Safari finally crashed this morning. I was editing my lines in my hockey pool, and when I went to go hit submit, it died. So, new Safari still isn’t perfect, but it is much better than it used to be. 
You are currently browsing SockBoy’s articles.
Yesterday, no crashes at all! We’ll see how today goes.
In other news, did you see those Poop Faces last night? They gained 9 fabulous points and worked their way out of last place. Good show, gentlemen.
Apple released the iPhone 2.2 update late last night, and I installed it this morning. Of particular interest in the release notes is this saucy item:
- Improved stability and performance of Safari
Ooh! I plan on putting this claim to the test. Immediately after I updated, I opened up Mobile Safari and viewed a few of the sites that generally don’t agree with my iPhone. Surprisingly, no crashes! Interesting! But, one isolated test a conclusion does not draw… from? I will keep track of when or if Safari crashes, and keep you updated.
Ugh! XBox! Come on! Ugh! I’m insulted. I thought we had something special.
Not as bang-on as our Miis, but close enough.
Why do your apps have to crash so much? And why do you act like nothing out of the ordinary has happened? Why do you think it’s acceptable to just make Safari disappear as I’m trying to set my lines in my hockey pool? Or as I update my status within your Facebook app? Like, honestly, apps crash probably around 10 times a day. It’s silly. If Firefox crashed as often as Mobile Safari did on a daily basis, I would have given up on the Internet long ago. I would probably become a forest ranger, protecting the forests from fires, drunks, etc.
Apple: Get your shit together. I don’t think it’ll be fixed in 2.2, but perhaps in 2.3? 2.4? Actually, if they released 3.0 and the only noteworthy addition was ‘no more crashes’ it would possibly be the greatest update ever.
You know what else is crazy? Apple with their commercials about how bad Vista is when OS X on iPhone is a horrible, horrible mess. I believe it is a good case of the pot calling the kettle black?
Anyways, these feelings of mine may have been triggered by the arrival of a Blackberry Bold in the office, with its sexy, sexy screen and it’s snazzy leather back. *wistful sigh*
And another:
If you include an interface to manage tasks without having to use the full Project app, please make sure it works properly. If for some reason there’s an error when I try to save my project, DON’T REMOVE HALF OF THE TASKS I’VE ENTERED!! If this software was a cupcake, it’d be made of flour, sugar and sadness.
She seems hell bent on destroying our beloved Poop Faces as well!
Fri, Oct 24 Legace left after one period Friday night with an injury that might have occurred when he tripped over the carpet placed on the ice for Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
Advice: Just before the ceremony, Legace was the first player onto the ice for St. Louis. A team official pointed to the carpet, but as Legace stepped onto it with his skate, he fell, then gingerly made his way to the crease. Legace played one period, giving up two goals on 12 shots.
(STATS, Inc.)
With Legace out for a bit, looks like we’re bringing in Leclaire. Good luck, little buddy!
- The Poop Faces fabulous 9 point rise in the LBFF standings, rescuing the team from the death clutch of Obscurity.
That is all.
Mandie and I received a new coffee maker as a wedding gift. It’s the bee’s knees. The carafe is actually insulated and it keeps that coffee hot for HOURS without the need for that hot plate to constantly heat the coffee, making it gross. I can make a 10-cup pot of coffee and keep drinking it over the course of eight or nine hours. It’s great.
This coffee maker also has a timer! When I wake up in the morning, that coffee is ready for me. I initially started by just brewing enough to fill up my travel mug. Sadly, when I ran out, I had to resort back to the coffee machine at work. The coffee that comes out of that machine is bad news. We have a fancy electronic board up at work that counts the number of days since the last employee dropped dead due to the horrible coffee. It never gets turned on because everyone’s dying all the time. Needless to say, if I can minimize the amount of coffee I drink out of that thing, I’m all for it.
I began researching the ways I could take a large amount of coffee from home and keep it hot for as long as possible. I thought about just taking the carafe itself, but that’s CRAZY. Then, I remembered the Thermos.
Up until this point, my experience with Thermoses consisted of them leaking all over my peanut butter and jam sandwiches in those little plastic lunch boxes everyone owned back in Kindergarten. The ones with the Thermos suspended ABOVE all your food. Great idea, Thermos Corp. I remember opening my lunch box, seeing my purple bread, throwing my arms up into the air, looking skyward and cursing Thermos Corp, vowing never to use their products again.
