Game, Tech & Life Trends

Kids….

Daniel Hall — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:10:37 +0000

My little girl likes to have a big “cup” full of hot cocoa every morning. But, this morning she asked for two things, hot cocoa AND vegetable beef soup. Brooklynn is know as the food waster, so I tell her that she doesn’t need both, because usually the hot cocoa will make her full and full for a couple hours. But for some reason (maybe because I has just gotten up) I decided I would fix her both. Nothing like some good old fashioned Vegetable beef soup, yum. So I fix her hot cocoa first, a smaller portion than usual since I want her to be able to eat both. When I end up bringing her the bowl of soup, I noticed that she’s 3/4 done with the cocoa and I start to get worried. Anyway, so I go sit down for a moment, drink some coffee and read. A few minutes later, I hear her jumping on the couch saying, “look, my belly is big, do you wanna see?!” Now, this usually means she’s done or not hungry anymore, so I get up and go check her bowl and she’s eaten about 2 potatoes. As I’m grabbing her bowl to put away, she runs up to the table and says she’s gonna eat now, but I tell her no and explain to her that having the 2 things to eat is just too much for her. So, after putting the soup away and walk out of the kitchen, I notice that she’s pounding the last 1/4 of her now warm hot cocoa. That’s my little girl, Ms. Ridiculous.

Sony Ericcson X1i Impressions

Daniel Hall — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:12:24 +0000

I just receive my Sony Ericsson Xperia X1i yesterday. I could barely contain my excitement! I won’t dig into the specs too much, but if you want to get a closer look, click here. Unboxing isn’t anything like the iPhone experience, no wows or big surprises really. The phone, when first seen was not as striking as i’ve seen on the ‘net. It felt really light when I first removed it, about the same weight as my 5800XM, but then I realized that the battery wasn’t in place yet. However, after installing the battery, it actually felt pretty good, yeah, it’s got weight, but it’s not a beast, it’s solid and evenly distributed. Ok, so powering it on, i’ve had WiMo Pro once before and a few WiMo Smartphones, I didn’t remember the boot taking so long in the past. The iPhone, with FW2 was alot faster. In realtime, it takes maybe 1-2 minutes to start. If you’re gonna be a WiMo user, you need patience. So, i’ve only had it 1 day, here’s my initial impressions.

What I like:
It’s a looker (the longer you have it, the better it looks)
Screen is absolutely stunning (color, res, the best viewing angles i’ve ever seen)
Panels (Very cool. They’re like apps & home screens. There’s alot of potential here)
Keyboard (take a little bit getting used to, but is really nice, the slider feels great too)
Customization (it’s WiMo, there’s thousands of apps available to tweak your device)
HTML email (plain text is so 2007)
Touch control can range better than average
GPS (very fast start, obviously great with a-gps enabled)
3.5MM headphone jack (thank you! no more adapters!)

What I don’t like:
Volume keys (nearly impossible to use)
No home button! (while some might feel it isn’t needed, it would be useful in other panels)
Default Virtual keyboard is terrible (it’s way too small, install a new one)
Optical mouse (if it were bigger, it might be useful)
Mono loud speaker (while it has some push to it, you can’t use it to listen to music)
No proximity sensory
No accelerometer
Not “all”" apps are optimized for the WVGA screen

Reserved judgment:
Music player
Camera
Video recorder
Charging via USB

While viewing and comparing my 5800 to the Xperia, you can definitely see where each was going. The X1 was targeted as a high-end business device, hence the $800+ initial price tag, while the 5800 was targeted as a “first smartphone”, music device. I believe that SE succeeded in about 90% of what they set out for and I find refreshing to see Sony go against status quo and push and help move the stagnant smartphone arena.

HTC Touch Diamond 2 Quick Review

Daniel Hall — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:08:57 +0000

Ok, I’ve had my Touch Diamond2 now for over 3 weeks. It has replaced my SE Xperia X1i and I honestly was a little nervous at first since it cost so much and because of the issues I was having with the X1. But, After having read a couple hands-on and previews, I decided to take the jump. And really, there wasn’t anything that caught my eye at that time. Ok, so the Diamond2 is a Windows Mobile 6.1 based device in HTC’s Touch Class of mobile smartphones.

