iOS7...Coming This Fall

While it's always exciting to follow the WWDC to see what's coming in the next iOS, we always forget how we're then set up for another long wait for the actual iOS to be available.

And after 6 iOS versions with the same UI, we can't wait for the fresh new look. We do agree that the UI is polarising, given the colour scheme, but overall what the new UI means for us is the amount of time we'll spend Macturbating once more. From the photobox-like parallax effect, to browsing moments and collections in the Photo app (although, given that memory space is still limited, those photos won't be permanently on the iPhone), to rearranging apps into different pages in a folder...hoo yeah, iOS 7 should keep us occupied until next year when iOS 8 will come out.

It's a shame iOS 7 still doesn't allow us to manually place app icons anywhere on the grid but still auto-arranges it from top to bottom, left to right. Personalisation still not fully there yet.

After the initial excitement at the iOS 7 video and the brand new 'pop'-ish look, what are we looking forward to in the new iOS? When iOS 2 came out, we happily paid up USD10 to upgrade our iPod Touch and have a look through the App Store - although we held out from paying for any apps for a long time. When iOS 3 came out, there was cut, copy, paste, video recording and MMS to finally made the iPhone a decent phone to consider (when compared to the Nokias then that already had all these features...).

iOS 4 had multitasking and folders (woo less home screen pages!) and iOS 5 brought the Notification Centre (finally), iCloud and iMessage. Stuff that we would definitely use every day on the iPhone.

With iOS 6...probably the only thing we were really interested in was Facebook integration. Not Maps - we don't use the Maps feature every day. What's more, Flyover wasn't a global feature, only for select places (and even then, we can expect Singapore and Bangkok to get those features first, like Street View on Google Maps or even 3D buildings). And Facebook integration - well, the only plus point really was being able to see birthdays from the Notification Centre. Otherwise it pretty much screwed up our Contact List by renaming them to their Facebook profile names (and this after we spend time unifying facebook contacts to those in our address book) even though we specifically chose the Address Book name to be displayed instead. There was also an instance when, instead of texting a contact, an email was sent to his Facebook email instead.

Gave up on Facebook integration (at least, integration with our contacts). And with MAS the only app using Passbook...pfft.

For us, iOS 6 didn't have that 'standout feature' to get us excited to upgrade immediately (not to mention, many held off upgrading because of Google Maps which weren't available in the Malaysian App Store).

iOS Version History: A Visual Timeline infographic by Angelina.

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So. iOS 7! Control Centre is definitely welcomed (Android!). The new look of the Photos app is great, too - finally some sort of organised look to all the photos! New look to multitasking (WebOS!) and an easier 'flick to close' gesture. AirDrop...well, until everyone uses an iPhone 5, we'll still be sending this via iMessage or email (and capped at 5 photos per email still?) while others go around the room bumping their phones with others. Don't think we'll be making use of iTunes Radio (data and battery life!) much if at all, too.

So...really, we guess the feature we'd be looking out for most of all in iOS 7? The new look and feel. That's it, heh. Simple expectations.

iOS Boredgaming

Given how we've not been able to join the friday night board game group much (if at all), we've been eyeing the App Store for games that have managed to make the transition to digital form. And there's been quite a fair few, much to our surprise actually!

We think one of the first board games based on a physical version we ever came across in the App Store would be Zooloretto. Visuals-wise, this looked better with animal sprites instead of tiles and lots of animal noises. That time we'd only an iPod Touch (no iPhone yet and the iPad hasn't existed) and it was a good start. AI was decent and we spent a fair amount of time playing that (among other iOS games, of course).

Then we got our iPhone, and Carcassone was announced. Carcassone was the first board game we actually bought too, and the introductory price of $4.99 was tempting (and turns out to be a good thing too, the price of the game never dropped from the usual $9.99 as far as we know!). Another plus point? Universal app. Looks great on both iPhone and iPad and still a mainstay on both devices (although to be honest we only play this as a multiplayer with the Chief occasionally).

Bang! was announced, we tried the Lite version featuring the founding fathers but somehow Bang! in essence is still best played in person (how else can one lie to the Sheriff?).

When Ascension was announced, we tried the lite version and was soon hooked. Couldn't bring ourself to shell out $9.99, though, not until they updated the app to include the expansions. Then we basically threw our money, buying the expansions. It's still one of our most-played iOS games, even though we rarely go online for multiplayer games.

Hey, That's My Fish! is a great game for introducing friends to board games when played on the iPad, although we suppose they'll assume it's just an iOS game instead of being a digital version of the board game. Come to think of it we wouldn't actually want to buy the physical version of Hey, That's My Fish! We'd go crazy setting up the tiles after a while!