Time has a way of making you forget, even forgive. I decided to give Thermos another shot. I went to my local SuperMart and picked up a large Thermos-brand Thermos. A week later, and I’m convinced: this Thermos has completed me. Short of brewing coffee at work (tried it, still have the scars to show for it) or hiring little midget men to pick up coffee at the local StarHortons, this is the best thing to happen to the over-consumption of high-quality coffee at the workplace. The coffee is supposed to stay hot all day long, but it never gets that far. I usually polish it off around lunch or so. I must learn to pace myself.
Anyways, if you are on the fence about buying a Thermos, I say ‘Do it, son’. Be like your father, carry around a Thermos. It makes you look like you’re in construction.
Let it be known that today, October 20th, shortly after 1:00 PM, Keith was defeated in a BlackBerry-vs.-iPhone keyboard showdown. He was out-typed and clearly outclassed. The iPhone’s virtual keyboard reigns supreme!
I guess it’s been awhile since I last posted anything here. Many things have happened!
- Amanda and I got married! I have the YouTube video to prove it!
- We went to Disney World, ate like champions and emerged victorious.
- The Poop Faces started their 4th year in the LBFF hockey pool of champions. We briefly flirted with first place, but are now deep in a pile of smelly garbage. Don’t count us out yet. We know people.
- I continue to be addicted to MLB Power Pros. Honestly, I’ve probably poured like 40+ hours into that game. It’s a sickness.
YouTube had audio issues with this video, so I’m using SoapBox. Sorry about the video quality, the iPhone camera is ballstastic. But the gist is there, and really, that’s all you need.
Next stop: 250K. SuperCar knows NO LIMITS.
SuperCar is fast approaching an epic milestone. We should be hitting 200k on our ride back from Strathroy. EPIC.
Word on the street is that iTunes 8 is being released tomorrow. How about some WiFi media syncing? Having to connect my iPod to my PC to sync music just seems so unnecessary. Since I’ve got my USB cable plugged into the little power adaptor beside my bed for night-time charging, syncing my media requires some behind-the-nightstand cable retrieval followed by some blind cable plugging in when I’m all done. It’s just a matter of time before I plug myself into the socket instead of my iPhone. Every time I sync music, I have to ask myself ‘Is this worth me risking my life?’. One day, that answer may be no.
Now, it’s not THAT big of a deal, but the technology is there (see: Zune) so they should just make it happen. Having things like podcasts automatically transferred over at night would be fantastic. In fact, my iPhone should be doing a lot more things while I sleep, like crunching the latest figures or balancing the books.
It happens more then you think. Like here. AND HERE:
Agh!! If that pic looks familiar, it’s because the building beside ours has a history of giant insects attacking it.
In the spirit of discussing baseball video games, I thought I’d share with you my epic disappointment with MLB Power Pros 2008 for the DS.
Disappointment Scale
-> 10 – Epic Disappointment
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1 – Mild Disenchantment
The actual baseball-y gameplay is fine. But, no Success mode? No MLB Life? No SEASON mode? Really, there’s no decent single player mode to be had outside of Playoff mode. Considering the Japanese version is chock-full of awesome features, this is a pretty big letdown. 2K Games, no skimping out next year, okay??
I picked up the Wii version of Power Pros yesterday, so I guess I’ll be sinking my 10,000+ hours into that instead.
With no sign of The Bigs 2 coming out any time soon, I’ve had to look elsewhere for my baseball-gaming fix. I attempted to play MLB2K8 a while back, since it’s the only baseball game that’s come out this year for the 360. Too bad it’s absolute garbage. The pitching, batting, fielding, etc. is just way too complicated. The beauty of The Bigs is that the mechanics of the game itself are incredibly simple and intuitive, resulting in a game of baseball that is just a lot of fun to play.
I thought all was lost, but lucky for me, I was COMPLETELY wrong. Since I’ve been TV-less for over a month, I decided I’d bring my old PS2 upstairs and hook it up to my computer monitor. Looking into some of the new games, I saw MLB Power Pros 2008. I grabbed it, tried it out.
Turns out the game is absolutely fantastic. First of all, the actual baseball game play is simple. While not AS simple as The Bigs, you can get by with a basic knowledge of the controls. There’s a swing button, a bunt button and pressing R1 will toggle ‘Big Swing’ mode. Pitching consists of selecting your pitch using the analog stick and pressing X. Base running and fielding are both straight-forward as well. Good stuff! All of the characters are big-headed, deformed little fellows, which kind of reminds me old-school MLB games on the NES.
The real great thing about this game, though, is the MLB Life mode. Well, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Before you play the MLB Life mode, there’s the Success mode. You start off on a AA team called the Green Apples, and the goal is to impress the scouts enough to get promoted to AAA and then the Majors. It plays like a mini RPG, requiring you to level up your character, meet new people, hold down a job, impress the ladies, etc. During the actual games, you only need to play your character’s At Bats. It makes every At Bat seem pretty important. Once you successfully complete Success mode, you can then use that character in MLB Life mode.
