Tag: review

Drafts for iOS

May 7th, 2012 · · text No comments - Tags: , , , ,

Drafts for iphone I tried out Drafts this past week. I was skeptical of it because its developer also did Terminology, which I had heard was great, but didn’t really like. Agile Tortoise doesn’t make pretty apps. Drafts is also a bit of an eyesore. The original theme for Drafts was a mess of browns that looked like the inside of a toilet bowl after a large bowl of spicy curry. There’s a gray theme that isn’t much better looking, but at least it isn’t brown.

Drafts is a weird mixture of tweet composer, note composer and email composer. Drafts is definitely not a place to keep text. It’s a place to start a thought and then move it off somewhere else. You can send text to Omnifocus, Simplenote or any other app that utilizes the “Open in…” function in iOS. There’s a “Send to Dropbox…” function, but since you can only send text files to /Apps/Drafts, its use is limited for me. I want to be able to save to any folder I wish, and I know it’s possible, but the developer claims that Dropbox prefers you to use “/Apps/[app name]“. So for the sake of making Dropbox happy, you’re stuck with no options. Elements and Taskpaper let you use any folder, but Drafts will not. It’s pretty lame.

I’ve found it useful to use Drafts when I want to quickly get something out of my head though. Drafts automatically opens up a new note when you launch it. From there, it’s one tap to send it to Omnifocus’ inbox or create a note in Simplenote. I also like that it auto-tags new Simplenote notes with the “Drafts” tag. I’d like it even more if I could choose my own custom tag to be assigned, but I won’t hold my breath. I know I can accomplish these same things (minus the auto-tag) with Launchpad. Launchpad still requires you to open the app and then choose your macro you’ve created. It feels faster launching into a text window straight from the home screen.

Drafts could also be very useful for creating templates. You can keep a draft of something, and use actions like send to Simplenote, Tweetbot or email whenever. Unlike Launchpad which doesn’t allow you to have line breaks when you create “Create new note with [insert text]” macros, Drafts would allow you to create relatively complex templates. Of course, if TextExpander Touch allowed for fill-ins on iOS, you could do everything with TextExpander like you would on OS X. (Sad face.)

Drafts is an interesting application and it certainly has its uses. It’s not going to replace any app you already have, but it’s possible that you could find a way to use Drafts that augments your currently used applications.

Tags, Revisted

April 26th, 2012 · · text No comments - Tags: , , , ,

Pathfinder

I wrote a little while ago about OpenMeta tags and some software to implement them. I continue to be a believer in tagging. At every opportunity, I reduced the number of folders I use and consolidate as many files as I can into one folder and then tag them, sparingly. Over tagging files can be just as bad as having too many folders. Here’s an example of overtagging:

For a while, I was tagging work documents as ‘work’ and ‘COMPANYNAME’. It was overkill. I should know that anything that is tagged with my employer’s name is work. I shouldn’t need to tag those documents as ‘work’ too. Those files are already in a ‘Work’ folder in Dropbox.

Two updates to applications I had tried in the past came out last week and their new inclusion of OpenMeta tagging support has gotten me back into them. The first is Path Finder 6. I tried Path Finder out in 2007, I think, and while I liked it’s extra abilities over the Finder, it wasn’t ready to be a replacement for the Finder. Path Finder’s come a long way, and I think you can safely leave Finder behind. What I essentially do is run both in tandem, and I redirect all “Reveal in Finder” commands to reveal in Path Finder and Path Finder lets you hide the Finder’s dock icon. Finder can run in the background for Time Machine and you can use Path Finder exclusively. It’s pretty seamless.

Path Finder 6 also adds the ability to work with OpenMeta tags. You can edit the tags for any file, but Path Finder has these nifty “tag groups” you can set up and then every time you apply a “tag group”, Path Finder adds multiple tags that you’ve already assigned to that “tag group”. I still use Tags.app because of the ability to tag anything, anywhere rather quickly and Tags.app has a great search feature and tag browser that Path Finder doesn’t.

