At the same time, my laptop has been less and less useful as time has passed. At 6 years old, it’s no longer powerful enough to run reasonably modern games, and while a smaller laptop might make up for such shortcomings by adopting a new role as a digital type writer, my laptop with its 17″ screen is just a bit too large and heavy to carry everywhere. I’ve been thinking about getting a netbook instead, to fill that need for a mobile typewriter which is especially prominent right now when I’m finally working full-time on my thesis, but available netbooks just didn’t seem to be worth the price.

But then this little spark of genius appeared unexpectedly:

That’s the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, or the TF101 if you want to make it sound like some secret military detachment. It runs version 3.0 of Android, Honeycomb, and the magic trick that makes it worth its price where ordinary netbooks or tablets aren’t, is that it’s both.

The Transformer is mainly a 10.1″ tablet, and its most natural mode of interaction is the multi-touch screen. By itself, it’s a pretty solid little device with a good, clear screen (even with the inevitable smudges you see so clearly in the above photo), an audio jack, mini-HDMI output, and a micro-SD slot for external storage just like a phone. Honeycomb isn’t quite as fundamentally smooth to interact with as iOS, but it’s clean, it’s logical, and it’s fairly pretty – above all its “back” button is pure magic, flawlessly predicting whether you want to go back to the last place you were within whatever app you’ve got open or whether you’re trying to switch back to the last app you were using.

DockTales

The whole idea of the Transformer, however, is its dock, which doubles as a keyboard. The dock has two USB ports and a standard SD slot. It also has its own battery that always charges the tablet battery when they’re connected, ensuring that the tablet has the highest possible charge if you undock it, and giving the Transformer an alleged 16 hours of battery time (it’s less if you actually use the thing, but it tends to last me a couple of days so far). When you connect the tablet to the dock, a cursor immediately appears on the screen, and all on-screen keyboards in the OS are disabled so you can type on the real keyboard instead. The touch pad below the keyboard works just like the touch pad on a Macbook, including the super convenient two-finger scroll gesture. You can even hook a USB mouse up as well and it’ll work right away, with no fuss at all.

The keyboard is both the main strength and the greatest weakness of the Transformer, because it’s not really very good. It has some super useful functions that work extremely well with Android, such as a back key and a home key, and possibly its most useful key is the one that disables the touch pad so you don’t accidentally touch it while you’re typing, but its keys aren’t as forgiving as I would’ve liked. If you hit their corners or even sometimes their sides, rather than hitting them right in the centre, they have a bad habit of ignoring your stroke. I type too damn fast to hit the keys that accurately, so I tend to curse a lot.

It’s also a big problem that some apps or websites have loads of input lag, which makes it hard to tell if you’ve hit the right keys or not – I can’t say if that’s ASUS’s fault, Android’s fault, or the fault of the apps or websites in question. The Transformer comes with an office suite called Polaris which is slightly too devoid of features to be a complete replacement for Microsoft Office, but which at least works quite well with the physical keyboard, detecting more strokes than most other apps or sites and with almost no input lag.

And speaking of lag, I have experienced some performance issues, both in the OS itself and on websites and in apps. The Transformer has 1 GB of RAM, and it seems like that may be pushing it a little. A greater problem, however, is that many apps handle the keyboard fairly poorly, and if you connect a USB mouse it only gets worse – for some insane reason, right clicking either on a mouse or the buttons beneath the touch pad defaults to “Back” instead of calling up the drop-down menu that you typically activate in Android by pressing and holding on the touch screen of the tablet. The mouse’s scroll wheel is also largely ignored – the OS occasionally manages to translate it into the equivalent of pressing and dragging on the touch screen, but too often it doesn’t seem to work.