MLB Life mode starts you off in the Grapefruit league, trying to earn a spot on the Big Club. If you’re decent, you join the team and get a couple opportunities as a pinch hitter to prove you’ve got what it takes. Impress the manager enough and you’ll earn a regular spot in the line-up. Have a bad game and you run the risk of getting demoted. It’s similar to the Rookie Challenge in The Bigs, but with a lot more depth and a lot more character development. Also, it’s incredibly addicting. Since each game only takes about 2 or 3 minutes to complete, ‘One More Turn’ syndrome is out in full-force. Also, I don’t usually get angry at a game, but when Little Chris goes 0-4 the first game back from injury and is forced to sit the next game… oh boy.
If you’re a PS2 or Wii owner and you’re looking for a solid baseball fix, I highly recommend this fine piece of software. There’s also a DS version on the way in the fall, which I’m confident will be the absolute end of me. If the MLB Life mode makes it over in-tact, and the game play isn’t muddled with some sort of crappy stylus-based control scheme, I’ll be in some sort of baseball-gaming heaven.
What else can you find in baseball-gaming heaven? Dogs. That’s the heaven they all go to.
I ordered some cables on Monoprice last week. I paid like an extra $8 or so to get them shipped via UPS instead of the USPS. They were supposed to be here yesterday, but it appears as though things have taken a turn for the worse. Visit the UPS tracking page. They got close. But Fredericton? Really? Here’s a picture of a sad panda.
Disney-licensed produce? Really?
And yes, we bought a bag. 
I saw this as I was coming in from the parking lot this morning. Strange idea, running the parking machine on Windows 98.
Someone on GameFAQs posted a list of tracks from the next Guitar Hero. Then it was posted on NeoGAF and then I read it. Looks golden!
Eagle Rock High School Tour:
"Dope Nose" by Weezer
"The Middle" by Jimmy Eat World
Encore: "Today" by Smashing Pumpkins
Big City Kids Tour:
"Roland" by Interpol
"Santeria" By Sublime
Encore: "Mr. Brightside" by The Killers
Feelin’ Nostalgic Tour:
"Take It on the Run" by REO Speedwagon
"Hold the Line" by Toto
Encore: "Rebel Yell" by Billy Idol
Vixens Tour:
"Heartbreaker" by Pat Benatar
"All Around Me" by Flyleaf
Encore:"Misery Business" by Paramore
Undertow Tour:
"Stinkfist" by Tool
"Lateralus" by Tool
"Schism" by Tool
Synchronicity Tour:
"Guitar Battle Vs. Sting" (Guitar Career Only)
Encore: "Every Breath You Take" by The Police
Fight the System Tour:
"The Kids Aren’t Alright" by The Offspring
The Good Left Undone" by Rise Agaisnt
Encore: "Bleed it Out" by Linkin Park
QQ Tour:
"Face Down" by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus
"The Kill" by 30 Seconds to Mars
Encore: "Thank You for the Venom" by My Chemical Romance
Rockin the Carnival Tour:
"Dammit" by Blink 182
"When You Heat Stops Beating" by +44
Neva’ Forget Tour:
"Jumpin Jack Flash" by The Rolling Stones
"Don’t Fear the Reaper" by Blue Öyster Cult
Encore: "Light My Fire" by The Doors
We Want the Funk Tour:
"Take it Away" by Red Hot Chili Peppers
"Renegades of Funk" by Rage Agaisnt the Machines
Encore: "No Sleep till Brooklyn" by The Beastie Boys Feat. Kerry King
Rockin’ the Joint Tour:
"Are You Gonna Go My Way" by Lenny Kravitz
"I Don’t wanna Miss a Thing" by Aerosmith
On Top of the World Tour:
"Man in the Box" by Alice in Chains
"Kickstart My Heart" by Mötley Crüe
Encore: "Spin the Black Circle" by Pearl Jam
G. Stinger Tour:
"Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana
"Car Chase City" by Tenacious D
Encore: "Everlong" by Foo Fighters
Lands End Tour:
"Animal" by Def Leppard
"Runaway" by Bon Jovi
Encore: "Paradise City" by Guns N’ Roses
Doin’ it Different Tour:
"Song for the Dead" by Queens of the Stone Age
"Vasoline" by Stone Temple Pilots
Encore: "Assassin" by Muse
Hootin’ and Hollerin’ Tour:
"The Boys Are Back in Town" By Thin Lizzy
"Life in the Fastlane" by The Eagles
Encore:"Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynyrd Skynyrd
All Pissed Off Tour:
"Here to Stay" by KoRn
"Dragula" by Rob Zombie|
Encore: "Bat Country" by Avenged Sevenfold
Here Me Roar Tour:
"10,000 Fists" by Disturbed
"Duality" by Slipknot
