First, there was Cow Clicker, and now its creator has announced the launch of the Cow Clicker Platform: the web-widget Cow Clicker Connect, the programmable Cow Clicker API, and three new official Cow Clicker products that implement them, the Facebook game Cow Clicker Blitz, the iPhone app Cow Clicker Moobile, and the Moogle search engine. It’s all part of cowclickification.
Month: January 2011
Google Voice Now Lets You Port Your Number
While Engadget says it’s limited beta, it’s showing up on my account and I’m tempted to jump on it. Anybody using their GV number as their full-time number have comments on pros/cons of doing this? Obviously Google’s presentations are pretty slick, but I’d like to see how normal people are using it. I’m out of contract with Sprint now, and have an Android phone, so I’m thinking this might be the perfect time to try this. About the only thing I thinking of that aren’t working 100% right now would be MMS (not critical as I don’t use it a ton) and changing outgoing caller ID on my phone calls from my cell, but I’m sure there’s a way to change that.
What Happens When You Mess With The Physics in GTA4?
This (brief naughty language warning):
It’s like Carmageddon with a modern graphics engine. Tthey need to make a version of that game that works on modern XP-era or newer PCs, as the various hacks out there are just that. I had far too much fun playing that game in college.
Any Home Theater Wizards Out There?
I’m trying to help my parents out with some home theater stuff for the house they’re building (just about finished). I’m trying to find an all-in-one receiver that will play Blu-Ray (or DVD, but preferably BD), as the built-in entertainment center area only has room for one more component (as the DirecTV DVR takes up one of the two). Now that’s not a big deal, as there are hundreds of those types of things out there, but I need one a bit more powerful and specialized: I need one that uses bare-wire speaker connectors (as he has in-wall speaker wire and I’m not using something with proprietary connectors like most of them have) and ideally has dual-zone support (as he has speaker wire running to the kitchen, deck, and bedroom as well).
Does such a beast exist? I have a thread open over on AVS Forum, but I figured I’d ask here if anybody knew of such a beast. Dual-zone support isn’t as crucial, but it sure would be nice.
Update: Made it more clear that I need one of those home-theater-in-a-box type of setups that will play the DVDs as well as power the speakers. Realized I wasn’t as clear as I could be with that. I basically need one box that will do it all. I have an Onkyo TXSR508 so I know all about multi-zone stand-alone receivers, just didn’t have a clue if a HTiB setup was capable of doing this.
Time Killer For The Day
Dang you Robert: I’ve lost many a lunch break thanks to Darkest Days. I hate you a little bit.
What If Classic Games Had A Extra Hard Mode?
It might look something like this…
Time Killer For The Evening
Man In Gap is a really simple game: Just get the man into the gap. But it’s addicting and really quite annoying as the game progresses. Which means it’s a load of fun.
Video Dump
A few videos to kill off some time (and to get them off my desktop)…
Reading Material (Lots of Android and Geek Stuff)
- I’m starting to get more into my Android phone, learning all the fun stuff the operating system can do. I’m getting all sorts of useful information from Reddit’s Android subreddit as well as the usual places like XDA and PPC. I’m finding far too many apps and time killers here (and here and here). I’ve rooted the phone so I could remove the Sprint stock apps (good list of what you can get rid of here and here), back things up, ad block and install custom roms down the road (among other mods). I’m also looking into Tasker and all the cool stuff it can do. I’m considering bucking up and paying Roam Control as that will help in Sunriver where the coverage from from Verizon is better in some spots. When I get an extra few bucks, I’m really considering getting something like this for my car and then installing the Torque app to monitor, clear, and read codes in my car. I really should get a dashboard mount for this phone and find a good music player and synching process and just leave my iPod at home. Then I could have a constant video recorder for my phone while I’m on the road using DailyRoads.
Seriously, though, I’m loving having an Android phone. Anybody else have any great tips or apps that I should look into?
And in case you’re wondering how or why I got such an expensive phone: No, I couldn’t even remotely afford this phone. I received it when Best Buy completely munged up the repair on my previous phone and I was using a loaner phone for nearly three months. They (thankfully) did the right thing and gave me a new phone, since it was pretty obvious that the repair company had no intention on sending my old phone back to me any time soon. Since my previous phone was top-of-the-line when I got it and had much better features than most of the phones there, the Epic was really the only one that matched up.
- Speaking of Android, Android vs. WP7 for developers, a case study.
- And now for something completely different, everybody’s flipping out a bit about this whole Arizona shooting and whether there were political influences (the dude was cracked, plain and simple). Just the same, Sarah Palin denies everything thrown at her, though I did think both of these twitter posts hit the nail on the head.
- If you shop on NewEgg.com (I do for a ton of computer parts), you might be interested in CamelEgg, which is a NewEgg price tracker to watch for price drops and alerts.
- Making computer science fun for all ages, it’s Computer Science, Unplugged!
- Read The F**king HIG is a great blog ranting about bad interfaces on Mac apps “from the Mac App Store, ‘designed’ by people who think they get interface design.”
- Speaking of interface design, everybody who has a site with a shopping-cart process needs to read this.
- While I still don’t see a ton of value in twitter (as the signal-to-noise ratio is about one-to-a-million), I love their response to the WikiLeaks subpeona and I only wish more companies watched out for their users like this.
- A few locals are starting up conference here in Bend called Ruby on Ales, a two-day, single track conference inspired by Ruby, microbrews, and shredding. They have a Facebook page as well. Since I know squat about Ruby, it won’t do me much good, but I’m sure there are folks out there with an interest in this.
Pre-BCS Time Killer
Shopping Cart Hero 2 will make you relive your childhood dreams of shooting down a hill in a shopping cart and getting airborne. This should occupy you until Game Time. I’ll have to go elsewhere to watch it, since I don’t have cable any more and this is the first time ever that the game is not on free TV (dang you ABC/ESPN).
Go Ducks!