Blog Posts.
A Tumblr curating a collection of long-form pieces about the game that was.
The joke is on them though, because any writing about games is better than no writing about games.
And hey, if it’s good enough for the Rolling Stone, it’s good enough for everyone, no?
Late last year Acer announced the C720 Chromebook. A Haswell-powered laptop that was small, thin, and light that offered impressive life was something I had to see, and after waiting a few weeks for local availability to no avail, I had one shipped from the US. After spending a bit of time with it, I’ve found it’s perhaps one of the best laptops I’ve ever used.
The first thing you have to understand about a Chromebook is that while it may look and feel like a normal laptop, it’s pretty different. The operating system it runs, Chrome OS, is basically a web browser and very little else. Because of that, the laptop is at its most useful when connected to the internet. There are a number of offline apps you can run and things you can do when it isn’t, of course, but it’s like having a car without petrol; you can still sit in it, listen to the radio, twiddle some knobs, that kind of thing, but its usefulness will be significantly diminished.
With Chromebooks, Google have latched onto this idea that everyone has an internet connection.
Chrome OS is basically just Chrome the browser, with a few add-ons. While it may not be as fully-fledged as something like Windows or OS X1, it’s still more than capable of performing basic tasks. It comes with a rudimentary file browser for looking at and transferring files from USB sticks and SD cards — something you’ll note iOS doesn’t have. It can view and playback a variety of file formats — it had no trouble with PDF files, images, or even a few video files I threw at it — and you can even sort things out into folders like you would a normal filesystem. It’s the basics, and that’s it2; it’s not spectacular, just serviceable.
And it’s this “not spectacular, just serviceable” attitude that defines the C720 Chromebook. The keyboard, while not exactly the epitome of tactile feedback, is not spectacular, just serviceable; you probably won’t enjoy typing on it for an extended period of time, but it works perfectly well for its intended use. The chiclet-style keys have even less travel than the ones on the standard Apple keyboard3, something I didn’t realise was possible until I started using the keyboard on the C720 to type out blog posts just like this one. While the keys themselves aren’t noticeably smaller than a traditional keyboard, there’s also no keyboard backlighting here either, although to be fair, expecting a keyboard backlight on a $250 laptop is probably asking for a bit much. If I had to improve one area on the C720, it would be the keyboard. It’s fine for typing the occasional web address or Google search, but doing any kind of lengthy typing on it is not spectacular, just serviceable.
I don’t own an Xbox One, but the Titanfall Limited Edition Controller looks amazing.
Shame the game itself didn’t really impress me when I played it during the beta period. Maybe I’ve just fallen out of love with multiplayer first-person shooters (Battlelog says I’ve played 22 hours since launch), but while I appreciate Titanfall for mixing it up and trying to do something new (the jetpacks, the Titans), at the end of the day it’s just another COD-like experience which doesn’t really do anything for me.
Updated 04/04/14: Microsoft have Titanfall-themed Xbox One consoles, too, but you can’t buy those. And yes, they look as impressive as their controller counterparts.
In response to an XKCD strip about an insular community born from a defunct but still active product support forum, Colin Birge shared the story of someone’s touching conversation with Clippy.
Worth reading. I had no idea responses to Clippy were monitored.
Pure gold:
It is with a heavy heart that I must put this invaluable relic of culinary excellence up for sale, as there is only so much power that one man can wield for so long. Many moons ago, I unwittingly bought this magical forge of nourishment from a sand swept bazaar named ‘Barbecues Galore’. The gloriously bearded one-armed merchant warned me of untold rewards, that of which I could never fathom at the time. Since that fateful day, I have achieved flight without the use of propulsion, bedded Scarlett Johanssen on the back of a unicorn, and maintained a 100% strike rate when inserting a USB stick. It is now time for someone else to reap the life changing benefits of this mystical contraption of sustenance.
The original link is gone, but Google has cached it here.
Thanks to a lack of a constant internet connection, I wrote a lot of tweets that didn’t get published. A few were thanks to frequent trips to Starbucks, but many, many others didn’t. Without further ado, I present: tweets from the road: stuff that didn’t get posted during my time away from the constantly connected web (note that some are actually longer than 140 characters). There’s a backstory to most of them, but I’ll leave it up to your imagination to fill in the blanks. In some kind of chronological order…
If you look closely, you can see the AMP tower or whatever it’s called.
What most people don’t know is there’s a game you play on intl flights called “respect other people’s personal space as much as possible”.
This guy next to me lost very badly, as did the woman in front who had her chair reclined almost the entire flight.
Travelled something like 6000 kilometres yesterday, but Fitbit reports a mere 5500 steps taken. Technology, hey?
Think my Comply foam tips worked just as well as a pair of noise-cancelling headphones would have on that flight, at a fraction of the cost.
Day two of my overseas trip and my sister already has Wi-Fi. Me? I can wait a few more days to sync my Fitbit, check email, etc.
Kinda disappointed in myself. Only lasted just over a day without Wi-Fi before I succumbed to the mistress of TCP.
Saw the first Hunger Games on the plane over. It was OK, I guess, if you’re willing to overlook the entire dystopian future aspect.
Riddick, on the other hand, was kind of stupid. Did not enjoy.
Worst thing about travelling, by far, is the sub-quality showers. I can deal with everything else, but showers with no water pressure, no.
Can you tell I slept in these pants? Because I totes did.
My sister just revealed to me she turned off autocorrect on her iPod touch. The shame.
Always amazes me how great iPhone battery life is in airplane mode.
…which is exactly what I need on long bus rides from KLIA to my father’s remote hometown. Just me and Miley, or Kilometrey as she’s known here
I seem to be catching a lot of buses in Malaysia. It’s like I never left Hobart!