*Monkeys with bones not included

I wake up in the morning to my iPhone alarm, usually hitting the snooze button about three times. Oozing out of bed, I grab my iPhone and head upstairs to sit with Lisa for a little bit before work.  I’ll usually open up Reeder to check the morning news.  Couch time is also a good time to check email and maybe G+ (Lisa in the meantime is checking Facebook on her iPhone).  Then sometime before I hop in the car I’ll crack open Instacast and check if there are any new podcast updates.  On the road to work I’ll listen to one of my podcasts, the audio edition of the Economist, or one of my many audio books on the Audible app.  At work my iPhone keeps me informed if I have upcoming meetings, email, or important site monitoring alerts.  During the day I get text messages from my wife, I take turns of the Carcassonne game I play with friends, and trade instant messages over Google Talk using BeejiveIM.

I have other activities that my iPhone gets used for irregularly, but listed above are things that I do almost every day.

From Chuck and Beans at shoeboxblog dot com

Once upon a time people didn’t have Google, and so there were many things that they did not know.  Pieces of trivia would simply go unknown for days or weeks until a proper dictionary, almanac, encyclopedia or other reference material could be found, often at a local library.  These days my intelligence is directly proportional to the signal on my smartphone.  I can answer most arcane trivia questions in less than a minute, provided I have a 3G signal.

There is really no doubt about it, my iPhone enables me in many different ways, most of which are quite enjoyable.

But I could live without it.

It is a very convenient device because it travels around with me so easy it’s accessible at a moments notice, but I don’t need that.  I wound’t be happy getting along with out many of the things it does: audio books, music, internet searches, etc, but I can do all of that stuff on my computers.  I have computers an internet at home, I have them at work.  Audio books and music can be carried on any number of other devices or formats.

I would miss it, but the iPhone does not in fact fill any unique purpose in my life.

Having your email account become compromised is probably the worst thing that could happen to you, digitally speaking.  It is worth your time and effort to secure your account. Spending an hour securing your account today will prevent you from having to spend many many hours recovering from a hacked account in the future.  I’m going to detail some important information for you about how to do this.

Passwords:

Step #1 is very important.  You need a good password.  If a very recent analysis of the passwords leaked from Sony is any indication you do not have a good password.  The easiest way to start fixing this is to install and use LastPass.  I will write more about LastPass another time, but it makes it very very simple to mange very complicated passwords.  If you don’t want to use that though you need to get a better password.  There are lots of good ways to create a strong password, but Steve Gibson at grc.com has some very good ideas about this.  You should read this article on Haystack Passwords.  It tells you some easy ways to create very secure passwords.

Two Tier Authentication:

If you don’t know what that is let me break it down for you.  Your bank probably already uses an example of two tier authentication already.  When you log in you enter your username/email and password; that’s tier one.  Then you are asked for a second piece of identifying information, such as “What was the name of your first pet”; that’s tier two.  Two is better than one right?  If someone get’s your password they might get stymied by the second question.  It’s like having two locks on your door.  Stealing one key doesn’t let you get in.  But stealing your keyring might mean that the person gets both keys, so two tier authentication works best when the second form is a completely different kind of security.

Enter Google two-tier authentication.  In addition to your password you must also authenticate through a second method.  Google currently has 2 options for tier-two authentication: an iphone/android app, and phone SMS.  Adding either one of these authentication methods to your account makes your account inaccessible by anyone who does not have access to your phone/mobile device.

Google’s options for two-tier authentication has two benefits: first you get a second level of security in front of your account rather than a single point of failure (weak/compromised password), and second the person who wants to log into your account must have physical access to your phone which is a very high bar to clear.  Your spouse or significant other could pull it off but anyone else is probably out of luck.  This kind of security makes the likelyhood of your account being compromised virtually non-existent.  It doesn’t require you to have a smartphone either, if you don’t have a smartphone you can simply configure Google to send you a SMS message to your phone’s text plan.

For convince you can have Google only ask for your second tier of authentication every 30 days for a given computer.  This means that on your primary system you won’t constantly be required to get your phone out to authenticate on Google’s services.  This is a perfectly safe practice since Google requires you to re-authenticate anytime you try to change your login information.  Google also gives you a couple of one time use passwords to print off, it’s a good idea to print these off and stick them in a desk drawer in case somewhere down the road you lose your phone or any other authentication information.

