via Twitter. Source: unknown
Mike Williams
Mike’s List of Absolutes
Your hair and your nails are comprised of your DEAD cells. Therefore, neither one can be considered “Healthy” by any measure.
Birthdays are a way to measure LIFE and not DEATH. That being said, you do not have birthdays after you die. You may have an anniversary of your death but you cease having birthdays upon death.
That's all I have so far. This list may change at any point.
That is all.
Bad Piggies – A Review
Bad Piggies by Rovio
Rovio has just introduced Bad Piggies into the wild. This game has been expected for some time even though we really didn't know what kind of Angry Birds spin there would be on it.
As it turns out, there is very little resemblance to the original block buster iOS game.
What made Angry Birds so popular has been completely abandoned by Rovio in this new game. AB was a joy to play because you just fling birds at pigs. Pretty simple. A great diversion and time killer that didn't require any more thinking than “how far do I pull back on the slingshot?”
Very similar to “Amazing Alex” (another Rovio game), Bad Piggies requires that you build things and well…think. I'm sure that a few folks will enjoy that type of thing. I don't.
I have a few games on my iPad but the ones I tend to like the most are not the ones where a tremendous amount of thinking is involved. Little Generals is a great game. You simply blow stuff up. Yatzee is very simple. The iPad game does most of the thinking for you.
Sounds like Mike doesn't like thinking…doesn't it?
Well, I write stories, programs, movies, etc. When I turn to my iPad for a quick diversion, I like simple.
Bad Piggies is not simple.
A complete turn from Angry Birds and a complete miss for Rovio as far as I'm concerned.
(Update: 10.3.2012 – Additional thoughts. What I think this game should be is a building of structures that end with the birds being thrown against them. How many pigs you have left should determine how well you do. )
Out of Touch
For anyone who has tried to reach me either by phone or email, sorry.
I am ridiculously busy right now. As you can see, I'm not even posting very much on my own website.
That will change.
Boy, do I got sh*t to write about!
Laterz.
Mountain Lion Usability Update
Hot off the presses!
It's still not usable. At least, not on my mid-2011 iMac 27″ Quad Core 3.4 GHz i7 with 16 Gigs of RAM, a 240 Gig SSD, among other things.
When I play video, after 5, 10, or longer the video slows down and I lose audio altogether. This seems to happen more frequently in fullscreen mode.
I thought maybe if I downloaded the 10.8.1 full version that it might solve the problem. It did not.
Back to the safety of Lion (10.7.4) for now.
Update (9/25/12) – Mountain Lion Update 10.8.2 has been released. It still does not address the serious audio/video problem. According to folks in the Apple forums, Apple seems to be ignoring the issue. My guess is that they know about it and may not know how to fix it. Since this problem is among certain Mac models I would guess that its a driver issue. Perhaps, if we start replacing audio/video drivers with those from Lion it would fix the problem? Oh well, crossing fingers again.
Personal Hotspot Option on iPad?
Personal Hotspot Option
I just noticed this option this morning. Not sure how long its been on there. 4th one down from the upper left hand corner.
Hmmm.
Windows 8 Versus Mac OS X Thought
Macintosh OS 9
The Mac operating system has changed over the years but not in very dramatic ways. In fact, anyone who has used OS 9 will know exactly how to use OS X. If you have used Tiger (10.4) then you can use Mountain Lion (10.8) without much todo or fanfare.
Steve Jobs knew that tablets were the future of computing and built the entire Mac eco-system around that idea. The features you find in iOS are readily becoming available in Mac OS X. This is deliberate.
What Microsoft is doing with Windows 8 is try to bridge a gap that has been building over a period of years. They are trying to jump ahead to a point that they were not preparing for. While Windows dabbled in touch screen interfaces, they saw something that was really “cool” but didn't really know how to apply it and use it to their advantage. I remember seeing Vista for the first time and listening to Microsoft tell me how awesome it was and was going to become. I also remember yawning and noting that all of those “cool new features” had been in Mac OS X for months or even years.
I am willing to bet (without having read the entire Steve Jobs biography) that Steve saw an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation's use of the PADD and snapped his fingers. I don't doubt that for a second because after watching the show, I myself wanted such a device. Man, the things you could do with a tablet computer! Steve Jobs did the same thing with the Xerox interface. While Xerox may not have fully understood what they had, Steve Jobs did. That is vision.
That is what Microsoft doesn't have.
This version of Windows is such a big jump from Windows 7 and so confusing to such a large base of users that this whole thing simply “smells” bad. Big jumps in OS are usually bad for consumers. I haven't even mentioned IT folks that may end up abandoning Windows in the workplace all together. They will have to weigh training hours, troubleshooting time, and costs against other alternatives that are much cheaper and offer less of a shock to their users. Let's face it. Windows in the workplace is expensive.
Windows 8 is such a big jump that it would be like paying someone to shoot you in the face if you are an IT guy.
Just. Sayin'
Mountain Lion Issues
I was hoping that Mountain Lion Update 10.8.1 would fix my streaming audio/video issues on the latest iMac 27″ you can buy from Apple.
It does not.
I am fairly certain that my issues will pale in comparison to the legions of Windows users who believe what Microsoft tells them about how easy the upgrade to Windows 8 will be only to find that they can no longer find anything. (insert most family names you know here.)
Back to 10.7.4 where its safe.
