The iPad is a glorious device and I am in love already. What makes this device particularly attractive is that it has a large keyboard and a large screen. This is important for two reasons. The first of these is typing speed. I am very closes to touch typing speed already.
The second thing I like about it is that I could easily see myself putting it in the stand and using the calendar feature and e-mail client. The display feels like a sheet of paper. They tend to go for that look. The advantage with such a device is evident. I can see the whole email without scrolling. This means I am less likely to skip over something that I should otherwise have notice.
The sound when you type is quite interesting. You hear low taps most of the time but for some keys you do hear the sound of the nail hitting the glass. If you hold it vertical then with my hands you can type although the fingers stretch a little too much.
Zynga and Maxis are from very different computer gamer times. Maxis came at a time when the game was the source of entertainment. You would build a farm, worry about pests and locusts, about fertilizing the fields and having enough income to build the next series of crop. Zynga on the other hand is a game that teaches you to behave like a machine rather than a human, where repetitive actions are the standard.
Simfarm, among other games was one of those games that you could play for weeks at a time. You would select a difficulty level and according to that difficulty level you would need to use knowledge you acquired through experience. If you put cows next to fields without a fence they would walk through and eat the crop. If you didn’t save enough money then if a crop failed your farm was toast.
With Zynga you can put pigs with crops, animals in barns and more. There is no intellectual aspect to this game unless you’re a garden designer. You plant the fields, you wait a while and then you harvest. This is great if life doesn’t get in the way. How many of you know what you will be doing in two hours, 8 hours or sixteen hours? i kind of do, but my life will not center around such a simple game.
What I liked about simfarm is that it was not mechanical. There was an aspect of game strategy. By obeying certain principles you could progress quite nicely in the game. Zynga has two ways for progression. The first is patience and the second is money. If you pay money then you can have everything immediately. If you spam your friends and they participate then you are rewarded. Do you really want to have to spam your friends to progress in a game? I don’t.
I don’t like this trend, that you encourage people to spend money for a mechanical rather than intellectual game and I think that game makers should take this into consideration. If Civilization V came to facebook then I would play it. I would pay an upfront payment and expect to have the full game.
And this reminds me of a recent documentary on the BBC called Coast. Do you, as a gamer, as a facebook user want games that are teaching you a different form of managment where right decisions bring profit or do you want penny arcade style games that require that mechanical put the coin in the slot type response?
I would like to leave you with an interesting TED talk to help you think about this topic. I watched it a week ago but it’s relevant to the question of time spent gaming and what we should expect to get out of it.
International World Water Day is held annually on 22 March as a means of focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources.
“After the Twestival hangover, how much money was raised for charity:water?”
There are some events I don’t feel are really as chartable as they sound and twestival is one such event. I have absoluetely nothing against the charity they are raising funds for but I do question the ethics behind the events. Can you spot the word that I find is unfortunate?
Hangover, that’s the word I think should never be used in this context. Here you are stating that you want to help a charity to raise funds for a charity but you do so through music and other events. Problem is you’ve got people drinking alcohol at the event.If they woke up the next day with a hangover then what value and what message did they get from the event?
If I were to organise such an event, especially in London, then I would go to the Frontline club and see whether they know of any documentaries on the topic. I would attempt to get some people whose job it is to study the problem of water and get them to speak.
In particulr I’m thinking of a session like the one concentrating on water at the World Economic Forum in Davos. They are specialists in relation to this topic. As a result they know what figures are important.
How many litres of water does it take to produce one litre of biofuel for example. I don’t have the numbers on hand but they are impressive.
I always go to social media events and meet a lot of geeks who love to use new technology such as twitter, seesmic and more. For once it’s a little different. I’m in Fribourg where I’m surrounded by writers. There are a lot of PC rather than Mac computers. The hot chocolate is good and the city is nice.
At the time of writing there have been two word wars. The concept is simple. Write solidly for five minutes at a time and see who has the highest word count. So far I’ve written 313 and then 328 in two sessions, not bad.
Stravistix for strava is a Chrome plugin. It allows you to analyse the data from your ride in more detail and with more graphs. In the detailed view you can see heart rate information, speed, power, grade, elevation and  ascent speed. It allows you to see each metric in more depth.
It allows you to look at your statistics in detail. You can see what percentage of the ride was flat, uphill or downhill. You can see how fast you were climbing and how your speed varies.
This breadth of data is fun to play with. It allows you to see whether you do spend as much time as you thought climbing. It also allows you to see how much of your time was spent static or moving.
There is a weather module for wind, temperature, clouds and humidity. This is a nice way of checking whether the wind is favourable to the ride you are thinking of doing that day.
What I would like to see next is a log of the weather and especially wind during the ride. It would like to see ground speed in contrast to wind speed. This data should be relatively easy to acquire.
Plugins are great because they allow you to do more with the data that you or other people generate. They allow weekend and professional riders to analyse how they are progressing. It also allows riders to compare themselves with others.
Tonight I went to the cinema and saw two films at a cinema that has turned half a century old. The most interesting of those event is a 1930s film with a live performance by a jazz band touring switzerland with that film. I also saw an Avant premiere for a film that was quite interesting. It was a different subject matter than other films I’ve seen.
I’ll write more and include links to videos once some of the video material I shot is processed.
Here are some images from the lac de Joux a few weeks ago. I had not had enough of the frozen landscapes so I travelled further afield. I walked on the ice but there are moments when I could feel it creak as I walked. I didn’t fall through the ice.
So which one did you get? I was in the Apple Store at Cherry Creek today , and one of the staff told me that they were out of them currently. They also have a reservation list of hundreds of people who are still wanting one. Local Big Box Electronic stores are in the same situation of not having enough iPads to meet the demand.
I got the 64 gig wifi and 3g version because that’s the one that makes sense. So far it’s been a great device although I have yet to really put it through it’s paces. We’ll see when that occurs.
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So which one did you get? I was in the Apple Store at Cherry Creek today , and one of the staff told me that they were out of them currently. They also have a reservation list of hundreds of people who are still wanting one. Local Big Box Electronic stores are in the same situation of not having enough iPads to meet the demand.
I got the 64 gig wifi and 3g version because that’s the one that makes sense. So far it’s been a great device although I have yet to really put it through it’s paces. We’ll see when that occurs.