Encore: "Toxicity" by System of a Down
S.D.M.F. Tour:
"Guitar Battle Vs. Zakk Wylde" (Guitar Career Only)
*Encore: "Demise of Sanity" by Black Label Society
Fathers of Metal Tour:
"Don’t Talk to Strangers" by Dio
"Heaven and Hell" by Black Sabbath
Encore: "Crazy Train" by Ozzy Osbourne
Making Progress Tour:
"The Spirit of Radio" by Rush
"Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd
Encore: "Pull Me Under" by Dream Theatre
Eruption Tour:
"Beat it" by Micheal Jackson Feat. Eddie Van Halen
"Hot for Teacher" by Van Halen
Tooth Fang & Claw Tour:
"Guitar Battle Vs. Ted Nugent" (Guitar Career Only)
Encore: "Stranglehold" by Ted Nugent
Decades of Metal Tour
"Warriors of Time" by Black Tide
"Leather Rebel" by Judas Priest
Encore: "Hallowed be Thy Name" by Iron Maiden
Livin’ in a Nightmare Tour:
"Angel of Death" by Slayer
"Tornado of Souls" by Megadeth
Encore: "Master of Puppets" by Metallica
Legends of Rock Tour:
"Johnny B. Goode" by Chuck Berry
"The Wind Cries Mary" by Jimi Hendrix
Encore: "Purple Haze (Live)" by Jimi Hendrix
Bonus Tour:
"45" by Shinedown
"96 Quite Bitter Beings" by CKY
"Bombshell" by Powerman 5000
"Clavado en un Bar" by Maná
"Enjoy the Silence" by Lacuna Coil
"Feuer Frei" by Rammstein
"Fury of the Storm" by Dragonforce
"Never Too Late" by The Answer
"Nottingham Lace" by Buckethead
"One Armed Scissor" by At The Drive-In
"Satch Boogie" by Joe Satriani
"Schrei" by Tokio Hotel
"Soul Doubt" by NOFX
"We’re An American Band" by Grand Funk Railroad
"Guitar Battle Vs. Sting" by Sting
"Guitar Battle Vs. Ted Nugent" By Ted Nugent
"Guitar Battle Vs. Zakk Wylde" by Zakk Wylde
Sample Songs:
"Untitled Drum Sample" created by Chad Smith
"Untitled Drum Sample" created by Dave Grohl
"Untitled Drum Sample" created by Travis Barker
"Cliffs of Dover" created by Neversoft
"Misirlou" created by Neversoft
"Walk This Way" created by Neversoft
"YYZ" created by Neversoft
Looks to be the bee’s knees! I will now blog from such remote places as:
My Deck
My Basement
My Car
Should be exciting times!
Yes. Deal with it.
Looks like I’ll be selling my iPod today. Wiping it and setting it to factory defaults was hard. We shared some good times, some tough times… *sniff*
As a tribute, here are some of my favourite iPod-related blog posts from over the years.
Since picking up my iPhone last Friday, we’ve quickly formed a bond only possible between a man and his beloved gadgets. The web browsing, the rich e-mail, all of the apps PLUS the fanciest iPod ever… what’s not to love? Well, sirs and sirettes, as a fresh turncoat from the BlackBerry army, there are a couple of features that I miss.
- The little icons on the Blackberry title bar that let you know if you have new mail, voicemail, calendar appointments, etc. even when the phone is locked. You can take the phone out of your pocket glance at the screen and know what’s going on. On the iPhone, no such luck. You need to slide your finger to unlock it, and if you’ve set a password you’ll need to enter that, too. And if you were in an application when you locked the phone, you need to hit the home button to get back to the home screen. Then you can see that, no, you don’t have any unread messages and, yes, you have no friends.
- The notification options on the iPhone are SORELY lacking. You’re either in Silent Mode, where you have the option to vibrate or not, or you’re in Not Silent mode, where you can choose what you get notices for (e.g. new mail, new text message, calendar appointments, etc.) You can choose your Ringtone, and select from a few pre-set sounds for text messages. And I think that’s about it. It’s a FAR cry from what the Blackberry offers. A ton of different profiles, with each profile letting you configure how you get notified when the BlackBerry is in the holster, and when it’s not. Text messages, e-mails, Level 1 alerts, application-specific notices, etc. all let you configure a) the sound it makes, b) how loud that sound is, c) whether to vibrate, d) how many times it should vibrate, e) whether to blink the notifier LED, f) how often it should repeat. Sadly, I don’t ever expect the iPhone to come close to this since it is pretty complicated and takes a bit of time to get set up the way you want. But when it is, it’s fantastic.
