E-ink Magnified

This Article shows iPad text, Kindle, Newspaper, Magazine and Book text magnified.

I don't think this is conclusive proof that e-ink is easier to read than an LCD screen, but it does show an interesting comparative.

Money Island 2 Out Now On STEAM

Money Island 2 Special Edition came out on Steam (Link). Playing it, it seems a lot more polished than the last Special Edition. The developers commentary is excellent too.

I was reading an article today called 10 Things You Did Not Know About Monkey Island and unlike your usual "things you didn't know" articles this was very good.

Restaurant Menu Phycology

I would have bought the fried pickles because I love to try stuff.

William Poundstone has written a book called Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value, it is about how companies manipulate prices to make you spend more. I haven't read it, but it's going on my reading list.

RIP J. D. Salinger 2010

J. D. Salinger Died On Wednesday and I think the New York Times did a good Article on his death.

My favourite quote from Catcher In The Rye isn't by Salinger, it is a quote that he had a character read on page 169:

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one
- Wilhelm Stekel

In this quote Salinger is trying to save himself from taking a lonely path or one that results in his younger self sacrificing too much for too little. Something he seemed to do many times in his life.

Higher Incentives Lead To Worse Performance

Daniel Pink is a business consultant and the best career counsellor you never had. His TED talk is about how behaviour scientists discovered why offering incentives for a quicker outcome resulted in a slower outcome. This is a very interesting talk and one that has very Human reasoning behind it all.



After watching the talk I wanted to see if he had written any books. I loaded up Amazon and let-out a rather audible gasp! It turns out I have already read one of his.

I read The Adventures Of Johnny Bunko when I started working fulltime. It is an excellent book for anybody who finds themselves in a job where they ask themselves 'is this it?'

He also wrote A Whole New Mind which is more about what his TED talk was about and is now on my reading list.
I will leave you with the trailer for Jonny Bunko.

Johnny Bunko trailer from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.

City Under Siege, The Berlin Blockade and Airlift 1948-1949

After WWII was over and the world entered The Cold War Berlin was split between Allied East, Soviet west and the surrounding country was also controlled by the Soviets. The Allies where supplying Berlin with needed supplies by a canal, a highway, a railway line and three air corridors. The soviets wanting to takeover east Berlin, closed off the ground access so only the air corridors remained. What happened next between June 24 1948 and May 12 1949 is one of those overlooked periods in history where people came together and achieved the impossible. In this case, to supply east Berlin's 12,000 ton daily requirement of food and fuel, every day by air transport alone.

So that is what Michael D. Haydock's Book City Under Siege is about and you can read an excellent cut-down version of events from start to finish on American Heritage.com. Which I found fascinating, especially since I never heard of this before.

[via Kim Pallister]

Mass Effect Revelation (spoiler free) (Completed)

So I finished reading the Mass Effect Novel the other night and as a stand alone novel it a little short, but I really enjoyed it as a precursor to the game's plot.

I wanted to read because I wanted some background on the Mass Effect universe before the game comes out, so that when I start playing the game I feel at home. Which is something I like about playing Star Trek or Star Wars games, because I am already familiar with the universe the names of places and things in the universe like 'The Force' or 'The Prime Directive' don't feel like new or alien concepts to me and I can concentrate on playing the game and not worry about the details.

The plot of the novel takes place years before the game's plot does. The main character is a Lieutenant Anderson who is investigating a Human research base that is attacked and completely destroyed. Anderson is then trying to find the only survivor of the facility while they are both being chased by a hired Assassin. Along the way the reader is introduced to much of the Mass Effect universe. Things like the Contact Wars between the Humans and Turians, the legacy of the Protheans, the galactic council which is kind of like a galactic supreme cough with a big fleet of ships to exercise it's will and who aren't opposed to wiping out an entire species if it is in the interests of galactic peace.

The Mass Effect universe as a whole borrows a lot from a lot from different areas of Sci-Fi. But apart from the similarity between the Jedi of Star Wars and the Biotics of Mass Effect, the series reminds me a lot of Babalon5. There isn't anything specific between Babalon5 and Mass Effect that is a direct comparison, but the way the different alien races relate to one another feels very similar because in both series politics plays a big role in the universe and many of the primary characters are politicians and people of authority.

Something that did surprise me about the universe is that the Spectres (who in the game you will play as Commander Shepard the first Human Spectre) aren't like FBI agents or Men In Black that investigate to keep galactic peace and only use their authority when necessary. No, Spectres are people who get results by any-means-necessary. So if that means killing a bus load of school children in the interests of galactic security, so be it, because in the greater scheme of things fifty lives is nothing to trillions. This gives me the impression that the Spectres are more like BobaFett than Jack Bauer, but the Spectres have the authority to get results and you will discover that quite quickly if you read the novel.

Because of the trailers we already know that the badguy in the game is Saren who used to be a Spectre. Well in the novel he is a Spectre and is one of the main characters. So I certainly feel like I know his character better after having read the novel and I am really looking forward to seeing him in the game.

My only complaint with the novel is that the ending was too open, but then the followup is the video game.
4/5


In case you haven't seen the trailer yet:

Harry Potter Series (Completed)

I haven't actually read the whole Harry Potter series as I find it easier to go through books of that magnitude in audio format with a narrator doing funny voices for all the different characters. That is to say books that I am not prepared to read, but really do want to read. Anyway having finished the series I thought I might give some retrospective.

JK does an excellent job of creating a consistent feeling of anticipation for what is coming in the story. There is always something going on in a chapter that keeps the reader going, not to mention all the secrets in the series. And unlike some murder mystery writers who leave it up until the final chapter to decide who the killer was, JK has peppered the whole series with little nuggets that forward and backwards references very nicely, which means new discoveries can be had on the reader's part from a second reading of the series.

My only issue with the whole series is with the last book. Through the series each book has the Defence Against The Dark Arts Teacher take some special place in each book's plot and no teacher holds the post for more than a year, but in the final book the post is only mentioned. This shouldn't have bothered me, but it did. It also bothered me that we never discover wither Harry graduated from Hogwarts, wither Harry fulfilled his interesting in becoming an Auror or what happened to a few of the characters. So although I deeply enjoyed the series, it left me feeling a little confunded as it didn't offer as much closure as I would have liked. That all being said it is an excellent series and something in me says that we haven't seen the last of the Harry Potter Universe just yet.
4.5/5

Geometry Wars High Score and Five Rings

I have been reading The Book of Five Rings by Musashi Miyamoto (I actually bought a printed copy) and the other day I read "The Frame of Mind For The Martial Arts" from the book of Water and the first sentence of that section reads:

In the way of the martial arts, do not let your frame of mind be any difference from everyday mind.

and then he finishes the section by saying this should be investigated. So I being the gamer that I am fired up Geometry Wars.

I have been playing Geometry Wars fairly regally since I Got all the Achievements and Almost Beat My Highscore, but I have found myself struggling to get even one million points as my motivation to do better isn't there, but after reading Miyamoto's section on frame of mind I thought I would give it another go not thinking I would beat my very respectable highscore of 2,158,680 points.

Well after just one game I got 2,664,455 and I seem to be able to have a good run on my highscore now quite consistently. So the book might have been written in the 1600's but it's teachings are quite relevant.