When I was on the IFO Apple Store website today, I came across this picture of the soon-to-be Boylston St. Apple Store:
A Series of Tubes
An archive of old posts.
Monthly Archives: April 2008
Fan Ages and Drizzle
Fan ages – that is, custom-made, unofficial ages for Uru – have certainly progressed a long way. From my first age, Galamay:
To the Fan City of Ahra Pahts:
And now, Eh’ko and the Book of D’eux:
The two ages seen here, Eh’ko and The Remote Age Viewer, look absolutely stunning. They really are Cyan-quality work, and incredibly impressive.
Also, the Drizzle Project is a pretty impressive feat of fan work. Some hackers have managed to decrypt the MO:UL age files, and re-encrypt them using the old Uru encryption methods, meaning that we can put the ages that were once exclusively for MO:UL into URU:CC. I tried it out myself, and after one failure the first time, I got it working completely the second time around. It’s very fun to link to the ages and mess around with the settings just by tapping keys on the keyboard (such as swap the winter Delin for the summer one by pressing Q or W, or make animals appear in Negilahn), plus it includes the flymode patch, which means you can use flymode in these ages and see everything from any angle. It’s very fun, and I’d recommend it to anyone with Uru:CC and the MO:UL files.
New Stuff From the Apple Store
I took a necessary trip to the Apple Store today, and picked up a new power cord for my computer. I noticed the form factor is smaller, it looks like the iBook adaptor now:
In other news, I picked up a Slider Case for my iPod, and it looks pretty good:
I also got some screen protectors, because I thought having a matte screen would look pretty cool, plus protection from fingerprints would be nice. However, I got a few specks of dust on the inside of the film, and I have not been able to remove them. Since the thing holds itself on using static, and dust or debris, no matter how small, produces a large air bubble. Plus, the matte finish makes the screen look grainy and weird. In the end, I took off the one on the screen but left on the back film, which has no matte finish, and is covered up by the case anyway.
Echochrome Demo
I just downloaded the demo of Echochrome on the new Playstation Store. It’s pretty awesome, and I’ll probably buy the full version when it comes out. It’s very cool, using cool perspective tricks to solve puzzles. There are 5 laws of perspective (these can all be seen at the beginning of the trailer, below):
Using those 5 laws, you rotate the camera angle to guide the avatar from ‘echo’ to ‘echo’. These ‘echos’ serve as checkpoints, in case you fall through a hole or jump into nothing. It’s pretty easy to get the hang of, but I find that the camera doesn’t rotate fast enough, and the motion sensor mode is too jumpy to be useful. Hopefully that will be fixed up by the final release, but I really like the demo. Check out the trailer below:
Power Cord Blues, Again
Well, it happened again. My Macbook Pro’s power cable has, once again, ceased to function due to overheating. This time, the cable obviously melted at the point where it connects to the power brick. Unlike before, nothing I do makes it work, which makes me think it’s been completely fused together. At the moment I’m using my Windows box, since both of my batteries are dead…Hopefully I’ll be able to get to an Apple Store tomorrow and pick up a new cable.
New Headphones
I bought new headphones today, to replace my graying iPod headphones. I saw them in Microcenter, and I decided to buy them. Only $40, and they claimed to be surround sound and noise canceling, which sounded like a great deal to me. So, I picked them up. They sound great, with very clear bass. Unfortunately, they’re on-ear, not around-ear, but it isn’t as bad as I thought it would be…
Unfortunately, the SRS does not work. I put in a AAA battery, but when I flip it on, the left ear goes completely silent, and the right ear barely changes at all. Oh well, I don’t need the noise canceling, the cans sound great.
Scientology Protest
Yesterday I participated in a protest against the Church of Scientology, particularly its practice of separating its members from their families and not allowing any outside contact. The protest was named Operation Reconnect, and was run by Anonymous, a leaderless group of anonymous internet-goers. Since the group is anonymous, everyone wore masks, giving a very impressive effect. I have uploaded all of my photos to my gallery, and you can find others on the Non-Violent Uprising wiki.
For more pictures, visit my gallery.
Uru's Final Day
Well, this is it. The final day of Myst Online: Uru Live. Tonight, at midnight (mountain time), Cyan Worlds and Gametap will pull the plugs on the game servers, shutting down the game for the foreseeable future. I plan to be online up until the very last moment, should anyone care to join me. Also planning on video recording the last 5 minutes or so, for the memories. You can expect that to be up sometime tomorrow.
Adium Blend
A while back, I made my own contact list style for Adium, which I called Blend. It’s extremely minimalistic and somewhat like the HUD windows in Leopard (see Quicklook):
It’s meant to float above other windows in the collapsed mode, and is barely noticable in front of other things.
If you like what you see, you can get it here.
Boston Apple Store Shaping Up
As you can see on the Birth Of An Apple Store site, the Apple Store outside the Hynes is shaping up pretty well. I’ve walked past it a few times to check it out, and apparently a giant Apple logo has now been installed:
I’ll be at the grand opening, whenever it’s announced.