- Where’s push GMail? There’s push for Yahoo! Mail, but not Gmail? That being said, at least read/unread statuses get synced on the iPhone, plus deletes and the whole bit.
Surprisingly, I’m pretty happy with the touchscreen keyboard. I thought it would be a painful transition, but I’ve already fired off a couple of big e-mails on the little guy and the occurance of typos and whatnot was pretty much equal to that of my BB.
Anyways, my 30GB iPod is on Kijiji if anyone is interested.
Ars Technica recently posted an article discussing gaming on the iPhone and how it’s the ‘next big platform’ for casual gaming. I think it shows some promise, but first they need to find a way to prevent the battery dying after like 2 hours of playing a game. I’m looking at you MotionX Poker! Your fancy graphics and vibrating ways are the biggest battery suckers this side of the Game Gear.
But I can’t activate you!
Constantly clicking between the iPhone and the iTunes Store… hopefully it’ll go through at some point.
UPDATE:
Finally activated!! 
Just had an interesting conversation with a customer relations rep @ Rogers. I had called to make sure that I would be able to get the 16GB iPhone on Friday for the subsidized cost of $299 and not the $800 or whatever they’re charging if you a) don’t want to be under contract or b) aren’t eligible for a hardware upgrade. Back story: I switched over to Rogers last October from Bell, but I brought my own Blackberry as to not get myself tangled in any sort of long-term contract. The plan was to wait until the iPhone came out here, pick it up and THEN get tangled in a long-term contract.
So anyways, it turns out that since I haven’t been a customer for 12 months I’m not eligible for a hardware upgrade. “But since I’m not on contract,” I proceeded to tell her, “there’s nothing stopping me from canceling my Rogers account, heading to a Fido store Friday morning, signing up with them and getting the phone for the subsidized cost.” Hoping they would see how silly that is, I figured she would just update my account, making me upgrade-eligible a few months early. No sense in ‘losing’ a customer.
Nope!
“That’s probably the best thing to do in this situation,” she says.
!!!
I understand that Rogers owns Fido (grr) but really… can’t just check a box? Really?
$30 and $45 unlimited data plans? Sorry kids! Here are the actual plans:
$60 for 150 minutes and 400MB of data
$75 for 300 minutes and 750MB of data
$100 for 600 minutes and 1GB of data
$115 for 800 minutes and 2GB of data
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080627/to363.html?.v=38
First of all, if I want more data, why do I have to pay for additional minutes as well? I may require 1GB of data, but I certainly don’t require the 600 minutes of talk time it includes. Last month, I used about 90 minutes. I sure hope they have some sort of mix-and-match, but I’m not counting on it.
Secondly, while all of these plans include voice mail, they sure as hell don’t include Caller ID, so tack on an additional $5 to each of those. Plus the $7 system access fee. Plus taxes… *sigh*.
That being said, it’s a hell of a lot better then what I’m stuck with now. Even though Rogers unveiled new data plans for Blackberries and other devices, since I use a BES for my work e-mail, I don’t qualify for any of them. Either I stick with the $65/25MB + $25/150min I’ve got now or pick up an iPhone and go with the $75 plan (at least to start) and get double the minutes and 30x the data.
http://tsn.ca/mlb/story/?id=241226&lid=headline&lpos=secStory_main
Ah, the glory days…
Electronista and Digital Home have posted details on Roger’s supposed iPhone data plans. For consumer folk, $30/mth will get you unlimited data, and for enterprise folk the charge will be $45/mth for unlimited data plus the ability to access corporate e-mail, intranet, etc. How they will enforce this, I’m not sure, since ActiveSync just uses an HTTPS connection to grab your Exchange content. But, that’s sort of besides the point. Both of these rates are pretty damn good. Barring some sort fine-print restriction on bandwidth usage, Canadians may finally be able to access the Internet freely from their mobile devices without the fear of a giant ass-raping monster coming up behind them, taking all of their monies and punching them in the ear.
I’ll remain skeptical until I receive my first bill.
The Glasser post on the Mozilla forums also includes a link to a GlasserExtras.zip, a file that includes a set of CSS files that you can use along with the Stylish add-on to make the Firefox Personal Bar look more Vista-esque.