Oh, one more bad ass thing. Path Finder 6 can queue file transfers! No more grinding hard drives to a halt when you initiate multiple transfers at the same time.

The other piece of software is the new version of the MailTags add-on for Mail.app. MailTags now adds OpenMeta tags so the emails you tag with MailTags show up in Tags.app’s tag browser. I guess tagging emails is a natural extension of my newfound love of tagging files. Adding tags like ‘@action’, ‘@followup’ and ‘@waiting’ have made it easy to create Smart Mailboxes that help me get to certain types of mail quickly. I have a Smart Mailbox called “Priority Mail” that contains flagged messages, ‘@action’ and ‘@followup’. I check this once in the morning and I can quickly see what needs to be acted on or processed in some way.

Overall, I’m really happy with my tagging setup. I keep everything in Dropbox, my MailTags tags sync through iCloud’s IMAP system (or at least they appear to be) and I’m taking advantage of Smart Mailboxes and Spotlight Saved Searches to keep everything at my fingertips.

Readability for iOS

March 2nd, 2012 · · text One comment - Tags: , , ,

1zAkd

Move Over Instapaper

Instapaper’s met its match. It did a while ago as a service, but now that the Readability iOS app is out, I can safely say that I’ll never use Instapaper again. I used Instapaper for a long time. I was a paid Pro user back when it was still $10. Instapaper lost me a while ago. After the major update that added that stupid browse bar, friends and changed the stars to hearts, I just hated looking at the iOS app. I tried out Readability since it was new and pretty and immediately loved it. It didn’t have social features tacked on, it had beautiful themes, and it had better Kindle integration than Instapaper ever had.

Looks

Readability is gorgeous. Unlike Instapaper, it actually has a nice icon! It’s a very non-standard iOS UI. It’s got five great themes with modern fonts and both daytime and nighttime reading modes. There’s a “Reading List” button at the top that accesses your unread items, favorites and archived items. Just the basics and that’s all I need. There’s also “・・・” button that gives you a few more things to do. You can search your articles, move and delete them in batches, add articles from URLs or start a Google search and lastly access the settings. There’s not a whole lot to do in the settings. You can choose a look and log into your Twitter and Facebook accounts for sharing purposes. I also love that there’s no “back” button while you’re reading an article. You just swipe to the right and you’re back at the “Reading List”. If you tap once on the screen, you get a menu at the bottom that lets you star, archive, delete, adjust style or share the article. And I’m so glad Readability uses ☆’s. I despise the ♡’s in Instapaper.

Mechanics

Readability is where Instapaper was, functionally, a few years ago. Readability is all about you. There aren’t any social features, you don’t have “friends” but you also don’t have folders or feeds you can subscribe to. I’m cool with this. Folders in Instapaper led me to hold onto articles I should’ve just archived, the “friends” I had in Instapaper either had the same things I had saved or had articles that I had no interest in reading. It’s my reading list, not yours. I’ve never enjoyed reading the articles that people link to. I usually enjoy the stuff that I randomly come across through web searches more.

Karma

I feel good about using Readability. Sure, it’s a free app and a free service, but if you choose to become a contributor, 70% of your contribution goes to the sites that you’re reading (provided they integrate Readability into their site) and 30% goes to Readability to cover maintenance and employee salaries, I suppose. I paid $10 dollars for Instapaper and I’m sure no one beside Marco Arment (or Apple) ever saw a cent of that money. Sure I’ve given about $20 to Readability in four months, but the sites that are getting money from me are happy to get it, I’m sure. If you want to be a good Netizen, try using Readability. You’ll feel better about yourself for giving some money to the writer of that article you ripped the ads out of instead of helping Marco pay for his self-important coffee.

