Sudoku v Sudoku for iPhone
July 26, 2008 | 1 Comment
 EA Sudoku ($7.99) |
 Free Sudoku |
I like playing sudoku. I got hooked on it with the Nintendo DS version that is included with the first Brain Age. It’s a fun and challenging puzzle game that’s great if you are seeking a few minutes of distraction.
I was asked to do a review of the EA created iPhone Sudoku game. I wanted some casual games for my phone anyway, so why not?
Frankly, EA’s implementation of sudoku for the iPhone is wonderful. The graphics are polished and appealing. The game play is exactly what should be expected, with a few options to keep it interesting. Well worth the $7.99.
With everything there is room for improvement though. First, there should bs some social features to allow score sharing or puzzle sharing with friends. There were also some minor stabilty issues causing the game to crash a few times. I would hope that will be fixed I’m a future patch. Finally, I wish that I could save multiple partial puzzles. All considered, solid and enjoyable.
To adequately evaluate this, must also compare against the free sudoku iPhone app as well. Honestly, if you plan on playing sudoku for more than 15 minutes total, pay the money. The differences between these implementations is fun v frustration. Unless the free sudoku sees a major set of enhancements, do not waste your time.
Tags: applications, ea, games, iphone, review, reviews, sudoku
MrSat.com - A Review
July 13, 2007 | 5 Comments
The following is a paid review
MrSat.com is terrible. While the information provided appears to be somewhat useful to someone looking for information on satellite dishes, yet I’m convinced you could find better information on Wikipedia. The site is visually painful. Seriously, it uses the blink tag for a blinking quote that slaps you in the face from the top center of the page. The lack of knowledge about technology does not end there, it also prompts for a needed Quicktime plugin, but I both have Quicktime and can’t see how this site could possibly use it…
Then, there is the poor organization of the information all over the rest of the page, leading to information overload. This poor organization makes it very difficult to find the answer to any specific question without reading through the entire site.
While most of the information may be useful for a specific audience, there is quite a bit on the front page that isn’t necessary, for example, “Common Misspellings of the word satellite.” It’s not really clear why this is necessary at all, but it definitely isn’t front page worthy. This sort of thoughtlessness as relates to information organization extends throughout the site.
The tagline for the site is “Mr. Sat, that’s my name. That name again is Mr. Sat.” It appears to be a play on the radio gimmick of repeating a name in an attempt to get consumers to remember it. Since we’re reading the name not listening on the radio, it just feels like Mr. Sat is being condescending, not funny.
The colors don’t match, and the banner at the bottom of the page requires you to scroll for no particular reason. With an entire redesign and better organization, this site might become useful, but until then, it’s just painful.
I do not recommend this site to anyone, ever.
Tags: mrsat, mrsat.com, review, satelite, satelitte, satellite, terrible
Ask a Ninja: Pirates of the Carribean 2 Review
July 21, 2006 | 3 Comments
I have thought Ask A Ninja was brilliant since the first time I watched it. Basically this is a funny podcast where a ninja answers questions and spouts about this and that. The camera changes angles rapidly and the often circular and self-referencing dialog is side-splitting funny at times. Without a doubt this is one of the best video podcasts currently available
Switching topics, Pirates of the Carribean:Dead Man’s Chest was sadly not very good. The first movie was outstanding, but this one suffers from a lot of ailments, including being primarily just a lead in to the third movie. After I saw it I had thought about trying to write a review myself, but after seeing the following video from Ask A Ninja, I didn’t need to.
The ninja rightfully attacks the movie for a series of things including too many plot lines, everyone being pirates, loss of “the pirates code”, etc. This is a harsh and extremely accurate review. So far everyone who has seen this video has loved it, so hit play and get free entertainment here to make up for what was lost in seeing Pirates.
Tags: ask a ninja, movie, movie review, ninja, pirate, pirates, pirates of the carribean, pirates of the carribean dead man's chest, plot, plot lines, review, video podcast, youtube
Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man - Make the Pain Stop
June 8, 2006 | 5 Comments
Never in my life have I felt so passionately unhappy about a comic. In general even when they are bad they still offer something. Since the conclusion of The Other series, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man has become increasingly worse. Peter David is an embarrassment to Marvel, and is greatly tarnishing the Spider-Man name. I was able to tolerate #5 - “Web Log”, even though it seemed out of order in the continuity and certainly took concentration away from Spider-Man. The two issue story “Masks” was uninteresting and I thought I’d be glad to start the next series. This is when things go from bad to gouge my eyes out, burn the comic, and pray the clone saga has not re-emerged bad. Yes, I said it, Peter David’s stories are worse than the mid-90s clone saga.
