain by upgrading. At least I would
be able to run Firefox, which freak errors in my XP install had been
preventing. With tempered optimism, I hiked over to the computer lab,
popped in an install CD, and jumped in with both feet. What follows
are my personal impressions and gripes with the system.
The following
weeks were decidedly not like the demo. One of the first things I
noticed was that the tiles that are the huge selling point of the OS,
was arbitrarily locked out of my computer because the resolution on
my netbook was too low. While my computer could display the start
screen, it wouldn't run or change any of the programs (I refuse to
use the word app for something that isn’t running on my phone) that
display. This stuck me with NBA headlines in the default sports app
there, a “Set your Location” message in the weather app, and a
giant Bing box that wouldn’t even work because of the
aforementioned resolution restrictions. After a week of attempts and
research, I was able to trick the system into thinking I had a bigger
screen and was able to fool with the apps that were there. With the
time I put into playing with the apps, I found the default apps
boring and vapid, and didn’t bother with them anymore. I can’t
imagine that I was the only one who was promised something easy and
useful were given something wholly non-functional instead.
Aside from that
specific issue with compatibility, I have some nits to pick with the
tile interface. For practically everyone who currently has a
computer, Windows 8 is completely a waste of time. The laptop I
tested Windows 8 on was a new Thinkpad with the touchscreen, and the
tiles, which are meant to be the new start screen are completely
built for touch. I marvel that no one at Microsoft thought of how
ridiculous a group of businessmen and -women all rubbing their laptop
screens would look. I say this because, even in the demo I felt
stupid reaching up from my perfectly good touchpad to move around the
screen. As the owner of a normal laptop, however, I feel even
stupider using my arrow keys to crawl around a bunch of boxes to get
where I need to go. So far I’ve spent most of my time on the start
screen trying to drag all of my most used programs to the top of the
front page; something that the old start bar did automatically.
The start screen
is over-designed and hyper-simplified. Like an ultra-modern kitchen,
it is attractive and clean, but not in a way that welcomes me to use
it. The news, email, and other live tiles are an interesting
addition, but only insomuch as they offer new and interesting ways to
get distracted while just trying to find Word. What is supposed to be
useful and engaging is literally a wall between you and what you need
to do. The one good useful feature of the new start menu is that you
can press the windows key to pull up the start menu, and just type to
get to a program or file. This is the one positive development, and
it is directly lifted from Debian!
Enough harping on
the tiles. Windows 8 does its best to hide useful features that were
easily accessible before. It took me a good bit of exploring to find
the control panel. There is no start button, which I still find
disconcerting when looking at the toolbar. Speaking of the toolbar,
it unspeakably huge, and I’m forced to auto-hide it.
Also conveniently
hidden are the huge phone buttons that replace the start bar.
Hovering in the upper right corner brings up an overlay that has five
options: Search, Share, Start, Devices, and Settings. 3/5 of these do
absolutely nothing. Start is the replacement for the start button
that brings up the tiles. Settings is where the Control panel is
hidden, but there are two different control panel pages that control
the desktop and tile modes separately. These start buttons are
terrible from a design perspective, and adds an unnecessary step to
simple tasks like ejecting hardware. One final straw is that you have
to hover right in the place that the “X” is in order to bring
them up, which can be problematic when you are using a finicky
touchpad.
Overall, it seems
that 8 was designed for the Surface, and I assume that it is good for
that purpose, but many of the features that are intended for that are
detrimental to the experience on a normal PC. Windows 8 is not a
desktop OS. It is clearly designed for touch. It is good for tablets.
That’s it. Even assuming that you have a touchscreen PC, you’d
still be better in an older version because of the extra steps that
are inserted to accommodate the tablets that would be using it.
Windows 8 attempts to make PCs more accessible, and fails on every
front. If you are considering upgrading, I have two words for you:
“STAY AWAY!”
Sunday, May 12, 2013
E72 - Butterdust
Its too late, its infected with butterdust. Join Lumans, Steph and Murph on a butterdust filled ride.
Monday, May 6, 2013
E71- Four Canonical Scenes
With extra scenes added! Join Tiernan, Steph, Geoff and Murph on another dork night. Topics vary from Iron Man 3 (which I saw after the recording and it is good), to phallic symbols on Mars. Join us wont you?
Mars rover draws on the moon (possibly NSFW)
Sunday, April 28, 2013
E70 - Closer to 200 than 100
Sure, we are bad at math. Join Ben, Geoff, Tiernan, and Murph for a very special Dork Night. It's another round number episode, so that makes it important. Talk of Thor, Sanderson, Defiance and Ameristralia fill the night!
Sunday, April 21, 2013
E69 - Art Critism
So this is the second part of an earlier recorded episode. Ben, Tiernan, Shade, and Murph chat up about DuckTales, some video games as art chat, and comic books.
The reason for the earlier part of a recorded episode is I appeared on Bonfireside Chat, a Dark Souls podcast. You should totally check it out, as Gary and Kole run a great thing there.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Ridiculous Fishing: Dodge, Catch, Shoot
Ridiculous Fishing is an iOS game put out by Vlambeer, Greg Wohlwend, and Zack Cage. I picked this up on the recommendation from the Besties, Polygon's podcast of the best friends in the world who talk about video games. I am here today to pass that recommendation on to you.
 |
| Gah! Jellyfish! |
Each "run" can be broken down into three distinct parts. The first, the descent, has you plunge your fishhook into the depths of the ocean, avoiding fish in order to get further downward to more and rarer fish. When you either hit the bottom, or far more often, run into a wayward denizen of the sea, you then start motoring upward, attempting to hit all the fish you missed on the way down. This is all done using the iDevice motion sensors, meaning you tilt the phone one way or the other, which can get awkward when you are trying to pretend that you are listening in a meeting, but is otherwise feels really on point. I want to emphasize that the controls for this game are exceptionally tight, one of the best motion controlled games I've played. Finally, when you reach the surface, you fling your fish into the air, and pull out a shotgun, or uzi or bazooka if you've been playing awhile, and tap tap tap away to shoot your catch, bringing in the money. Then its to the shop to buy upgrades (all in the in game currency, no in-app purchases here), and back for another run, to get a little bit deeper this time.
This cycle of gameplay is really satisfying for some reason. You get a pokemon-esque desire of needing to catch every type of fish, categorized in Fish-o-pedia. On top of that, its hard but not in a frustrating way. Failure just means a new challenge starts, which takes away that sting when you make it to 799 feet instead of 800, because now you have to be sure to hit that super cool looking fish you saw on the way down.
Not only is the gameplay solid, but the world around you is cute. The art has this triangle pixel style, which borders on cuteness. The story of the game is told through Bryder, a Twitter analog, but it is ignorable if you just want to dodge, catch, and then shoot fish.
This is a solid iOS title, and at $2.99, well worth the dollar to enjoyment ratio.
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