Tom Bihn’s Empire Builder and Synapse Reviewed

January 16th, 2012 · · text No comments - Tags: , ,

Empire Builder

I’ve been in the market for a larger, briefcase-style bag for work for quite a while. I wanted to get away from taking a backpack (a messenger bag or a briefcase seemed more suited to work) as a backpack lacked a lot of the organization that I need for the papers and teaching materials I carry with me to and from work. I used a Timbuk2 messenger bag for a little over 6 months, and it was okay, but it was a bit small and the build quality felt cheap in a few places. Now that I’m a Tom Bihn convert, I thought it’s time that I upgrade to a better class of briefcase.

Size

Empire builder

It’s hard to gauge just how big a bag is from looking at an image of it on the Internet. When I first opened up the shipping box with my Empire Builder in it, I was shocked at how large it was. It’s a beast of a bag. (It holds 22.5 cubic liters.) And if I have one thing to complain about with the Empire Builder, it’s that it’s huge. At the same time though, that’s its reason for being. It’s huge because it can carry a ton of stuff. And that’s what I wanted. I was constantly running out of space in my Timbuk2 bag and I needed something bigger. I think it’s because I’ve been used to carrying around such a small bag the last 6 months, I’ve forgotten how heavy a big bag can be. For most people (those who drive, especially), the size will never be a burden, but I’m often on a bicycle, and wearing the Empire Builder across your chest like a messenger (which isn’t what it was built for) can be pretty heavy. It’s not a strike against the bag. It’s more about it not matching my commuting style. Right away, I found myself wishing I had gone with the Zephyr, which is the Empire Builder, only smaller. But who knows, I may have wound up finding the Zephyr too small, and ultimately have wished I had got the Empire Builder.

Organization

Empire builder inside

Tom Bihn bags are always well-organized. The pockets always seem to be just the right size and the number of pockets on the bag is perfect. The Empire Builder is no different. It’s got a monster main compartment that eschews the trend of putting zippered pockets inside the main compartment (I never use those kind of pockets and it’s a place for pointy things to stab at your stuff and make things generally lumpy) and adds nifty little clips to hold an optional (man I wish I had ordered one) Brain Cell laptop holder in place.

There’s a large flap that closes over the bag and on the outside of the flap are two zippered pockets and one open pocket. I’ve found the two zippered pockets are great for things like earphones, my wallet and my Pocket WiFi (think MiFi). The unzippered one is just large enough to hold a Japanese canned coffee. Under the flap is a large wide pocket with spots just the right size for an iPhone, index cards or Field Notes, three slots for pens or pencils, and one small slot where a pack of gum or an eraser would fit nicely. (I’m using it for a USB-charging battery pack.) With the remaining space, I’ve been keeping my Kindle in a Tom Bihn padded organizer. And below that pocket is another zippered pocket That is also large enough to find a Kindle (in a case) as well.

Empire builder front pocket

Construction

As with all Tom Bihn bags, the Empire Builder is built like a rock. It’s made of the same durable materials as all the other bags, the shoulder strap clips are heavy metal, the handles are well-padded (and quite comfortable) and all the zippers are YKK. (I hope you realize how important the quality of your zippers are!) In addition, the zipper teeth are covered from end-to-end, which will help keep dust, dirt and water from getting into your bag. I also love that the Empire Builder will stand all on its own and never wobbles, even on a bumpy train ride.

As far as gripes go, I wish the bag didn’t waggle so much when worn messenger bag style. This might be due to the placement of the shoulder strap clips at the top of the bag on opposite sides of the zipper instead of being on the actual sides of the bag under the zipper. Doing that wouldn’t allow the bag’s zippers to go as far down as they do now (which is very nice). The zippered pockets on the flap are easily used when opening the pockets, but because there’s only one clip in the center of the flap holding it down, there’s nothing keeping the sides held to the bulk of the bag, and it makes it hard to zip those flap pockets up one-handed.

My gripes are very minor to be sure, because the Empire Builder is a very fine bag. If you’re in the market for a large and durable briefcase, the Empire Builder will take care of you. It’s currently $180 on Tom Bihn’s site. If you love the style but are afraid of it being too big though, it’s little brother, the Zephyr ($170), is also available.

