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12 October, 2013

Quick Review: iOS7

Posted by blackcampbell under Computers, Technology | Tags: ios7 |
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I got my iPhone 5 (no bloody C or S) for Virgin Mobile about a month ago, and it’s been a marvelous device. The iPhone seems to much better access the Sprint/Virgin network in Albuquerque much better than the old HTC or the dumbphone I had before that. Here’s the original review when it was still on iOS6, so we’ll concentrate on the move to iOS7 here. I turned to the iPhone because the user experience of the iPad 2 has been so good, that I figured it would be recreated on the small phone. I was not wrong. So how did the new iOS7 change the user experience?

For me, it was an excellent switch. There’s a ton of articles online about the technical aspects, the bugs and glitches, the various interface aspects of the software. You can Google them if that’s what you are looking for, but here’s my experience with iOS7: The new interface is cleaner and the “flat” design and new typeface makes it easier to see and use for my LASIK modified eyes. (I’m now mildly farsighted.) The new notification center can be accessed by swiping down from the top of the screen and works from the lock screen, so you can check the weather or any message notes — this makes it very easy to do quick checks of your calendar, etc. without having to punch in your password. (No fingerprint crap here.) The command center, or whatever they call it, swipes up from the bottom. You can set airplane mode or do not disturb from here, use the camera, or the camera flash as a flashlight (a feature I’ve used more than I expected), or adjust the sound or screen brightness without going through your passcode screen.

Once you’ve passcoded into the phone, it operates no differently from iOS6; easy, intuitive, and I saw no slow down in performance, nor issues with phone or wifi reception. Battery life did drop about 10-15% percent. I can get through two days of use with a bit of internet access, messaging, and the occasional phone call. I was able to cut about half of the new battery drain by killing the background app updates, the fancy parallax effects, and limiting the location services to the essential apps. (By the way, if the parallax stuff is giving you some kind of motion sickness, you’re way too damned sensitive; I couldn’t even notice it unless i really concentrated — hence why I turned it off.)

The integration of email/Twitter/Facebook/other app sharing across the platform makes it easy to do most things you might need. Siri works better than I thought it would when accessing functionality on the phone, but still isn’t much use as a search engine. The voice recognition for speech-to-text is quite good and can handle my strange Amero-Scottish accent without too much trouble.

Otherwise, there’s it’s much the same user experience — just cleaner and a bit better integrated than the last iteration of the OS.

Now, on the iPad 2, the experience is much improved. I know others might be having issues with the upgrade; I’m not. As with the iPhone, the new notifications and command centers are handy; and the interface is cleaner, easier to read, but here the functionality is much improved by the ability to still get out of an app to the “switcher” with a quick four-finger flick up. (I wish the iPhone incorporated this, as it would save the double tapping on the Home button and increase the life of the device.) Once in the switcher, you simply flick with a finger the app closed. It cuts down on the use of the home button on the iPad — you almost don’t need it. I’ve also seen not dramatic drop in performance of the device — none of the reported keyboard lag, no hanging apps or sudden app closures (although I do occasionally get one on the phone.) Even Real Racing 3, which is a resource hog of Texas boar proportions (and kinda sucks now that they’re trying to squeeze every last dime out of the player with their new freemium paradigm) runs well, with just a few jitters in the initial menu screens.

So, was the update worth it? Yes, even for an older iPad 2. (My wife also reports no issues on her iPad 3.)

Style: 5 out of 5 — the new look is modern, simple, and easier to use than iOS6. Substance: 4.5 out of 5 — the OS works as advertised and integrates a lot of the functions in ways that make it easy for the user to access. Siri still isn’t too impressive, and Maps is still slower than the DMV if you use a sat or hybrid view; stick to the straight map function and this isn’t an issue.

