Long time; No Speak.

Hey everyone! I’m posting for you all to know that, yes, I am still very much alive.

But I got no soul.

Yeah, that’s right. I have no soul as of now. Nor do I have a life. Ever since I decided to pick up World of Warcraft sometime back in October, my soul has slowly been draining away into the empty void that is the addiction of a MMORPG.

These past four months, I have played that game almost every day. I have traversed the lands of Azeroth from the northern reaches of Kalimdor to the southernmost portion of Eastern Kingdoms. I left this realm and battled the Burning Legion in outland and am currently locked in combat with the Scourge of Northrend. My tale is that of death, sorrow, and destruction, but also the tale of life, healing, and accomplishment.

Yeah, huge fuckin’ nerd here. I played that game starting from a level 1 Night Elf Druid noob to a wise  level 80 Tree. It certainly ate up my entire life. I spend hours on that game, for what, pixels? But those pixels mean a lot to me.

World of Warcraft is unique in that it is all about teamwork. There are three different ways you can contribute to the “team”.

1. You can make sure every monster in the area is happy at smashing your face in, so that way the others don’t get hit; This is called tanking.
2. You can do high amounts of damage to the monsters to make the battles quick and easy so that the next fight can be engaged; DPS (Damage per Second) is this role.
3. Or you can keep everyone alive by intensely watching their Health meters and casting spells to get them back to 100%; healer is thy name.

Now, being a druid, I can fulfill all three of these roles. I can take the shape of a bear to have a huge increase to my armor and be able to withstand the damage, or I can take the shape of a sneaky feline to mangle and claw my opponent to death, or yet I can take the shape of a loving and caring tree, to better heal my fellow team mates to live another day.

The only class that can also do this is the Paladin, but PALADINS CAN’T BE KITTIES, SO WHERE IS THE FUN IN THAT?!?!

Anyway, moving on; I have become an addict of that game. It’s not the mathy nerdy things that got me addicted, no no. It’s the cooperation between the various roles that other classes play that got me. It’s the teamwork that is used to take down things many times stronger than you is what hooked me. Such cooperation within a game is outstanding, and coordination between different roles and classes increase the depth to the game even further. Now, the lore is nice, and I do like fantasy. In particular, I like the stories about the Night Elves, the Blood Elves, the Orcs, the Horde, and Arthas Menethil (think Anakin Skywalker). But I still feel that players fulfilling their role and doing so to help others is something that I have yet to come across in a game.

The reason why I chose to be a healer was because I felt that’s where I belonged. I can’t memorize rotations and priorities of abilities that Cat’s have to master. I’m an OK tank at best, but I find that I get nervous when other people are healing me (distrust from previous experiences), but when I’m healing, my ADD kicks in and I pay attention to every health bar, predicting when the next blow will come in and tossing around heal over time spells to help mitigate that.

Anyway, I hope I can start focusing on other things now that I have pretty much ‘beat the game’ (though technically, you can never beat it.). I might be posting to this more often, but beware, sometimes it will be about World of Warcraft rather than tech things that I used to talk about all the time. (I stopped following most tech stuff ever since Apple thought it was a good idea to put a mother fucking VIDEO camera into the iPod Nano’s.)

A chat with a bot.

I was on Yahoo! Instant Messenger, when all of a sudden:

sassysally21: Hey i just came across your profile. Ur a cutie! <3

Of course, I don’t have a profile she could come across. I figured it was a bot, so I decided that I would have fun with it.

Here’s the rest:

travist120

Really, then you must know that I don’t have anything on my profile.

sassysally21

Yay someone to talk too!! ~~~

travist120

And you simply avoid the question. You are a bot, aren’t you?

sassysally21

whats a bot?

travist120

Look, SassySally21, how did you get my username?

sassysally21

Which site do u usually go on?? Cause i’m on a few of em.. LoL

travist120

Well, I asked you the question first. How did you get my username.

sassysally21

Oh Ok LOL,Nice!how you doin

travist120

I’m actually good. I can entertain myself easily knowing that you are indeed and automated robot.

sassysally21

haha! i am not!  i like raindrops and bubblegum at bedtime….  would an automated system say that??