Bought Neuroshima Hex, but we're not to keen on the setting of the game, hence after a game or two we tend to leave the game aside.

Ticket To Ride initially was announced for the iPad, but we were already spoilt by iOS app pricing and somehow can't bring ourself to pay for the app. Then Ticket To Ride Pocket for the iPhone was announced at 99¢ and we snapped that up immediately. It's a great game, the small screen might take a bit of getting used to but we're ok with that.

Caylus came out and it was an impulse buy for us...only to be stung a few days later when the game went on sale. But now we finally get to figure out how the mid-game and late-game works. When the board game first came out, we understood what to do for the early game but somehow lost our way by the mid-game. We figure this was because we never bothered much with checking the costs of the expensive buildings that earn lots of victory points. Amazing how the game works on the iPhone decently too with a bit of scrolling.

Le Havre we bought when it was on sale, and while its an interesting game we honestly did not want to spend the time learning the functions of the different buildings. It does have an Agricola-ish feel, though.

Magic: The Gathering - Duels Of The Planeswalker 2013 was announced with iPad support and we were rather excited for that, because we got Duels 2012 when it was on sale on Steam and we found it to satisfy our MtG itch quite well. Even though the decks are limited to the theme decks, it's still good enough and way cheaper than spending on the actual card game. Duels 2013 even had expansion decks based on the Ravnican guilds (without their guild mechanics, sadly, but the decks were themed appropriately still) and while we paid for the first expansion, we're holding off from buying the rest just yet (who knows, they may drop the price when Duels 2014 comes out, hur hur).

We bought Puerto Rico earlier this year, honestly for the only reason that we were on a trip, we were craving to play PR and we had no access to the PR Evolver Excel file where we've always been playing. We weren't really keen to get PR because it was only for the iPad (with the exception of Duels 2013, every other game could be played on the iPhone), but now that we've got it on the iPad, gameplay is ok. We still get our quick fixes using the excel file, but the upside of the app compared to the excel file is that we can randomise the starting position of players.

So.

Lately we had the itch for some quick game to play on our phone. Ascension's still our default when we have a few minutes but a game takes some 5-10 minutes, while we were looking for something shorter. Granted, there're plenty of iOS games out there, we could play Bejewelled Blitz (not Tetris Blitz though, the game was spoiled with all the in-your-face power ups pop-ups that the game try to get you to spend with the in-game currency that we lost interest in playing "one more time") or a level of Angry Birds but we wanted something that was short but didn't have us racing against a timer, didn't require us to focus too much on sliding our finger on the screen like Ticket To Ride Pocket (in case our attention was divided elsewhere), or replaying the stage (as we do with Angry Birds until we nail that 3 stars!).

And so we ended up getting Lost Cities yesterday. Verdict? Good choice. The game is short, the rules understood within a game, and there's replayability!

Actually, heck, for all our reasons we might have just wanted to BUY an app for the sake of retail therapy. At least it's a game that we're happy with!

Next, we wait for Agricola to finally be released. It's been delayed, we hear.

Social Tedium

It's been ages (again) since we've last looked to Blogger. What with all the various forms of social media and the fact that typing on a mobile device is no walk in the park (we're using the iPad for this as we don't think our thumbs are ready to type out a full post...but then again what is a full post), we've pretty much left this blog like a diary stuck in a drawer in the attic.

While posting on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram is far quicker and easier, well...it's certainly not a great way to remember things that happen.

Navigate Facebook's timeline? Very much dependant on our Internet connection, as if we're trying to search for something that happened vaguely in the second or third quarter of either 2010 or 2009, we'd have to click on the month and start scrolling down to the older posts (and hope that our connection doesn't drop and stop Facebook from further loading old posts).

Let's not even bother looking for old stuff on Twitter.

OK we've actually stopped typing out this post on the iPad, and have actually switched over to typing on the PC because why the hell are we using the iPad to do this when we have a proper keyboard to hammer on in the first place, we have no idea. Probably to prevent ourself from going on a typing diarrhoea.

So. If we're going to maintain this blog, shall we further integrate it with the rest of our social media? We can just imagine it now, using a photo post as an example:
1. Take photo.
2. Edit as necessary using Instagram.
3. Type out quick post, add in whatever hashtags as we see fit.
4. Copy text of said post.
5. Get Instagram to post to Facebook, and probably Tumblr.
6. Go to either our Photos or the Twitter app, and draft same post. Edit text to fit 160 character limitation if necessary. Post.
7. Go to the Google+ app, repeat process.
8. Go to the Blogger app, repeat process. Elaborate text as we see fit.

