Dan Wilson’s Blog

Here are some pictures from the game:

Shannon Sharpe Skydiving (tandem) into Mile High Stadium

Shannon Sharpe landing. What a grand entrance for his ring of fame induction

Balloons, so many balloons

Is this not littering? Hope they are biodegradable

Game on!

I am in the midst of a total video renaissance on my home machines. It all started with the addition of NAS to my home network infrastructure. I added two 1.5 TB drives in a RAID 1 (hooray for redundancy) for backup and video storage. This gives me virtually infinite HD video storage (or a few hundred hours if you want to get technical about it) and allows multiple machines to work with the raw HD recordings. This decentralization allows me to work with my video on either Mission Control using Sony Vegas Movie Studio for really complicated video editing tasks (like ‘Unstoppable‘), or my Mac Mini and iMovie for simple kid clips like ‘Tumbling‘.

The most painful, but essential, part of my video setup was getting the original camcorder software installed on Mission Control. When I first got the Handycam, the software for importing and organizing the AVCHD video from the camera was not compatible with 64-bit Vista. They have since fixed the issue, but installation required several components and reboots. With this new setup I hope to capture and produce more video. This also allows me to transfer back to the camera, and import all my old videos into iMovie, since best I can tell iMovie can’t just up and import raw AVCHD file dumps from a hard drive.

I also have found some great solutions for video on the go. I purchased Xilisoft’s iPod Video Converter, and can now take just about any video format and copy it to my iPhone for viewing on the bus. Even more impressive, however, is the TiVo Desktop Plus software. This software let’s me browse my TiVo recordings, and easily copy, convert, and add them to my iPhone in one shot. What’s really nice about this is I can time shift to skip commercials on the iPhone. Now I can get my Daily Show with John Stewart and Robot Chicken fix, and I don’t have to pay a dime in the iTunes store (though the TiVo software did set me back $24.95). Finally, for DVDs, I use CloneDVD Mobile to rip DVD’s for viewing on my iPhone. This is a great solution for plane travel, since you can just load up a handful of DVDs before a trip and you are all set with just the iPhone, a device that travels with you anyways. With this complete setup, I now have the ability to easily fill my iPhone with videos from file, TiVo, and DVD. I see my listening time for podcasts and audio books dropping sharply, except for while walking about.

I think I have reached near perfection and mastery of video, and am master of my own video domain.

The DenverInfill Blog has some pictures of the Four Season’s mast going up and being attached, but I did snag one while it was still on the street walking to the bus the other day.

Interesting comments on DenverInfill. Very mixed opinions on the architectural design now that it is nearing completion. I will hold judgement until it is done, as I think the lighting after nightfall may make it impressive.

Since I purchased my iPhone late last year, two iPhone games showed the promise to make me forgot about any portable gaming device on the market. One lived up to that promise, the other fell flat. Let’s start with the disappointment: SimCity.

SimCity (iTunes link)

This was a favorite game of my youth, going back so far I remember being blown away by its graphics on a VGA screen. The iPhone version of SimCity is the same of a real, big-boy version once available on PC. When I first opened up the app and started building my city, I was truly impressed – at first. I was making power plants, zoning, managing public services. All was well.

Then the minutiae took over. I have fat gorilla fingers, with thumbs that at their largest can take up a fifth of the iPhone touch screen. What was once a fun city management experience quickly turned into fumbling and bumbling and zooming and pinching and panning (repeat) to make sure every tile had water and power lines and little itty-bitty water pumps and so on and so forth. This was an acceptable chore in PC versions of the game. When I am using a touchscreen that fits in my pocket using thumbs that barely fit in my pocket, this isn’t just a chore, it is an impossible, cumbersome punishment.

I understand the ease of porting a game by exactly duplicating its functionality. I understand the desire to be true to the original. But when I have a little time to kill, spending 20 minutes pinching and zooming and navigating menus and drop downs just to provide 3 city blocks with water, well, no one is going to have a lot of fun with that.

Moral of the story: just because you can port a game exactly, doesn’t mean you can forget the form factor and how it has a very real impact on the experience.

Civilization Revolution (iTunes link)

The Civilization franchise I picked up in the early 2000s, and quickly fell in love. Playing god on a scale of the world’s best empires provides a great degree of challenge and reward. This version of the franchise may be an exact port from the Nintendo DS (anyone?), but it finds a great balance of being true to the gameplay while working within the constraints of screen size and touch screen input.  Pinching, panning, tapping, contextual buttons, and the side buttons are very intuitive, and you can tell a lot of thought was put into the design and UI.

The game difficulty settings are spot on. One complaint I have with many games is that the jump from a difficulty of hard to hardest is non-linear, i.e. hard is too easy, hardest is downright impossible, frustrating, or unfair. This game trains you and works you up to the level in a very natural way. Another great feature is the different scenarios; basically tweak some of the attributes of the game to accelerate the experience, whether in science, military, or monetary achievements.

I still do have a few complaints about the game. The lack of futuristic military units is a disappointment. The game can also crash occasionally, which seems to occur later in a game when there is a lot going on and you are about to win. Also, the slow load time makes it hard to squeeze in a few turns while spending a couple of minutes on the throne. Finally, the game drains the iPhone’s battery faster than any other task you could do on the phone.

For any future ports of game franchises to the iPhone, I hope Civilization Revolution is the model for which they base their design. I could see the platform truly becoming a gaming force if the form factor is used as an advantage (Civilization) and not a constraint (SimCity).

Kyle Orton’s QB rating: 100.7

Kyle Orton’s QB rating, if that last pass had been batted down and not tipped to Brandon Stokley: 72.91

On the bright side, Jay Cutler’s week one QB rating: 43.2 – ouch!

(Hat tip to QB Rating Calculator)

Two technology commercials that stuck in my mind, one still seems relevant and timely, the other seems upside down:

Linux Learning

Apple 1984