travist120

Yes, if you were programmed to do so.

sassysally21

I’m actually working right now what are you doing exactly??

travist120

I’m talking to you.

sassysally21

nice, nothin I work from home just starting doing these cam shows  It’s pretty fun actually lol

travist120

I bet it is, especially since you took what I said and acted as if I had said something else.

sassysally21

I am a little busy right now cant really talk here but I would LOVE if you came to watch and give me some company, and maybe a GOOD rating ??

travist120

Actually, no SassySally21. I’m not interested in you. I know you are a machine, who is sent to trick the stupid masses that are on the internet. Very clever, and I’m proud that humanity has the capability of creating such believable artificial intelligence. However, I wish that they had put this time and money to good use, and not to spamming me with webcam chat invites.

sassysally21

suit yourself…  ur prob a virgin anyways…  peace!

travist120

Actually, SassySally21, I’m 17 years old. I don’t know the law in your area, but I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to solicit sexual content to a minor. See ya, hope some other idiot falls for your ploy.

sassysally21

well I think i have my free friend’s pass lyin here one sec babe.. I mean would you want it??

travist120

SassySally21, tell me. Did you understand a word that I said before? Or did your language parser miss it, and send me a canned message instead. It’s illegal to solicit pornographic material to a minor. I don’t want your pass.

sassysally21

yup, I do got another pass left!..YAY.. just please don’t tell anyone else I can get in trouble. What color panties should I put on for you sexy, i’ll let you pick! LOL

travist120

Actually, to be honest, I’m feeling excited for some red panties. But you won’t give me red panties, Sally, you will instead send me a link so that I may give my credit card information, and the best part about it is that I won’t even see you. I’ll see a whole bunch of different girls being payed minimum wage to do what guys in chat rooms tell them to do. And most of the time, it’s creepy foot fetish perverts.

sassysally21

you can always goto the store and buy one of those 20$ cards… Am i not worth it?! Its free anyways!!!

travist120

Sally, all the money in the world wouldn’t be able to pay for my excitement to see an AI strip down naked. Sadly, this could never be true. As you are not real, and are programmed to seduce lonely men.

sassysally21

I have a blue dinosaur that eats pancakes…  is that real enough for ya??

travist120

Actually, no. No it’s not Sally. A blue dinosaur that eats pancakes isn’t possible, and could therefore not exist. As dinosaurs are extinct, and pancakes had yet to be conceived.

sassysally21

Ok, go to http://www.myhomecamnetwork.com/megansfantasy scroll all the way down to the bottom babe, and you will see “friends of Megan”, click that and when you get the password page, put in the password: “daddy” okay

And that’s it! I found a whole lot of amusement in it, so I decided to post it.

Mac-tastic!

It’s no secret that I have been having Mac envy for quiet some time. I’ve been wanting to develop a Twitter app, which the SDK is only available for Mac OSX. I’ve tried Hackintoshing my Dell Laptop, but that didn’t work out so well. I’ve even looked into running Mac OSX in a virtual desktop.

For a while, I didn’t think I would be getting my wish anytime soon. I already have enough computers, and having a Mac, simply to edit and mess around with iPhone applications seemed… a tad unnecessary. I gave up for a bit.

Then I went to the Apple store. My want was reinvigorated. I reaaally needed that Mac, there was no doubt about it. I talked to my Dad’s assistant, Mitch, about it. He said “Ask your dad, he’d get it for you.”

I did.

I got it. That night.

We went out to Best Buy and picked up a 13″ MacBook Pro. I was so happy, I was ecstatic. As soon as we got home, I ran up to my room, pulled out my iPhone and started taking pictures of the unboxing. I was up until 6:00 in the morning, downloading apps and generally learning all that I could about this thing.

So here is what I have to say about it. Right now, I have spent a total of… 24 hours with it. I still have a lot of excitement within me, so I may be a tad bit biased, but I will try to critique the best way I can.

What I like:

Front Facing Camera

I have had a few laptops in my life. The best one I have had so far was my Dell XPS that I received for my birthday 3 years ago. It was awesome! 2GB of RAM, dual core, excellent graphics card. It was the ultimate gaming laptop.