Other Option

If you’re like me and your commute involves riding bikes and running to catch trains, check out The ID. It’s a messenger bag with an optional quick-adjust strap and most of the same style of pockets as the Empire Builder. It’s slightly smaller than the Empire Builder at 20.9 liters, but in a lot of ways, it’s the bag I wish I had got instead of the Empire Builder. I would love to do a review of The ID sometime to compare the two.

Synapse

I’ve had a lot of bad luck with backpacks. I’m hard on backpacks. Really hard. I’ve destroyed every backpack I’ve ever had by either ripping holes in the material or pulling zippers off. This time around, I wanted a tough backpack that would stand up to my rough treatment, would have lots of pockets (without adding a lot of bulk) and would be comfortable. The Synapse is all of those things, and might be the best bag I’ve ever owned.

Size

Synapse

The Synapse is not a big backpack. It’s actually no bigger than the Adidas one I was using, but where the Adidas bag had just two pockets, the Synapse has six, including the main compartment. The Synapse is big enough to do light grocery shopping, go on a day trip, or just run around downtown. As everything I own keeps getting smaller (MacBook Air, iPad, Kindle) I don’t need a huge backpack. I’ve got all my work and all my books on just two slim devices, and I’ve still got plenty of room left in my Synapse after that.

Organization

Synapse pen pocket

Synapse phone pocket

So the Synapse has a big compartment and a deep pocket inside of it. The pocket will fit a laptop or an iPad, no problem. On the back of the bag, there’s a super deep pocket that’s great for a mini umbrella or a big water bottle. (I’ve got a 22 ounce glass Life Factory bottle in mine.) There’s a shallow pocket just above that that is handle for small things like earphones or a wallet. On the sides of the Synapse are two vertically zipped pockets with o-rings for key rings. The right side pocket has a suede pocket that’s perfect for an iPhone (although if your phone’s in a case, it might be a tight fit). In the left side pocket, there are slots for pens and other stuff. On the bottom of the Synapse is a long pocket that I’ve been using to keep cables in.

Construction

All the things about how well-built the Empire Builder is can be said about the Synapse as well. The bag is super tough. It comes with chest and waist straps to keep the bag snuggly against your back and has a little clip on the right strap that can be used to keep headphones from getting in your way. (You can switch which side the clip is on). But my favorite part of the Synapse might be the straps. They are dense. They feel soft enough when you’re wearing the bag, but when you take it off and are slinging it around, you’ll notice that they don’t squish. They are very firm.

The Synapse is a tough backpack and super comfortable. If you need a good backpack, the Synapse is it. If Steve Jobs had ever done a keynote about the Synapse, he would’ve called it magical. It’s $130 on Tom Bihn’s site. You should buy one.

Accessories

Snake Charmer

When I’m traveling, especially between the US and Japan, I take a lot of electronics and their accompanying cables with me. So I was quite excited about Tom Bihn’s Snake Charmer. There might not seem like there’s a lot to the Snake Charmer at first glance, but it’s its simplicity that makes it so great. The Snake Charmer’s sides are mesh while the encircling part is solid. This gives it the chance to show off its contents to you while still having a sturdy feel to it. The Snake Charmer is also split into two compartments. Dual zippers line the top of it and it makes organizing say your portable game system’s cable separate from your MacBook’s various cables. There’s also a loop on the end that makes it easy to hang your Snake Charmer for easy access.

Packing Cubes

Something that I wish I had bought when I got my Aeronaut this past summer was a packing cube. The Aeronaut is quite a large duffle bag and I really wanted to be do some organization in the main compartment. I finally got a couple of the large packing cubes. You can fit two large cubes or one large and two small cubes into the Aeronaut. I’ve found them quite useful for separating casual clothes from business attire or just clothes from everything else. The large cubes go for $20 while the small cubes run $17.

Clear Liquid Pouch

I’m no fan of security checkpoints at airports. If you are looking for a sturdy see-through pouch for your liquids, the 3D Clear Organizer Pouch is nice to have.