10 September, 2013

Quick Review: iPhone5 (Virgin Mobile)

Posted by blackcampbell under Technology | Tags: iphone 5, virgin mobile |
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I’ve been using an HTC One V for a little over a year now on the Virgin Mobile service. It was a serviceable smart phone, but was increasingly buggy and twitchy. Even cleaning every cache, removing unused apps, etc. would not fix the issues, which included more and more dropped calls and bad reception. I finally broke down and decided to take the hit and buy an iPhone 5 (yes, I know the 5S is coming out at the end of the month, but I doubt it’ll hit VM before the year’s end…and I really don’t need a fingerprint sensor on my home button…)

So, was it worth it? In a word: yes! I’m relatively platform agnostic, but over the last few years i find myself gravitating toward Apple products. It started with the iPad, which I still adore, and then my wife bought me a MacBook Air back in 2010. It’s still going strong with 98% of the original battery capacity, it’s still as fast, and it still works great. I like that the Apple devices talk to each other easily and — outside of the craphill that is iTunes (Seriously, Apple…fix the damned thing!) — I have no complaints. Yes, the interface isn’t as customizable as Android. Yes, it’s a “walled” ecosphere — I still get pretty much all the performance I want. Yes, they’re bloody expensive — the main sticking point for me.

I figured I would like the iPhone — it’s a small iPad with a phone, after all. Except the integration of the apps is astounding. Everything talks to each other. Siri isn’t the greatest search engine, but it makes it easy to use the phone without hunting for the right app — call Mom. Facetime with Paul. Where’s the local Chinese joint? It works. Just don’t ask it if there’s a local distributor for McEwan’s Scotch Ale; it gets confused.

The texting/Message feature is good, and Facetime is quick and stable for video calls (my mother was thrilled to talk to her granddaughter face-to-face.) The voice recognition is about 90% — pretty good for my screwy Pennsylvania-Scottish accent, which throws it on the strangest words.

It looks good, build quality is top-notch — something the HTC also had going for it — and it’s no larger than the One V was. I find iOS6 much more user friendly than the back/home/app button combo of the One V, and i think the stability of the OS build is immediately noticeable.

The big downsides: yes, the interface looks a bit plain compared to Android, which you can customize, but that wasn’t much of a selling point to me; I want to find what I’m looking for fast and be able to hit the icon without worrying about my fingers being too big. This might not be an issue on the billboard-sized Samsungs and Droids coming out, but I want to stick with something phone-sized. Second: No true multitasking. I found with my HTC that multitasking on the Android phone blew through battery life pretty quickly. It’s a good best we’ll see the same issue once iOS7 brings it to the iPhone. Another is battery life. It wasn’t great on the One V, but I only had to charge it every two or three days with average use. The iPhone looks to burn through a charge will average usage (for me a couple of calls, a bit of texting, and some data usage) in about two days. A heavy user would have to charge the thing every day. I assume the same with an Android or Windows phone, as well.

As to the Virgin Mobile service for the iPhone. You can pay $55/month for unlimited everything, but I run the $45/month for the 1200 minutes and everything else unlimited. After taxes and fees, I’m still only paying $50…about half of the big boys, including Sprint, on whose network Virgin functions. Even paying up front for the phone, full price, over the life of a contract period, I pay $932 less. And yes, you can swap the SIM cards and run on other networks. So is it worth a bigger hit at the start for the overall savings? Especially if you can use the PayPal Buy It Now (or whatever they’re calling it) promotion of six months with no payments or interest — yes. Pay it off in a couple of chunks. You’re much better off than with AT&T or Verizon, from a price point.

But what about the quality and coverage? Not as good. I get 3G in Albuquerque and the surrounding New Mexico area with a bunch of dead zones thanks to the massive areas of nothing out here between towns. (911 service, however, has been available in the same places I’d get it on other networks.) You do need to leave LTE on if you want to do anything data-intensive or the performance is glacial; with it on, it’s speedy enough for a Facebook check or to do a quick internet search for whatever. I haven’t bothered to try streaming anything yet, but I suspect it will be a bit jumpy. Call quality is good, for those of you who realized you can use a telephone to speak to people, instead of conducting a 2 minute conversation over the course of an afternoon by text.