Specs

Gallery

When I received my package, I first noted the box, it was, matte black and pretty plain looking. Not the best first impression and certainly not like opening an iPhone for the first time. Opening the box now, I proceeded to pull out the cardboard. There it was, the Touch Diamond2. It’s a square candy bar shaped phone, it’s a hair wider than the Nokia 5800, but a 1/3 less thick. Obviously it was extremely light without the battery, but when putting in the battery, it was still impressively light. It’s not cheap light, but it has a nice feel, it’s solid. Powering on the device, after inserting my SIM and Memory card (yes, no memory card included), you’re greeted with and HTC logo, a nice sound effect, a WinMo splash screen and then HTC’s custom setup. It’s quick and doesn’t require the usual screen calibration or password prompts. You can do those later if you wish, but HTC has pretty much nailed the sensitivity. The first thing you will notice, obviously, when the device is first loaded is TouchFLO 3D. It’s HTC’s skin/interface to try to removed alot of Windows Mobile’s hideous underpinning, and for the most part, does an excellent job. I actually wish HTC would integrate TF3D more into the default applications, like SMS, because the tab version of SMS is slick. I’ve used TF3D on the X1 before, ported from Rhodium and Blackstone, so I know what it’s about. TF3D is fast and smooth on the TD2, impressively so. There’s no default landscape, but it can be enable through the registry or other tweak apps, but it really isn’t that necessary since not all the tabs are optimized for it. The default keyboard, ezinput, is very good. The 3.2″ screen makes the keys large enough and the flat flush screen make it easy to tap the keys on the edge, unlike the X1, which you had to angle your finger. HTC touts the TD2 as a conversation-centric phone.

“The HTC Touch Diamond2 arranges your conversations by people, not just by how you speak with them. When looking at your contacts, you now can see a history of your conversation in whatever form it took place. It doesn’t matter if you get asked about a recent email while you are talking on the phone, or if you’re in a café reminiscing about a friend’s recent text – all your interactions are neatly laid out for viewing and follow-up in a tree of communication with that person.”

This means that you can have separate SMS, email, events (like Facebook updates and birthdays) and call logs tabs from with the contacts card. It’s a great idea and I hope they can integrate more in the events tab. Email is better now since 6.1 supports HTML email, but you must be running Exchange 2007 for this support. The internet tab has a default search bar, YouTube and Opera Mobile. The YouTube app is simple awesome, open search, play and in high res, none of the watered down mobile versions. The vidoes look wonderful on the 800×480 screen (recommend encoding in DivX). The processor chews through the vidoes like butter. Opera Mobile is a super experience too, it renders really well, it’s fast enough and I like the auto full screen. The calendar tab is a decent, but there are alot of 3rd party apps that perform better. I do like the weather integration though. The music tab is ok as well, it has a little bit of the cover flow involved, but it still needs more work as a player. Music DOES sound excellent however and quite possibly bests the X1 on this front, but then again, I have SRS WOW installed and Audeo Phonek headphones. Your mileage my vary. The weather tab, I think everybody has seen this, it’s a partially animated weather tab with large icons. It looks sweet and functions great, but for some reason the forecasts (accuweather?) are mostly off.

The hardware. I personally love the size of the phone, the dimensions are for me, perfect. I loved the feel of the BlackBerry Pearl too, FYI. There are 4 front facing buttons, send, Windows, back and end (which doubles and home). They all have a nice tactile feel and work flawlessly. The top also houses the earphone, led, gps and light sensor. There insn’t a proximity sensor, but I really wish there was. Then there is the volume rocker on the left side, which in my opinion are the opposite of the front facing buttons. No tactile feel and sometimes does not register button presses. On the top of the phone is the power button, which also acts as the suspend key. It’s placed on the left, which is a little awkward, but at least it works well like the front facing buttons. On the right is a single speaker and it does it’s job well. It’s not the loudest nor the softest, but I do wish there were 2 for stereo playback. On the bottom of the phone is the mic and USB port. That’s right, no 3.5mm jack. You must buy an adapter if you want you use your own headphones. I knew this coming in though, so I bought an adapter because I love my Phoneks. The backside of the phone sports the 5MP camera, and it actually works pretty well. If it had a Xenon flash, I’d be ecstatic, but nay, it doesn’t, so you’ll have to make due with massive amounts of sunlight. Videos are also recorded pretty decently, but it certainly doesn’t replace a camcorder or even a camera. Now, I’ve noticed some impressive things so far with the D2, first with Coreplayer, which plays EVERYTHING smoothly and the battery life, which last exceptionally long, as long as you don’t install hacks like SDKcerts or SIPchange. Also, surprisingly, the screen is legible in sunlight! A first for a Windows Mobile device! All kidding aside, the screen is wonderful, it’s bright, sharp and the viewing angles are good. *New addition, GPS. I just want to say that it is excellent, I use it with iGO8 and live search and it is just an awesome experience.

So, having come from the X1, I was a little skeptical, but boy am I glad I did. I’m more of a media centric guy, so losing the hardware keyboard isn’t a huge loss to me. The optimized CPU, along with better camera and screen make this one of the best phones I’ve ever used. In all honesty, It’s probably THE best I’ve owned. I Recommend this phone to anyone that wants a great all around phone. With TONS of apps already available, a Windows 6.5 upgrade path and a large community (XDA) behind this, the D2 is going to only get better.

A Whole Lotta Catch Up! (And I Don’t Mean What You Dip Your Fries In.)

