Mini Stormtrooper images

As some of you may have seen on Facebook and Twitter that I’ve been messing around with a number of Star Wars action figures. These in particular and a couple of stormtroopers, and an R2D2 unit (this is what happens when a 35 year old goes shopping after a couple of beers).

I’ve also been after an opportunity to put the iPhone 4′s camera to work. All the images below are shot with the iPhone 4′s 5 megapixel camera.

Now I wish I could take credit for the idea, however there are a lot smarter people on the internet, with a lot better camera’s than me, just google StormTroopers day off.

Below is my contribution

Tags: action, beers, Below, camera, contribution, couple, day, facebook, google, idea, images, iphone, iphone 4, lot, megapixel, Mini, number, opportunity, star, star wars, star wars action, star wars action figures, Stormtrooper, stormtroopers, twitter, unit, year

Social Networking for Gamers

I like most of you, use twitter, facebook and occasionally pop on to myspace to see how many bands want to be my friends.

Anyway, on the 4th of October, through total fluke read through a twitter conversation, and noticed a load of twitter entries from @squ1r3ll, with updates on his gaming status….linking to a site called raptr.com.

Being a bit of a gamer I’ve tried for months to get my gamertags, achievement, out to my friends and virtual friends, but the only way I’ve found to do this is manually.

I tried a number of facebook apps, and had varied success, they would either change my status to “Darren is playing…..” after a couple of hours of gaming, or just not bother at all. The achievements would post to my feed, however this was a manual process, I belevie the app is called “Xbox 360 Live GamerCard”.

Anyway, raptr.com, what is it…well let me tell you, it’s fantastic, and what I’ve been looking for, for ages. You sign up (using Facebook connect if you like) and add your gamer profiles, eg Xbox Live, PSN, Steam, Warcraft, etc etc, what it then does is monitors and reports on your gaming activities, eg which game your playing, on which platform, and records how long, and any achievement you may get.

Xbox live is monitored through the feed that Microsoft so kindly provide, and updates almost in real time (can be a 5/10 min delay), PSN tracking is currently broken due to Sony putting a restriction on their data. Everything else is tracked by the client.

The client is a custom messenger type client that can also run your msn, gtalk, aim, yahoo, xfire and icq, however this is the key to tracking the stats on your PC/Mac. On initial install it will scan your hard drive for games, and add them to your collection (both on the client, and on the website), any new games installed it will pick them up and also add to your collection.

When your ready to play a game, just start as normal and this will change your messenger stats to “Darren is playing xxxxxxx”, as it does with your online raptr status too, and logs the time played. When finished, it calculates the time you were playing and adds this to your tally on the website.

With the site you also get the option of a couple of signatures with varied information, all updating in real time, varying from currently playing to, the last/most played with you longest played 6 games.

Once you start to build up your friends, it will give you a ranking out of your current friend on a particular game (bases on the number of achievements you have), you can also compare achievements on a game with upto 3 friends at a time.

Finally one very cool feature of Raptr, is that when you get an achievement, it will tell you what percentage of Raptr users who have that game, have gained that achievement, giving you an idea of how hard it was.

The only downside with Raptr, is that it is unable to check your PSN stats, now this is through no fault of their own, it just seems Sony is being a little protective about their data. You can update your playing time, but this is manual, hopefully some day in the future, they will allow this.

From googling the PSN issue, I stumbled on a number of other social networking for gamer sites, GamerDNA, Playfire and Giantbomb.

I haven’t used any of the sites as much as I’ve used Raptr, however they all seem to be kinda tracking my stats.

GamerDNA, does seem to track PSN stats, and pull through the trophies, but there seems to be around a 2 day delay

Playfire, Love the layout, but again doesn’t pull through the PSN stats/trophies, doesn’t track time, and also about a day behind.

GiantBomb, I only signed up for this last night, but it’s already tracking my Steam, Warcraft and XBL, but again, no PSN.

All in all, it’s good to more and more of these sites popping up, I remember the day when gaming was deemed as geeky, however seems every man and his dog is doing it now, and it’s now socially accepted.

