A relatively short list of things that I’ve found in Civilization IV that tick me off.
Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
With my new computer one of the things I wanted to try was to see exactly how much functionality I could achieve on Windows using only freely available software. Having gotten most things like multimedia playback, word processing and other essentials out of the way I found I needed a decent replacement for Nero. After using ImgBurn for a while, which is workable but better suited for burning and ripping discs rather than building them, I stumbled upon InfraRecorder (IR) on Sourceforge. The software is apparently intended to be an open source replacement for Nero so it seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. Here are my thoughts on it.
I haven’t written a post for quite some time. The blame lies entirely on Civilization IV (Civ4) – specifically the “Complete” pack that I bought the other day. I really can’t stress enough how addictive this game is! Seriously, several times now I have sat down to play for “half an hour or so” only to stop later and realise that half a day has passed. So I guess caution is advised if you’re going to play this game. Anyway, let’s get on with the review proper shall we?
I’ve been running version 2.3 of WordPress for a couple weeks now and I’m getting more accustomed to using tags with my posts. One thing that struck me about the default handling of tags is that, while free form, it’s a bit unwieldy for long term use. For example, you have to remember what you named various tags (“did I use web or internet?”). The Simple Tags plugin gets rid of most of the problems associated with tagging and makes it an absolute joy to use – I’ve been using for editing my posts for a few days now and I love it.
I had the opportunity to see an actual iPhone in action today. I must say that, even though I’ve seen plenty of pictures and read a bunch of reviews on the product, I was surprised as how nice it looked. They’re quite small and the touch interface is pretty slick. Browsing the web with Safari was pretty simple for such a small device and a couple other apps I saw looked good as well. I didn’t get long to gawk at it though so I don’t have anything in-depth to report.
It does make me wonder when exactly Apple will release them down under. I sincerely hope that the few annoyances they have are sorted out by then: things like phone company lock-in and charging 99 cents US (which should be $1.69 here, same as iTunes songs) is all kinds of ridiculous. Allowing for 3rd party applications would be good too. As a web developer I think that because of the iPhone, combined with the new iPod Touch, Mobile Safari is going to become more and more popular so I’d better start looking into how to make my sites compatible with it.
The new computer is up and running with everything working well. I thought I’d go through some of the things I’ve noticed and learned.