Three till Seven

I got my iPad 2 in! I’m using it now, to type this entry, and it’s going pretty well. I took notes in compilers this morning using Upad, which allows me to type as well as draw in the same document. It went pretty well, though I found a few annoyances that I’ll have to note in a review. We’ll see how it goes in models of computation, where I use a lot of mathematical symbols and figures; I bet the drawing capabilities will be very useful there. In compilers, I mostly found myself writing text.

Arrgh, all I want to do is relax by playing Dragon Age II, but I’ve been struggling for twenty minutes plus with stupid PS3 updates. I wanted to get my free DLC stuff in DA2 that I got from ordering off of Amazon, so I registered my game online and it should just show up in-game. I figure it has to be online to do that, in order to see that I’ve registered and maybe download the content. But I couldn’t sign into the PS network because Insight is a shitty ISP and we constantly need to reset the router. So I do that, my PS3 is able to get online again, and it immediately tells me there’s a system update so I can’t log into PSN yet.

After having used my CR-48 Chrome OS netbook for a little under a month, I have to say it has been an exercise in frustration. I don’t know how much of that is the fault of the operating system, because my two main issues deal with the trackpad and the wireless connectivity.

Holy crap, I got a Chrome OS netbook! I didn’t think I’d actually get one after I signed up for their beta program a few days ago. I didn’t submit a video explaining why I’d be an excellent choice, and my answers were short. I just explained that, as a student, I’d test Chrome OS by taking notes in class, doing my homework, and doing some programming; I also said I’d be able to test how an Internet-based laptop performs when out in the boonies at my parents’ house, where their wifi isn’t the greatest and their Internet connection is even worse. :P Somehow, though, I managed to score a position in the beta program—woot!

Hope you folks aren’t sick of hearing about Animal Crossing, because I’ve been playing the Gamecube version recently after a year of playing City Folk for the Wii, and I wanted to grumble about some of the differences. It feels like they left a lot of detail out of City Folk and I don’t understand why. Perhaps it’s because they based City Folk off Wild World for the DS, and they had had to leave stuff out of Wild World due to memory/space limitations. If that’s the case, then it seems just sheer laziness not to have ported things from the Gamecube to the Wii game, since obviously the Wii can handle whatever the Gamecube (GC) can. Here are some of the things they left out of City Folk (CF):

Talk of the new Animal Crossing for the Nintendo 3DS has gotten me thinking recently about if another Animal Crossing were made for a non-handheld Nintendo console, either the Wii or its successor. Jon had an excellent idea the other day: an Animal Crossing MMO. Now, I’m not thinking World of Warcraft but with animals, because that wouldn’t keep with the theme of Animal Crossing. But I think there are a variety of improvements that could be made to Animal Crossing that would make it more a social experience, which I think would be a good thing. A problem I have with all the existing A.C. games is that, after a while, they feel too small. The animals repeat the same things (if I have to hear about the Mayor’s connections in City Folk one more time…), the days run together, and it becomes basically an item grab: get Gracie’s furniture sets, get all the Mush set items, get all the clothing, get all the Gyroids, get all the fossils, get all the town upgrades, etc. I get that that’s the heart of the game anyway, but when that becomes too transparent, the game loses its appeal.

Though I hadn’t seen any reviews of Late Night on Metacritic, I went ahead and bought the expansion pack after reading a positive review on Cinema Blend. It took me a good two hours to be able to play the game, though, because it kept crashing. This didn’t really surprise me because The Sims 3 has got to be one of the most unstable programs I run, based on the number of crashes I get. I’m on a Windows 7 64-bit machine, which I’m sure contributes to it based on all the problems other people seem to have on 64-bit machines with The Sims 3. Why EA/Maxis isn’t preparing for the future (not that 64-bit machines are particularly futuristic anymore, but that just makes EA/Maxis look even worse) is beyond me.