On June 1st 2012 Wizards of the Coast will be releasing new Planechase decks. If any of you have not tried Planechase it is a lot of casual magic fun. Here is a link to their product info, along with card images on the Wizards of the Coast site. There will be some amazing new cards and some old ones...
I almost forgot. The Humble Bundle for Android 3 is out! You know by now how much of a fan I am of the efforts of all the Humble Bundles. 1.Unique indie games 2. Great prices. 3. Supports charity and developers.
This bundle includes Fieldrunners, Bit.Trip Beat, SpaceChem, Uplink, and if you pay more than the average (right now at $6.07), Spirits. Fieldrunners and Bit.Trip Beat together are easily worth the average of $6.07. Everything else is tasty, tasty, gravy. Note, however, that Uplink and SpaceChem on android are designed for tablet. Don’t worry though, for as usual, all of these games are also compatible with Windows, OS X, and Linux. For you Steam users out there you can get codes as well if you pay at least $1.00.
I can trace my do-it-yourself attitude back to my father. Growing up, I was suckered into helping my father with his sundry “honey-do” projects and general carpentry projects like roofing, siding and remodeling. I was unfortunately too young in comparison to my other brothers to do anything other than fetching tools or light grunt work so I didn’t really learn any useful carpentry skills. What I did learn was the satisfaction gained from improving something with your own two hands. While I may not be the blue collar type I definitely bring the blue collar attitude to even the nerdiest of my pursuits. The following are some of the sites that rest on the top shelf of my nerd toolbox.
Once upon a time there were many Gawker sites that were a part of my daily blog rotation. In my opinion though the only one that has stayed consistently good is the Lifehacker blog. This site contains a scattershot of DIY information ranging from hardware hackery to personal finance. Because of that the articles you may find useful or interesting will vary widely from day to day. Unfortunately, the sites search function leaves much to be desired. Despite that, I still highly recommend adding this site to your bookmarks and checking it out at least a couple times a week. I guarantee you will find at least a couple things you will find personally useful every week (even if delving into the innards of your gadgets isn’t your type of thing).
Looking to do a specific project? Instructables is the first place you should look for help. It’s the wikipedia of DIY so individual guides vary in completeness and usefulness. Even if the specific guide isn’t particularly thorough they usually give enough information to help narrow down a google search. The biggest draw to this site is that it has EVERYTHING. Want bacon flavored wiskey? There are instructions for that. Want an Arduino powered tree climbing robot? Inscrutables has you covered. The site is easily searchable if you are looking for something specific and also fun to browse around when you are bored.
Have an android phone? Want to unlock its full potential? This is the first and last place you need to go. This is the source for rooting and custom ROMs on every android phone and tablet on the market. I am a big fan of Android OS but I will also admit that Android has inherent issues. Since it is coming from typically smaller divice manufacturers the carriers have more power to make demands on what features and crapware gets shoveled into these phones.
Fragmentation exists because, for the most part, every carrier wants a special phone for their service. HTC recently tried to streamline its device catalog with the line One series phones but was flatly rejected by Verizon. The only cell phone manufacturer outside of Apple that is bigenough to get one device across the different companies has been Samsung. It wasn’t until I read this article on The Verge that I realized the umpteen Android devices were because of carriers and not the manufacturers. Updating all those devices erodes their profits and many a poor phone languishes in the realm of versions past.
That is where the knights in shining armor from the xda forums come in. The friendliness of the community varies from phone to phone. I’ve heard that some phones boards are full of elitist [explitive deleted] and some are full of nice helpful people. Either way xda will be your #1 stop for information on rooting and source of custom ROMs for your device.
Maybe it’s a sign that a jealous type but I think unboxing videos are a blight on the internet. In my personal opinion the hamster dance has more merit than any unboxing vid. That is why the above compilation of Nexus 7 unboxing fails gives me unmitigated pleasure. Watch as TV personalities and bloggers try to break into the Fort Knox of boxes that encapsulates the Nexus 7.
Ouya (pronounced OOO-yah) is the latest kickstarter project that has the gadget blogs buzzing. It is an inexpensive console based on Android 4.0 which has already made over two million dollars in pledges in twenty four hours. The founders are looking to revolutionize console gaming. From their kickstarter page: “Let’s open this sucker up! It’s time we brought back innovation, experimentation, and creativity to the big screen. Let’s make the games less expensive to make, and less expensive to buy. With all our technological advancements, shouldn’t costs be going down? Gaming could be cheaper!”
