Randomized Output

ed: Thought I had posted this a while back, but apparently I’d left it in draft form.  Updated and throwing it out here now.

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I recently recommended a bunch of iphone games as a twitter response so I thought I’d post a more thorough entry here.

Games I’ve got loaded:

• Lux Touch – Risk style game; this is the free version which is good enough for when I get that urge.
• Quordy – Boggle style game; has multiplayer challenges; I should play more, but there’s so many other games.
• Fieldrunners – tower defense;  my favorite of the many many TD games that I’ve tried on the iPhone.
• Mecho Wars – turn based strategy game, similar to Advance Wars;  I like the art style.
• Tiki Towers – physics puzzler, similar to world of goo, but not as polished.
• Civilization Revolution – port from xbox live.  It’s not quite as detailed as the pc version, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
• iBlast Moki – physics puzzler.  It’s my new favorite game.  I love the art style and the game theme plus level design is fantastic.
• Secret of Monkey Island – classic adventure game
• 2 across – crosswords
• Flight Control – finger drawing / time management game
• Robocalypse – RTS game.  ported from nintendo DS
• Uniwar – turn based strategy
• Tris – tetris clone

Games I’ve got an eye on:

• Romance of the Three Kingdoms – koei port!
• Hybrid: Eternal Whisper – action/rpg
• Zenonia – zelda look-a-like
• Catan – official Settlers game, but currently looking clunky

Over the last couple months, I’ve been on a reading frenzy, going through several newish fantasy series. I’ve been avoiding writing anything about them because it’s easier to just say ‘read this’, but I decided I should at least make a short post. I’ve read all of these via Stanza on the iphone. It’s an awesome e-reader that I highly recommend (it’s free).

Update: looks like I’ll just be doing one per post. Haha.

First one I highly recommend is the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. It’s epic, it’s got great characterization, and it’s got some very well thought out magic systems. As I was going through it, everything felt well planned as if driving towards an ultimate goal. I’ve been reading his annotations online at his website and it’s very clear that he’s spent a lot of time working through things to give the maximum impact to the reader.

He’s taken some familiar fantasy tropes and given them some twists. He has created a world where the archetypal fantasy hero has failed (think if frodo had kept the ring) and turned into an evil emperor. There’s some of the other usual fantasy fare like prophecies and magic, but nothing plays out like you would expect at first sight. It just feels logical once you’re done reading.

That logic even touches the several magic systems in play in the book. The main one we’re introduced to is “allomancy”, in which, certain individuals have the ability to “burn” small amounts of ingested metal to give themselves physical abilities. Different metals give different powers like a video game mana system. The actual powers aren’t outlandish, but I was pleased with how he mostly follows the laws of physics and comes up with very creative uses to achieve the feeling of superpowers. The other two systems of magic tie in together quite well as slightly different ways to achieve the same level of powers.

I can’t say enough good things about the series. It kept up a quick pace, never bogging down, but felt complete at the end. The characters changed / progressed. It’s a fairly serious story, but there’s enough jokes to keep things from getting too out of hand. In short, it’s awesome. Read it!

Ok, this was more of a review than I was originally planning. Maybe I’ll get to writing about the other series later.

Edit:  Thanks Jed for pointing out I actually installed WP-Touch instead of IWphone.  haha.

I seem to be more interested in setting my blog up to do cool things, than actually writing about said cool things.  One of the plugins I’ve found is called WP-Touch.  When it detects the user agent from an iphone or ipod touch, it sends a version of your blog that’s formatted for the iphone.  There’s also an option for the visitor to see your blog with the original formatting if they so choose.  I’ve included a couple screenshots I snagged while writing this post.

Just installed the wordpress app for the iPhone. Testing the posting capability. Looks pretty sweet.

Also installed a twitter plugin for wordpress that should automatically create a tweet when I create a blog post. (thanks laura and jed)

so the volume button on my iPhone sticks. Went to the apple store in fair oaks and they ordered a replacement. So that’ll be coming Monday or Tuesday. Need to deal with backing up my contacts in yahoo I think. Also all the downloadable apps don’t start and power cycling doesn’t seem to fix it. Deleting and re-installing seems to work however. Yay gadgets. I still want to make out with my phone.

Victory!  Only had to get up at 5:30am yesterday to get my black 16gb from tysons.  Woot!

I want to make out with my phone, it's so awesome.  So, anyone have some reccomended apps?

I've already installed:

smugshot (for viewing smugmug galleries of my photos)
city guide (created by wapo and ties into all their reviews)
remote
google
all the google apps
flashlight / mylite (turns it into an expensive flashlight)
sportstap (sports scores)
shazam (music recog)
yelp (restaurant reviews)
boxoffice (movies)
labyrinth LE (game)
tap tap revenge (game)