iOS 6 Review (On an iPhone 3GS)

Updating. And you can have both Apple and Samsung products together...

As expected with every new iPhone Apple will release new iOS to improve their product. Well for me and most owners of the aging ancient iPhone 3GS, we are delighted with the iOS 6.0 update as it let us experience some goodies that come along the new iPhone 5.

For starters it took roughly 3 hours to download (what a whooping update!). Then the updating takes roughly another 20-30 minutes. But after doing so you'll be treated with some improvements as shown below:

Typical update menu.

Do Not Disturb - Finally I can simply turn on this mode to still get selected updates without relying to total communication shutdown in airplane mode. Apparently you can set which contact are able to contact you while silencing the rest. Apart from that you can set "Quiet Hours" to make your iPhone leave you in peace even when there are calls and SMS coming in. It'll just sit there quietly waiting for your command. 

New Music Player Interface - Black and orange themed player, looks good. But changes are just visual.

New VIP in E-Mail - So we can get quick access mail from important people. Okay, a new category then.

Passbook - An all in one app where you can digitally get your scan-and-go boarding pass, tickets etc. But knowing Sibu, this neat function is quite impractical for now. Oh you still need to go to App Store to get those passes.

New Keypad - Okay, we have a new white and brighter keypads for us to tap in numbers. This is cool. Again changes are just visual.

New Camera & Photo Interface - Well, not new per se but the interface is now black in colour instead of white like earlier iOS versions. Changes are visual and no new improvements. In Photos, your images can be easily shared with the new icons form the 'More' options.

Apple Maps - Apple replaces Google Maps  with their own app and well... the satellite/hybrid map is horrible (for Sibu anyways)! It's like the comedic Restoration of Jesus! I could see my house in the previous app but now all I see is Pixel Land. At least the streets and roads are adequately named this time.

New Call Response Options - Besides the standard Decline or Answer key, you can now slide the menu up to reveal "Reply with Message" or "Remind Me Later" to your caller. For "Reply with Message" you can instantly reply with present messages to explain to the caller why you can't talk e.g. "I'll call you later" or "I'm on my way".  As for "Remind Me Later" your iPhone will remind you later to call the person. Cool. 

Voice Control - ...still cannot catch Manglish. I was asking "What time is it?"

Overall the iOS 6 didn't come with much features for iPhone 3GS but it's understandable as it was focused on iPhone 5. Some features are gone like YouTube and the good old high-resolution Google Maps. However the introduction of Do Not Disturb mode is very much welcomed. The iPhone do feel to run a bit faster too. I hope we can get the ability to blacklist some numbers too in the next update. And perhaps a map of Sibu with better resolution? Anyways I'll summed up the review:

iOS 6 for iPhone 3GS
by Apple Inc.
★★★☆☆

Some good upgrades like the Do Not Disturb mode (although some already used in other smartphones e.g. Android's Reply with Message), we appreciate the new updates. We just got a beef with the map quality and there are rooms for improvement. (Ability to blacklist please)

Zynga's Empires & Allies Review

This morning I woke up to tend to my citizens need in Cityville when I came across the in-game ad Empires & Allies. The word 'Empire' always turns me on and a quick check showed a favourable rating on its Facebook page. So what the heck I clicked the "Allow Permission" button.

After producing a few games ending with '-Ville', Empires & Allies (E&A) is the latest addition to a fleet of Zynga's simple, repetitive but addictive games. Despite the lack of the traditional suffix, the game feels like an Empireville where traditional concepts remain, such as building stuff, harvesting them after a set amount of time and share your achievement on your Facebook wall and newsfeed for your buddies to see.

The island where you start your destiny as a glorious leader.

Zoom in a bit. And hey those coins look so familiar. Must... click... coins...

Your intimidation is so... [Clean Edit]

The game puts you in the storyline of how your little island town just got bombed by the appropriately named Dark Empire, and you as the leader are now on a warpath of vengeance to defeat all the Dark Empire's armies, island by island. A good plot and puts you in the mood to play but in-game storyline isn't new to Facebook apps. However you do experience something new: Battle.

Looks like a cute Pokemon battle on a Nintendo.

Traditionally most Facebook games use texts to display the battle progress on and make your mind does all the work imagining how your wicked sick 500 armed mafioso just whooped another mafia called Master Street Thug "LoveFrodo69" Level 235. But in E&A, you'll be served with an interactive new screen showing your army charging towards the enemy army. Endlessly. And you'll be able to click on whatever target you want them to shoot until one side loses everything.