The thing is, I’m not that much of a gamer. I play a total of 1 games on my laptop and desktop. That game being Team Fortress 2. I loved the laptop though, and it was excellent in doing things. But it also lacked a webcam, and a microphone, which I remedied by buying a cheap webcam and headset.

With the MacBook Pro, however, this comes up at the top of the notebook, and the microphone is located somewhere on this freaking thing. The quality isn’t great, and it reminds me of cellphone cameras more than anything else, but hey. It’s still usable, and I can still record with iMovie and upload to YouTube and the likes.

Keyboard

The nerd species is a nocturnal group. We stay up until the wee hours of the morning, then hibernate until the sun beats down on us and the heat of the day wakes us from our slumber. I am no exception, and I do a lot of coding and general surfing at night. With the lights off. Apple really knew what the people wanted when they created the “Pro” line of the MacBooks. They knew that the general consensus of users would be nerdy folk who are powered by Mountain Dew and caffeine. The keyboard lights up, easing the strain of finding out where the “<” is, therefore streamlining our coding and allowing us to work at max efficiency.

That, and the keys are really nice to type on too. I don’t know what it is, but I think it is because the keys themselves are indented, combined with the fact that it is the “chiclet” style of keyboard, makes this laptop really nice to type on.

Oh, and I thought I would hate the arrow keys being so squished together. I was wrong, I actually got used to them faster than I thought.

Touchpad

The touchpad takes some getting used to. Though, if you treat it like a normal touchpad (touchpad up top, two mouse buttons on the bottom) you will be pleased to find that it works the same way. I think the thing is on a slight ramp, because I noticed that it is slightly harder to click when your hand if up the pad slightly. There is the ‘pinch’ gesture, which works great on webpages (and even enlarges flash video). If you use two fingers, you can also ‘free’ roam, and scroll sideways, vertical, diagonal, whatever. Using four fingers, you can swipe up to hide all windows, swipe down to window switch, and swipe to the side to activate the alt-tab. A minor gripe that I have is that sometimes I will enlarge a webpage entirely by accident.

OS

Now that I’ve gone through the hardware of this new laptop, I’m going to touch up on the OS. I personally see it as a cross between Windows and Linux. It has the support and widespread usage of Windows, and the hackability of Linux. While some may find this statement controversial, I think that it best fits what my opinions are of it. The OS is fast… like blazing fast. Putting it to sleep and waking it up is almost instantaneous. The weirdest thing though is installing and removing apps. The apps are self contained, and installing them is as simple as dragging and dropping into the application folder. It’s weird, and gimpy. Oh, and the installer files are treated as disc images. Literally, disc images that are mounted. Really strange, that feature is. There is not much to say about the OS, other than the fact that you will have to learn keyboard shortcuts, and fast.

Well, that concludes my mini review of my new MacBook Pro. I’ll update my opinions as I have more experience with it.

Without my iPhone

So far, it has been 8 hours without juice in my iPhone.

I have been awake for 3 of those hours.

Within those 3 hours, I have reached for my iPhone a total of 4 times.

Every single time I do, I am sadly dissapointed that it has no charge and will unable to be charged for quiet some time.

This morning, around 6:15AM, I was coming back from a Lock-In at the Skating Rink at Horne Lake, Mississippi. We had pulled into the driveway of my friend’s house to drop her off. I, being the gentleman that I am, had all of her gadgets and gizmos (and even a pair of shorts(she brought them just in case she started to get hot in her pants (that explanation sounds even more perverted than what I’m trying to explain(fail)))) stuffed inside the many pockets of my cargo pants. Pulling all of the junk out of my pockets, I had realized that her headphones were entangled with my iPhone charger. I set the two down, untangled them, and gave the headphones back. I bid my farewell, and hopped into the broken down cop car that my dad’s assistant (Mitch) was driving.

We went on our merry way.

Once I got home, I started receiving the dreaded “20% Battery” warning. “Bah!” I exclaimed. “There is a simple solution to this mundane issue!”. Unfazed, I reached into my pocket, only to find that my iPhone charger was missing!

