Thursday, January 28, 2010

YP 22 Biplane

DREAM

YP-22 biplane. 2 versions. Small, Low speed old style biplane (2 seater). And medium speed pushprop biplane with post holding up engine behind single seat.

Unknown manufacturer. Yield-Penn?

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Downloading 800 MB file

RANT

I don't see how people can just provide a link to 800 MB files and call it a day. I understand that some products are that big, but how about providing little bit of chunk of about 100 MB each? Even 100 MB is rather sizable. Even broadband, downloading 500 MB file (CD size) is rather excessive. I'd like to download a little bit, close off connection, then resume downloading another day. That's not too hard, is it?

Neither Internet Explorer nor Google's Chrome allows downloading to resume once the network connection is lost. Why is that? Is that too hard to implement? Kids today sure can't program like they used to. They are too dependent on libraries. If the programming library don't support it, they're helpless. Sigh.

Animal Puzzle Adventure DSiWare Score

FUN

It has been a week since I played Animal Puzzle Adventure. I have managed to lower some of my scores. No more 359 steps solution. The solutions aren't recorded, since there's no replay option. I'll probably make a computer program to do so later on.

Chapter 1: 8, 11, 15, 13, 20, 28, 24, 20, 38, 20
Chapter 2: 27, 35, 31, 58, 68, 63, 37, 29, 18, 53
Chapter 3: 25, 80, 25, 26, 37, 62, 71, 52, 31, 48
Chapter 4: 35, 82, 61, 32, 83, 74, 91, 34, 19, 47
Chapter 5: 30, 27, 42, 28, 44, 59, 104, 83, 63, 79


Sunday, January 24, 2010

Update

I finished Animal Puzzle Adventure, BTW. Not too tough. I finished it in less than a week.

Communication Trouble

RANT

I'm having trouble updating my blog via my mobile phone. Could be the tower, but the software is supposed to be designed so it is fault tolerant, and not caused reset and lose my work. Sigh.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

DSiWare Review Animal Puzzle Adventure

REVIEW

I downloaded Nintendo DSi DSiWare Animal Puzzle Adventure earlier this week. It's a puzzle game similar to Robot Rescue where you have to guide the animals to the barn, except that all the animals moves at the same time and you have to use the terrain to change the formation of the animals to avoid falling into a hole.

The graphics are excellent and that is why I buy it. The music, I feel, has been designed to be inoffensive while retaining upbeat feel. It's still distracting, though, especially when trying to think multi step solution. Unfortunately, you cannot turn it off. In the end, I turned down the volume on the device, and while that stops music from distracting me, I also lost the sound effects. Why can't I turn the music off?

Speaking of levels, the later levels are hidden. You have to solve existing puzzles before you can advance. I don't see why the designer feels it should be so, especially since the later levels aren't easy at all. It took me a while to clear 2-7, 2-10, 4-5, 4-10. Who is the designer anyway? There's no credit screen?

In all, a good effort, with only minor blemishes. No hints, no help other than generic comments. Replay option would have been nice to have. Full screen level preview, as well. Level editor, had it been present, would have been terrific!

Here are some help for some of the harder levels:
2-7: When you get to the bottom, line up all the cats in a line of 4, then shape them.
2-10: This was a doozy for me. Ran into false hill. Only when I realize that I need to skip 5 square distance and go from 6 directly to 3, that I solve the problem. Rather counter-intuitive. Pair tops. Pair bottoms. Then slide top pair into top fence. Bring bottom up until they're close. 53 moves.
4-5: Use the fence shape to hold them at opposing sides, then jiggle them (also using the fence) to shape. Took me 359 moves although I'm sure it can be faster.
4-10: Group them into a tight square, then hook them one by one.


Update: I did a more thorough walkthrough on February 2, 2010 blogpost. Included is also my par scores. Check it out!

Movie Rating and Professional Quality Products

RANT

Looking at the movie scores from Critics (Professional reviewers) and User (Movie goers), I see that the Critics consistency score popular and good movies much lower than Users. Are we approaching the end of information era that professionals don't know what they're doing? I mean, what if come 2012 we can no longer trust our bankers and investment managers? Can you imagine what would happen? Oh, wait. We just had that last year.

But it seems I'm echoing more and more JFK's sentiment: "How can I be so foolish as to trust the experts!"

Looking at recent crop of games, what do I see? No level select. No difficulty select. No turning off annoying music. No control customization. No working shoulder button (Nintendo DSi, I'm talking to you!). You know. Things that were standard just a few years back. What happened? What's next? Leaving credits on who work on what parts off the programs?

I dreadfully await 2012. Prognosis is NOT good.

Monday, January 18, 2010

More Toys

FUN

I'm starting my old hobby, that is doll collecting. Those claw machines do work. Sometimes, though, the toys aren't worth it. I must have been out of practice. I used to be able to get these at about 2-3 dollars each. Now it's about 4-5 dollars each.