Style: 5 out of 5 — you really can’t fault Apple’s aesthetics. Simple, yet pretty; the interface is simple and easy to use. Substance: 5 out of 5 — it’s the largest app store in the world, and you can find just about anything you need. The operating system is almost bulletproof stable, call quality is good, and it’s packed with a host of baked in features.

Additionally, the preview of the iOS7 features and new look is another draw — at least for me — to the phone.

19 July, 2013

A Mobile Phone For Your Pulp Campaign

Posted by blackcampbell under History, Roleplaying Games, Technology | Tags: mobile phone, retrotech, roaring twenties |
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19 July, 2013

The Dynasphere! Why Ride Two Wheels When You Can Have One!

Posted by blackcampbell under Cars, History, Technology | Tags: dynasphere, monocycle |
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Something for the Hollow Earth Expedition crowd:

16 July, 2013

Robotic Uprising? Ridiculous! Or Maybe Not… Your Choice.

Posted by blackcampbell under Science, Science Fiction, Technology | Tags: aaron saenz, BAASICS, Bay Area Art & Science Interdisciplinary Collaborative Sessions, robot uprising, robots |
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Here’s Aaron Saenz at the Bay Area Art & Science Interdisciplinary Collaborative Sessions (BAASICS) on the possibility of the robotic apocalypse.

11 July, 2013

The Future of Aviation Warfare: the X-47B

Posted by blackcampbell under Military, Roleplaying Games, Science, Technology | Tags: james bond rpg, naval aviation, naval drone, ucas, x-47b |
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The X-47B drone just made its first carrier landing. How important is this? Well, the Navy is saying its on par with the first naval aircraft. The craft are remote-piloted, smaller than most naval aircraft (more to a carrier), and are much, much cheaper per unit than most of the hot-shit new fighter designs. Oh, and not having a pilot on board means it can out turn anything in the skies.

Here’s the first catapult launch of the craft:

And the first landing:

Can Cylon Raiders be far behind..?

Here’s the stats for the X-47B for the James Bond: 007 RPG:

PM: +2 RED: 2 CRUS: 500 MAX: 700 RNG: 2,100 FCE: 5 STR: 25 COST: n/a

GM Information: The X-47’s small profile gives opponents looking for it a -2EF to their Perception. The drone can carry 4500 lbs of missiles or other ordinance.

16 June, 2013

Concrete: Everything Old Is New Again

Posted by blackcampbell under Science, Technology | Tags: concrete, roman architecture, romans |
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One of the best lines from Monty Python’s Life of Brian is “What did the Romans ever do for us?” The characters follow this up with a collection of marvels from sanitation and aqueducts to the road. Now it looks like the Romans are about to do something for modern civilization: Scientists have recovered the secret of Roman concrete manufacture.

That may seem a strange thing to laud, but keep in mind most Portland cement-based concrete is lucky to survive weathering and use over a half century…in Italy, there are buildings in remarkably good shape after 2000+ years. 11 harbors studied showed remarkable vigor, despite being exposed to the vagaries of wind, weather and water.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories explains in this press release:

The Romans made concrete by mixing lime and volcanic rock. For underwater structures, lime and volcanic ash were mixed to form mortar, and this mortar and volcanic tuff were packed into wooden forms. The seawater instantly triggered a hot chemical reaction. The lime was hydrated—incorporating water molecules into its structure—and reacted with the ash to cement the whole mixture together.

Bigus Dickus would be proud.

