Sick with the Halo Flu

Tired? Fever? Sore throat and a bad cough? You could be catching it too. What started as a one off sick day back in November 2004 just after the release of Halo 2, could now be an epidemic as gamers all of the world might fake an illness to have a full day to get into Bungie’s latest Halo title: Halo: Reach.

So the question is does the newest Halo game “reach” expectations? The answer is YES. If you own a 360 and do not own this game then go out and buy it, you won’t be disappointed.

Reach Noble Team

The single player campaign is epic. Superb level design, excellent graphics, fantastic gameplay. It has the lot. Like all prior Halo games, Reach has 4 different difficulty settings to cater for all skill levels of player. This time round you can play the campaign co-operatively with up to 4 of your friends or enter the returning Firefight to take on wave after wave of Covenant troops*.

Reach combines everything great about the past Halo games and adds many extras to make it truly outstanding. The most noticeable is the abilities each player can choose from. No, this isn’t an episode of Heroes but damn it sure feels like it. Perks such as Sprint (run faster), Active Camo (invisibility), Jetpack (look Ma I can fly) and my personal favourite; Hologram (which one is the real Slim Shady??) add a much welcome extra dimension to the game.

In one level you even take control of a spaceship, bringing the fight to the stars. This reminded me of the N64 classic Rouge Squadron and is one of the funnest levels during the campaign. If Bungie released a game which was just about flying this craft all over the universe I would definitely be buying.

Piloting a spacecraft

I’m going to go as far as saying Reach is the best multiplayer first person shooter I have played on 360. Plenty of different game types to choose from, fast matchmaking, unlockables from levelling up, there is lots to do and achieve in multiplayer. Each game is recorded too so you can download and share with your friends through the file share. You can also check your stats at Bungie for a detailed overview of just how badass (or pathetic) you are.

Customizing your character has also been taken to the next level with The Armoury. Here you can use credits earned from playing single and multiplayer to buy different armour items. Although none give you any real advantage they do make your character more unique.

CBF doing a conclusion, I wanna play some more Reach right now. My Live Id is jase7777 so if you’re up for a game add me.

* Achievement whores like my friend Drez should download this Firefight custom game to quickly rack up hard to get achievements like Killionaire and earning 1 mill points in Firefight. 1 000 000 Points in 10 mins

The Legend of BJenkins

I love to win. It is for this reason that I will not play poker machines. How Sir Losealot and his band of (not so) merry gamblors can get enjoyment out of feeding a machine I will probably never understand. I mean seriously how can you win at a game which is specifically designed to take your money? Yes, it’s a scam!

The purpose of today’s post is not to gloat and boast at my own self discipline however, but to acknowledge a man (whom I have never met) by the name of Brett Jenkins. As legend has it Brett walked into the casino with $9 and left $27,000 richer. How did he do this? As the tale goes he was down to his last 50c and was playing a Queen of the Nile linked to Train Jackpot machine. Brett was playing Max Bet by 1 line when his luck turned. A feature was triggered. Then four golden heads and a Cleopatra substitute aligned perfectly on the middle line. The pay was $1,200! Not bad at all for a 25c spin. This max bet by one line style of play has from then on been known as BJenkins.

Mr Jenkins then went on to turn that $1,200 into $27,000 by pushing his luck to the limit in Blackjack and horse races, however it is the BJenkins credit management style that made him famous among pokie losers all over Australia.

After hearing the story I decided to put aside $100 for “research” purposes in a hope to replicate this extraordinary accomplishment. The plan was to put either $10 or $20 in a machine and play it BJenkins to see how often it would pay on the middle line. The results were quite surprising. Nearly one in three machines paid 5 of a kind on that middle line.

Although I never got a pay anywhere near Brett’s $1,200 effort one of my pays (5 eyes) covered the initial cost of the experiment plus more. Once getting a BJenkins pay I would take a picture with my camera phone of the achievement. Here are the 5 of a kind pays:

5 Octopuses BJenkins

5 10s BJenkins

5 10s BJenkins

5 Qs BJenkins

5 Eyes BJenkins

Sir Losealot assures me that he once got the same 5 Golden Heads on Queen of the Nile playing BJenkins in the feature also. The picture exists on a long lost microSD card and once he finds it I’ll be sure to add it here.

