Day Two Hundred Forty: Evening of April 1st 2010

Another heavy sinus headache day, so very little tech usage today. I tried some Mass Effect 2, played four hours, but dozed off for about three of those hours. Of course, I was mining most of that time, not the most exciting activity in ME2.

One thing that was exciting was the discussion about Apple’s upcoming release of iPad. Major reviews seem to be favorable (New York Times, Wall Street Journal), although techies will point out its short comings. The interesting point made is this device is neither a laptop replacement or a larger version of Apples iPhone. Apple has created a new category of computing device.

My iPad is coming and I’m looking forward to seeing what I can do with it.

We shall see.

For as long as it‘s needed, I’ll keep closing this way, please check out a good organization that’s providing aid in Haiti and make what ever kind of contribution that you is can afford.

Day Two Hundred Thirty-nine: Evening of March 31st 2010

I’ve been participating in an online competition to help get funds to rebuild an elementary school in southern Illinois. Basically, Pepsi has set up a online listing of participant generated worthy projects seeking monetary support from Pepsi. The winners depend on the number of votes received by visitors to the website who vote for those projects. There are a wide variety of categories and monitory awards ($5,000 to $250,000). I don’t live in the area, but used to spend some of my summers down there when I was but a boy. So when I received an invite in Facebook from a relative to help out, I decided to visit the site and saw that the competition was stiff and their proposal was ranked d 26th. I didn’t bother checking beyond that point and started to vote. I placed a marker on my Facebook page and later in the competition I even made a direct appeal on my page. I don’t know if it had an impact, but it was worth the try. Anyway, the competition ends in a few hours and the proposal has moved from 26th to 10th. It was nice to see the public response to all of the projects, but only the top two projects will receive the funding and that means the little school won’t be getting the award.

What bothers me about the situation isn’t the obvious issues with a competition like this (big market little market and its relationship to the nature of the project and there were a lot of quality projects). No what bothers me is the State of Illinois involvement in the rebuilding of the school. I didn’t see any mention of the State support for rebuilding the school. I mean the school served seven to eight hundred students and the community has to resort to this online popularity competition. Somehow that doesn’t sound like the way it is supposed to be, but Illinois politics is a very interesting animal.

If you‘re interested, here is a Facebook page with information (http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=107567595931442&index=1) and the Ben-Gil Boosters webpage (http://www.bengilboosters.com/ )

For as long as it‘s needed, I’ll keep closing this way, please check out a good organization that’s providing aid in Haiti and make what ever kind of contribution that you is can afford.

Day Two Hundred Thirty-eight: Evening of March 30th 2010

I don’t understand the battery situation on my iPhone. I shut off the 3G setting (supposedly a big battery drain) and the device is still acting erratically.

The primary manifestation occurs with the battery charge indicator which doesn’t always show the correct level of charge. I’ll play The Creeps! for an hour or so and the charge indicator goes down a little. I’ll shut it down, turn it on later, and the charge is significantly diminished. Why? Is it a polling issue? The charge isn’t necessarily measured at the conclusion of use. Is it a app issue? The app has a design flaw and bypasses the battery check upon closing. I’d have to check a bunch of apps to see if this occurs with other apps.

Previously, I went through the Apple Support system and followed various suggested solutions without success. So now I’ll go online to see if there are any other observation and suggestions addressing this issue.

We shall see.

For as long as it‘s needed, I’ll keep closing this way, please check out a good organization that’s providing aid in Haiti and make what ever kind of contribution that you is can afford.

Day Two Hundred Thirty-seven: Evening of March 29th 2010

Today was ‘help the wife out’ day. She had some student posters that needed to be mounted for a city hall competition. So it was about five hours (travel included) of work with foam board and spray adhesive.

It was funny, there was debate, while we were working, centering around matting or mounting the posters. This occurred because of a change in the competition guidelines came through requesting the student work be matted/mounted. What was confusing was the 20-inch by 30-inch dimensions. Was that with or without the matte? Anyway, she had everything printed out before the change. She had the foam board, and no matte board. So she decided to mount the posters. I agreed, because that presentation plays to the nature of a poster. How is a poster normally seen? It is on a wall, interacting with its environment. So it was so it was spray, place and trim.

Of course the travel time was filled with The Creeps! That is if we weren’t talking about the directions and changes for the competition.

A while ago, I might have commented on how this kind of work should be automated. After a recent Print Expo that I attended with my wife, I know that the equipment is out there. Of course it is expensive, so mere mortals will have to ‘spray, place and trim’ for a while longer.

For as long as it‘s needed, I’ll keep closing this way, please check out a good organization that’s providing aid in Haiti and make what ever kind of contribution that you is can afford.

Day Two Hundred Thirty-six: Evening of March 28th 2010

I played The Creeps! on and off for a few hours today, but housework, the last two games to determine the Final Four, and the recliner took big chunks of time way from my game play today.

Once I felt sure that Duke would maintain control over Baylor, I decided to go into the living room and play some Dragon Age: Origins. So I fired up the console sat back in the recliner, and began loading up the game. I pick up where I left off the last time I played, skirmished with some evil doers, and fell asleep. Duke won, and I lost about ninety minutes or so - damn recliner.

It is spring break and the public schools our out, so I’m not sure what I will be doing with my family. One thing for sure, I’m looking forward to the delivery of the Apple iPad, hopefully, at the end of the week.

We shall see.

For as long as it‘s needed, I’ll keep closing this way, please check out a good organization that’s providing aid in Haiti and make what ever kind of contribution that you is can afford.

Day Two Hundred Thirty-five: Evening of March 27th 2010

Again, The Creeps! won out, although I managed to replay the tutorial for PixelJunk’s Monsters on the PlayStation 3. Currently, the early scenarios of Monsters are all survival, but that might change as I get deeper.

Right now the iPhone is being charged, I drained the batteries because I played the game for over three hours. One thing that I did before I started this charge was to turn off the 3G acceleration. It speeds up the transmission and reception of information, but at a cost -battery drain. So when I play the game, from now on, I’ll turn off that function. Hopefully, it will prolong the game playing experience

We shall see.

For as long as it‘s needed, I’ll keep closing this way, please check out a good organization that’s providing aid in Haiti and make what ever kind of contribution that you is can afford.

Day Two Hundred Thirty-four: Evening of March 26th 2010

I had some long overdue chores today. I took care of that, returned to The Creeps! and tried to open up any more levels.

Later in the afternoon, I checked to see if there was a tower defense game that I could download from the PlayStation Network for the PSP. There were at least three that actually used the term “tower defense” in the description and ranged in price from $7.99 to $19.99. I had purchased the PS3 version of Pixel Monsters, so that eliminated that, and the least expensive one was a hybrid game, mixing tower defense with a variation of the trading card war game. I picked out a game based upon the Final Fantasy franchise entitled Crystal Defenders.

The game looks like a straight port of a PS One game using 8 bit graphics and simple angular paths (so far). The reviews that I saw stated that the game was okay (Average, 3 out of 5, 6 out of 10, etc.) Right now the battery is charging on the PSP and I’ll get back to it later.

We shall see.

For as long as it‘s needed, I’ll keep closing this way, please check out a good organization that’s providing aid in Haiti and make what ever kind of contribution that you is can afford.