If you find yourself stuck at work all weekend, sitting at your desk doing a shit-load of waiting around, do yourself a favour and download the Spore Creature Creator. That’s the demo right there, leaked a little early. The full Creator will be available June 17th.
The demo only has 25% of the parts that will be available in the full version, but it doesn’t matter. The amount of crazy things you can make with this is bat shit awesome. Here are some of my dudes:
Mandie’s been making some, too. I will post them, for they are of higher quality then my silly beasts. Except for TonyDanza, he’s pretty fantastic. Also, I will use Live Writer’s built-in video uploading to share with you this video of Fredrickson doing a dance with his kid.
Dance! DANCE!!!
I was reading Paul Thuroughgood’s Firefox 3 review where he mentions two fantastic Firefox add-ons that I’d never heard of. One is Glasser, an add-on that replaces the standard opaque Firefox app background with Aero Glass goodness. The second is Hide Menubar, which is pretty self-explanatory. Combined, they make Firefox 3 look as good, if not better, than Internet Explorer running in Vista. And that, friends, is all that anyone could ever ask for.
BlackBerry 8700 (Unlocked, works on Rogers)
30GB 5G iPod Video (New hard drive, case)
$199 is an awfully nice price, but I’m REALLY curious as to what the data plan will look like. I don’t imagine it can get any worse than what I’m currently paying…
I wonder how long that monkey plans on staying with that family. He seems disappointed by their lack of rhythm and general uncoolness, almost saying to himself ‘Is this what I signed up for?’ I mean, when he arrives at the door he couldn’t be more excited, he’s all like ‘SAMBA de FUCKING AMIGO, BITCHES!!’
and then he sees the father and he’s like ‘This family isn’t Latino! But I’ll let them play my game anyways’. And that’s when it all goes downhill.
I just read this article on Electronista, which I’m sure is some sort of ploy for hits or something. Rogers will offer the iPhone with an unlimited browsing plan for $7? I bet! Considering their data rates up until this point have been absolutely ridiculous, I choose to eat this story with several grains of salt. Case in point: last month I went 9MB over my allocated data limit. Overage charge? $63!! That would pay for 9 months of data under this plan. Considering the iPhone has built-in YouTube, Google Maps, mail client, etc. etc. etc. you could EASILY rack up 1GB+ worth of data traffic every month. Going from charging $7 per MB to charging $7 for an all-you-can-eat data buffet… reminds me of a particular Aaron Carter song.
And what would RIM think of this? Currently Roger’s $7 unlimited browsing plan is limited to a small number of handsets, and even then the handsets have to be running a specific web browser. BlackBerries and Windows Mobile phones are excluded. With RIM making their consumer push with phones like the Pearl and the Curve, I can’t see them being too happy with Rogers bending over backwards to appease Apple with a much more attractive data plan.
That all being said, if for some reason it does happen and ActiveSync isn’t blocked (see: Rogers BES blockage for cheap data plan) I’d happily get on that train.
Yes, it’s that good. Mandie and I rented it last night while we were waiting for Bondi to finish our pizza. (Speaking of renting games, $11.99 to rent a game for a month? I had no idea!) After eating our delicious pizza, we popped it into the Wii and played for a bit.
We played the single player campaign, passing the controller back and forth and taking turns trying to beat the levels. In order to get ‘Gold’ on the level, generally you need to clear it out with one throw. It was fun exchanging strategies, trying different things and laughing at each other’s horrible failures. Truly, our relationship has grown stronger. Thanks Steve.
I brought it into the office today to try out the multiplayer. Unfortunately the co-op mode is two players only, but it looked like it could be a lot of fun. We tried the competitive stuff with four players. GOOD TIMES. 
We played the ‘Throw’ modes where you’re trying to knock down as many blocks as possible to gain points. Then we tried a Janga-esque mode where the goal is to only pull out one block at a time, with any additional blocks costing you points. That shit gets tense, yo. (Thanks Easy E!)
In closing, the game is great, Stevey Spielberg did great work and I’m hoping there are some Jurassic Park unlockables in there somewhere. I’d also say E.T. but then I’d be in trouble.
Update:
I wonder how long he’ll keep these up…
Maurice makes like Pat Quinn and gets sacked
I liked Maurice, but I guess the results weren’t there. I don’t know how much can be blamed on Maurice himself, but I guess that’s what happens when you guarantee a playoff spot and then proceed to watch as your team shits the bed.
I thought they’d wait until they hired their new Ultra GM, but I guess Cliff had his own ideas. It will make for an interesting summer. New GM, new coach, maybe some decent prospects from the draft… I won’t even recognize these crazy Maple Leafs anymore. Well, not until the fall when they actually start playing. Then it will be allllll too familiar.
