Archive for November, 2007
I was one of those folks that bought Leopard on the day (night, I should say) of release and have been using it to no ill effect since. The only incompatible application I have is Shapeshifter and that’s a non-issue. I had initially been wooed by the Cover Flow-like Finder view and the Quick Look feature but I’m not exactly sure if they made my file browsing faster or not. I suppose that in order to take full advantage, I need to get used to the search too. However, I’m rarely looking for files so I’m not in any rush to get melded with those features.
The features I’ve been looking to take advantage of are Spaces and Time Machine. With Time Machine, I’ve become serious about backing up my data. Before this “life altering experience” (heh heh heh) I only used to backup my files (writing, development projects) and downloads (mods and stuff) and only rarely (once or twice a year). Now, I just plug up my external drive once each night and Time Machine takes care of the rest. As for Spaces, I’m still in the process of actually getting used to it. I need to expand on the default 2×2 and better organize which application resides in which desktop. I’m thinking of keeping web browsing, coding and design stuff in one row, while the second will have email, writing and multimedia.
Boot Camp has also caught my eye and I’ve used Boot Camp Beta before and thought it was good stuff. There’s a very specific reason for having Windows on my Macbook so I’m going to try to make the install as small as possible. The process in beta was very smooth so I’m hoping it’s still the same.
Besides those features, the recent prompts of executing something that I recently downloaded and faster boot up and shutdown times (boot up is kinda miniscule but shutdown is much faster than before), the upgrade to Leopard has been pretty transparent. Me likey.
The past couple of weeks was mostly spent playing single-player games. Beaten Heavenly Sword, Gears of War (for the PC), Call of Duty 4 (sp campaign) and just this weekend, Assassin’s Creed.
The lastest game, Assassin’s Creed, was very fun. Having to fish for information about the target and planning the method of attack was enjoyable. While dodging the vengeance of the guards after the kill is challenging and makes you think on your feet as you look for a place to hide, it does get irritating at times. But this irritation is only when traversing the streets. Being able to scale buildings and travel along the rooftops makes the getaway much easier… just don’t make a misstep and fall.
Some people criticizes the deliverance of certain threads of the storyline and I agree with them. Those bits could have been condensed and saved for a good climactic ending instead of stitched between the action resulting in too many breaks in the pace and a pretty poor ending.
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I’m sorta looking forward to the movie Hitman, which is based off of the video game series of the same title. In my opinion the storyline of the series isn’t complex and the only really great feature of the game was the freedom of operation for each mission, so Holywood can’t screw this up, right?
Then again, the whole premise of Doom was that a rift to Hell was opened (very straightforward, no twist no turns), whereas in the movie, it was changed to genetic mutation. Very disappointing, especially since I’ve gone through the Doom remake, which provided a better cinematic atmosphere. Out of the two Resident Evil movies I’ve seen (I didn’t see the third, Extinction, yet), only the second one (Apocalypse) was entertaining and that’s only because they had Jill Valentine in it. The first Resident Evil movie could’ve been so much more. It could’ve been a great horror/thriller movie sprinkled with some gun fighting action.
The failures of the recent video game to movie adaptations have me feeling a little discouraged with Hitman, but the trailer (always the trailer!) has sparked my interest.
Of course, there’ve been a few adaptations that were successful. Like Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, Tomb Raider and Silent Hill.
I’ve been using Gmail’s IMAP service for almost a week now. It’s nice to deal with account administration via Apple Mail (bulk archive, bulk spam deletion, etc.) and the direct syncing of email between phone, laptop and Gmail account is nifty (meaning I don’t have to log into gmail from a browser to clean it up). However, something kept bugging me for a couple of days. Turns out that G-IMAP doesn’t support a bunch of features, such as flags for \Answered, thus losing status icons to let me know if I’ve replied to an email message and/or forwarded it.
Most of my communication is via chat so it’s not critical to have them, but knowing if I’ve replied to an email, or not, is very nice. And of course, it was a feature supported by my domain’s implementation of IMAP. Due to this, I might switch back to the roundabout fashion I was using previously. It worked well and didn’t really cause a lag in receiving or sending mail. The only thing missing was the ability to deal with spam. Logging in to Gmail via a browser every once in a while isn’t difficult and what I’d get in return is more usability for what matters more than deleting spam.
A co-worker sees me get to my desk:
“Ah, breakfast food, huh?”
What my mind was going to say:
“Yeah, breakfast of champions; nuts and juice.”
What I said in reality (much to my relief):
“Yeah, cashews and Fanta Fruit Punch. Good stuff.”
Either, the nearly one decade of constant teasings for stupid stuff I’ve blurted out has learned me, or I’ve managed to cut it out due to my friend EL being worse than I.
