Tag Archives: review

Blog

The Most Read Posts From 2011

January 3, 2012 – 6:21 pm

Didn’t have time to post this before the new year but now is as good a time as any! Below I have included the past year’s most read and commented posts. Have a look back!

I’d like to say thank you so very much to all of you — I don’t make any money on this site and do it to spread knowledge and any wisdom I can. The message of freedom is most important to me, beyond all the tech and goofy posts, it is what I strive to promote.

Without you, my readers none of this would be worth it — I do it for you. Cheers!

San Francisco’s $10 Mandatory Minimum Wage
San Francisco now has the highest minimum wage in the country. $10. The economically ignorant will cheer this as a massive success! They feel they are increasing the standard of living by forcing entrepreneurs to pay entry-level workers more money for jobs that may not call for that money in the open market.

The Media is Out to Stop Ron Paul — Here’s Proof
If you have followed then you won’t be surprised by the attached images. If you haven’t been following Ron Paul, the libertarian Presidential hopeful — and last hope for America — has been at the mercy of the Mainstream Media cabal.

RIP Bill of Rights: December 15, 1791 — January 1, 2012
With the stroke of 66 pens the tyrannical Barack Obama singed in to legislation the highly controversial National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, thus suspending habeas corpus.

OS X Lion Adds Emoji
All of us who have used Emoji icons on our iPhones for the last few years will be happy to know that those blank spaces and boxes with x’s through them will now display properly in OS X Lion! Just a small tidbit I figured deserved a post.

Shortmail Introduces “Shortmail Me!”
Shortmail Me is a small lightweight script that can be installed on any website (Tumblr, WordPress confirmed) that enables visitors to quickly and easily send a Shortmail to the embedded user. Just copy and paste the code, change the target user name to your own and off you go!

Here’s to a fantastic 2012!

Tags , , , , , | Permalink | Comment (0)
Reviews

Super Short Review — Sherlock Holmes 2: A Game Of Shadows

December 25, 2011 – 10:45 am

Went and saw the second installment of the Sherlock Holmes series starring Iron Man. Yes, Robert Downey Jr reprises his role as the good detective. This time he clashes with evil genius Dr. Moriarty in an epic battle of wits.

The movie was great. Guy Ritchie does it again with this. The plot is non-stop fun, action, and dry comedy reserved for those smart enough to grasp the jokes. Sometimes the language of the period in the movie makes it hard to follow but giving it time it sorts itself out.

The effects and great slow motion camera work are something to be seen. The movie isn’t loaded with a bunch of annoying CGI — rather there is excessive use of the slow motion scenes. Something I am not annoyed with at all. I actually enjoy them.

All in all this movie should be seen. If you saw the first one then you must see this chapter in the series. Don’t waste time, enjoy the holiday afternoon by taking in a great film.

Rating systems are dumb so to break it down much easier…

Plot: thumbs up!
Effects: thumbs up!
Overall: see it.

Tags , , | Permalink | Comment (0)
Blog

Limbo on the Mac App Store

December 24, 2011 – 2:29 am

Limbo finally dropped for the Mac App Store! I downloaded and haven’t stopped playing. The most basic of controls but the most visually beautiful game I’ve ever played. Keep in mind there is no color beyond black and white. Just lovely. Play now!

Via Mac App Store

Tags , , , , | Permalink | Comment (0)
Technology

Two Days With The MacBook Air: My Thoughts

August 11, 2011 – 12:21 am

I’ve had my new Air for about 2, maybe 3 days. Nothing has changed in terms of love for the machine. I stand by my statement that this is the best laptop money can buy (unless you are looking for a desktop replacement machine to do heavy video or graphic editing). The machine is light, fast, and perfect. The battery is unreal! 9 hours is a wonderful thing!

Some questions I’ve had have come from family and friends so I figured I would throw a small list together to discuss them in one place. If you have a question hit me up in the ask box or shortmail me (in less than 500 characters) here.

Question 1: Do you miss the DVD drive?

Not at all. On my 2010 13″ Pro (which is now the world’s most expensive paperweight) I used the optical drive over the span of 9 months about three times. My portable media of choice is my 8GB thumb drive.

Question 2: How is the battery life?

As I said above, it is unreal. One charge gets me through about 8 hours of use. I have no complaints.

Question 3: How is the storage?

I have no complaints again, I got the top end Air 1.8GHz i7 with a 256GB solid state drive. 256GB is more than enough storage for a mobile computer. Not to mention I have 8GB of truly mobile storage in my jump drive, and let’s not forget that I have 5GB of free storage in the cloud with iCloud! No need for a giant drive. Of course I have a 1TB Western Digital that collects dust.

Question 4: Why did you even get an Air?

To be completely honest it was the screen resolution that was lacking on the 13″ Pro. The Air has a nicer resolution and I take advantage of every pixel.

Question 5: Can you play games or Photoshop on that thing?

To be honest I haven’t tried but considering I used to play Left 4 Dead 2 on my Pro which is less powerful than my new Air I’d say I will be alright if I decide to load up Steam. I will make sure to test it this weekend and let you know!

So there you have it, the most popular questions I get — I know I’m late on my review but I always like to take my time. I stand by what I say; if you are in line for a new machine don’t waste time with anything else. At the very least go to the Apple store and play with one.

The thing is so mobile and light I throw it in a bag everywhere I go.

Tags , , | Permalink | Comment (1)
Technology

A Week With Google+

July 11, 2011 – 10:45 pm

So rather than cranking out a bunch of lengthy paragraphs I figured I’d mock up a trusty list of the likes, dislikes, and needed improvements for Google+. This thing has set the tech world on fire, no matter who you talk to (so long as they aren’t a redneck) everyone has an opinion and a desire to get an invite. Let’s hop into it.