UPDATE:
The Thirsty Thruster wrote about the same thing, possibly earlier then I did. I blame Google Reader.
A few of us went up to Toronto last weekend to catch a Marlies game. The game itself was horrible (Marlies lost 5-1), but the Thunderstix were incredible. Pogge didn’t play, and he hasn’t had a start in 9 games or something. For a goalie who’s supposed to be The Goalie of the Future, sent back in time to save your hockey team from embarrassment, well, he sure isn’t getting a chance to demonstrate/develop his skills.
Mike Toth over at Sportsnet (the last great Sportsnet analyst?) put his two cents into the candy bowl on his blog yesterday:
Like Montreal, there’s also some controversy swirling around the goaltending situation with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Justin Pogge has been anointed as the Leafs goalie of the future. But for the last few weeks, he’s been riding the pine with the Toronto Marlies in the American Hockey League playoffs. The Marlies have played nine games in the post-season and Pogge hasn’t been given a single start. Veteran Scott Clemmensen got pounded for five goals in game one of the Marlies series against Syracuse and Pogge still didn’t get the call for Game 2.
So, what’s the problem?
According to sources, the Leafs feel that Pogge has some growing up to do. At times, he’s displayed a cocky attitude about his future role with the Leafs and his work ethic hasn’t always been up to snuff. With that in mind, the organization wanted to deliver a strong message regarding their expectations for Pogge.
In addition, Marlies coach Greg Gilbert truly believes his club has a better chance of winning with Clemmensen in the crease. Thanks to hard work, group sales and a few free tickets, the Marlies saw a big attendance boost during the regular season. However, their playoff crowds have been disappointing, underlining the fact that the Marlies still have a long way to go before establishing a foothold in the Toronto market. But winning a Calder Cup would definitely increase their profile and the team believes Clemmensen gives them the best shot.
As it turns out, however, even Clemmensen hasn’t been able to solve a red-hot Syracuse club. The Crunch have lost only once in regulation time since the middle of February and took a quick 2-0 lead on the Marlies in their second round playoff series.
So, will Pogge finally get the start in Game 3 on Tuesday?If he does, you can chalk it up as evidence that the Maple Leafs message may be finally getting through.
Well, since that was yesterday, I can tell you what actually happened. Clemmensen got the start again, made 27 saves and the Marlies won 8-2. Where that offense was Friday night, I have no idea. Perhaps they were filling out credit card application forms with bogus information to score some free shirts. *shaking head*
Why hello there fun-looking physics-based puzzle game! Come into my home, I’ll give you the love and attention that you’re looking for.
Here’s a multiplayer preview:
It was supposed to be out today, but I can’t find it! Soon, friend. Soon.
Looks like PNG compression is good for more than just images! This fellow decided to compress Javascript code into a PNG file and then use the canvas tag and a function to extract the JS out of it at runtime. You can read about it here.
I tried out the technique, it works pretty well. I’ve compressed the SockWorld archives into one big PNG file, which I’ve posted below:
I think I’m going to stick with this one for awhile. It’s simple, blue, and it let me add elephants. That’s all I really need.
I just saw that Sun has released version 1.6 of VirtualBox! According to this page, it looks like quite a bit has been fixed/improved. And judging by this screenshot, your feet have been added to the list of supported OSes. Nice.
Ryan Morris was in town last night, and he knew that we had wanted to visit his dog, so he called us up and said ‘Come over and check out it ouuuuuuuut!’ and we were all like ‘Cool, see you in a few!’. And so we went, played around with his dog (a Shiba Inu, like the picture) and exhausted ourselves. Looking for something else to do, we decided to watch a movie. Surprisingly, Iron Man was playing at 8:30 at the Westmount 6!
Since it was already about 8:10, we booted it over, thinking that perhaps we would get bad seats or tickets would be sold out. Well, when we got there, the box office was closed and they were selling tickets at the concession stand. We went over and I asked if there were tickets left for the 8:30 showing of Iron Man. The girl selling tickets laughed, said there was and so I bought 2, got 1 free (thanks Microsoft!). By the time we bought our tickets, concessions, etc. there was about 5 minutes left before the movie was to start. We went into the theatre and were greeted by abooooout 6 other people. By the time the movie started, I think about 2 other people came in.
I have made the conclusion that either a) everyone who lives in the Westmount area drives over to SilverCity to watch movies or b) they are intimidated by its classiness. I think it’s B, because the Westmount 6 is the classiest establishment in London and most people can’t handle it. They’re all like ‘Virtua Tennis AND Puzzle Bobble?? *explosion*’
Anyways, Iron Man was great, made better perhaps by the exclusivity of the screening. We had one guy behind us who laughed loudly, but only at appropriate times so that was okay.