I thought maybe I was being over dramatic, until I read IGN Comics’ review:
I didn’t think I would find myself literally wanting to burn a comic book, yet I feel as if this issue should be made extinct. A futuristic tale trying its best to be a mixture of “Days of Future Past” and “Future Imperfect” is a poorly written and offensive piece of dreck. Bucky came back and man did that work brilliantly. Jason Todd came back and that worked decently enough. The return of Uncle Ben has been one of the biggest mistakes at Marvel in Joe Quesada’s tenure. Will it greatly disturb the comic-book universe? Thankfully, it will probably not. There’s more important things happening (you know, like Civil War), to allow this story to make much of a dent. That’s the only blessing for this abysmal tale. Marvel, you owe me $3 and 10 minutes of my life!
Rating: Burn It.
Marvel, please cancel this series. It is too late to recover from these horrendous stories to ever make anyone think this title is worth it. If I didn’t feel as though I needed the issues to keep my collection complete, I would have already cancelled my subscription. Then immediately fire Peter David. Seriously, walk down the hall, pick up a phone, send an email, do whatever it takes to start the process of making that man never responsible for the fates of another Marvel character. Spider-Man is Marvel’s banner character and David has literally pissed all over him. If this isn’t a fire-able offense, I don’t know what is.
Tags: burn, clone, clone saga, comic books, comics, friendly neighborhood spider-man, marvel, review, spider-man, spiderman, uncle ben
X-Men 3 Review: Astonishing, Uncanny…
May 26, 2006 | 9 Comments
I expected to like this movie, but instead, I loved it. Without Bryan Singer directing I feared this may be a disappointing conclusion to a great series. Instead the movies just got better with each installment.
I was initially doubtful about the casting of Kitty Pryde and Juggernaut, but both actors played their parts to perfection. Combined with reading Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men, I’m now thinking Kitty may be my favorite X-man. Right when you think think “how can she be useful in a fight?” she calls Juggernaut a “dickhead” before leaving him unconscious. Yes I’m serious.
In general the movie throws a lot of unexpected events at you. From who the funeral is for through to the after credits clip which will leave you wondering if this is truly the Last Stand for the X-Men movies.
The only thing I was not entirely satisfied with was the surprisingly small role Angel played. Also, does anyone know what happened to Nightcrawler?
Tags: "astonishing x-men", angel, astonishing, bryan singer, comics, Juggernaut, Kitty Pryde, last stand, movie, Nightcrawler, review, uncanny, uncanny x-men, x-men, XMen
ecto for Windows Still Blows
December 1, 2005 | 6 Comments
Alex, the lead developer for ecto for Windows, has commented a few times on my ecto for Windows Blows post. I figured they’ve been through a few versions and it was time for me to give them another shot. Alex seems to be putting a lot of care into the product, and as a developer myself, I know how frustrating it can be to get either useful feedback or overly generalized complaints (a la something “blows”). I hadn’t looked at it since August, so why not.
I downloaded it again. Which itself was somewhat difficult. Have you Google searched “ecto windows” lately? The first promising link is misleading as it leads to an old version (1.0.3) which in itself has a link to a broken download. Anyway, I found my way to the homepage and grabbed 1.8.7
On first glance, I’m not satisfied with the spell check, I’d prefer if it checked constantly, sorta Word style. Also, a quick trial on the new keyword feature didn’t actually work, but that is likely because of Wordpress not explicitly supporting it, not necessarily their fault. Another annoyance at this point is that the ping action threw me a non-descript error about “Internal Server Error” no clue why, or how to fix… One last comment, a lot of my posts have relative links to images in the posts. Anyway these could be rewritten to take account of my blogs hostname so they don’t all show broken? On that note, why do none of these previews use my site’s template somehow? Maybe that’s configurable and I just didn’t look deep enough.
Oh crap, I just noticed a final straw to break the camel’s back. My posts in the system that are drafts are showing up in ecto as “Published”. That won’t fly.
I guess I still can’t commit to using ecto for windows (in fact I’m not using it on the mac anymore either) The built in Wordpress interface is simple, and for now that continues to win. Truthfully many of the problems I’m experiencing may be attributed more to Wordpress or the underlying APIs, but either way I still can’t use the product. Nor will I be recommending it on campus as we roll out potentially 30,000 blogs…
Tags: api, apis, blog, blogging, blogs, desktop blogging, ecto, google, movabletype api, review, software review, windows, wordpress