Say what?

And here comes the con. If you don't like tending farms or had added applications with "-Ville" at the back and left it after a few days, this is not your cup of tea. Some similar concepts may turn off some players who will say "Oh no not another building, harvesting and wall spamming game". Unless you are willing to tend to your farm in Farmville then jump to Cityville then E&A the go back to Farmville when your energy had recharged. Speaking of energy, the battles in E&A use energy so sometimes your trigger happy finger may stop when the menu pops up telling you to ask your friends to give you Energy, or just buy them. It's a good game nonetheless, and uh... add me up!

Pros:

• Clean and beautiful graphic.
• Battles are entertaining.
• Wall posts only display to friends playing E&A.

Cons:

• Same gameplay concept from many Facebook farm/city building games.
• Energy usage in battle sucks out the fun.
• The "Immunity" feature stops you from attacking your friends for hours.

There's room for improvement Zynga! Play now by clicking here.

Awesome! But why does she reminds me of someone...

Oh.

Steam Updating Problem Fix

Steam.exe main exception

To run Steam, you must first connect to the Internet

If you have:
1. Encountered the message above when updating Steam
2. Already connected to the Internet
3. Already turned off firewall
4. Windows 7 user
5. and Googled your way here

Then congratulations you're one step closer to solving it. Here we go mate:

Step 1
Click on Windows go to Control Panel then in the Search Control Panel box type firewall. Click on Allow a program through Windows Firewall as shown below:



Step 2
Scroll down until you see Steam. Make sure you ☑ it for both Home/Work (Private) and Public. It should look like below:

Step 3
Restart Steam, and try updating again. This time it should work as shown below. Enjoy!

How to Loop YouTube Videos

Who needs 'Play' button when you can loop that YouTube song from 10pm - 10am

This is a simple trick for those who tend to be busy, DO NOT WANT to click Play again when the video is over, and really want to let the YouTube video play on repeat non-stop.

STEP 1
Head over to YouTube and find the video you want.

Step 2
At the address bar, add in the word repeat before the .com. Then press ENTER. See below for example:

Step 3
You will be redirected to YouTube Repeat and your video will be played on loop automatically. Enjoy!

Infectonator: World Domination Review

A dose of senseless pixelated violence of a zombie apocalypse is recommended during finals... TANK!!! PARAH! PARAH!

Remember how all zombie games usually let you kill hordes of zombies? Well, this one lets you turn people into zombies. INFECTONATOR: WORLD DOMINATION is a sequel to INFECTONATOR, and yes I was grinning and LOLing all the way watching panicking pixelated people running away from my pixelated zombies who were wreaking havoc from pixelated Jamaica to Melbourne. Maintaining its 8-bit graphics and music style, WORLD DOMINATION also retained its basic point-and-click-and-enjoy-the-ensuing-chaos gameplay but now you will have to plan well due to its new features.

The first noticeable new feature is the ability to play around world (or dominate it, as the title suggests). Starting from Africa, you will have to infect and destroy towns and cities using zombies. You'll earn cash that can be used to upgrade your zombie horde by doing so, and new regions will be unlocked as you progress.
Each region demonstrates its demographical uniqueness in-game. For example while 'infecting' Indo-China you can expect to see stereotyped Asian pedestrians. The pedestrians also express mundane or hilarious monologues e.g. pre-attack Singaporeans uttering "Gotta get dollars" (LOL), or Malaysians shouting "Oh Tuhan! Zombies" or Iraqis screaming "Mashallah, infidels!" during an attack.
Also, several regions hold a special pedestrian that must be infected in order to unlock SPECIAL infected that adds up to the humor e.g. when you infect Colonel Sanders you'll be able to spawn Col. Sandars zombie who spawns zombie chickens. Each special infected has their own unique attack as well as homage/spoof e.g. Tank pays homage to Left 4 Dead, MJ zombie does the Thriller dance accompanied by 8-bit Thriller music to stun everyone on the map. These special infected can also be upgraded.
With all these combined you have a classic but gory 'stress-reliever'. For example the town of Aceh in Indonesia region map below. Yes, that guy in white t-shirt can "Cuci mata dulu ah" for now because moments later...
...hordes of zombies terrorises the place, with a Ranald McD zombie defecating(?) infected hamburgers, MJ zombie moonwalking the army to death, and other chaos that cause the locals to scream "Apa-apaan ini?" and "Parah! Parah!". I must be sick, but the gore and hilarity portrayed made me ROFLMFAO and forget about worldly worries.

