Archive for July, 2010

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The curse of the long back…

Saturday, July 10th, 2010

So I get up this morning, I head for the coffee; I put my hands on the counter for just a second and WHAM my back goes out on me. I spent fifteen minutes just lying on the floor trying to get up. The pain is running all down my right leg, too, so it’s obviously something to do with my sciatica (I have chronic problems with that).

Anyway, it runs in the family. I have what’s referred to as a “swimmer’s back”, meaning it’s very very long. And the longer your back is, the more likely you are to have some lower back pain. At least it’s not killing me so much I can’t sit comfortably anymore. Well, it’s still uncomfortable, I guess, but Advil helped and if I stay in one position I seem to be okay.

Ironically, my father’s still getting over his back going out on him ten days ago.

Bit of a meaningless post to the blog, but I felt like venting my frustration, so just deal with it.

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Apple “bumper” solves my antenna problem

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

Well, after waiting for two weeks, my “bumper” from Apple has arrived. For $30 you get a cheap piece of plastic that goes around the phone in a strip. It does afford some protection if you drop your iPhone, though, and, more important, it gets rid of the “death grip” antenna glitch by separating the antenna from your hand with aforementioned cheap plastic.

Personally, I think Apple should be giving a free bumper to all iPhone 4 users, but we know that’ll never happen, right? Especially when Steve Jobs’ response to the glitch was, “Stop holding the phone the wrong way…”

So it works. A case would work as well. Anything that separates your sweaty palms from the small black line on the lower left that is the new antenna.

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Singularity for the PC: Quick Review

Saturday, July 3rd, 2010

I’m not the world’s hugest fan of FPSers, but when a good one comes along, well, it’s a pleasure to see.

Singularity is a FPSer with a bit of a twist. Made by the same folks who made Wolfenstein, they use a gimmick to make this game infinitely more fun than a regular FPS. Remember your occult abilities in Wolfenstein? Well, in Singularity, you have the “TMD” — “Time Manipulation Device” — which seems to be the big brother to the supernatural powers you had in Wolfenstein.

Using the TMD, you can age things, or creatures, levitate objects, and so on. Using the TMD effectively is- a large part of the game.


The TMD sets Singularity apart…(click to enlarge)

The game’s premise is rather simple; you’re on a mission to investigate a place called Katorga-12, where the Soviet Union, in the 1950s, discovered a powerful element named E99. Minor spoiler coming up — when you land on the island, early on, you are shot back into time to rescue a man — a man who goes on to harness E99′s power and drops an E99 bomb on the USA, giving Mother Russia a monopoly on power in an alternate timeline. Your goal then becomes to undo the damage you’ve caused.

Basically, Singularity is a straight-forward FPS, with the TMD thrown in, and that is exactly what makes it so fun. Rebuilding staircases and such using the reverse-aging function of the TMD provide a level of puzzle-solving to the game.

The rest of the game’s mechanics are fairly simple. Point, aim, shoot. You can get upgrades to your TMD using E99 tech, and upgrades to your weapons using “weapon tech”. You can even use E99 tech to purchase ammo, although that’s rather a waste of a substance that you could be using to upgrade your powers.

I give Singularity a solid 9 out of 10.

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Apple iPhone 4 antenna problem “software glitch”, according to Apple

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

Okay, so apparently the antenna glitch with the iPhone 4 is not actually a hardware glitch (or, rather, not ENTIRELY a hardware glitch) at all but rather a software glitch which is showing your signal as too strong; they apparently screwed up the formula for it. They’re working on an update now.

More here:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2366031,00.asp

Of course, this sort of belies the fact that Apple thinks we’re all idiots and we actually believe a software update can somehow fix a hardware-related problem. Let’s get this straight: the “death grip” on the iPhone 4 is real, whether or not the screen is showing the correct number of bars.

They ought to be giving a free bumper out to every iPhone 4 customer. I’m waiting for the one I paid for to be shipped, still.

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Thoughts on the iPhone 4

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

Well, I have it, finally — have had it for two days; the brand spankin’ new iPhone 4. What do I think of it?

Overall, I like it. They’ve changed the design a little bit, which I don’t mind, because I’m more of a fan of the sharp-edged iPhone than the “rounded” 3G and 3GS.

FaceTime works perfectly. I videochatted with a friend of mine for about half an hour, not a single glitch, very fast, very good quality video.

The camera has been worked over, and now has  a flash, and also a much better autofocus feature. You can also shoot video in 720p HD, which is nice.

However — and this is a big however — the reported “antenna glitch” is real, and if you get an iPhone 4, you better be prepared to deal with it. You can either stick a piece of scotch tape around the offending antenna, or you can buy a case, or do what I did, which is buy Apple’s “bumper”. Those will all fix the problem. Alternatively, you can just try not to hold the phone with your fingers on the antenna (a small black line at the bottom of the phone), but I find this to be rather hard to do, so I’m waiting very impatiently for my bumper to arrive.

Overall, not as huge a leap as the 3GS was from the 3G, but still a nice little skip forward. And it runs iOS 4.0 beautifully. And fast. And well.

And I’m done.

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