I was browsing along on the internet and found a surprisingly addictive game to play. It’s called BrowserQuest and only requires an HTML 5 capable browser to play. Created by Little Workshop and Mozilla to highlight the capability of HTML 5. So you can actually play on pretty much any modern browser and many mobile devices as well. It looks like an old school 16 bit RPG and has a great sense of humor. You play in an instanced session with other live players. Oh and it has achievements to go along with all the loot. Try and remember to feed yourself, children, and or pets before checking it out. You will play this longer than you think. Ho here to play: http://browserquest.mozilla.org/ or watch the video below for a sample
A media streaming ball to be precise. It’s called the Nexus Q. It is a media streaming device designed to allow any Android devices in the area to que up content such as music and videos from the cloud and Play Store. It’s cost is concerning compared to that of the Nexus 7 tablet. For a content streaming device that needs a TV or monitor, $299 seems a bit steep. One wouldn’t have blamed google for the pricing being the opposite between the two devices. But there are other considerations at play “cough Kindle Fire cough”. It is made in America. And this seems to be brought up when discussing price on the Nexus Q. I say: so are Vizio electronics and they make some great affordable electronics in the US. Strange product, stranger price.
Android version 4.1 “Jellybean”,1.3Ghz quad core processor, NFC, Front facing camera and a 1200×800 screen.
More importantly though:
*Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet, and more importantly any high-end tablets are now completely obsolete.
Why?:
1.With the announcement came news of the play store adding the ability to sell TV Shows (seasons and episodes), Movies, and Magazines Google puts itself in as a major player in content distribution. Their previous lack of content is what opened the door and allowed Amazon to compete in the tablet market in the first place. Remember, the Fire is not pure android it is a skinned version that highlights Amazon’s content. This made complete sense at the time but, no longer has the pull it did previous to today’s announcements. Amazon should have done their best to parter with google and provide content directly in Android rather than make the Kindle Fire. Now they have to fight off Apple and Google in providing video content. Ouch!
2. Apps! I have been telling the people I know that the reason that I made the purchase of an iPad over a powerful android tablet was the lack of apps. Yes, yes, I am aware that the Play Store has over 500,000 apps. But, how many of them are optimized for tablets? Very few. I do not see this changing overnight as it will take time but, a single high selling android tablet may swing some developers to target the Nexus with new versions of their apps.
You may have and old Android phone laying around collecting dust in some junk drawer or maybe you are due for an upgrade and wondering what to do once you get your shiny new gadget in your hands. Even though the phone may seem old, slow and decrepit there are still plenty of useful things you can do with it. Some of the things on this list explicitly require root access. If you haven’t rooted your phone head on over to xda forums for instructions. Every phone has a different method and varying degrees of difficulty and if you are uncomfortable delving into the guts of your phone then I would suggest not rooting your phone. Don’t be too put off of tales of bricked phones though. That term has been too loosely thrown around and it is generally very hard to cause an unrecoverable error. Only the last thing on this list requires root access and if you find that useful then I’m sure you will be comfortable with obtaining root access.
If you are rooted I highly recommend shutting off your cell radio. It will vastly improve your battery life and you can safely hand it over to a child without worrying about accidental calls to 911. To do this simply install Script Manager, download this script to your Android phone, run the script in Script Manager and make sure you check “run as root” and “run on boot” options. Now your phone will run days on end without needing a charge.
Today is the longest day of the year. Which google believes gives you some extra time for a few new Android apps. They have put together their “longest Day” sale and it includes quite a few good deals. Shazam Encore ($.99), Mass Effect: Infiltrator ($.99), Grand Theft Auto III ($.99), NBA Jam ($.99), and quite a few more. Why they wouldn’t call it Solstice, I don’t know. Maybe because it was a bad NES game. Go here to see more: Google Play
Adult Swim has made another silly game. This time it is way more addictive. Monsters Ate My Condo has great graphics and sound but more importantly is fun. Characters designed by the crew that brought you games like Robot Unicorn Attack and Snoticles. I grabbed it for my iPad but it is available for iPod/iPhone and android devices on the play store. Well worth the $.99 to make monsters eat sections of a building while the music pumps out hints of Dubstep. Easy to lose some time on this one. Like Rampage….only on Crack sprinkled with LSD.