I urge you, if you use Gmail as your primary email and have other accounts tied to it, turn on two factor authentication right now.

I will take this opportunity to mention that because Google is kind of dumb and does not yet support their own service (Google Apps).  So for the moment I am using G+ through one of my old gmail accounts.  This bugs me as I assume I will have to re-do all my G+ settings when I move back to my primary account as well as lose all my history.  History may in fact not be important, I assume stuff that is older than a couple of days will not be looked at ever again, but I like the idea that I could.  It’s true that G+ does currently have a data export feature, but currently has no import feature.

As a application it seems that G+ still has a ways to go before it will be done.  There are some obvious enhancements which I can only assume will come in time.  I am making suggestions as I find them.  I am looking forward to having a social interaction that a larger number of friends and family members will have access to (most people I know have a gmail account).  Even the limited interactions I’ve had with people so far has been fun.  I will re-evaluate as we go along, but it looks like a solid service, and I have high hopes.

Are you aware of the many and varied benefits of pie?  Longevity, increased happiness and sexual potency, halitosis prevention, and beneficial mutations are just a few of the perks that pie has brought us.  For trillions of year, pie has been the leading the way in food technology and innovation.  From the pugilistic fighting pies of yesteryear, to today’s GigaFlav™​ portable micro-pies with over 120 megafillings.  Pies have impacted every part of our lives and society.  Did you know, for example, that a lemon custard pie once served in the United State senate, and helped pass the bill to abolish dinosaurs?  Did you also know that the deep sea blueberry crumbler pie is the reason why English trade with the orient was possible during the middle ages?  Yes, the rich history of pies can be found in anywhere you look, and you can help celebrate today by selecting your favorite pie from the local Crust-Station and Filing Enrichment Center http://www.hubbardavenuediner.com/assets/Uploads/Hubbard/Menus/Current/HUBpieMAYweb.pdf Please help us honor the history and tradition of the majestic pie by selecting one of these little bastards to devour alive. Time is limited, so act now!

 

My iPhone Homescreen

I’ve been a dropbox user for quite a while now.  I signed up for an account the first day that I heard about it and I signed up for a paid account the moment that paid accounts became available.  Safe to say I use it and love it.  I found another great iPhone app yesterday that uses it, and I looked at my homescreen and realized that quite a few of my apps have dropbox integration these days, and that’s awesome. QuickShot – Easy way to take pictures and immediately upload them to dropbox.  It can also upload multiple photos at a time from the camera roll. PlainText – primarily a note taker, it just very simply handles plain text files and keeps them sync’d. Dropbox – Access to any of my files. Trunk Notes – A great markdown notebook.  Lately I’ve been keeping notes about the various games I’m in, in here, but I think it could be used for much more. DropList – This was the app I just picked up.  It’s a pretty simple to-do application (of which I’ve tried many).  This one is pretty unique in that it just keeps a very basic plain text file in dropbox, and puts a pretty face on it on the iPhone. Atomic Web (not shown) – A web browser that allows me to download files and upload them directly to dropbox. GoodReader for the iPad – not shown on the screenshot, because that’s my iPhone.  GoodReader is a great tool for  managing read-only documents.  PDFs, word documents, etc.  It’s a great way to keep gaming books and documents with me.

Jurisfiction

I love my audible.com account. It delivers wonderful things to me. Most recently it has delivered One of Our Thursdays is Missing, the sixth book in the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde.  I started reading the series early this century and was blown away by how much I enjoyed it.  The whole series is incredibly clever.  As I write this I realize that my brain is missing important details and that I really need to go back and re-read the whole series (easy enough to do).  I am looking forward to reading this latest one, and looking forward to his other works.  I really wish he would get the Shades of Grey series done faster.

So, Dragon Age II (DAII) is coming out tomorrow, March 8.  Thanks to Steam, it’s pre-loaded onto my computer to be unlocked the moment it’s available.  This is the sequel (of course) to Dragon Age: Origins and its expansion Dragon Age: Awakenings.  I’ve played through both the original and the expansion (I finished the expansion a couple of weeks ago), and I am very excited about the sequel.  I’m also excited for the sequel because I enjoyed Mass Effect 2 so much.  Bioware has been an amazing company for producing engaging and exciting roleplaying games, and DAII seem to be no different.  I’ve heard a lot of people who are unhappy about how DAII has been, excuse the term, “Mass Effected”.  Let me explain that.