Daniel Hall — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:05:16 +0000

Thanksgiving came and went. So did a few phones, most notably my G1. That was replaced by the Nokia 5800, which, surprisingly I still have! It’s really a great phone. Hands down it’s my favorite one so far, but it still has its faults. I gave a brief description in my previous post, some months back so I’m not gonna linger with the details. So, here goes, because I do have alot of stuff.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

What I like:
Beautiful screen
Fun web browsing (Flash Lite 2.0 built-in)
Music sounds great
Customizable
Good reception and call quality
VGA Video recording
Built-in RSS reader
Nice overall width and length
Good GPS

What I don’t like:
Too many presses to do most tasks
Implementation of taps and double taps is not standard (tap once here, then tap twice here, then tap once?)
Processing can lag at times
Which makes the screen seem not so responsive
Some presses do not register
Apps are not being converted fast enough
Built-in “download!” store is sorely lacking (it ain’t no app store or market)
Low light pics and video are pretty grainy
A tad thick

What should be fixed?
Auto rotating homescreen.
More homescreen options
Ability to choose 1 tap or 2
More long press options
Native HTML formatted email
Ability to adjust the accelerometer manually
Touch menu key
Nokia software store?
Better camera/video drivers
Faster more optimized OS (yeah, that’s asking alot)
Better qwerty KB in portrait (wider)
Separation of video & images in the gallery
High frame rate qvga recording
More codec support (divx, xvid, flac, audible)
Support for higher bit rates for lossless audio
Make the scroll bar in the web browser actually work or allow for it to be flicked/dragged for longer page scrolls

Summary:
All in all, despite its weaknesses, the 5800XM is a very capable device. It’s fun, it’s hip and it does ALOT of things and most of them it does right. It’s only been updated once, but I imagine at the end of its life, it will be an entirely new beast.

GAMES!

More games than you can shake a stick at!
Star Ocean 1st – PSP
Star Ocean 2nd – PSP
New Super Mario Brothers – DS
Chrono Trigger – DS
Away: Shuffle Dungeon – DS
Pokeman Ranger 2 – DS
Sonic Chronicles – DS
Dragon Ball Origins – DS
Kirby Super Star Ultra – DS
Mega Man: Powered Up – PSP
Street Fighter Alpha: MAX – PSP
Hot PXL – PSP
Legend of Heroes – PSP
Mega Man: Maverick Hunter – PSP
Monster Hunter Freedom 2 (again) – PSP
Burnout Legends – PSP
Kingdom of Paradise – PSP
Odin Sphere – PS2
Capcom vs. SNK 2 – GC
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2 – DS
Crisis Core (again) – PSP
Dungeon Seige (again) – PSP
SingStar 80′s – PS2
SingStar 90′s – PS2
SingStar Pop – PS2
Warioland – Wii
Metal Gear Solid Anthology – PS2
Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes – GC
Timesplitters 2 – GC
Shadow of the Colossus – PS2
Bomberman – Wiiware
Guitar Hero: World Tour – Wii
Skies of Arcadia – GC

I’m probably missing more, but I can’t remember. LoL
Hopefully….hopefully I’ll be able to give a quick rundown of those games.

On No! A New Phone!

Daniel Hall — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:05:04 +0000

Yep, I bought into hype once again. This time it’s the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia’s first (some say second) smartphone. Boasting a 3.2″ touch sensitive (resistive) display capable of showing 640×360 via 16 Million colors. It is a beautiful display really and has excellent viewing angles. Running on Symbian OS 9.5 (which is basically 9.3 with touch) the phone is pretty fast. It’s also equipped with a 3.2MP camera with dual LED flash and can record video 640×480 @ 30FPS. Now the camera is so-so, but it does the job, as does the flash (all cameras need flash). There is no geotagging out of the box, but nokia does have a beta app that works fine. Videos are smooth, but the mic is a tad middling resulting in low volume sounds.

More to follow in part 2 of my Nokia 5800 XM impressions. Stay tuned!

Epiphany #1

Daniel Hall — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:31:24 +0000

I’ve been searching for years for an explanation about some sort of mental out of body experiences that i’ve been having randomly for quite some time. While listening to Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, the word anesthetic piqued my interest. At that point, I paused the book and did some online searching. After reading the history of anesthetics and what they actually do, I clicked on a link that explained some of the types of anesthetics. Now, somewhere reading about Ketamine, I noticed some of the effects if could have, one being dissociative amnesia or depersonalization. Investigating that, brought me to my epiphany. When i’m fully relaxed, sitting up right and letting my focus untrain, I can feel (my first though was sleeping with my eyes open, but being aware) a sense of being out of my body. Now, here is where the epiphany comes in. I believe i’m simply (not simply actually) meditating! I’ve been trying to tell people for years about this, but I could never explain it well enough. Now that I know, I’m going to read up a little bit on it and see if I can pinpoint why or how I do it. Being Vietnamese, my first step is to look into Buddha. I’ll let you know what I find.

