Hey – My Hama Bead Patterns are popular so here are some more. These could always be used for cross-stitch/needlepoint too, if that’s your thing.
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Hama Time: More Mario Hama Patterns
These are my links for January 14th through January 21st:
- Anonymize your Google searches with the GoogleSharing add-on for Firefox –
- “Memorize Now” Helps You Commit Long Passages to Memory [Memory] –
- Monday morning science hoax – I'm absolutely going to have to try this out.
- Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do) – I am taking notes for future reference.
- KeepFocused is a portable Pomodoro Technique timer for Windows – I've tried to get into carious productivity techniques like GTD but this one seems simple enough that it might just work!
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Hama Time: Pacman Patterns
I’ve been at it again and this time, for your beading pleasure, I present Pacman Hama patterns.
These are my links for January 7th through January 13th:
- Kodu, Microsoft's game creation lab for kids, comes to the PC – If Kids can do this, maybe I can too!
- Kodu, Microsoft’s game creation lab for kids, comes to the PC –
- ChromiumOS Zero Boots Faster, Offers Automatic Updates [Updates] –
- Five Best DVD-Ripping Tools [Hive Five] –
- SpeakerShare Streams Music Between PCs with Minimal Fuss [Downloads] –
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Podcast Novel Ordering Solution
I’ve been listening to lots of podcasts recently and particularly enjoying the Solar Clipper series. My main problem has been that the iPod Touch defaults to playing the newest podcast first, so that I always have to skip backwards to get to the next episode. I found a neat little solution for this that I thought I should share. It only really works for completed podcasts, or podcast novels though.
I downloaded all of the podcasts to iTunes, then selected the podcast and selected “Get Info” from the right-click menu. I then changed the content type form Podcast to Audiobook. This moves the completed podcast into the audiobook section and gives you correct ordering – sweet!
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App Review: Bubble Defence
Bubble defence is a tower defence game. There are several of these available on the Market and this is one of the simplest looking, if no less addictive for it.
The basic concept is to build up defence towers along a path to try to defeat wave after wave of increasingly armoured bubbles which follow that path.
There are four different kinds of towers:
The Basic Tower – shoots a single shot
The Six Barrel Tower – shoots 6 equally spaced shots at once
The Flame Tower – melts ice balloons
The Transporter – transports balloons back to the beginning of the track
The variety of enemies isn’t huge but it’s an elegant solution. Shooting each enemy removes 1 “layer” of protection until you finally get down to the last layer and destro them
You earn money foe every hit but, unlike many of these games there’s no interest to be earned by saving your cash
These towers are used to defeat the 7 different kinds of enemy. Most of these are basi
There are 7 different path layouts and Five levels of difficulty.
Bubble defence is available as a free ad-supported version or as a full version for 1.99. One thing that annoyed me after buying the full version, and is something I’ve seen in several upgrades of that kind, is that your history of high scores isn’t imported to the full version. It might be a bit of extra work but it would be rewarding for those of us who’d played enough of the free version to cough up the cash.
Bubble Defense is a tower defense game. There are several of these available on the Market and this is one of the simplest looking, if no less addictive for it.
The basic concept is to build up defense towers along a path to try to defeat wave after wave of increasingly armoured bubbles which follow that path.
There are four different kinds of towers:
- The Basic Tower – shoots a single shot
- The Six Barrel Tower – shoots 6 equally spaced shots at once
- The Flame Tower – melts ice balloons
- The Transporter – transports balloons back to the beginning of the track
These towers are used to defeat the 7 different kinds of enemy. Most of these are basically the same, with different colours and speeds, all nested in one another. Shooting each enemy removes 1 “layer” of protection until you finally get down to the last layer and destroy them. The most difficult enemy shoots back though, so be careful
You earn money for every hit but, unlike many similar games there’s no interest to be earned by saving your cash, so feel free to splash out.
There are 7 different path layouts and 5levels of difficulty, leaving quite a lot of variety and replay value.
Bubble defense is available as a free ad-supported version or as a full version for 99 cents. One thing that annoyed me after buying the full version, and is something I’ve seen in several upgrades of that kind, is that your history of high scores isn’t imported to the full version. It might be a bit of extra work but it would be rewarding for those of us who’d played enough of the free version to cough up the cash.
I’ve had a problem with my G1 for the past week or two and today I found a solution. My Gmail wouldn’t sync with the device in the same way that it had before. It seemed to be stuck in the past and I couldn’t send or receive any new email using the Gmail app. There was always a big button at the end of my inbox saying “No Conection” with a “Retry” button that didn’t seem to help.
Today I found the solution for the problem on the Google help pages, via the androidcommunity site, and it simply involves clearing the app’s storage.
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News Alert: R.O.U.S.s Discovered
All Princess Bride (buy on iTunes) fans knew it was only a matter of time but the BBC are announcing the discovery of Rodents of Unusual Size (R.O.U.S.)
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Android Update: I rooted my G1
Having toyed with the idea for a while I was really excited to see the “one click root” that appeared this week. Having installed the app from the Android Market (I’d like to see Apple allowing yellowSn0w onto the App store) I ran it, a few times before I worked out the whole system then updated to the CyanogenMod.
I don’t have any benchmarks but my perception is certainly that it’s faster and sleeker than the system I had before, and that’s very exciting. Having also heard the rumours that the next version of the Android OS might not fit onto a G1 I’m delighted to have the freedom to upgrade past the point that others might see as necessary.
Lifehacker has a nice guide for those interested in following suit. The only thing that caught me out was that the firmware was reset to the standard after a reboot – I had to re-run the hack software then reboot.
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Tech Thought: My New Phone
So having only recently acquired my G1 and having fallen fairly significantly for my iPod Touch, I now have about 16 months to think about what phone I’ll have next. Had I not already bought my touch I’d probably have gone for an iPhone, but havnig had my G1 for a while I’m torn.
The iPod touch is very pretty, very functional and has some great apps available for it. even though i’ve jailbroken it there is always the fear that an Apple update will break it or that something will stop working. There have been several prominent examples of tech-minded people abandoning their iPhones in favour of Android based devices. I have some sympathy with this.
I know that the g1 is not the most beloved piece of hardware on the planet but I’m really enjoying it. A large part of that is down to the improvements brought to me by the Cyanogen mod and the huge performance benefits which it brings. There have been rumours that the G1 might not have enough built in memory to handle future Android updates so I’m glad to have the rooted handset to see me through. Android has a long way to go but it is only now starting to come out if its shell and have proper applications built for it. The only way appears to be up.
I suppose it’s pointless to speculate which handset I’ll have. The market has changed significantly in the last 18 months – I’m quite excited to see what happens next.