App-less and oranges

If you don’t mind the inconsistencies of the input methods at your disposal, however, the Transformer is extremely handy. If you need to write up an email you simply slot the tablet into the dock and press it down gently until the lock clicks in, and then you start typing. When you want to lean back and waste some time on Reddit, you undock again and put the tablet in your lap so you can browse lazily, your genitals blissfully unroasted. In netbook mode, the tablet goes to sleep when you fold it down and wakes up without a hitch when you open it up again. It’s a perfectly good tablet and a fairly decent netbook, and it costs no more than what any other good tablet would set you back.

In the end it will come down to the app selection on the Android Market, as it always does. Right now two major criticisms of the Transformer is that there are very few HD (ie. optimised for tablets) apps on the market, and that even fewer of them work very well with a keyboard and mouse. The former will hopefully be fixed when Honeycomb converges with the other Android versions – which is scheduled to happen around the end of the year as I understand it – and the latter is tolerable in most cases. The main thing I’m missing for now is a better browser, as the built-in Chromium is slow and clunky and Dolphin HD has some interface design decisions that cause me much frustration. I also drastically need to find a way to import my PC Chrome bookmarks into either of those browsers – none of my attempts to do so have succeeded thus far.

The more I get used to the idiosyncrasies of Android and the Transformer, however, the more I enjoy it, and the more certain I become that I made a good purchase. If you happen to want a tablet and need a netbook but you don’t think either is worth the price on its own, the Transformer is hereby recommended. And if you don’t particularly like Android or you just need a device that can run Windows programs, a version of the Transformer running Windows 8 is slated for release some time next year.

A while ago, I bought an iPhone 4.

For some reason, I immediately feel compelled to justify and excuse my decision to purchase it, which may say a thing or two about the cultural connotations of the device. Suffice to say it seems like the best phone on the market, and the weight of Apple’s enormous bulging app store is sufficient to balance out the phone’s ludicrously inflated price (yes it’s a great phone, but is it twice as good as an Android phone half as expensive? I doubt it).

Lawrence requested that I post a review, but I’m not structured enough on this blog for proper reviews, so this is what I always post when I’ve tried something I feel like blogging about: assorted thoughts and opinions.

I haven’t experienced any connectivity problems with it yet. I gather you have to put significant effort into holding it the wrong way to make it drop calls, and none of my natural ways of holding it have managed to break it. In performance terms, it also runs its operating system impeccably – an operating system with an interface that I can’t say enough good things about. I’ve even gotten used to the on-screen keyboard, which I feared might never happen – in fact my typing speed on the iPhone very quickly became much faster than on my old T9-phone.

One of my few problems with the interface is that it does seem to have a lot of hidden functionality that you can’t intuitively infer. I believe this is a consequence of Apple retrofitting functions that by all rights need to be on a device like this onto a phone with only two buttons. This means you get interactions like double-clicking the home button to call up a list of open apps or holding the home button and then pressing the sleep button to save a screenshot. These functions generally make sense, but I can’t see how you’re supposed to know about them without consulting the manual. In Apple’s defence, they do a good job of introducing you to many of these functions in a Getting Started booklet supplied with the phone and by sending you an email with tips when you register the device.

Another interface gripe which is none-the-less becoming increasingly annoying is that I find it difficult to move my cursor into the middle of a word. I could just be missing some sort of function (in which case please do let me know about it in the comments), but if I make an error in the beginning of a word, I don’t know how to place the cursor at the error to fix it without deleting the rest of the word – for example, were I to write extrtapolate, I’d like to be able to just put my cursor behind the offending t and push backspace to delete it instead of having to delete the entire -tapolate part. In fact controlling your cursor with any kind of precision often seems pretty awkward.

UPDATE: @supergarv was kind enough to inform me via Twitter that you just hold your finger on the word and the looking glass appears for exact control. I was certain I’d tried that, but I guess I was doing it wrong because I just checked and it totally worked. Basically, consider the previous paragraph an extra example of the problem described in the paragraph above it.