Bit of complaints, went upstairs, fell asleep, and woke up at 11:00AM.

At this point, I figured that it wouldn’t be long before I can take the car, drive 40 minutes to Mississippi from Tennessee, grab it, and come back.

Fortune was not with me.

My Dad’s car was gone, Kim’s Porsche was gone, and Mitch had left already.

“Great!” I said. I knew that it wouldn’t be too long before any of them had returned.

I surfed the web for a bit. Watched my neglected YouTube subscriptions, caught up on Twitter, caught up on FaceBook, caught up on MySpace, caught up on Google Reader, caught up on Zero Punctuation, caught up on Jabo0ody Dubs, watched 10 “2 Girls, 1 cup” reactions on YouTube, caught up with my email, caught up with AppVee.tv, caught up with showering, caught up with eating, caught up with… well, you get the point.

Though, a curious thing happened. Once I had caught up with all of my “distractions”, I had decided to finish the Fast-Web app review that I had been putting off. I reached into my pocket, grabbed my iPhone and–

“Oh, yeah. I don’t have the cable for it, so I can’t transfer the screen shots. Oh well! Doesn’t matter! I can simply email all of the screen-shots to myself so–

Oh.. that’s right. My phone is dead. Can’t email from a dead phone, right?”

Distraught, I decided that it was time to take some action. At the time, I didn’t know that my parents were out, so I was ready to get directions to my friends house (I live in Colorado, so there is no way I could have the directions to and from Memphis, Tennessee to Horne Lake, Mississippi memorized)

I pulled out my phone and…

GOD I HAVE TO STOP DOING THAT!

For a minute there, I panicked. My Dad’s house lacks a home phone, as he and his wife rely on cellphones only. So there is no way I can call to get an address… Thankfully, I am a genius someone who can follow instructions, and also have a nice, orderly contact list synced with my Gmail account. I went to google.com/contacts and pulled up my friend’s contact card, which contained her address. I clicked “map it” and rubbed my hands in anticipation. I looked around for a minute. What was I looking for?… Oh yeah, where I am now. Uh…….. WHY CAN’T I HAV GPS ON MAI INTERNETS??! Grudgingly, I pulled up the address for my Dad’s house, and tore off a sheet of paper to write down the exits and turns.

Found out that my parents weren’t home, sulked, went upstairs, watched more YouTube, etc., etc.

By this time, I was thinking about something I would like to include in my upcoming-but-not-even-started Twitter app. The idea was coming too fast for me to write down so I quickly pulled out my iPhone and…

OH GOD WHY!?

I can’t…. I can’t even record a quick memo!

So here I am, the current time is 14:46 (I’m getting used to Military time, it’s actually a lot easier!). I’m waiting, bored, and waiting. The reason I decided to post this was mainly because I hadn’t realized how reliant I had become on this phone. No, seriously. It’s bad. My previous phones were nice, and great for texting and calling; but that was that, and they weren’t any good for much else (sorry for my grammar, I think the voice in my head is picking up a southern accent (ooh, that would make a great tweet!)) Though with my iPhone, I have become so reliant on every feature of it. Synchronized contacts, HTML email, GPS directions with Google Maps, I miss every last bit of it. The only thing that I don’t miss is how STUPID GOOGLE MAPS IS!! WHY THE HELL WOULD THEY INCLUDE PURPLE CIRCLES IN THE DIRECTIONS VIEW IF THEY DIDN’T AUTOMATICALLY GO TO THE NEXT STEP WHEN YOU REACH THE FUCKING PURPLE CIRCLE!!! WHAT THE HELL! I swear to God, I am going to be killed by Google Maps SIMPLY BECAUSE I AM ALWAYS LOOKING AT MY DAMN IPHONE WHILE DRIVING 80 MILES PER HOUR ON THE FREAKING HIGHWAY BECAUSE I KEEP MISSING THE “NEXT” ARROW WITH MY GIANT ASS THUMBS!! And no, I do not have giant “ass-thumbs”. The iPhone, and other smartphones, have become such a valuable tool in our everyday lives that when we are unable to use these devices, it’s almost as if we have lost a hand.

