Apr 11
The girls and I went to the NASA in your neighborhood thing a couple of weeks ago here in Oxford. I snapped a couple of pictures and put them in the following album.
Enjoy.
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Apr 08
Alright, so I’ve only had it for five days, and despite having a rather unfortunate name. Of which I no longer think it is unfortunate, Apple is taking it back! I love this device.
It is absolutely 100% the perfect device for what I use it for. I don’t think it’s perfect of course, but it doesn’t matter. It is seriously awesome for what I need.
I purchased this device to replace a Macbook which was going on 4 years old. I kept the Macbook in my bedroom, and would use it sparingly at night before bed to check email, read facebook, and in general, goof off.
Well, this does all of that. And actually does it even a little better than my Macbook. One of the things I always wanted to do, was to watch movies and stuff that I had on my desktop computer in iTunes. Macbook never really could do that because it never registered the play. iPad syncs with iTunes, and now when I watch on there, next time it syncs with the desktop registers the play. If I listen to Music or Podcasts on my iPad, it registers those plays as well. This is important to me because I use a lot of Smart Playlists that keep track of these things to figure out what to put on my devices.
It’s lighter than my Macbook was. So it will be great on trips. On Trips 99% of my use was email, facebook, twitter, light web surfing. And you know what else. BATTERY LIFE IS AMAZING! Really Really good. It claims 10 hours for uninterrupted video. Well, under normal use, you can probably count on more like 12 hours. I ran it out by doing stuff solid for two days before it finally shut off.
If I want to do a little work, the on screen keyboard is a little blah, when you turn it sideways, the keyboard is a little small still for my hands. That coupled with the fact that I am a touch typist makes it a little difficult to use as I have to hover my hands over instead of resting my fingers on the display. But they fixed all that. iPad will sync with a bluetooth keyboard. So Bam. I’ll just keep one in the bedroom and take it on trips etc. just in case.
I’ve goofed off with a few of the games. Some of them are better on iPad. Some are a little worse. the bigger screen is nice, but sometimes with having to touch the screen, you obscure the graphics and can’t see what’s going on sometimes. It’s really not that big a deal when the games are well written.
One of the coolest uses was the ‘Small World‘ game. It’s a port of Days of Wonder’s boardgame of the same name. It works awesome on the iPad, and though it’s two player only. Playing a boardgame without any bits is pretty neat, especially when it’s doing all the calculations and everything for you.
Really Really great little device they’ve got here. Oh, and Sarah loves her ‘new’ macbook as well!
* This post was completely written on my iPad!!!
May 20
I’ve felt so weird lately. I have not been at all enthusiastic about gaming nearly as much lately as I used to be.
Case in point. This past Saturday, Valerie and Olivia went down to Alabama recuriting. This meant that I was alone on Saturday with Sarah. It happened to be the third Saturday of the month. So I figured I would take her up to Mid South Game Center in Memphis Tennessee to go play Pokemon. When I promised to do this, I thought I would be excited about it too.
Well, when Saturday morning came around. I wasn’t excited. I went into my game room and started looking at the shelves, and didn’t see anything at all that I wanted to play. Eventually I ended up taking Reef Encounter, Through the Desert, and Kings Breakfast. These were the only games I thought i might mildly have an interest in playing that day.
Well, when I arrived, I flat out didn’t really want to play any of those either. I kinda wanted to play some war something or another, so we borrowed the demo copy of Small World and set it up. I don’t want to get into a review, or a session report about what I played. But I will say I enjoyed Small World, and would try it again for sure, but I’m not sure if it’s something I really want in my collection. But I digress.
Afterward I still felt all blah. Not knowing what to play. I played several things that day, half enjoying myself for the most part. But the straw that broke the camels back was another game of Stone Age.
It’s official. I don’t like that game at all. There is no fun in it. It’s same old same old. I don’t care about who wins when I play it. It’s meh…
It made me think though. I don’t care who wins most of the time.
So tonight is game night too, and I asked a friend what he wanted to play. And secretly I’m hoping he’ll say Hammer of the Scots, or Hannibal, or Twilight Struggle or something, and I’m thinking to myself, if he doesn’t say one of those things. I’d rather sit at home and play Sid Meier’s Pirates instead.
Mar 10
I’m trying to set up a computer in Sarah’s room. Which is on the complete opposite end of the house where the Router is, (and opposite on a diagonal too). And the signal is so weak, she can’t get a reliable network connection going.
So, I got an Airport Express to set up to relay the signal about halfway. Set it up, etc. But the dang, wifi card in her computer is so weak, unless I put the Airport into her room directly, the signal won’t be seen by her card, and if I put the Airport outside of her room, her computer doesn’t see the signal. And if I put the Airport in her room, her computer sees the wireless network fine, but the Airport Express doesn’t see the freaking router.
She must be living in a Faraday Cage. That’s the only explanation for it. That’s the only thing that would be giving me this kind of trouble.
I’ve got a couple more things to try… I can move her computer toward an inside wall I guess. Maybe I’ll give that a shot Wednesday or Thursday night. But this week is so busy.
Anyone else have any ideas? I’m nearly ready to run a wire through the attic, but I wouldn’t even begin to know how to get it up and over… She has a cable going to her room from the DirecTV. I wonder if I can piggyback on that…
Dad, you need to come visit!
Feb 25
So, this past Saturday was the first Saturday where I took Sarah to the Pokemon League in Memphis at the Mid South Game Center.
Of course, I picked this past Saturday because it corresponds to the same Saturday where the MSBGC happens to meet at the same store for their regular Monthly Memphis Game Day.
So, I figured she could stay in the front of the store playing Pokemon, whereas I could be lurking toward the back of the store playing board games.
It was a very friendly place, there were about 6 or 7 Pokemon players, and she had a blast. She signed up for their league where every game they earn points toward getting free cards and eventually they can get their Poke Badge… Now I’m not sure exactly what that is, but I do know that she seems determined to get it.
It’s interesting. I watched a couple of her games… The game isn’t all that compelling. Magic has much better decisions, but I suppose the cards aren’t nearly as cute. Which would be the reason that Pokemon is probably more popular among the kids.
Now, as for me. I finally managed to play Le Havre. I had really wanted to play this game during BGG.con this past year, but I never managed to get myself over to the table where it was being played at the right time. It does look interesting and it’s the same Designer as Agricola, which is a game I very much enjoy.
Well, my take, is it’s another optimization worker placement type game, along the same lines as Agricola. But it has less luck, since the card deck is available to all the players, rather than just the individual player. Other than that, optimize your actions of which you have more you need to do, than you have time to do them.
It was very good. I still think that I like Agricola more. Mainly because I kind of like the luck. There are so many cards in Agricola, that each game your strategies must change depending upon your hand. Le Havre doesn’t have that. Since you use the same base building deck in every game, You will pretty much be able to follow similar strategies in any game. There is a small bit of randomness in the distribution of the buildings, and the dock tiles, but they will always all be there.
And Le Havre kind of seemed more dry to me than Agricola, still, again, I liked it and would play it again. I might even purchase it if it wasn’t so freaking much money to try to get a copy here in the United States.
Other than that, I played a little bit more Manoeuvre, a game I’m very quickly loving more and more and more. And I played a quick game of Ghost Stories as well. Which we lost. I think I’m currently 1 for 8 playing Ghost stories when played with the correct rules.