A smaller criticism is that the built-in email client isn’t quite as good as I’d like. It does do pretty much everything I need it to, but it doesn’t make it easy to keep my inbox organised, and it often fails to delete my emails from one of the two accounts I’ve set it up with. I’ve even experienced an annoying glitch where under circumstances I haven’t quite narrowed down yet, if I delete an email on my PC that I’ve already downloaded onto the phone, the iPhone’s mail client will get confused and delete the subject and the contents of the mail, but the mail itself will sort of linger in my inbox – undeletable, unopenable – until I turn off the phone and start it up again. Not catastrophic, but a bit of a nuisance.

But those are the bad things, and the good things are not only more numerous, they’re more important too. As I’ve mentioned, the app store is the iPhone’s main edge over its competitors for now, but having upgraded directly from an old 2G cell phone, the things that please me most are not really unique to the iPhone. The device’s calendar saves me having to carry my old Filofax planner with me everywhere, for example, and the built-in Google Maps app means I will never get lost again – as long as I have 3G coverage, at least.

The iPod functionality does everything I need from a music player, meaning I no longer have to bring both my old iPod and my phone with me, and even the iPhone’s camera is surprisingly decent for a built-in phone camera – thankfully it doesn’t compare to my Nikon D50, because that would be kind of sad, but I love the fact that I now have a fairly good camera on me at all times, in case of spontaneous alien abduction or similar.

I thought I might mention some of the third-party apps I’ve been using so far. Facebook and LinkedIn both have really good iPhone apps, in fact I think they both present their respective networks better than their actual websites. Tweetdeck works brilliantly on the iPhone, and I have a feeling I’m finally using the service the way it was intended to be used. I found a slightly crude but completely free app called BB Time Table that helps me remember my classes this semester. Endomondo is a great way to keep track of my route, distance, and average speed when I go out on my bicycle. I find that web comics tend to be viewed better in dedicated apps than through the iPhone version of Safari – Schlock Mercenary even has an official app.

In terms of games, Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor is a must-buy for displaying so far the best use of the iPhone as an input device that I’ve found. Bejewelled 2 is a legendary time-waster which happens to be perfectly suited for mobile play, and the same goes for Flight Control, which further has a type of gameplay that it’d be hard to imagine working well with any other input method. Jet Ball is a modern version of Breakout which probably disqualifies it for any innovation awards, but nevertheless makes it a highly entertaining game. And finally, Wolfenstein RPG and Doom 2 RPG are both very enjoyable first-person turn-based RPGs the way they used to make them back in the day.

If you’re thinking of getting an iPhone, get it for the huge app store and its super friendly interface design. If you’re after good value for your money, or if you’re really passionate about freedom of information, you should probably get an Android instead – hopefully the Android app store will soon be populated as well as Apple’s is. Either way, don’t worry about that antenna thing, that was blown way out of proportion.

Personally I’m just pleased to finally have portable access to Google Maps.

Unfortunately, upon loading the game, it immediately became clear that Blazing Angels 2 was not about to acknowledge the existence of my joystick just like that. In the game’s control settings, a seperate column does indeed figure for setting up a joystick, but every function is unbound by default, and clicking buttons or moving along axes on my joystick does absolutely zilch – I just get a message after a while that it failed to set the function, presumably because it has no idea I was providing any input at all.

In fact it seems BA2 has quite a few issues with joysticks in general. Observe these discussions on that very topic at Ubisoft’s own forums for the game:

Unable to install patches for BA2 Secret…, and joystick won’t work
Blazing Angela wont run or update or joystick!
joystick problems blazing angels 2

But wait, help is at hand in the form of Ubisoft’s tech support site!

How Do I Configure My Joystick?

Oh wait… no it isn’t. I have to use a seperate setup program that the game has put in my start menu, except… I got the game through Steam. There is nothing in the start menu, and a thorough search of the game’s folder in the Steam directory reveals bugger all.

So this is… a flight game with broken joystick support? Great job, Ubisoft. Great job.