Anyway, these are just some thoughts to pass the time while I wait for the car(s) to get back.

If I were to create a Twitter app

I’ve been thinking about this for a while. There are plenty of Twitter applications on the iPhone, but many of them do different things with different interfaces. Of all of these, only 3 Twitter clients are worth using. TwitterFON, Tweetie, and Twitteriffic. All of the others are buggy, or are copies of one another. TwitterFON is great when it comes to the search interface, the contact interface, and the fact that it is free. Tweetie is great when it comes to intergration with the iPhone style, stability, and overall user friendliness. Twitteriffic is powerful, supporting accounts with identi.ca, I also enjoy the writing interface, as you can tap the “eye” to lower the keyboard, which is really helpful when trying to remember a tweet or something of the like. It excels in features, and a different GUI.

What I think I want is an app that combines Twitterriffic’s power, Tweetie’s interface, and TwitterFON’s contact and search interface.

Anyhow, that deters from my point. I’ve been thinking about features that Twitter Clients could use, and if I’m feeling up to it, I could learn Objective C and Cocoa Touch. And buy a mac.

Email ‘N Walk

If you’ve read my review of Email ‘N Walk, you’ll see that this app provides a way to stare at your phone and watch where you are going. So you don’t run into a tree. My idea is that it would utilize the iPhone camera, combined with an interface based on opacity to provide this. Of course, this could be turned off, and I don’t plan on using it as the main interface.

Dynamic Themes

Often times I find myself switching between the dark theme and light themes on both Twitterific and Tweetie. If I was to create a Twitter app, it would base the theme on the time of day, or the amount of lighting in the room (iPhone 3.0 will allow this). And it won’t be of one of three themes for morning noon and evening. No sir, it will be gradually altered. So at 3 in the morning, you will get a slightly blu but mainly black theme. Then at 6 in the morning you will have a light blue theme. Towards noon, that blue theme will turn to white, (or whatever color I chooose, white really isn’t a great theme) then towards the evening, the theme will gradually turn orange, then dark blue, then black. This shouldn’t be too hard, as editing the colors would simply require mathmatics. As for based on light: lots of light == high contrast colors providing easier reading. In a dark movie theater == mainly dark theme with subtle colors.

Currently Listening to:

With the new OS coming out sometime this week, one of the API features will be to have access to the Music library on the device. One of the things that would be a pretty neat feature is for the application to grab the song currently being listened to and format it the same way Blip.fm does.

Export to Birdhouse.

I love Birdhouse. I think it is a really useful tool. Hopefully, the developers of the application will allow us to enter text from another application. You can do this with safari and tweetie by typing “tweetie:” at the beginning of the URL, which Tweetie will accept and shorten for you. This way, if users think that a Tweet needs a bit more thought, they can draft it to birdhouse.

Custom RT’s:

I personally use the “via” system. Why? Because when I joined Twitter, I had no clue what the hell RT’s meant. And “via” just looks better in my opinion. Well, a lot of people like RT, or even some crazy symbols. To alleviate all of this, I will have the option to use RT, Via, or even your own. How? It will look something like this: “%t” (via @%u). In which %t will represent the text and %u will represent the username. That way, you could format it however you want such as: “@%u says: %t” or something like that. It’s not revolutionary, I know, but not very many Twitter clients use this. And if it’s not user friendly, though there are preformatted ones that could be used.

Twitpic

I love the way Tweetie does this, and I really hope I could achieve the same thing. Instead of displaying a webpage, Tweetie grabs the image and presents it in a way similar to the Photo’s application.

Ad Preferences

If I were to create said application, I would release two versions. An ad version, or a paid version. Both versions would be the same, but the ad version would have ads, of course. Many people complain about Ads, and it seems difficult for a developer to settle on one type of ad system. So in the preferences menu, I will be offering three different kinds of ads. The first type would be an ad at the top of the timeline view. The second would be an ad as a tweet. And the third would be a fullscreen ad that is shown when opening the application (and never pops up again), this ad would be similar to the Flixter application. In the settings menu, they can change what type of ad they would like to see. (but no ads is not an option). I say this is useful, as people like different kinds of ads, and hopfully, they will opt to buy than to suffer the ads.