Facepalm. But we think what we'll do is to wait for the new iPad Mini, then get a Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for that...that is, if we still blog by the time the new iPad Mini launches.

Boardgame Cafe: Crude Oil

So tonight we ended up back at Boardgame Cafe as we were free tonight and there were new games from Essen to try out.

First up tonight: Crude Oil, with sinbadwolf, Khim, angxj and yours truly.

It's a dice-throwing game where players take turns throwing dices to activate assets they've built on their quadrant of the board (we kept thinking of Battleship).

You throw the dices, activate buildings that land on the coordinate lines (harvesting crude oil, refining crude oil to gasoline and selling said gasoline if possible), and buying/selling assets as the player sees fit according to the market forces.

The game starts with everyone having $200mil, and gameplay progresses until a player gets $750mil, then there's a final turn for all players (except the player that triggered the endgame step).

Pretty much looks like a quick game of throw-dice, get oil, buy-sell, and hopefully don't get screwed by the market.

Jack208 said the game would take around an hour or so to complete. Our game went from...late 9.30pm all the way till 1am. We're thinking this was due to dice rolls and inventory hoarding. The game began with everyone going roughly for the same strategy (a refinery to convert crude oil to gasoline, a couple of gas stations to sell gasoline to customers, and as many oil drills to dig for oil), with angxj going for more oil drills concentrated in a certain area of his quardrant.

Somewhere in our first round itself we were hit by taxes when angxj and us rolled double 1s, bleeding our funds dry when we had to pay tax for every barrel of crude oil and gasoline we owned - angxj was first to have to decide which of his assets he had to sell to pay off taxes. It didn't help when the economic state went on the rise, pushing prices of refineries/drills/stations up.

Soon everyone got a feel for the flow of the game, and worked towards his own strategy: angxj kept up with trying to build oil wells to generate crude oil, Khim aimed more on selling gasoline via gas stations, sinbadwolf had a balanced game, and we decided on buying crude oil from the domestic/foreign market, concentrating on refineries to convert them and stations to sell them to customers while keeping a minimal number of buildings.

In our game run, the economic state of the game kept switching from recessions, depressions, downturns and recoveries, keeping the customer market for selling gasoline low (although buying buildings were also cheap). We've only ever hit a economic state of prosperity twice, so trying to make money from selling gasoline wasn't lucrative enough. Even selling to the domestic/foreign market fared only slightly better.

angxj and sinbadwolf hoarded crude oil produced by their oil wells, and when it came to a point where we were all locked out from buying crude oil from the foreign market, the rest of us suffered as prices for crude oil went on the rise, from less than 10mil to 10-15mil per barrel. It didn't help Khim and us that angxj and sinbadwolf only sold a few barrels back to the market, and customer demand for gasoline remained low.

In the end Khim had to rid himself of his oil well to finance his other assets, angxj utilised his entire territory with an orderly arrangement of oil drills and wells, stations and refineries, sinbadwolf and us were trying to get more wells. Then came a point where angxj, having stocked up enough barrels of crude oil and gas, decided to sell everything to trigger the end game.

End score:
sinbadwolf: 820
Khim: 741
angxj: 1169
us: 714

Mobile Gaming

1. Why don't you Draw Something?
2. A classic Prince of Persia.
3. Jeng jeng Jenga.
4. Come on, join the Jetpack Joyride.

So over the years, as our desktop of now nearly 10 years declined into obsolescence (actually it was already in that state some 5 years ago) we've replaced it with our Nintendo DS and our iPod Touch for all our gaming needs.

True, there are some games that just can't be replaced by mobile gaming, but then again there were the occasional cybercafe jaunts too. The ageing desktop was relegated to other matters like syncing our iDevices with iTunes, converting our CDs to sync onto our iDevices, blogging, storing our photos, converting movies to sync with our iDevices (which usually is an overnight job for JUST ONE MOVIE)...and perhaps for some gaming. That is, games from the pre-2000 era.

Otherwise, until 2009, our most-used gadget (and best investment) was our Nintendo 3D because we've been gaming on it like crazy. The Mario games, the Zelda games, the Castlevanias, Nintendogs...

Even when we got our iPhone 3GS in Dec 2008, our iDevices wasn't heavily used for gaming as the App Store was still relatively new and we were still careful about buying apps (much has changed then).

Gosh. Come to think of it. When the App Store was still new we could afford to check it weekly and probably go through most of the new apps for something free/worthy. Now there's just too many to bother.

Now our iDevices take up more than half the time while we wait for more 3DS games to appear (and seeing how we can't buy anything from the Nintendo eShop unless it's free).

So let's talk about gaming on the iDevice. Specifically on the iPhone for now.