If you are playing the Max Credit by 1 Line a helpful hint would be to play a higher denomination machine. For example playing 25 credits by 1 line on a 1c machine pays less than playing 5 credits by 1 line on a 5c machine, even though it is the same type of machine and costing you the same amount per spin. This trick was submitted by The Smearbird.

In conclusion although playing BJenkins thus far proved a profitable success I daresay my beginners luck contributed to most of it. Whether the story of Brett Jenkins is 100% true I do not know. What I do know is if you continue to play poker machines you will lose in the end; and that definitely isn’t good.

Releasing the Handbrake

Finding the right tool for a job is often easier said then done. Especially if the tool is a quality software program. My recent dilemma was finding a good video convertor to transform movies and videos from AVI format to a more Apple friendly format such as MP4. Yes, Apple are bastards when it comes to format restrictions (among other things) on their devices. Usually a Google search is enough to find what you’re looking for, but in my case it only produced results of commercial software with poor reviews. The next trick is to search forums (Neowin and Whirlpool are two of the best) to see what other people are using. Bingo.

Handbrake is an open source, free utility for converting a variety of popular video formats into MP4 or MKV. It is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux and is relatively straight forward and easy to use. Select a file to convert, select a preset for the device you will be using it on, click start and wait for it to finish.

Converting video to MP4 or MKV using Handbrake

As of the current version (0.9.4) there is no iPad preset. However, Handbrake has a great community and a thread search produced this guide containing specific settings to use when converting for the iPad.

Next time you would like to transfer movies/videos in an unsupported video format to an iDevice, or just want your vids in MP4 or MKV format, look no further than Handbrake. It does the job, and it does it well.

My Tech on iPad

Is the iPad’s 15 minutes of fame almost up? In the last few weeks the only gadget on everyone’s mind has been the iPhone 4. Nonetheless the iPad isn’t that bad…but it’s missing so much that could have really made it a lot better. No doubt all part of Apple’s game plan for future generations.

When the iPad was released earlier this year I was in no rush to buy. No front or back camera, low RAM and no flash support, and this product was meant to “revolutionise” mobile computing :S. A couple of associates had imported from the US, so we were able to have a peek before it was officially released here in Australia. First thing I noticed was how easily the screen smudges. The good news is that when the screen is on you can hardly notice the greasy marks. My first impression was this is just an iPhone on steroids. Many others obviously disagreed as they were prepared to wait in queues hours long to be first to get one. Since then there has been very limited stock, especially of the 3G version.

Fast forward a couple of months and iPads have been trickling in here in Oz. I received one as a gift recently and after using it for a while I must say my opinion has changed. This thing actually has a lot of potential! I can tell because after loading up some frequently used apps, bookmarking my favourite sites and setting up my email accounts I’ve hardly used my laptop since.

I doubt I would ever read a physical book again thanks to iBooks. Save any PDF document from Safari and it’s there in iBooks ready for offline reading. Perfect for a plane or train trip. There is a variety of books in the app store, but also check out the Kindle app for an even larger selection of titles (and generally cheaper) from Amazon.com.

The iPad's screen is amazing for reading digital books

Unfortunately compared to the large amount of iPhone apps in the App Store, only a small percentage of them are iPad optimised. I’m hoping this is because the iPad is fairly new and developers are still hard at work porting their mobile apps. All iPhone/iTouch apps can run on the iPad, however most I’ve tried look horrible magnified 2x. There are exceptions such as Bejeweled, Trees of Doom and Fruit Ninja (which also has a HD version). Here is a list of iPad apps which I have installed and use often:

Team Viewer HD – Easily gain secure access to your own or a friends PC for remote help; this is the best remote desktop client app I have ever used. Free for personal use and works great with Windows and OSX.

Bloomberg – Excellent finance and share watcher. Looks amazing on the iPad plus it’s free. Watching your stocks drop in high res sort of makes up for the loss….well almost.