31 May, 2013

Play Report: Gaming Via Skype

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games, Technology | Tags: gamemaster tips, skype for gaming |
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During our play session this week, we took the opportunity to finally try something we’ve wanted to do since we had most of the old gaming group fall away back in September. One of these gamers had scheduling issues — he works in Los Alamos on the days we usually have open to game. He lives in Santa Fe. We play in Albuquerque. If he were to leave for the game after work, he would have 93 miles during rush hour traffic to get here. It’s a two hour run at the best of times, and another 45 minutes to an hour to get home.

In other words, not doable.

We’d thought about trying to link this player and the one who GTT (Gone To Texas, for you non-history fans) to the group through the internet. During test runs in September, we’d found Facetime was the most stable platform, but couldn’t handle more than two callers; Skype could do multiple callers, if one of you popped for the ability, and was generally stable if not as much so as Facetime; and we tried Google Hangout, which could handle multiple callers and was mostly stable, but got increasingly twitchy over time.

Since we were only bringing one person in on the video call, and only one of us had Facetime, we went with Skype. The result was much better than I’d hoped for. We got the call-in about 1900 hours and game ran until 2230 hours. The call audio quality was good, although we’ve decided it would be a good idea to rig the iPad we were using into its bluetooth speakers next time. Video quality was patchy — good for the first hour or so, but it steadily degraded until the remote player had to kill his video feed for about 45 minutes. During a break, he called back in and the video was good again.

He has a few issues receiving video from us at first, but it cleared up after we hung up and recalled at the start of the session. He had a few problems tracking the crosstalk on the table at one point, but otherwise was able to feel part of the action and not terribly disconnected.

Here were the observations:

1) Positioning is very important. Depending on the webcam, laptop, or in this case, an iPad, you want to find a place where the camera can see the entire group and can adequately pick up the conversations.

Just as important is the GM’s position. I was seated to one side of the table — iPad at one end, players arrayed in front of me of to the opposite side of the iPad, and occasionally I would lose track of what the video caller or the player opposite of him was doing/saying. Better to position yourself so the players and teleconferenced person are in front of you; be at the head of the table, if using one, with the teleconferenced player at the other end of the room, so you can see everyone. this cuts down on the chance that you favor one side of the room or the other. I managed to avoid ignoring the video caller over the rest of the people in the room but I had to keep it in mind throughout the night.

2) Venue. Try to avoid big. empty rooms with lots of hard objects. This bounces the sound more, and the echo effect can make it difficult for the video caller. You want something big enough to allow the camera to pick up all the players, but small enough not to jigger with the audio.

3) Equipment: Screen size: we were running the conference on an iPad — an 11″ screen. It was good enough we could see the player just fine in the space we were working with. A bigger room, or more myopic players might like something larger. A good microphone and speaker are important when doing a conference call with a room full of players. I mentioned the bluetooth speaker to get past the reflected noise of the host’s kitchen and the generally crappy speaker of the iPad2 and later. If you have a TV and can connect the device running the video conference, the speakers and video should be more than enough to the purpose.

4) Coordination. As with tabletop gaming, coordination can be a real issue. This gets worse the more time zones you throw between the two sides of a call. This has prevented me from setting up a game with another gamer in Korea — 14 or 15 hours is a lot of time to work around; you’re in different days, much less times of day. Even a call home to Scotland is six hours offset. Keep this in mind, even for something like a single timezone. An hour in the evening can mean starting too early for someone, or ending a touch to late for another.

Overall, our experience was very positive, with two of the players and myself expressing the wish to continue with Skyping the player in, and the others being positive about the experience in general, but not so enthusiastic. They’re also not part of the group from last year, so that’s probably a reason.

Video conferencing is a great way to retain players who have moved away or for some reason can’t make the haul to game. Depending on the number you need to conference in will decide what service you want, but if it’s just a single player Facetime (if they have a Mac) and Skype seem to be the most stable. Google Hangout is great for multiple players, but our last test showed it to be twitchy. They may have improved it since them, and it included a plug-in dice roller, so there you go. Just attend to the tips above, and you should be able to bring in long lost friends or busy players.