As one Mr. Slambone has pointed out, Google has finally added high-res aerial photography for the London region! And from the looks of things, it’s fairly recent, about a year old or so? The Oxford St. bridge is finished (it wasn’t in the Yahoo! Maps beta) and the apartment building they’ve been putting up across from our office downtown is being worked on, so good news! I don’t think SuperCar is in the driveway, though, which is unfortunate. I imagine it’s somewhere in London, so if anyone can find a silver Neon, let me know.
I was going to link to a bunch of people’s houses, but then I said ‘Wait! That’s probably a bad idea!’ and so I didn’t.
For those of you who a) run Firefox and b) are not blind, you may enjoy a Firefox extension by the name of Piclens. You know what? I don’t even think you need Firefox.
Anyways, the extension works with a ton of sites like Flickr, Google Image Search, Facebook, etc. If you’re viewing a collection of photos, you can click a little icon to take you into PicLens Fullscreen Face-Melting mode. And you end up with something like this:
I love it. It makes going through people’s Flickr albums a whole lot easier, saving me valuable time, dollars and dolphins.
I kind of let things go around here, with all the comment spam and whatnot. But, no longer! I have installed a fancy new Captcha machine that was recommended to me by one Jon Tackabury, developer of such great applications as DisplayFusion and DisplayFusion 2: Still Fusin’.
While I’m going to enjoy not having to manually delete all that spam, I’m going to miss those comments keeping the site fresh. Maybe I’ll have to post more…
The iPod hard drive I bought off of eBay arrived today! After initially dismissing it as ‘horribly broken’ and cursing eBay, eBay sellers and the Internet in general, I realized I had the hard drive installed upside down. One quick flip resolved all issues. So I’m back in business. Serious business. Where is my business suit? At the dry cleaners.
We’re getting started in Strathroy, on myFM. And we’re having people talk for us. There’s an Almost Newlywed game that they’re putting together, and, well, we’re almost newlyweds. So, people have been nominating us to go on the show. You can, too. Just don’t cry too much when it’s revealed that after nearly 11 years of dating, I still think Mandie’s favourite food is cabbage.
First it was Google, now the new Firefox beta! Never before has the effect of the man been felt so strongly. Please, stop keeping me down. My voice can not be silenced!
Keith sent me a screenshot of the warning he gets when he tries to visit my site. I have posted it below. Clicking the thumbnail will not kill you. I promise.
GamesRadar (what?) put together a cool video montage of a bunch of console startup sequences.
The Dreamcast startup is my favourite. bing bing bong bing bing bing whisssssssssssh… Also, the Gamecube one is great. It makes me sad that the first thing you see when you turn on the Wii is a health and safety warning. Can’t you see I’m already healthy and safe, Wii? Can’t you detect that with your IR blaster and fancy accelerometers? What year is this? God.
Also, I can’t believe people had to wait that long when starting their 3DO.
After two years, nearly to the day, my iPod has kicked the bucket. I dropped it at work, and the hard drive didn’t work so well after that. I tried some trickery by sending it to Apple under the guise of a battery replacement (in which they would replace the whole iPod) since it still booted into the menu, but I guess their diagnostics are pretty thorough. *SIGH*
So, I don’t know what I want to do. I can’t really afford to buy a new one and I’m sort of waiting for the iPhone to come out here. I was hoping it would last until that happened, but it was not to be. I might try replacing the hard drive in my current one, which would probably be just shy of $100. I’d much rather put that towards another iPod. Wah.
That’s right, sons and daughters. I have two of them. Actually, that’s a lie. My 360 has the other blog. I’ve never mentioned it here, and for that I apologize. Anyways, here it is:
http://www.360voice.com/tag/YeOldeSock
I signed up for it after a friend of mine set one up for his XBox. If you come visit and we play XBox, you’ll see it blogged about there. For example, on Saturday Dave and Jordie came over, and we played NHL 08, Army of Two and then Mandie joined us for some Rock Band. Here’s the post from that day:
YeOldeSock’s Xbox - 3/9/2008
I told YeOldeSock ‘Don’t make me hurt you!’ and the threat worked because he decided to show up yesterday. A gamer score of 3,750 is in our back pocket. That is a boost of 20 points over last time! He rallied NHL® 08, Army of Two, Rock Band, and… hmmm… maybe that was all… it felt like we played more games.
IT’S ALL THERE. Scary!
In other news, all of my future posts here will include pictures of explosions. I hope this doesn’t offend you.