Padded Organizer

I didn’t know there was a Kindle Fire/Kindle Keyboard pouch coming when I made my last order, so as a replacement for my noisey velcro-fastening Kindle cash, I picked up a Padded Organizer Pouch (medium). There are various sizes and prices varying accordingly. The medium one is priced at $13 and while it’s slightly larger than my last generation Kindle, it’s worked out very well. At this point though, I’d recommend you buy the real Kindle Pouch for $15.

Other Goodies

  • Assuming your have any touchscreen devices, do pick up an Ultrasuede Screen Cloth or two. I got a black one, and my only regret is that I didn’t get a handful to keep in different bags and one to leave at work.
  • I really want one of Tom Bihn’s new Travel Trays. They were announced after my order arrived. They are a super quick way to gather up all your stuff and go. If you go to a hotel, throw your various pocket items into a travel tray on your bedside table and when you’re ready to checkout, just pull the drawstring and throw the Travel Tray into your main bag. You’ll never forget another little thing at a hotel again.
  • I don’t have a dog, but if I did, I’d get one of these Citizen Canine bags. They are good for walking the dog, with space for your stuff and your dog’s stuff. (Even has a nifty spot for poop bags.)
  • Lastly, if the Empire Builder is too much for your needs, check out the new Cadet which has less emphasis on document management and more emphasis on your computer. If you’re looking for a lightweight laptop-friendly briefcase, the Cadet looks awfully nice.

Gears of War 2 on Hardcore

October 25th, 2011 · · text No comments - Tags: , , , ,

I had a good time playing Gears of War. I played it on casual, and it wasn’t very hard either. It was a quick playthrough, and I enjoyed myself. For Gears of War 2, I figured that since I had some experience playing the game that I should play it on hardcore this time around. If I hadn’t been playing a solo campaign, I would’ve been right. But without a partner, boy was I wrong.

Hardcore is Insane

The first three acts of Gears 2 aren’t that hard. I progressed through the game all by myself just fine. I think the key to quick progression is having all of Delta squad with you. Whenever there are four guys fighting it out, the AI seems to pick up a lot of slack and does a good bit of helping; not only to shoot enemies but to draw enemy fire away from you at the same time. In the fourth act though, it starts being just Marcus and Dom and I’m not sure if everyone’s game did this or just mine, but after Dom’s big emotional scene, his AI stopped participating in the game. He followed along, but he stopped shooting. He stopped showing up in the TAC/COM. Enemies stopped noticing he was there.

In Act 5, there’s a sequence where you man turrets and shoot down reavers to protect a communications array. There are two turrets, and with a co-op partner, you can pass this section very quickly. In my solo campaign though, Dom never mans a turret, stands there holding his rifle, and keeps telling me to use the turret. He never helps out. It’s a frustrating section if you’re playing by yourself, especially on hardcore where enemies absorb a lot more damage before doing down.

The worst section I encountered was a courtyard battle towards the very end of the game where Dom wasn’t helping and I had a troika, a kantus, 8 grunts, two maulers, a bunch of wretches, and two bloodhounds to take down. The best I could do after 3-4 hours of trying was get down one of the bloodhounds and the second would always wipe me out.

Co-Op Is The Way To Go

Luckily, a Twitter follower answered my call for a Gears 2 co-op partner and were finished the section in about 10 minutes, with only one death. We then went on to finish up the rest of the game in another 30-45 minutes, I think. Playing Gears 2 in co-op wound up being a breeze and was a lot of fun, even on hardcore. Having somebody to talk to just made the battles of attrition go by that much more quickly. After hating the game for two whole days, now all I want to do is jump into co-op again and play Gears of War 3!