[UPDATE February 18] I realized the support site I’m linking to above is for Blazing Angels 1 – Ubi’s support has nothing on joystick problems in BA2. In the end, I solved the problem by uninstalling from Steam and downloading an .iso via Bit Torrent – this allowed me to actually patch the game (for some reason it was unpatched on Steam), which made it recognize my joystick input.

It’s not a very well suited game for playing with a joystick. Even in simulator mode, it seems intent on levelling the plane automatically, so to execute a long turn, you have to keep the joystick twisted in a really uncomfortable position to apply both roll and yaw while pitching up – it’s shit on the wrist, in short. Furthermore, some of its timed objectives are definitely timed for the arcade mode – it’s way slower to maneuver in simulation mode, so some of these time limits get fairly ridiculous.

I notice this post still gets a lot of hits from Google searches, so here’s a piece of advice: If you’re looking for an action flight game that’s playable with a joystick, hold out for the HAWX PC demo – from what I’ve played of the 360 demo, it seems like it’s a lot more suited for joystick than BA2. I’ll post a little review of that when I’ve tested the demo with my X52.

If you’ve already bought Blazing Angels 2 and you’re trying to get it to work with your joystick, get a hold of the retail copy and patch it. That should do the trick. Good luck!

[UPDATE April 8] Here’s my characteristically subjective and informal review of the PC version of HAWX as played with my X52 setup.

Speaks to the importance of interface, doesn’t it?

Or possibly it just tells you how easy I am to impress.

Our connection went mental on Wednesday – it didn’t die, it just sort of lost its mind. About half the pings we send time out, and when we do manage to connect to a site, it goes incredibly slowly. Most of the time I can’t connect to MSN, and when I do, about half my messages are never delivered or received. Worst of all, I can’t get my mail. I had 41 mails waiting for me when I last tried to check on Friday night, and surely I will be drowned in mail when I finally regain my connection.

The main problem is that my ISP, YouSee, has pretty terrible service. It’s not for a lack of trying, but their internal communication could use some work. It seems their support department and their technician department only communicate through some sort of helpdesk system, and I can’t contact the tech department directly. So I need to talk to the supporters, who then tell the technicians they should call me, and the technicians will then call “between 8 am and 4 pm”.

So, uh, I should just stay at home waiting for them to call…? The first appointment we made with them was for them to call us Monday between 8 and 10, but they never did. Then we called their supporters, who reminded the techs (via the helpdesk) to call on my cell phone, which they did 4 hours later. In the middle of my second viewing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. At this point my dad was home, but they didn’t think to try the home number when nobody answered my cell phone.

So, uh, if TDC Cable wanted more customers, maybe they should’ve improved their customer support workflow a little instead of just changing their name to YouSee?

After a week without ‘net at home, I’m seriously starting to go a little crazy. Not a lot, I’m just constantly slightly frustrated, restless, and uneasy. It’s a mix of boredom and the complete absense of my social network. Sure it’s not a disaster for TNM if I take a week or so off from the project, but it’s a week I could spend improving the mod and fixing bugs which is instead being spent playing GTA4 when I don’t really want to play at all.

Three things I’d take to a deserted island:

• My computer.
• A solar power plant.
• The Internet.

The indomitable Master_Kale has presently released his FTP program, WormholeFTP. While aimed largely at the IT-impaired, I was lucky enough to secure an early release candidate for testing and have determined that the program is also supremely suited for the lazy (such as myself). Since obtaining it, I have entirely stopped using FireFTP for uploading files to my blog – and because of our implementation of SVN into The Nameless Mod‘s organizational structure, I’ve almost completely stopped using FireFTP in general – because WHFTP is simply far more convenient: It just sits there on my desktop, waiting for me to drop files into it at my leisure, and presenting me a direct link in return.

The program is very simple, which is indeed its strength as well as its main feature: You simply drag a file over to the little window and drop it into the wormhole graphic, then a progress bar appears, and once the file is on your server, the progress bar is replaced by a download link. Click the link to open the file in a browser or right-click it to copy it to your clipboard. At my request, it is possible to define the URL in the program’s settings seperately from the upload directory setting, such that the program can give you a functional URL even if you’re using an esoteric subdomain. It really is a splendidly handy program, and at $8 it presents very good value for the price.