What’s On My G1? Part 4

Daniel Hall — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:52:23 +0000

Well, the flood has turned into a trickle. It has become increasingly harder to find any useful apps lately. Part of the problem could be that i’m impatient, or it could be the fact that Google isn’t allowing for any paid apps/games just yet on the Market. Thus having developers keep their apps under wraps. But, hopefully that’s not the case. I’m sure all of you have noticed that the Android Market is a Beta, as with most Google products. I bring this up because I still am not enamored with the way new version of apps are not advertised as updates, unlike the Apple App Store. Hopefully Google will remedy this when the Android Market is out of Beta. Anyway, there are some new apps and games that I have downloaded in the past week or so, and they are:

1.) DoggCatcher – It’s an app to download Podcasts. Useful and I like it, but the name needs to change. I didn’t bother looking at it until 2 days later.
2.) meebo – IM app over wireless, but so far you can only sign into 1 system at a time. Supports AIM, MSN, Yahoo, GT, Jabber & ICQ.
3.) Ring Control – It uses the accelerometer to set you phone in silent or vibrate by turning your phone on its face or putting it upside down. It’s pretty cool, but doesn’t always stay on.
4.) SMS Screen Alert Prefs – Turns your screen on if you G1 is in sleep when you receive an SMS message. On the useful scale i’d give it a 3/5 since you’d have to have the phone in front of you to notice. Plus, the screen didn’t stay on for the time I told it to.
5.) Sokoban – A puzzle game where you move pieces to a specified place with a certain amount of moves. The levels are somewhat maze-like and some have obstacles to overcome. The version on the Android Market didn’t install properly for me, so I went to the devs homepage and got it.
6.) SplashID – An app for storing your passwords or other confidential information. Not the best GUI, but it should keep getting better as it’s currently the best on the Market now. I believe it supports AES 256-bit encryption.

Well, that’s it for now and i’m sure there will be more coming. Until then….

2 More Games to the Collection

Daniel Hall — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:25:40 +0000

I just picked up Meta Gear Acid (Ac!d) for the PSP and Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia for the DS. After having played the heck out of Acid 2, I can say that they are different. Acid 2 makes a lot of improvements to the system, while on the surface, the story in Acid 1 sounds a little better so far. As for Castlevania, i’m only 3 maps into it, but I can definitely say that this is one of the best experiences outright i’ve played in quite some time. I’ll say this, the music is fantastic and the character art is amazing. I’m looking forwarding to getting further into this.

On a side note, in Fallout 3 i’ve finally reached level 5. But, everytime I level up I always have this feeling of if I screwed up my perks and specials. Anyway, I’m starting to wander aimlessly because to me, it seems like some of the quests are broken. For example, Lucy West sends me on a quest to deliver a letter to her family, but when I get to the area and find them, my quest notes still say I need to deliver the message. So I went back thinking it would update, and tell her but the quest still says deliver the letter. *sigh*. There’s another quest with the water repair guy that seems broken too. Maybe i’m doing them wrong, I dunno, but I am following the steps i’m sure.

On another side note, I finally downloaded Left 4 Dead demo (PC)! I’m gonna play tonight with my brother. I played about 5 minutes last night, before my son turned off my computer, and it was pretty cool. I’ve got it reserved on the 17th. Can’t wait!

G1 RC30: Behind the scenes

Daniel Hall — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:41:39 +0000

Well, a couple of days ago I was notified of the RC30 firmware update for my G1. Obviously, everytime I see an update, I jump. I just love new things. However, after downloading and rebooting my device, I didn’t notice anything new at all, no outward changes. From what I hear, the patch fixes a serious security hole in which RC29 or earlier had. With this, the G1 was interpreting all keystokes as a Shell command, i.e. typing reboot would literally reboot your G1. I’m not sure what other commands were available, but I guess somebody could make write a script to keep rebooting your device. But, I don’t know, i’m not a programmer. Anyway, no changes to the camera, it still….. is not good under less than optimal light.

Get a little more out of your G1: Mobile Optimized

Daniel Hall — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:58:12 +0000

So I was browsing a little today on my G1 and I had a flashback. If you’re into Video games as much as me, then you probably already know, but if you’re still going to sites like, joystiq, nintendowiifanbody, dsfanboy and kotaku, you probably already noticed that they don’t load blazing fast. Well, here’s a partial cure, how about loading up the mobile versions used by the iPhone?

For the Joystiq network, *fanboy, you will use i.joystiq.com etc.
for Kotaku, you’ll use the standard m.kotaku.com
It’s still sad to see that gametrailers doesn’t support the G1…..

These look great. If anybody has any other iPhone/Safari optimized sites, let me know.