Personal recommendation, give Raptr.com a try, it just works and if you do, feel free to add me as a friend

My ID’s for the sites are as follows

Raptr

GamerDNA

Playfire

Giantbomb

and no, Raptr isn’t broken, I’ve actually spent that much time playing Borderlands

Tags: achievement, apps, client, com, couple, Darren, day, facebook, fluke, game, gamer, gamer profiles, GamerDNA, gaming, gaming activities, Giantbomb, hard drive, mac, Microsoft, monitors, msn, new games, number, pc mac, Playfire, psn, raptr, real time, restriction, site, sony, status, steam, time, twitter, virtual friends, xbox, xbox 360, xbox live, xfire

iPod Touch OS3.0 First Impressions

Ok, I’m a little sad, ever since the WWDC I’ve been counting down the days until the version 3.0 software for my iPod Touch. Today as most of you are aware is d-day. I’ve spent the day checking the net to see if it’s out, but to no avail.

5.30pm came, I got myself home in record time, sync my iPod, hit Refresh of the update page….and got the, the latest firmware is 2.2.1…Booo !

Had a quick look on twitter, and and there was a tweet from TrekkyGeek to suggest the firmware wouldn’t be out till around 9pm. Great I though, I’ve got things to do, and this gave me a little time to do them, then I could spend from 9pm onwards messing with the new software.

Just after 6, there was another post from TrekkyGeek saying, ooops, 9pm may have been wrong, so I hit refresh and there it was FINALLY !

I hit the magical download button, did as most people do and just hit the “I accept your T’s and C”s”, paid my £5.99 and hit download.

Initially it download a “iPod Software Update” of 277Mb, went through the motions of updating my iPod, rebooted, once rebooted I unplugged it, went straight to Config >> About and it still said 2.2.1 ? Thought WTF !, So I plugged it back in, iTunes detected it, and said…”Hey, there’s a new firmware available ?!?”, so I downloaded the firmware again, this time a 257Mb file, it ran through the motions, and voila Version 3.0 !

So, I’ve had a couple of hours to have a play with it, so what do I think ?

Well, it’s quicker, and I’d say noticeably quicker, it seems to feel a lot smoother.

Bluetooth, now enabled !, for those of you that didn’t know, the iPod Touch 2G has bluetooth, however this was never made public knowledge, ad this is what was used for the iPod + Nike, and was how you communicate with the sensor you put in your trainer. This now seems to be unlocked so you can use it with Stereo headphones, and speakers. From what I’ve read, this will also be used for peer to peer gaming also.

One of the major additions for me is the Landscape keyboard, currently it only seems to work with Safari (which it did anyway), notes and mail, which is cool, however I hope they bring this to the other applications.

Spotlight Search…anybody who owns a Mac will know just how good the spotlight search is. This will check meta data and id tags for the “searched word(s)”, emailed, notes and it an incredible local search engine, to see this work on the iPod Touch was lightening fast, and a welcome change.

Now this is the major seller for me, and worth the £5.99 alone, Cut, Copy & Paste..I tend to use my Touch a lot for browsing the web, and sending and receiving email, and to be honest it’s been frustrating not to have these when you become so used to them, on the PC and Mac. This does work a treat, you hold down your finger or thumb on the screen for a few seconds, and you get the Cut, Copy, Paste option, select the text, or images you want, with 2 movable start and end blocks, and your done, works very well.

Voice recorder, not a major feature for me, as it means I’ve got to plug in my ear bud/mic combo headset in, but works pretty well.

Something I noticed when I was listening to a podcast shortly after was a number of new icons on the play bar. You now have the option to jump back 30 seconds, which for me is a godsend, I’m forever getting interrupted and struggle to find where I was, with this, 1 click and your 30 seconds in the past !. Another of the icons lets you speed up / slow down the play speed, this way you can power listen to the podcasts you are behind on, which seem a really good feature to me !

The main update I’m looking forward to (which won’t be available till September) is the Push Notification, which allows information about your apps to be notified to you (kinda how the blackberry’s work) for example if you use a Twitter application, this could potentially be coded to let you know when you have a reply, without actually running the application. This if done right with be brilliant, and really give blackberry a run for their money I think.

Finally, a feature that’s been missing since day, something very simple and something you could do by using Yahoo, it’s the ability to sign in to your YouTube account and see and play your subscriptions  ! GENIUS !

Anyway, the firmware is still new, I need to have a good play with it, and will get chance over the next couple of days.

There are many more features, but the above are the only ones I’ve played with so far.

Tags: 2g, avail, bluetooth, counting down the days, couple, d day, day, Download, feature, firmware, ipod, ipod software, ipod touch, little time, lot, mac, motions, new software, nike, play, public knowledge, record time, Refresh, search, software, software update, something, stereo headphones, time, time sync, touch, TrekkyGeek, tweet, twitter, update, version, work, wwdc