Just recently everyone's caught the Draw Something bug. And we think it's been done rather well, although we're rather wary of playing this via mobile 3G. You add a friend, choose a word depending on the difficulty, you draw it out in whatever colours are available to you, and send!

The immediate problems? Battery life playing on the 3GS, for one. If you're playing with a lot of people, you may find that as soon as you've played a round starting from person A to person Z, it's time to play with person A again.

And while the game is available as both a free and paid app, we don't think it's worth paying because somehow we have this feeling that by a week's time this game will lose momentum and in under a month quite a lot of people will stop playing.

Just a feeling.

Meanwhile, we're trying to hold out from buying Prince Of Persia Classic that has reappeared on the App Store. Funny. They actually launched the app on the App Store December last year as an universal app at 99¢, which we automatically bought.

Or, would have bought. We couldn't, as a pop-up notified us that the game needed a front-facing camera. It could have probably meant that it was for the iPhone 4 onwards (although we don't see why so), but it was a bummer that we didn't manage to download it then. Then not long after that, it got pulled off from the App Store.

And now it's back, at USD1.99. While the iPad version is at USD2.99. Whatever happened to it being an universal app?!

It's still Prince Of Persia 1, all dressed up in nice fancy graphics (and from what we've seen on YouTube) minus the violence of being sliced in half or impaled on spikes.

We still remember one of our most shocking moments playing Prince Of Persia 2: The Shadow And The Flame was when the Prince was running down a corridor when suddenly out of nowhere he violently split in half with blood splattering everywhere - our introduction to the wall blade trap.

So...not buying Prince Of Persia Classic yet.

Jenga was free recently and we've downloaded it and gave it a quick try. The first impression? I still rather my actual physical Jenga set with friends, and all the crazy rules and setups we come up with. It's worth the trouble of setting up the pieces to play, really!

And prior to Draw Something most of our casual gaming was on Jetpack Joyride. A free endless running game that's gotten the mix of power-ups and objectives just right. Unlike other endless runners, with Jetpack Joyride we're more focused on completing objectives rather than "getting the furthest distance".

We'll probably only stop playing this once we've bought out all the costumes and jetpacks - but there's an update for this game coming and who knows what new content will be available then!

Still, too many games, too little time, and the urge to get more games!

Memories Rewatched

1. Disney's Beauty And The Beast 3D
2. Nobita's New Great Adventure Into The Underworld

So recently we've relived some old memories. Just the other day The Chief bought tickets for Beauty And The Beast 3D, which got us all excited as we weren't aware that it was screening then.

We never did get to watch The Lion King 3D that screened earlier somehow. We were aware that it was going to be out in the cinemas, but somehow we totally missed it. But for Disney's Beauty And The Beast 3D? No way.

You know, the first version of Beauty And The Beast that we ever knew of portrayed Beauty as having 2 other selfish sisters, a merchant father who got lost and found his way to a castle, stays the night and as he was leaving the following day plucks a rose from the garden for Belle only to be confronted by the Beast...

...Wikipedia has the story. Yeah, it's the same one right down to the bit where her sisters rub their eyes with onions to fake crying. There's no Gaston, no animated household furniture, no songs.

Disney changed that all right. We actually recall that we bought the cassette tape of the soundtrack even before we got to watch the movie. Knew the songs by heart. Then we borrowed the VHS tape from Randall and was wowed.

We think we had more impact from the soundtrack compared to the movie. Even after Beauty And The Beast, it was the soundtrack cassette tapes that we bought instead of the VHS tape of the movie for Aladdin and The Lion King. By the time Pocahontas came along we've made the slow switch to CDs (they weren't considered cheap then at nearly RM50 a disc!).

Gosh. The soundtrack. We'd that tape plugged into our Walkman playing so much we're surprised the tape lasted all the torture we've put it through. Fast forward. Rewind. Fast forward. Switch to side B, more fast forwarding and rewinding. We found out that the soundtrack was a stereo recording when our earphones weren't plugged in properly and we were surprised when half the townsfolk in "Belle" couldn't be heard at all, we thought there was something wrong with our tape!

Even though we've watched it again on DVD (last recollection was in Glasgow, the extended version with "Human Again" included), we always remember the scenes as though we were watching the blurry VHS version. Until we watched the 3D version.

Oh wow.

The feeling was the same as when we first made the switch to contact lenses. Everything bright and clear as we walked down Argyll Street!

The stained glass at the prelude depicting the story of the Prince transforming into the Beast!

And in 3D!

Somehow we were reminded of our 3DS, where the 3D effect was seen by a sense of depth rather than things popping out of the screen. And with such clarity. Made us want to run out and buy the 3D Blu-Ray version after the movie!