Everything else.

Of course, I will try to intergrate as many features as the other Twitter clients have. Instapaper, Del.icio.us, Safari, Twitpic (or yfrog), bit.ly and anything else I may have missed. It seems those have become a standard in the AppStore today, and I would be a fool not to include these handy features.

Oh, and as for the features that I have meantioned above. Many of them (such as email ‘n walk, dynamic themes, or ad preference) would be only activated under the advanced section of the settings menu of my app. They’d probably cause a lot of bugs, and it makes more sense to put them there than to have users complaining about a broken app. I plan to have as many features as I can think of, even if they are experimental, in that option. Simply because I like to mess around, and the same things get stale.

But before I can do any of this, I have to:

1. Buy a Mac.
2. Learn Objective C
3. Learn MGTwitter
4. Learn Cocoa Touch (shouldn’t be too hard, I looked into it, reminds me of javascripts Functions)
5. Buy a Mac.

As you can see, the biggest hurdle would be obtaining a Mac. As the SDK is only available on OSX and I only have Windows compatible machines at home. (Hint: If you are throwing out a Mac, how about donating it to me instead?)

Hopefully, I can do this. Sure, it would take a lot of time, but if I play my cards right, (and the fact that I plan to do this all by myself) I can make loads of cash. Or it could go with the rest of the stream and be drowned by the craploads of Fart and iMob applications.

Really hope that second one doesn’t happen.

And sorry for my grammar, I rushed this post out, because frankly, I haven’t posted anything in months!

*edit* Forgot a feature!

Network Based Compression

Another API feature being released is being able to tell the difference between EDGE, 3G, or WiFi networks. When posting to TwitPic, the app will look at the network, and compress accordingly. So if while on EDGE, it will compress a lot so that the image may be uploaded faster, whereas on 3G or WiFi, it will have little to no compression. This could be turned off, seeing that some people don’t care for the wait times.

Landscape View

Although I really hate it when apps do this, landscape view brings out more screen realestate. This will be entirely optional (because I know it might be buggy) but when rotating to landscape view, I will have the Twitter client reveal multiple columns the same way Tweetdeck does this. Interesting feature, and I think it may catch on.

Stanza VS Classics VS Kindle

I’ve been reading a lot lately from my iPhone. I don’t know why I started reading so much on my phone, but I have.

A few weeks ago I picked up The Assassins Apprentice for free off of the Random House Free books in Stanza. To say the least, I devoured the book. It was fun, and a real pleasure to read. But the app itself is was really set me off the most. Stanza 2.0 is really great, but there are some annoyances that I could live without. I’ve posted this before, but for some reason, Stanza thinks I want to read upside down. I don’t want to, and it’s a pain when I can’t even lay on my side. Another issue that I had with it is when exiting the app it will sometimes lose it’s place. Not that big of a deal, but a real pain when trying to just continue where you left off. Something that I really enjoyed about this new iteration is the ability to change the page background. I did a quick google image search for paper and used that as my background image. Now I didn’t have to stare at a pure black and white screen the entire time. All in all, this app has the biggest selection of free books and the most options for the interface, but it suffers from bugs, slow start up times, and annoying auto rotate.

Classics was the next app that I picked up. After seeing it on an “There’s an App for that” commercial, I deemed that it’s interface was beautiful enough for me to buy. It cost me 99c for a truly beautiful app. This app is really something. While only offering classic books that are availiable under the public domain, it does it so beautifully that it is worth the dollar. The pages are not a stark white with black text, instead they are nice subtle shades of brown that provides an easier read as if you were hiding a real book. I read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and I can say that it was one of the best books to read on the classics app. The pages have an interactive 3D animation that really brings it to life. There was only a small issue that I encountered. When there was a “$0.00″ given out for any given amount in between the period and the actual dollar amount would be the last paragraph. Clearly just a pain in the butt.