Anybody got any good recommendations?

Lately I’ve been trying to keep up with the “The PC as a gaming platform is dying!” “No the PC as a gaming platform is doing fine!” debate, and frankly it’s not very easy. A lot of the participants in this debate have something at stake (it’s difficult to trust the pro-PC gaming arguments entirely when they come from Valve and Epic who have massive market shares to lose if the PC dies as a gaming platform) and I have significant problems digging down to the facts at the heart of the debate.

I’d like to link to a couple of interesting articles in these ongoing discussions, the first being a righteously bitter forum post by Michael Fitch from THQ over at Quarter To Three, “Venting my frustrations with PC game-dev“. One of the main points of the post – inspired by the closing of Iron Lore, developers of Titan Quest – are the corrosive effects of PC game piracy. Now, the piracy issue is a debate worthy of its own blog post (if not several dedicated websites) but Fitch brings up a lot of really interesting issues, all of which lead to depressing conclusions.

The more optimistic counterpoint is Gamasutra’s interview with Valve’s marketing VP Doug Lombardi and business development director Jason Holtman, “Valve Explains Why PC Gaming’s Gaining Steam“. The Valve guys claim that the depressing numbers of PC sales are largely to be blamed on the focus of certain surveys: If you don’t ignore MMOG’s, the disturbingly gigantic PopCap, and Valve’s own Steam distribution platform, things look a lot better for the PC.

I don’t know what to believe because I don’t know whose numbers to put the most trust in. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is no easy summary – I doubt PC gaming will ever die, but I’m certain it will change. I don’t know how much it’ll change because I’m not in the habit of trying to predict the future, but I hope 5 years from now, we won’t be left with a platform full of MMOG’s and casual games.

Brain control headset for gamers

Immediately a score of game ideas swam into my mind, and telekinesis was just the most obvious of them. How about a fantasy game where the power of your spells is influenced by how much brain activity you’re experiencing? Or where your spells might fail if you get too excited? A game where you get a time-limited berzerk if you get very agitated or an adrenaline bonus if you get excited during combat. Your aim with the sniper rifle steadying if you meditate a little. Your nemesis taunting you with how shocked you are to see him again after you thought he was dead!

Imagine a horror game where your fear or anger empowers the monsters. If you give the player a wise-cracking companion who can make him or her smile in the middle of a really scary situation, that’ll actually drive the monsters away for a bit or make them weaker. Conversely, if you want to make things worse for the player, let something bad happen to that companion, making the player angry and shocked and in turn making the monsters more vicious and powerful. Thinking happy thoughts will litterally make everything better.

Imagine a puzzle game where you have to conjure up specific emotions to cause specific effects, solving puzzles that way. Imagine in Star Wars if Yoda or Darth Vader can “sense much anger in you…” or in Mass Effect if you had to actually relax to let Liara into your mind. If you’re broadcasting your emotions, telepathic characters can predict your movements, dodging them. If you’re good at calming your mind, they’d lose that advantage. Monsters who find their prey by reading your thoughts could be rendered blind if you can control your feelings.

Implementing the headset in a dialogue system could produce fantastic results:

“You seem tense, is something bothering you?”
“Hey look at you, what are you so happy about?”
“Don’t be angry with me, I didn’t do it on purpose!”

A studio like Valve would be able to let you interact with characters through what you are feeling without having to put a more independent avatar between you and the world. I don’t know how sensitive the technology is in reality of course, but imagine if Alyx could tell what you think about a plan simply by “the look on your face” (determined by the readings of the headset of course).

And that’s just what I can come up with in half an hour. The possibilities are pretty much endless if the technology is accurate enough. I hope this headset gains good support so its price will drop and its feature set will continue to be developed. I really want to make some games for that thing!