Flight Control
I really like simple games, which you can play where ever you are – and which still has enough challenges to be interesting for quite a while. One of the best games I’ve played for a long time is Flight Control for the iPhone/iPod Touch. The game was developed by Firemint.
It’s a fairly simple game. You’re in control of an Airport and all you have to do is make sure the planes land at the runways. To do this you simply draw their designated paths on the screen. There are 4 different aircrafts – helicopters, propeller planes, small jets and large jets. As you play more planes concurrently enters the airspace – and eventually it gets quite busy and avoiding mid-air collisions a challenge.
In the recent update of the game two new airfields was added to the original, and with the different layouts, new strategies for keeping the planes from hitting each other must be developed.
The sound in the game is nothing special, but that really doesn’t matter – once the airspace gets busy you really don’t have time to listen – and if you like you can disable sounds when the game launches and keep listening to podcasts or music.
The game is currently (at the time of writing) on sale for 99 cents – buy it now (AppStore link) and you’ll have hours of entertainment.
My Current high scores:
- Classic: 153
- Hawaii: 91
- Carrier: 82
London & Greenwich
We visited London (again) in May. A brief visit with a lot of walking in the City and a visit to Greenwich. Here are a few photos from the trip.
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Better but Broken
Posted by mahler in Project Management, eBusiness on May 10th, 2009
Working with application development – either on the web, on the desktop or any other place – is often quite interesting. When making new releases features are added, changed – or in rare cases removed.
As a developer – or “software product manager” – it must be an interesting challenge to keep up with the users and the market to capture the features and changes to a product, which will make it better from release to release.
There are probably many ways to try to keep up – by doing research and by listening to user feedback seems to be two obvious choices, but I’m sure, there are many others. Some, I’m sure is also just a gut feeling of what might be cool new features. If you’re good – and now the users, the market and the competitors, you’re making steady progress.
Yet sometimes you miss. The slow adoption rate of Microsoft Vista might be a sign of a very public miss.
It doesn’t have to be a big miss, to chase a user away.
This weekend it happened to one of my favorite iPod Touch games – Tap Defense was upgraded to version 2.0 – and while most of the updates probably are great, there’s one little detail, which probably ensured I’ll rarely play it again (unless I find a way to fix it).
I used to play Tap Defense a lot while listening to Audiobooks and Podcasts. The new version has been updated with sound effects and music – and now the podcast or audiobook goes away (pauses) when the game is launched.
I’m sure TapJoy, developers of the Tap Defense game, are proud of their new sounds, but if I need to choose between the game and my listening to podcasts, the game looses. Please bring the ability to keep listening to what every the iPod plays, back in version 2.1.
Ubunutu Uncomplicated Firewall
I’m still enjoying the fresh new Ubunutu 9.04, and one of the nice new features is a firewall – which Canonical calls “Uncomplicated Firewall”. I’m usually not hooked on firewalls, but just for the fun of it I enabled the firewall on my laptop and it seems to work quite well. The firewall doesn’t seem to have any noticeable impact on system performance and as the laptop from time to time visits open wifi’s, it’s probably a good idea to have protection from other users on open networks.
Installing the firewall
The firewall should be available by default, but there isn’t a GUI application installed for the firewall. Open your favorite package manager and install the “gufw” package.
sudo apt-get install gufw
O
nce installed the firewall can easily be turned on and of – and controlled from the System -> Administration -> Firewall configuration menu item.
I set the current configuration to “Deny incoming traffic” and enabled the firewall (beneat the shield). This is probably all most desktop users needs to do.
On my laptop, I am running a SSH server. I do this as a way to fetch files I may have forgotten on the machine when leaving the laptop at the office – or use it as a jumpstation to other machines.
Adding a rule in the firewall, which allows incoming SSH traffic was a simple matter of choosing the “preconfigured” tab, and there adding a rule allowing SSH traffic.
The firewall can be configured with much more advanced options, but if you really need that, you probably (or hopefully) know what to do, but for regular users having an easy to use firewall and an uncomplicated interface to manage it, is just great and one of the cool new features of Ubuntu 9.04.
Ctrix and Ubuntu 9.04
I’ve recently wiped the hard drive of my laptop and upgraded to Ubuntu 9.04. The Linux desktop is a perfect place to do development and surf the net, but the corporate network is a Windows world and to access mail and other enterprise applications we use Citrix servers. Getting Citrix running on the new Ubuntu is easier than ever.
sudo apt-get install libmotif3 sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libXm.so.3.0.2 /usr/lib/libXm.so.4
download the most recent client from Citrix.
mv linuxx86-11.0.140395.tar.gz install_tmp cd install_tmp tar zxvf linuxx86-11.0.140395.tar.gz sudo ./setupwfc
After finishing the install remove the “install_tmp” directory.