Likes —

  • I like the way friends are added to the Circle system.
  • I like the way you can share to different groups, or just share to the public.
  • I like that everything is baked into the experience. Notifications on the “sandbar”.
  • I like that you can easily share images, links, videos, etc.
  • I like that I actually want to engage the site and continue using it.

Dislikes —

  • Threads “rise” to the top as comments come in. Makes me feel like I’m surfing the same content forever.
  • Messy look and feel! Comment threads need to collapse!
  • I should be able to turn sharing off from some people, like I turn retweets off on Twitter.
  • I should be able to turn entire Circles off. Sure we are friends but I don’t give a shit about your hamster or your girlfriend breaking up with you.
  • There needs to be an easier way to find friends.
  • Muting a user should not hide the post completely.
  • The mobile site is terrible (I once thought it was good, after using it for a few days I hate it.)

Wishlist —

  • iOS native app.
  • Ability to moderate stream better.
  • Plug in with Gmail.
Tags , , | Permalink | Comment (0)
Gaming

The Nintendo 3DS; Some Trustworthy Words

March 30, 2011 – 10:18 pm

My brother had a chance to spend a few hours with the new Nintendo 3DS. If anyone knows about gaming and handhelds it’s him. He has never once steered me wrong in terms of a handheld review or recommendation. Over on his side blog he writes:

I must say I am impressed with the device. It is a must buy for Nintendo Handheld fans. I do not recommend it to those who are casual handheld gamers, stick to the DSi for now. There is not enough games on the market to make it worth you while if its something you are not a fanatic over.

Just on that paragraph alone I’m sold. If you like handheld, portable gaming then get your hands on the system of tomorrow. I have said for some time now that mobile gaming and the mobile platform is the wave of the future. These companies will boom in the coming months and years. As the market gets larger more and more innovation is coming. Nintendo is leading the way but soon these smaller garage game developers will bring the masses in.

Tags , , | Permalink | Comment (0)
Web

Why We Picked WordPress Over Tumblr

January 9, 2011 – 8:34 pm

We had been having this conversation for days. WordPress v. Tumblr – which blogging platform should we use? We finally decided to go with WordPress but it wasn’t as easy as some would expect. I know there are a lot of friends of mine who blog and keep journals so I figured some of our reasoning might help future bloggers decide. Here is a short write-up of the pros, cons, and why.

WordPress.com –
This is the default to go with when it comes to blogging. Every option one could need to get up and rolling is provided free of charge. You can’t ask for much more as far as features go. A great piece of software and a proper community at anyone’s disposal. Some pros:

  • Free to use. (No upfront costs for hosting)
  • Managed, no need to update or install plugins.
  • Easy to use backend with power user features.
  • Plays nice with social networks.
  • Large community that helps spread your work out.
  • Everything built-in is excellent. Stats, polls, rankings, tools, etc.

For all of those great items there are some short comings. Most of it comes down to specific paid features. Some of these features are readily available on other blogging platforms for free. Some of the cons for WordPress are:

  • $12 per year to map your own domain to your blog.
  • $15 per year to edit the CSS in any way. (This seems excessive.)
  • Community is vast but it seems less social than Tumblr.
  • Overly complex for someone just trying to blog random stuff.
  • Limited space. 3gb per account.

While some will disagree with the community comment I maintain it to be true. Tumblr really does have an amazing community which I will touch upon momentarily. WordPress has a great community as well but it doesn’t seem to be as organized at least in the way Tumblr’s is. The Tumblr dashboard does a lot of good, also a lot of bad.

Tumblr –
So Tumblr, Tumblr is great. The hype in blogging at the moment and I understand why. It is basic, simple, and easy to get into and see growth. There are several great features and most of the WordPress cons are addressed by Tumblr. Some of the pros are:

  • Free.
  • Hundreds of free themes that look excellent.
  • Ability to post anything with ease.
  • Highly customizable.
  • Free features like domain mapping for your .com, etc.
  • Active and vast community.*

Note that the last one is starred, I’m getting to that. Tumblr’s flaw is the community as much as it is the strength. Tumblr users can “like” or “reblog” a user’s post. This does help share it across the network but it also hurts the post. Often times names and original content are stripped, especially if it is an image.

While the community can interact it is also highly annoying that you can’t interact beyond the original post! Tumblr has no built-in comment system. It does, but not traditional. People can leave comments in the form of a reply but you can’t answer back. This is so counter intuitive it drives me insane. Users need to use third-party comment systems like disqus. Unfortunately this takes away from participation for many people who aren’t familiar with it. How hard is it to just build in working comments!?

Finally the SEO, it is horrible. I have had Tumblr for years now and none of my posts are even remotely searchable in Google. To counter that, posts I’ve submitted on here are already receiving Google traffic. It’s amazing how important that is.

Tumblr is great for casual blogging and for kids and adults who want to share fun stuff with their friends and their community on Tumblr but that is the extent. It is like a walled garden. Great user experience within the walls, no love outside the walls. Either place is a great way to go about sharing your content but ultimately WordPress wins out. It is always the 10,000 lb gorilla in the blogging world and for good reason.

Tumblr is an excellent personal sharing system for things that can be found in a junk drawer. Tumblr is a better Twitter and for that I love it but if I want to crank out a post like this it isn’t even an option right now. Maybe with their new round of funding they can change that? It will be interesting to see.

Tags , , , | Permalink | Comment (0)