Dropbox – I’ve discussed Dropbox previously and it’s only natural an iPad version exists. One of the best free cloud storage solutions.

IMDB – Read up on and rate movies and television series’ using the Internet Movie Database App.

WordPress – Fantastic free app for admins whose sites use WordPress. Easily connect to write new posts or edit existing ones.

Feeddler RSS – Awesome free RSS reader that syncs with Google Reader.

Evernote – Synchronises notes across multiple platforms. I’ve stopped using the built in notes as Evernote is all that plus more.

Jumbo Calculator – Why Apple thought the iPad didn’t need a calculator I don’t know. It could be useful. Jumbo is free anyway so if you need a big ass calculator check it out.

Surprisingly a Facebook for iPad app does not exist. If you don’t want to use the iPhone version check out touch.facebook.com. This site is presented very nicely on the iPad but there is no FB Chat.

If you come across any iPad games or applications you would like to recommend please use the comment section below.

Currently running on special version of iOS 3, the iPad doesn’t yet support multitasking (unless you jailbreak). This is set to change later in the year when a new software version is released. It is definitely much needed! Some other minor OS improvements I believe would make the iPad better include being able to attach more than one file to an email and having way to connect to a printer from the Email and Safari apps.

Doodle Jump & Froggy Jump

When it comes to game addiction I’m pretty much the worst of the worst….and then I found these jump games for iPhone. Aiyaiyai. The concept is simple – tilt the phone to move the character and bounce on the platforms to get as high (pun intended) as possible. Having a few mates that are always trying to beat your score is also incentive enough to keep playing.

Doodle Jump has been around for a long time. Really I have no excuse for not buying this game sooner, as its always in the top 25 best paid games of all time. Doodle Jump starts off easy enough. There are lots of platforms and the occasional monster may pop up to try and kill your little…I don’t know what the hell you play as…alien? Tapping the screen makes our alien fire bullets out of its…nose? Mouth? This alien is odd indeed. Anyway the bullets can kill the monsters or you can jump on their head to kill them too. As you progress you will come across more challenges like exploding platforms, black holes in the background and platforms that you have to position before you can jump on them.

Doodle Jump. What exactly is this thing?

High scores in Doodle Jump are submitted via the Facebook in app login. I don’t mind this but prefer services like OpenFeint that don’t require a Facebook account.

Froggy Jump seems to have more features than Doodle Jump and at the bargain price of free it is definitely great value! Reaching certain height milestones in Froggy Jump unlocks different themes. So far I have only unlocked 3 themes but one (Inferno) has the benefit of having ledges that normally drop or disintegrate hang around for a few more jumps. There are also items you collect on your way to the top in the form of special word letters and coins. Collect all the letters of the special word or 1000 coins and you’re rewarded with a diamond. Gather enough diamonds and you can purchase even more customized items/upgrades for your frog. Alternatively you can buy diamonds via an in-app purchase.

Skeleton Froggy is unlocked after reaching 52k

In contrast with Doodle Jump your frog doesn’t have a weapon to fire at enemies. Instead, a tap of the screen will trigger use of a held rocket that blasts your frog into the air; a technique that when timed right will prevent him from certain death. I prefer this “lifeline” to the shooting perk offered in Doodle Jump. Froggy Jump utilizes the awesomeness of OpenFeint. This will allow you to share your high scores with your friends, unlock achievements, and connect via Facebook and Twitter to post updates.

Both these games are highly enjoyable and addictive. If there is anything I don’t like about them it’s that they can drain your battery way too quick!

Fallout of the real world

Bethesda Softworks owes me at least two months of my life back. Five years ago I found what could possibly be my favourite RPG (role playing game) of all time in Morrowind. One year ago I lost countless hours playing the sequel, Oblivion. And now, after thinking it couldn’t get much better than this, I’ve found Fallout 3. Yes, I know it has already been out for ages. Seriously it’s been on my to do list for a while. Better late than never, as they say.

