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By leo.flor, February 13, 2012 01:49

After resisting the urges of several friends to read the series, A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, the HBO Series: Game of Thrones (which in my opinion is masterfully done) finally convinced me to get into them.  I am now firmly entrenched in the camp of readers anxiously waiting for book 6 (and 7).

Since I’m a math and computer geek, I have a naturally propensity to this type of nerdery.  After finishing Dance With Dragons, and while waiting for Season Two of Game of Thrones, I still craved some form of medieval battle.  I even rewatched the battle scenes in Braveheart.

I used to play a LOT of Warcraft III but I can’t be bothered to re-install it (and I can’t find my disks).  So I went to my iPad to see what I could find.  I was looking for something that would be like the old Sierra game, Lords of the Realm (which I also played more than my share of) and decided to try Lords of War.

To be frank, this hasn’t satisfied my craving for real-time battle action, but nonetheless, I can’t stop myself from playing it.  It’s like being constantly in the building phase of Warcraft or Starcraft but like a real lord, I don’t actually battle.  I just send the troops and get results.  I think most people would easily get bored playing it.  I guess I’m enjoying the social aspects.  You have to ally yourself with others else you will be picked on.

One part of the game that is a little tedious is asking for prayers which turn themselves into vouchers which buy useful things in the game.  The alternative is paying real money in exchange for gold in the game, which I’m even more adverse to.

The game is buggy as hell and there are typos and grammatical errors in all kinds of places in a manner that reminds me of Engrish.com.  Some of the bugs I’ve exploited such as being able to sell an item twice, hehe.

It’s pretty low maintenance, you don’t have to pay too much attention to it and can devote as little or as much time as you like.  Although the leaders of my alliance will sometimes convene a war council which is fun as we scheme and attack our way to the top!

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By leo.flor, September 5, 2011 15:00

I needed a new vehicle to deliver audio from various music players to my brain after I lost my Skullcandy earbuds; decided to take it to the next level since I wasn’t fully happy with them anyway.  Like most headphones, the wire eventually weakens on the connection so over time you lose hearing in one and then both ears.  These were already replaced once through their great warranty but I was reluctant to go through the process again; it was a sign.   Plus I had a gift card that was collecting dust so I decided to check out these Dr. Dre headphones that seem to be increasing in popularity.   I would gladly rock the bigger, badder over-ear models but  I was going for small, light and easy to put away.

These are definitely next-level headphones.  Whether you’re listening to classical or rock or hip-hop you can hear everything on the track very crisply.  The bass is nice and deep; it will move you.  The microphone is quite good, I used it with Dragon Dictation to record this blog post.

The on-cord remote for controlling volume and playback is pretty solid albeit biased to Apple products; it easily controls my iPod nano, my iPad and even my MacBook.  It works splendidly answering calls and controlling music play on iPhone (4).  I say biased because it doesn’t control my BlackBerry Torch very well (known issue).  In fact I can’t even use it as just a normal headset for talking on the phone, there seems to be some incompatibility (works with my wife’s Blackberry Curve 8900 though).  Monster and Research In Motion better work this out because it’s ridiculous for this not to work.  On Android (Motorola Xoom) the remote is only good for starting and stopping playback, all three buttons do the same thing.

It comes with all of these accessories that you see in the picture.   There are earbud attachments of different sizes as well as this adjustable over-ear wire which is handy if you want to be active while using them.  The case is very durable although bigger than I want it to be; I suppose they need to be big enough to house the entire unit.

All in all it is a solid product.  My research indicates the squarish, rubber-like wire (patent pending) is more durable than regular headphone wires.  They are expensive headphones, hopefully the cost is mitigated by them lasting a long time.

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By leo.flor, June 27, 2011 16:56

Often I’ll consult my cousin John on matters related to technology and I credit him with getting me to use the Dragon-Dictation/Evernote-Apps-Super-Ultra-Combo-Special (for iPad). That is: the practice of using the Dragon Dictation App, dictating my ideas and lists into it and uploading them into my Evernote.

I was already a big fan of using voice recording and making lists (before these Apps) because essentially you’re taking a snapshot of your brain at that moment.  In this day and age of information bombardment it is increasingly difficult remembering every important little detail of our chaotic lives.   Taking a recording of your thoughts, saving them and making them searchable (equally as important) seems like a good idea to me.  You will forget things; computers will not (unless they crash hard of course).

I had heard of Dragon Dictation before (I’ve used it for PC) but it wasn’t as good at voice recognition as it is now.   I find for best results to talk into it slower than your normal conversation speed.  My other cousin Issa commented when we were testing it: “it could as side effect teach you to be more articulate in conversation.”

It’s really a very good app if you don’t want to use your hands for typing.   I already use a computer likely much more than the average person but I also make microscopic art and play sports.  My hands need every break they can get.

I imagine it would be a very useful app for people who have vision or motor skill handicaps.

Anyway give it a try and share your feedback.  I wrote this post using Dragon Dictation.  John responds to emails without typing.

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By leo.flor, June 22, 2011 10:31

After my laptop committed suicide (a contributing factor to why I haven’t blogged in a while!), I had decisions to make as to what I was going to replace that decrepit, obsolete piece of junk with.  I started my process in the same logical way I evaluate most devices: examining my interface with said equipment, namely the keyboard and screen.

A disturbing trend that I’ve noticed with laptops in Canada is the need to want to support French on the keyboard.  Frankly I don’t utilize enough French to make it worth it for one of my primary interfaces to be compromised.  (My problem with the multilingual keyboard is the placement of the enter and shift keys (as Peter so eloquently points out on his blog), among the MOST USED keys on a keyboard!)

It is crucial to your laptop experience to have a worthy screen and video card.  Your eyes will gaze upon this thing for countless hours, you want it to be pretty.

Lastly, your machine has to be fast and stable.  Nothing worse than your computer crashing constantly or it taking forever to open Windows Explorer (*cough* Vista *cough*).

After weighing all of these factors, I bought myself a refurbished Macbook Pro 15″ with anti-glare screen (support for 1680×1050 resolution, perfect for my eagle eyes). Refurbished on the advice of a friend who always buys refurbished Mac machines for his business, also Apple has a great warranty and they test the heck out of the refurbs, I’m told.  Most of these are just open-box returns anyway, good way to save a couple of hundred bucks.

At first I wanted to stick with PC but none of the laptops I looked at really did it for me.  Perhaps I was soured by my recent experiences with Microsoft OSs but something told me it was time to look at Apple. After all, my iPad has proven to be a useful, elegant tool, why not give their laptops a look.  I figure if I wanted to get nostalgic, I could always install Windows with Boot Camp or run Parallels.

Likes:
I splurged on the screen upgrade because I want to see a lot of screen real estate.  And call me spoiled but since I’ve been working from home much more frequently, I wanted to be able to sit in the sun and stay connected (it’s summer, get outside!).  Also, Spaces (virtual desktop) is beautiful, reminds me of the Unix machines I worked and played with for Computer Science courses at the University of Waterloo and my first programming job (I had an SGI on my desk).

Speaking of nerding out, I love that Terminal allows me to truly relive those Unix glory days.  I may have to break out a shell programming textbook!

LOVING Apple shortcut keys and gestures on the Multi-Touch Trackpad.  As I anticipated, I easily adapted to new shortcuts.

Dislikes:
Price – Time will tell whether I got what I paid for.  So far, so good.