MultiMarkdown Composer Review

October 24th, 2011 · · text No comments - Tags: , , , ,

Why It’s a Big Deal

MMD Composer is a big deal because it’s the first time the creator of Markdown (or a variant of Markdown) has created a text editor. It’s not a massive text editor like BBEdit or TextMate, but for me that’s fine. I don’t use more than a sliver of either applications’ power. I just want a straightforward text editor that handles MultiMarkdown really well. MMD Composer, created by Fletcher Penny, is just that. A lot of text editors on the market don’t do a great job with MultiMarkdown. They handle Markdown just fine, but a lot of them don’t do MultiMarkdown at all. Seeing as Fletcher Penny is the creator of MMD, Composer does the best job of MMD formatting I’ve ever seen.

So What’s New?

MMD’s best addition to the basic Markdown syntax is the ability to create tables. The biggest thing in MMD Composer for me is the automatic wrapping of tables.

It can take text like:

| Name | Phone Number |

| —— | ————– | Louise | 555-1234 Benny | 555-1285 Alex | 555-8320 [Contact Details]

And turn it into this:

It’s pretty nifty, right? It also adds more options for images like size customization and creating footnotes.

MMD Composer can auto-pair characters like [], (), and “”. Makes creating links and the like much easier. Another cool trick for links is that if you’ve got a URL in the clipboard, you can highlight a string of text in MMD Composer, paste the clipboard contents and MMD Composer will automatically create a link for you. Also, highlight text and use the usual RTF ⌘ + B or ⌘ + I and it wraps the text in asterisks for you. It’s quite handy. MMD Composer exports as RTF, LaTeX, HTML, OPML and you can even give it a custom shell script for custom exporting. There’s also a nice Table of Contents function so that you can open a ToC drawer and jump quickly between different # headers. Lastly, if you have Brett Terpstra’s Marked installed, you can have MMD Composer open up Marked when previewing documents.

If you write in MultiMarkdown on a Mac, you should definitely be using MultiMarkdown Composer. It’s currently available at an introductory price of $7.99.

My New Favorite Email Client, Sparrow

October 17th, 2011 · · text No comments - Tags: , , ,

Artwork 600x200

Email Ennui

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Apple’s OS X Mail app for quite a while. I loved it because it was well integrated with OS X and unlike Outlook Express on Windows, Mail was actually quite functional. But Mail has its issues. I’ve had lots of crashes, every OS X update seems to break some add-on I’d installed, and searching old messages wasn’t very effective. I tried the power user-focused Postbox and liked a lot about it, but it was too much for me. I then hoped that Lion’s Mail would be the update to finally get everything right. While I think Lion’s Mail app is a good email app, I didn’t like the layout as much as I hoped I would (although I don’t hate it as much as some people seem to). I decided it was time to find something better.

I had tried out Sparrow when it was in beta, but I held off buying the app when it launched because I wanted to stick with Mail if possible and I was waiting to see how Mail in Lion turned out. Well, with me being disappointed with Mail in 10.7 and Sparrow having come a long way (now up to 1.4), I was happy when I got a copy to try out from its developer. After just two days of use, I’m sure I won’t be opening up Apple’s Mail again any time soon. I’m extremely happy with Sparrow and here’s why.

2

Email Excellence

Sparrow looks a lot like the original Tweetie for Mac. Accounts are laid out in the app’s sidebar and things like inbox, starred emails, and search are listed the same way as @replies, DMs and search are in Tweetie. The biggest difference between Apple Mail and Sparrow is that Sparrow was originally designed for Gmail. It now does normal IMAP as well, but if you’re a Gmail user, Sparrow handles starred email and labels like a champ. It even shows priority inbox tags if you’ve enabled the feature in the Gmail web app. Sparrow also features Cloud integration for sharing attachments, but don’t worry, you can still send them the old fashioned way too. The app can connect to Facebook too for acquiring contact photos of email senders. My biggest gripe about Apple Mail was its crappy search. The app had issues (for me, at least) with searching through messages back on the server. Sparrow does a great job syncing messages and allows for great searching (offline even!). There’s also a nifty “new message” shortcut option so that you can quickly start a new email no matter what application you have

The app sells for $9.99 (as of October 17, 2011) and I can’t recommend it enough. It’s lightweight, fast, and is built to wrangle Gmail like a pro.