Now, how to describe Fallout 3…well I started playing on a Friday night, then I looked at the time and it was Monday morning. Wait what? Yes, there you have it, subjective time loss; the quality of a truly epic game. Basically Fallout 3 plays like the other Bethesda RPGs previously mentioned however instead of being set in a medieval fantasy land it’s set in a bleak post nuclear war future, and instead of being able to cast magic spells you have big guns to impose havoc.

The story begins from the moment you are born. Growing up you have it pretty easy living inside a bomb proof vault. The air is clean. The water is pure. Then one fateful day your father decides to leave the vault (which is strictly against the rules) and you are forced to escape and venture out in search of him. What a contrast it is on the outside – the world looks like it has fallen apart!

So it begins. Complete freedom to venture in whatever direction you wish, talk to whomever you want and kill (or try to kill) anything you think deserves killing. Decisions, decisions, decision. Whether you are doing the main quest or not, it’s a good idea to head towards Megaton to pick up a few side quests and scope out the situation when first starting out.

Sneaking improves your accuracy and if undetected will reward a critical hit on targets.

Levelling up in Fallout 3 is pretty straight forward. When you advance you get a number of points to put towards improving your technique with skills and a choice of perk. Regardless of what type of player you are building I suggest you take the Educated perk and Comprehension perk as early as possible so when you level up in the future you get more skill points to assign, and for every book you read you’ll get 2 points instead of 1.

The two mini game challenges in the game are lock picking and computer hacking. Your ability to perform a lock pick or hack a terminal depends on you skill in Lockpick or Science respectively so it’s a good idea to invest points into these two skills as well. Speech is another important skill to have. Sometimes you can talk your way out of fights or persuade people to give you better items or unlock other unique dialog options by having a high speech skill.

Having a follower will help you in fights

I think the game is best played in first person point of view but with the click of a button you can change to third person. The graphics are really amazing, especially if you’ve got a high definition set up. Sure the environment may be kinda depressing but the detail in the characters and textures is very impressive.

Overall Fallout 3 is simply awesome and it would definitely go into my top ten games of all time. I found the Game of the Year copy which also includes 5 expansions for the bargain price of $50 AUD at a local EB games store. If you’re an open world RPG fan I highly recommend playing this game. Now the wait for Fallout 4 begins…

Online Backup Solutions

Some people have a fear of spiders. Others heights. Up until a few years ago you could be excused for having a fear of losing all your important files. Sure, you can transfer them to a USB drive every so often and hope that drive doesn’t fail, but who has time for that? Well fear not. We live in an age where cloud computing is taking off and although I can’t help with arachnophobia or acrophobia, by using some online backup services, it might take the edge off any file loss related phobia you may have.

For the last year or two I have been using a service called Dropbox to automatically backup files and have them accessible on any computer or mobile device. Overall I’ve found it works perfectly. After installing the software simply drag and drop the file or folder you wish to backup into the special Dropbox folder. And that’s it; Dropbox handles the rest.

Dropbox syncs all files and folders in it's special folder

Whenever you change, add or delete a file in Dropbox the changes (not necessarily the whole file) are automatically sent and updated on the server. I no longer find a need to email myself attachments or put files on USB storage as the Dropbox client can be installed on Windows, OSX, Linux and even a mobile client such as the iPhone.

Security wise Dropbox is very good. They encrypt all data before sending and it’s stored on their server using AES-256 encryption. They also have big men with guns and lasers securing the perimeter of the data server, you know…just in case.
Currently (and for as long as I’ve been using it) Dropbox has been offering 2GB of storage for free. They also offer larger allowances for a fee per month.

So what alternatives are out there? I think the main contender is Apple’s iDisk. As part of their MobileMe suite of cloud computing software iDisk allows for up to 20GB of online disk storage and a nice browser interface to access the files remotely. Like Dropbox there is an app for iPhones and iPads to allow mobile users access these files as well as desktop integration. At the time of writing Apple are charging $99 a year for the MobileMe service.

The other which I have been testing out for a client is DriveHQ. What I like about this one is you can select individual files and folders to backup without moving or copying them to a designated folder. You can also specify your own passkey to further encrypt your files when they are backed up online. Unfortunately the desktop software is Windows only, however there is a web interface to access the files from a web browser. DriveHQ has a free account with 1GB of storage, or plans with pay per month or year if more storage is required.