After each attack, apart from the money, you will also get a news report to show what you've done. Lookie the damaged I've done to Perth:

You complete the game when you've destroyed all the towns and cities in the world including the North Pole (wtf?). For me I did it in 188 days, kinda slow since I jumped between regions and continued LOLing at favourite hotspots.

Infectonator: World Domination is a great successor to the first title with these new features. The ability to turn people in zombies has made me happy. Hence I'm going to give it:





with a complimentary







Click the link below to play:
Infectonator: World Domination

Iban Shuffle

MELBOURNE SHUFFLE FTW!

Since Gawai's (Ibans' harvest festival in Sarawak) around the corner, I figured out it's time to have some Gawai song trance/techno remix. Accidentally I stumbled upon this:

Iban Shuffle Ignoring the incorrect stereotyping of Iban culture by the West (the Ibans portrayed look like confused Native South American/Zulu warriors on weed doing the robot to Iban sape music), this is a FTW video. But nothing beats this ultimate For Teh Win shuffle video;

Pocong Shuffle (Pocong - Malay ghost of the dead wrapped in white burial cloth)


Well, to heighten up the mood, have some more shuffle fest at Sarawak. Haihz globalization... Oh well, enjoy the song!

Gawai Shuffle

Happy 30th Birthday PAC-MAN!

The world went into a standstill, as millions of people got distracted replaying an old-time classic from the 80s...

This morning I woke up all groggy and pretty much messed up after a crazy night. Then automatically my body motor systems turned up the laptop and went online, as it has been for the past 5 years. To my surprise, I was graced by a very familiar character from my childhood; パックマン (PAC-MAN)

At first I thought it was just a doodle (static creative illustration of Google's logo distorted to match the event), then suddenly the 4 colorful ghosts started moving and I automatically moved the yellow guy using my directional keys. It's the 80's and 90's all over again for me...

To commemorate the 30th birthday of NAMCO BANDAI Inc.'s epic game that's considered as one of the grandfathers of video games, Google gave surfers the chance to play a map based on GOOGLE layout. I finished it in less than 2 minutes with 1 death and gosh was I delighted to be able to re-experienced the game that was part of my innocent and simple childhood life. To play, head over to www.google.com while the event lasts.

P/S: you may notice I have 1 PAC-MAN and 1 Ms. PAC-MAN in the screenshot. To get this, simply click the "Insert Coin" button twice quickly. Player 1 will be using directional keys, while Player 2 will be using WASD keys. Enjoy!

Join I played PAC-MAN on May 21-23, 2010 on Facebook!

MAS Traveller Short Film Competition

Vote your favorite MH videos!
As well as this video made by our own Curtin Miri campus. Haha miss you guys ;)

Sayonarra Mafia Wars?

You ain't extorting my email address from me Zynga...
So I came back after a long day looking forward to attend to Facebookly matters. Then this shit pops up in Mafia Wars. At first I thought I was blind because I couldn't find the ever-friendly X icon to close the message. Apparently there isn't any.

Players of Mafia Wars are now required to give in their e-mail in order to play Zynga games. This is a broad daylight extortion. A short trip to their profile Discussions revealed the same thing happened to other Zynga games such as Farmville. Fuck this.

This is their disclaimer in the puny Zynga's Email Program:

When you share your email with Zynga's Mafia Wars you'll get regular messages about developments and promotions in Mafia Wars and other Zynga games. We'll also let you know when your friends in Zynga games leave you messages or ask for assistance. You'll be able to manage your preferences by visiting our Preference Management Center. Please read our Privacy Policy to learn more about how we treat personal information like email addresses.

Unlike most who quit all Zynga-based games as protest, I've decided to join the ultimatum until Friday evening for this ridiculous extortion to be removed. This is a clear violation of privacy policy offered by Facebook, so any of you who are in the same shoe please do not give in to their demands... you want my e-mail? Nah! mIm (-___-) mIm

Remember the Disconnected Malaysians

Today we will remember the Malaysians who were intermittently disconnected from the world...
Here at K4L I would like to commemorate the Malaysians who were struck by the worst disaster in Malaysian history; the day Malaysia has no Internet. My condolences to those who lost their times to harvest their crops in Barn Buddies, gossiping in MSN/Skype/other IM, clicking refresh to see Facebook statuses, stalking people online, and occasionally looking for materials for referencing.

Read more here

When this news broke out last night, I wonder how many people in Malaysia will suffer until May 2nd (or longer since who knows *touch wood* may take longer). I hope the service improves after I get back...