Bioware used to be best known for a game called Baldur’s Gate(BG) and Baldur’s Gate II (BGII), two games based in the realms of Fearun, one of the many Dungeons and Dragons universes.  The games were very popular among a certain crowd of PC gamers because on top of an engaging combat engine, the game had a deep story, engaging characters, excellent storytelling, wonderful dialog, and a sharp sense of humor.  I get the feeling that many people who remember the game fondly remember the stats of their favorite character, remember the best class combos and where to find all the greatest magical items that the game had to offer.  I, myself, remember much of that, but I also very fondly remember some of the more interesting dialog, many of the jokes, and quite a few of the quests.  I imagine that many of the people who complain about the “Mass Effecting” of Dragon Age II get deeply into the gameplay mechanics of Bioware games.  They enjoy finding strong class builds and group combinations that allow them to devastate any enemy in their path.  I’ve spent a lot of time doing that, let me tell you.  However, when we get right down to it, I play Bioware games because they are some of the best story tellers I know.  They have done amazing things with the roleplaying genre, and streamlining combat is one that I count as “improvement”.  Dragon Age: Origins had a massive amount of content that was just me talking to my party members.  I sat around the campfire and learned about the history, backgrounds, hopes, dreams, and fantasies of my party members.  I absolutely adored the fact that at one point I sat down at the game and engaged in conversation with my party for almost two hours.  It was all completely optional too, totally unimportant to the mission.  More or less the same thing is possible in Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2.  The level of character interaction just astounded me.  It really made the game for me.  I had people I trusted, people I disliked and people who remained inscrutable.  I am looking forward to going back a few years from now and replaying it as I still expect to find hours of content that I missed the first time around.  Mass Effect was probably more enjoyable for much the same reason.  Lots of really awesome writing and dialog, and combat was straightforward, I didn’t have to spend hours trying to figure out how to optimize my characters in order to be able to win certain combats (damn you Demi-Lich!)

All that being said, I did end up being disappointed with how the release of Dragon Age II was handled.  I pre-ordered the game about a month ago, or perhaps it was as far back as January, in my excitement to play it.  Recently, however, I have discovered that on day one there will be content that was not included in the game, but available as paid Downloadable Content.  This has been going on for a little while, but it’s really starting to bug me, so I wrote EA/Bioware a letter today.

I am writing because I wish to voice my discontentment with the Dragon Age II product release and companion Downloadable Content (DLC). I do not mind that you wish to break your game up into an ala-carte model, what I am disappointed with is “surprise” model of paid content announcements even prior to the games release. I pre-ordered my Dragon Age II in good faith that I would be receiving a complete game only to find that even before the game has been released you have announced additional content for which you wish to charge an additional fee. I have been a very strong supporter of Bioware games over the years, and I strongly support all decisions to add DLC to the game to increase revenue and support the development of new games. I feel that your actions are punishing me for pre-ordering the game (an interest free loan to you) and do a disservice to your most loyal customers. I expect honesty from Bioware, I expect to be told a price for the game and sold the game at that price rather than releasing most of the game and then charging me for additional parts on day one. If you want to make the game available in pieces, that’s fine, but you must be open, up front, and honest about what will be available and when. I kindly request that in the future you disclaim all game components and their prices before you make them available for purchase so that I can make an informed decision about what I wish to purchase rather than surprising me at the last second. I feel that my trust has been broken and until I see some evidence in the future that you have changed your ways I will have to cease my purchase of your games early in their release cycle and instead wait until you have released your “ultimate” editions. I will be encouraging others to do the same. I do hope that someone will read this and pass it on as a sincere and loyal customer who has been a very strong supporter, will continue to be, but cannot support the current business practices. I would dearly love to know that someone has read this and at least acknowledged my concerns. Because I do not feel confident that the support form I was directed to is the right place to provide feedback I will be posting this on your customer forums as well.

Thank you for your time.

That’s pretty much the jist of it. I don’t disapprove of DLC, what I disapprove of is the shady business tactic of surprising me with it at the last minute. I would like to feel like my purchase was complete, or at least informed. Not such a hard thing I think but I suspect EA is going to continue to make business decisions that make me unhappy. Time will tell. It makes me a little sad to think that I’m going to have to delay my gratification of Mass Effect 3. I really want to play Mass Effect 3. Really badly.

My sweetie picked me up an early birthday present.  I am looking forward to getting some people together to play!