Well, so far we've resisted from buying the Blu-Ray due to the fact that we haven't a Blu-Ray player nor a 3D tv.

As for Doraemon, we admit that we had grown out of it a long time back. We admit, we used to watch the BM-dubbed cartoons (known for its high-pitch voice acting) and bought the BM-subbed comics. Asides from the short stories, there were the longer adventures that took up an entire book, featured a fair number of gadgets and had fantastic plot lines as compared to the mundane everyday setting as found in the short stories. Also perhaps we enjoyed it more because there was no "moral to the story" as found in the short stories.

The one we enjoyed most was Nobita's Great Adventure Into The Underworld, dealing with magic and demons.

So we got to watch the 2007 movie remake of that story, and we're actually surprised at ourself for not watching the original movie. Still, we remembered bits and pieces of the manga and were pleasantly surprised that the remake had great artwork and animation (like Doraemon's reactions when he sees a mouse!).

There were some changes that makes us want to get the book to read through again, just to see what they've removed and/or added.

The funny thing is, the DVD only has the cartoon in either Chinese (which we have limited comprehension) or Malay. In Malay, the translation is fine (although we're a bit puzzled at certain names like Lampu Moonlight and Bintang Devil instead of a full Malay translation), but we're somewhat disappointed by the expressions of the voice acting. Japanese anime tend to be rather extremely expressive and the voice acting here seems only half there to us. It's good, but could be better.

If we had the option we would have watched the show in Japanese with English subs. Perhaps somewhere out there there's a version of the DVD with exactly just that (we're not sure if we're ready for an English subbed version of Doraemon, though...).

Oh well. Now to wait for Disney to release The Little Mermaid in 3D!

East VS West: Valentine

1. Chap Goh Meh Celebrations
2. Pre-Valentine Prep
3. V-Day

So if it wasn't for the Chief we wouldn't have known that Chap Goh Meh is considered the Chinese Valentine's Day. To us it was always more of a blind-date-fishing day where people throw oranges (and lately bananas...?) into the lake for other people to fish out and call the following day.

Although we can actually picture a scenario where a guy quickly snaps up oranges in a net, starts calling numbers (using a new prepaid sim card instead of his usual mobile number), checks to see which girl answers, and if he doesn't like her he'll hang up quickly and throw her orange back into the lake.

Anyways what this means for us now is that we have to prepare even more for the two days!

Interestingly for Chap Goh Meh this year it was celebrated with the Clan Chief and their friends in a big Chinese New Year dinner celebration, with the, ah, associated games to follow.

These dinners with the Clan Chief, we've never yet gotten over that stressful feeling when dining with them. Perhaps because of the language barrier. But then again we're quite thankful for that language barrier sometimes, it allows us to enforce our shy violet personality that we are.

We've also noticed since Christmas that we don't go window shopping as much as we used to. Gone are the days where we wander around spending the entire evening and night in 1U or MidValley planning out our purchases.

Thankfully (for now) there are still some gift ideas for us to get the Chief, and we've managed to prepare a small gift for Chap Goh Meh and started planning for Valentine's Day.

Yes well we place more emphasis for Valentine's and Christmas while the Chief gets more excited about Chinese New Year. Home decorating will be easy delegated once we stay together.

We've gotten the Valentine's Day card, the presents wrapped, and printed out the iTunes App Store gift (instead of emailing it), and instead of chocolates decided on cookies. We were almost late sending the card, though, but lucky for us the card arrived on the day itself! We're wondering if our postal service actually identify Valentine's Day cards, and hold them only to deliver it on Valentine's Day itself. Truth be told we were expecting The Chief to receive the card only on the 15th.

Now we feel a bit stressed, as if we now must make sure that the card always arrives on the actual day itself!

Amusingly the yearly gift-giving process (birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine's, Christmas) led The Chief to jokingly ask us if it is okay to give us angpows instead in the future.

...because it's not that The Chief doesn't know what to get for us any more, it's more that what we want is extremely expensive.

No objections from us on that statement.

Well this year there's no predetermined dinner plans at any restaurant, in fact we were supposed to have eaten at home and watched Love, Actually or some other DVD. Turns out there was no dinner at home so the both of us made for MidValley for dinner and a movie. Dinner was good without being expensive as is the common belief (we went for ramen and they had a set which worked out cheaper then ordering a la carte, not to mention we had a discount using Citibank), we watched Chronicles (there wasn't any lovey-dovey rom-com this year, no?), walked around a bit and headed back home because, well, it was a working day the following day.

Hmmm darn it we still want to do Love, Actually again one day.