Review: L.A. Noire

September 28th, 2011 · · text No comments - Tags: , , , , ,

Repost from Pixelsnatch

La noire logo

The most important thing about L.A. Noire is its story. It’s the best attempt I’ve played so far at recreating a movie-quality narrative and experience in a game. I liked Heavy Rain a lot for its attempt to be cinematic in not just its graphical presentation but in its storytelling as well, but it fell flat for a few reasons. Where Heavy Rain failed, L.A. Noire succeeds, mostly.

  1. Heavy Rain’s voice acting was done by French-Canadians and was very unnatural. L.A. Noire has lots of Hollywood talent; lending a polish that Heavy Rain sorely lacked.

  2. L.A. Noire’s not limited to Quick Time Events. The best Heavy Rain could do for action scenes were let you tap buttons quickly or wave your Move controller around.

  3. There’s more to do in L.A. Noire’s world. You can drive cars, go anywhere you like, search out collectibles and it still preserves the focused storytelling.

The Hollywood talent I mentioned comes mostly from the show, Mad Men. The main character, Cole Phelps, is a regular on the show. As I went through the game, I kept coming across Mad Men actors and actresses at a pretty regular clip. Most of them are front loaded. You’ll find most of them at the first couple desks you work. By the time you get to the vice and arson desks, the game has exhausted most of the talent pool. It may seem like overkill (or typecasting), but the Mad Men folks really do a great job. They’re well-known, but not super famous, and they feel right in their parts.

The main gameplay mechanic for L.A. Noire is the detective parts. You get a case to work from the department head, you drive out to the crime scene, you search for clues, and then question the witness. You are then tasked with deciding if the witness is telling the truth, whether you doubt him or her, or if they’re lying to you. If they are lying, you of course have to be able to prove it with a clue you’ve found. The problem is, however, that the line between truth and doubt is awfully thin, and sometimes, proving a lie can be hard because you might have two clues that could both be plausible as proof of lying. You can look up at witnesses from your notebook as you question them, and sometimes you can see them shifting in their seat or grinning after an apparent lie, but when you say you doubt them, they blow you off and the game tells you that you’ve chosen wrongly. In these instances, it was probably a lie, and you weren’t pressing them hard enough. I got the hang of the doubt/lie system later in the game, but there were a few cases here and there that would’ve gotten tied up differently had I been tougher on a few suspects.

The driving bits in L.A. Noire aren’t as bad as GTA 4’s. I hated the driving in GTA 4 so much that I quit playing the game after just a few hours into it. The cars handle a little more tightly, and your less likely to get all the fishtails that you do in GTA. It also helps that most of the time you can hold down Y or Triangle to have your partner drive to a predetermined destination. By utilizing that, you can skip 75% of the driving in the game. There are plenty of chase sequences that youmust drive during, but the traffic isn’t as heavy during these times, and driving around Los Angeles is much more fun.

In the first half of the game, combat is pretty limited. The second half of L.A. Noire does have its fair share of shooting bad guys though. The game is a fairly competent cover-based shooter in these instances. The game’s strong point isn’t combat, and the game compensates for this by not making the enemies too aggressive. They tend to hang out in their cover spots, and pop their heads out long enough after firing off a few rounds so you can take them down. They almost never fire in tandem either. So just wait till their clip is empty, watch them stand there, and mow them down. Gears of War it ain’t, but it’s a fun little divergence from all the sleuthing around.

The star of the show graphicly in L.A. Noire is the facial animation. The characters in the game really look like themselves. Watching Cole Phelps in the game is almost like watching Ken Cosgrove in Mad Men. If you’re familiar with the show, you’ll notice how realistic all the facial movements and twitches are. The environments look great too, and the non-facial animations in the game are smooth as well. The one thing that bugged me throughout the game were hand animations. Watching Cole open letters and envelopes over and over reminded me of Ryo Hazuki in Shenmue. In the 11 years since Shenmue on the Dreamcast, it doesn’t seem like much progress has been made in hand animation. Instead of a flip of the thumb to open letters, there’s this long deliberate hand motion; like Cole’s pinching a corner and moving his whole arm to lift the paper up. They put so much effort into getting the faces right, but didn’t get hand animations down naturally. And since Cole is constantly handling notebooks, ledgers, and various paper products, this stuck out a lot.