From here on it’s a matter of configuring the Citrix Receiver to your specific environment.
In my case, I gad a backup of the old Ubuntu installation, and I fetched the “.ICAClient” directory from my home-folder and putting in the same place on the new installation and no configuration was even needed.
(Thanks, Schack)
Welcome to the “new” old site
Let’s call it lift off… This site has been online in some form or another for 10+ years. During that time I’ve been runing a static HTML site (eventually with a few CGI’s), later on Movable Type a few years and most recently an odd mixture of Wordpress, Gallery2 and custom code. During the past months I’ve been trying to make things somewhat simpler, and what you’re looking at right now, is the first step – a new look (though a standard Wordpress theme and a drastically reduced plugin collection).
There are loads of broken links, and currently the entire photo gallery is more or less off-line. Don’t panic though – you can still see some of my images on iStockPhoto and some of the images will return on the site as Wordpress Galleries.
Sorry for the inconvenience, but I’m sure things will improve eventually – featuring less broken links and more content.
Dubai, U.A.E.
We recently visited Dubai, U.A.E..
Here are a few photos from the week down there.
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Skift kodeord… ja altså
Posted by mahler in It, teknik og Internet on March 16th, 2009
Så er det på tide at skifte kodeord til Windows netværket på arbejde. Det er altid en spændende opgave, idet feedback teksten man får, hvis det nye kodeord ikke opfylder de regler, der nu måtte være sat op, ikke helt er til at dekryptere. Er der nogen, der kan hjælpe mig til at finde et nyt kodeord, der opfylder det sidste krav – “… og skal være mindst 2 dage gammel”?
Klik for at se det i stor udgave.
Simple slideshow updated
Quite awhile ago I posted a little piece of javascript, which could be used to a (very) simple webpage slide show. Someone requested a version a little more advanced for use in a kiosk mode, and sure why not – updating the script with the option to set different times on the webpages displayed was a minor change, and it’s been done now.
If you’d like an updated version of a basic webpage slideshow with an option to specify the time each page is displayed, go ahead get it from the lab.
Den gode overskrift er om TDC
Politikkens tjek har tilsyneladende kedet sig på redaktionen og efter lidt tid med papirflyvere og andet tidsspilde, har man så fundet på dagens TDC historie – at det er gratis at opgradere til større kabeltv pakker, mens det koster penge at nedgradere. Det er der så kommet den rystende overskrift “Dyrt at spare penge hos TDC”.
Uha, uha.
Der er to ændringer, de burde have overvejet, inden de sendte artiklen i trykken, hvis overskriften skulle have været retvisende.
For det første handler den om Yousee (der er godt nok ejet af TDC), og selvom skribenten tilsyneladende er klar over dette, så skal man da ikke kalde tingene ved deres rette navn.
Den anden – når vi nu skal harmes over at der tages gebyr for nedgraderinger – er, at det, når man nu er ude i de stakkels forbrugeres ærinde, er at artiklen lige får nævnt, at Stofa (der er ejet af Telia) tager penge for både op- og nedgraderinger og der tager man cirka 65% mere for skiftet (495,- mod 295,-). Mon ikke det burde have været overskriften, hvis vi nu skal harme over gebyrgrippen, der svæver over os stakkels forbrugere.
Når den ikke er blevet det, så er det sikkert fordi, at den gode overskrift i dette tilfælde er om TDC, ikke artiklens indhold – Mon ikke?
(note: jeg arbejder hos TDC, men på dette site repræsenterer jeg kun mig selv og ikke min arbejdsgiver).
Recent Twets- @OmnitureCare true... but all my other extensions did upgrade without needing reinstall and I was kind of expecting the same from you...
- RT @Schack: ... upgrade Clickmap plugin BEFORE upgrading to FF 3.5 and things will work #omniture ... - sigh, sigh, sigh
- If my recently played music on Last.fm seems odd, it's a just an example of how little of a genius the iPod Genius function can be...
- @chrille_dk Hot in Copenhagen too :-) - even @schack dropped jeans for shorts today...
- Firefox 3.5 (on Linux) - it sure feels faster :)
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