Kindle was downloaded as soon as I heard it was available. I downloaded a couple of samples and I never touched them again. Why? Because I didn’t want to buy any. Well, recently I found Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was available from the kindle store. I downloaded the preview and I laughed my head off. Shortly after, I bought the book in it’s entirety and am currently reading it. The things that I love the most about the kindle app is the ability for it to stay in portrait mode. Another plus in using this app is the simplicity of the user interface, and while it is no where near the simplicity of the Classics app, it is light-years ahead of the Stanza’s user interface. But the biggest feature for me is the ability to preview books. This makes things so much easier in determining what books you want to buy and read. And when I go to college, a Kindle DX sounds really useful for buying text books on. Which then can sync wirelessly to my iPhone. We really live in a privileged world!

Anyhow, I’m going to go ahead and rank each one.

I believe my number one will have to be the Kindle ebook reader. This is due to the fact that the books on Amazons website are cheap, and you can get a free preview of the book you want to buy automatically sent you. This is a really excellent feature, because I can determine within the first few chapters if I like a book or not. Another thing that wins my first choice is the locked portrait mode.

A close second is Classics. I love the selection of books, and the interface is just amazing. I enjoy the minimalistic approach and the subtle colours to ease eye strain from reading. There is only one small bug, but it’s not the worst thing in the world. It loses points only on the fact you can’t download more books, but that is the point of the app I guess.

A distant third is Stanza. And even though they really fixed up a lot of the issues from the previous version, it’s still a giant pain. What I enjoy about Stanza is the amount of free books that I can read. From indie to Random House, there are a lot of books. But then there are free books on Amazon too. I also enjoy the ability to search from inside the app itself. It has an animation while turning the page, but it is nowhere near as cool as Classics animation. Grudgingly, I admit that they have done a good job with the splash screen, as it shows what page you left off of instead of their logo. It really sucks though when you lose your page all the time and when you open up the app you have to be standing straight up. There was also some small formatting issues, but it’s not that big of a deal. Oh, and they have an intergrated dictionary. Which is useful, but the way it is activated needs to be cleaned up (I always accidentaly bring it up when I don’t want to.)

Oh and let me just tell you what books I’ve read for each.

Kindle: Getting things done, Pragmatic Programmer, currently reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
Classics: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, currently reading Sherlok Holmes.
Stanza: Assassins Apprentice, How to write cleanly.

Reviewing for AppVee.

Two days ago AppVee updated their Twitter. 

 

Looking for one more app reviewer - text only, 1/day min., free apps. Email sample to alex [at

Who wouldn’t like free apps? And 1 review per day does not seem that bad compared to the amount that we write daily in school. So I sent a sample of the Classics App.

 

 

 

Hello, my name is Travis Moore and I will be reviewing Classics for the iPhone/iPod Touch.

Classics is an eBook reader that focuses on old novels that have stood the test of time. Upon opening the App you are greeted with a beautiful virtual bookshelf that the developers have filled with custom book covers that they created themselves. From the bookshelf you can rearrange the books as much as you please, as well as see which books are currently being read. To begin reading, simply tap a book, from here you can see what truly makes Classics worth its price: The colors of the pages are subtle shades of brown to which brings a more “physical” feel to the books, and while turning a page you are presented with an interactive 3D animation. If, for some reason, you do not want the 3D effect you can simply change it to a left / right swipe from the settings menu. As you read a subtle progress bar is filled showing you your relative location to the end of the book. When you are done reading you can simply exit the app, as you will be returned to the page you left off from. This app is great, and is simple and intuitive enough for anyone to use. While the eBooks in this app are free because they are under public domain, I would recommend this app to anyone who loves to read and does not want to suffer from the eyestrain that normal black and white eBook readers give.

4/5

To which I recieved:

Travis,

I’d like to invite you to write for AppVee.

Are you able to do at least 1 review/day?

If so, please print/sign/scan the attached lite contract and register for an account on AppVee.
Afterwards, I’ll activate it for reviewer and get you set up.

Thanks!
Alex

Of course, I’m really excited about this! Summer is coming along and soon I will have enough time to write reviews for applications daily. I can right now, it’s just having to cram them in will be the problem. This is really exciting! I’ve never done anything like this in my life before! And FREE apps? That’s just awesome! I can take this opprotunity to strengthen my writing skills as well, considering I am only a teenager. Very excited, if you didn’t know.