The music in L.A. Noire was great. It fit the time and style of storytelling wonderfully. But the background chatter at the police stations will wear on you after a few cases. Every time you go to a police station, any police station, there will be a cop there talking about how he wants to move up to a .45 so he can “put em’ down in one round.” Is Team Bondi trying to say there’s one murderous cop in every station? And if you’re out on the street there are civilians constantly saying stupid stuff like, “Isn’t that the cop you solved the big case and got promoted?” Maybe it’s a joke that I just don’t think is funny, but it’s repetitive and annoying.

Overall, I had a good time with L.A. Noire. If you like the gritty storytelling telling of Rockstar games but get fed up with the wonkiness of GTA due to it being a little too open, L.A. Noire could be right up your alley. Just don’t make the same mistake I did. Buy the DLC and install it before starting the game. I bought it all afterwards, and it all takes place within the main storyline. If you have it installed already, the cases just show up naturally in the timeline. Also, get the Rockstar Pass for L.A. Noire. You get four extra cases for the price of three.

You can help out the site by purchasing the game from Amazon.

To Defrag or Not to Defrag…

August 23rd, 2011 · · text No comments - Tags: , , , , , ,

Idefrag2 ss1

Do you need to defrag?

Well, it depends. Do you have an SSD? If so, no, you don’t. You’re not going to benefit from defragging. Do you have a regular spinning disk drive? Then yes, you’ll probably benefit from defragging. Contrary to what most Mac zealots will tell you, OS X doesn’t do all the defragging you need on the fly. If you write and delete lots of big files (videos?), you’re going to have a lot of fragmentation. I ran iDefrag and immediately found my 2009 MacBook Pro to have serious amounts of fragmentation. And it made sense, I download and delete large video files everyday. This creates huge holes in the table on the disk and thus it makes it harder for the OS to find the files I need even when doing simple tasks. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that it contributes to the MacBook running hotter when playing HD video as well. Probably hurts gaming performance as well.

So you need to defrag…

So we’ve established you need to defrag. Is defragging going to help your two year old Mac that has put its HDD through the ringer with writing and deleting huge files? Well, it could…but you’d have to wait a very long time to defrag it. I ran iDefrag and let it run over night, and it only made its way through 3% of my drive. I don’t think it’s because iDefrag isn’t able to defrag quickly, but during the analysis iDefrag did on my drive it said my drive was over 90% fragmented. I eventually gave up on the idea of defragging the drive and came to the conclusion that backing up, formatting the drive and starting clean was my best option. At 90% fragmentation, it’s hopeless. Defragging would take days, it would be quite taxing on the drive, and after two years, I’d like to start fresh. My theory is, if you do periodical defrags on a freshly created OS X install, the defrags would go much faster and wouldn’t allow the drive to become as fragmented as mine did.

iDefrag has a few different modes of defragging. The more thorough the defrag process, the longer it takes. The biggest selling point that got me interested in iDefrag was its ability to defrag without a boot disk. Sadly, this isn’t currently possible under Lion. iDefrag works with Lion, but you’ll have to create a boot disk (which is easily created from within the app itself). Coriolis Systems, developer of iDefrag (as well as iPartition), have encountered a few problems due to Lion, and they said on their blog that they intend to issue fixes as soon as possible. These sorts of utilities are always going to have problems with major OS updates. Thankfully, you can still use iDefrag with Lion, you’ll just have to use a boot disk. You can download a demo here.

A Blast from the Past: Omnifocus for iPad

July 29th, 2011 · · link No comments - Tags: , , ,

NewImage

Here’s another great review that I did for Smoking Apples: Omnifocus for iPad.