All three previously mentioned solutions provide a way to share or make public some or all of your files. This can be helpful if you need a group of people working on the same files.

Cloud computing has become increasingly popular over the last couple of years and now more services, like Office 2010, are integrating these features to provide users with a secure and easy way to store and share documents and files.

Closing apps in iOS 4 to save battery

Like most tech geeks out there I was keen to update to iOS 4 on my 3GS as soon as it came out. The two negative things I noticed were 1. My contacts and calendars had all gone and 2. My battery was only lasting half a day (usually I get about a day). The first turned out to be a problem with gmail synced contacts and calendars. A reset of the exchange account seemed to help as contacts were coming back in blocks of 50 and calendars had returned. After an hour or so everything was back to normal here.

It took me a day or two to realise that the battery was draining at a much faster rate since the update. I put this down to multitasking but it never occurred to me that you could kill open apps. It was only once I found this article on how to do it and closing the open apps did my battery go back to lasting the day. I hope this helps others like me that didn’t find it obvious.

Pressing on an open app for a few seconds in the multitasking bar brings up the close app icon.

Now showing on WD TV Media Player

It was only a matter of time before I decided to get a media player for my TV. I was spending at least 5 hours a week watching shows on my laptop and the 13″ screen wasn’t really good enough, especially when friends wanted to watch also. Thus I needed something that could easily connect to my LCD TV, support all the file types I had in my library of videos, and have an easy to use interface with remote. Enter Western Digital’s WD TV HD Media Player.

WD TV Media Player

The WD TV can connect to a TV using component, composite or HDMI cables and supports up to 2 USB storage devices. The unit itself is small and unobtrusive and the remote is very simple and easy to use. Like the remote, the menu system is user friendly, however if you have a large amount of media files on your storage device(s) it may take a minute to scan when first plugged in.

I bought this media device primarily for watching video files. The majority of the videos I have are in AVI (XVID) or MPEG4 formats and the WD TV handles them well. It can even support some subtitle files. The quality of the picture is great but depends on the particular file you’re watching. This model can handle full-HD 1080p resolution and DTS 2.0 digital audio.

Aside from videos, this gadget can also slide-show pictures and play music files. This is good when you have family or friends over and want to go through some pics from a recent holiday or outing in the comfort of your lounge room.

I purchased the WD TV for $160 AU, which at the time I thought a bit expensive, but after using it for almost 6 months without any problems I’m happy I bought it. In the future I would go for something with network capabilities so I can transfer media wirelessly to the attached hard drives. I did look into setting up a computer for this purpose running a program like XBMC but at the time didn’t have a spare computer to do it on…and it also didn’t look as good next to the TV as the little black WD TV box.

The device will not play protected content such as music or movies bought from the Apple Store. For this, something like Apple TV may be better suited but I’ve never used one so don’t know if it can handle other popular media formats.

You can read more about the WD TV at WD TV Live Community

Address Book and iCal Google Sync

This tutorial is intended to follow on from yesterday’s post on setting up a Google account to synchronise contacts and calendars automatically. It assumes you have contacts and/or calendars set up on a Gmail account.

It’s time now to set Address Book to automatically sync with this account. Open Address Book and click Address Book -> Preferences. Click the “Accounts” tab and check “Synchronize with Google”. Click configure and put in your Gmail address and password. Your online contacts will now be downloaded into your Address Book.

Setup a Google Account within Address Book

Configuring the calendar will be a similar process. Open iCal then go to iCal -> Preferences. Under the Accounts tab click “+” in the bottom left to set up a new account. Leave Account type as Automatic and put in your Gmail address and password. Your online calendar will now be downloaded into iCal.

Setup your Google calendar in iCal

If you have multiple calendars in your Google account you can select which ones to sync by going to the Delgation section of the account. Put a check next to the additional calendars you wish to synchronise.

Click Delagation to add multiple calendars

You should now successfully be synchronising with your Google account