I complain alot…

I complain a lot… I don’t know If it’s just because I’m cynical or writing about praise-worthy things just bores me. Anyhow, I bring this up to to make note of a widespread epidemic. iPhoneupsidedown-itis. I have a problem with apps that allow you to turn your iPhone upside down. First of all, this makes reading/writing useless unless you are standing straight up.

Take safari for example: start with your phone straight up then turn it clockwise. By the time you have turned it upside down, you’ll notice that it stays in landscape mode until you are no longer holding the phone upside down. This is called “the right way” of doing things. This allows you to hold your phone in any direction without having to engage in an epic battle. Now go download evernote or a widescreen email app, try writing in landscape mode. Easy, right? Now lie down on your side and try the same thing. Now it becomes impossible for you to use because THE KEYBOARD KEEPS FREAKING ROTATING!!!!

There are applications not made by apple that follows the correct way of doing things. So it is possible, and not only exclusive to Apple.

Have you ever ran into a situaion where it was imperative that you could turn your phone upside down? I once heard that they do it so the speakers don’t get blocked. Here is a simple solution…. PLUG YOUR HEADPHONES IN!!!! Nobody wants to hear the music that’s played everywhere already! And if it’s imperitive that everyone MUST hear your crappy music, simply move your freaking pinky and cradle your phone! This way you are not blocking your speakers AND you can type.

So developers, I know the chance of ANY of you reading this ranty post is slim, and the chance of ANY of you changing your keyboard is even slimmer, but please…. Think of the vampires!!!

It’s alive!

I have moved from Posterous to WordPress! Now to start shipping all of my old blog posts to wordpress. This is going to be awesome.

-Travis
(yeah, that’s right, I just SIGNED my post)

Stop it Ubuntu. Just…stop.

     It seems that with every release, Ubuntu seems to be getting closer and closerto the dark side…

    Each new release (since Hardy) has brought us darker themes. And the new login screen? Atrocius! It’s disgusting! I’m going to go back and show what it was like back in Ubuntu 6.06.

    Ubuntu 6.06 LTS was the first ShipIt CD that I recieved Ubuntu in the mail in. It was absolutely beautiful, the desktop was a chocolate brown, but that was just the background, not the actual themes themselves. And that could easily be changed with the themes that came along with it. Now, I can’t include pictures, as I am writing this from school, but trust me, Ubuntu used to have TASTE man.. But then they started this up. Oh god, why?!?

Was it really necessary that we do this? And don’t get me started on the login screen. It’s just plaing awful.

The reason why I’m complaining so much is… are we really ready to present this as an Operating System to the masses? As Ubuntu we should be embracing a more easy look torwards our desktop. Right now, it looks like some basement nerd’s pet project. Do you know why so many people hated Vista? Not only was it because of the awful security and the way it treats hardware, but the new look of it too. Microsoft went from nice subtle shades of blue and green with WindowsXP to harsh translucent blacks and light blues.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8f/Windows_XP_SP3.pnghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/54/Windows_Aero.png
Now tell me, which one is more pleasing to your eye. The simple blues and greens? Or the translucent shades of black. I would have to say that the shades of greens are the more pleasing in my opinion, and I once read that the eye is more attracted to greens and blues than any other color. On the left there is serenity, while on the right there is technology. I’m all for technology, but would it be possible to combine the two? Even OpenSuSe understands the need of a peaceful green background combined with shades of blue. If Ubuntu wanted to gotechnologicalthen they should be pointing people to crunchbang, which is completely techy nerdy. Ubuntu really needs to stop, and look at it’s self. Are we an operating system for the basement nerds who don’t get out? Or are we an operating system that even the most technologically inept person can be proud of. Now I know I can always just contribute to this and make my own theme. But you wouldn’t want that… Trust me, you definantly wouldn’t want that. As a 17 year old teenager, I understand a little about design choice and usability. In particular, I think OpenSuSe’s Gilouche is a great theme. It’s simple border and GTK makes it pleasing and fast. I understand that Brown is ubuntu’s “thing” but with the new themes coming out, I think it’s understandable that we take on a new color scheme. Preferably one that is not brown.