Best iPhone Games – mrbass.org/iphone

Well back in the day I bought my 400GB for $200 each.  I’ve probably had four or five die on me last few years both Seagate and Western Digital.  Even though data was safe in my ReadyNAS through the years I attritube failure to heat.  Those puppies would get 65 C/ 149 F that is as hot as hell is I’m sure.

Seagate used to be fine but evidently last year or so many reports they suck too.  So who is the new king? Samsung check out 1.5TB drive at 23 C / 73 F or even 27 C / 80 F which is lower than Western Digital 33C / 91 F. So 23 C or 33C? Yea I’ll take the 10 C cooler one.  Next step is get five more Samsumg 1.5TB hds top populate both my ReadyNAS devices.  So grats to those Koreans as Samsung seems to be putting out the coolest 1.5TB harddrives which is critical for longterm life.

Having my Western Digital hard drive report this to me doesn’t make me feel easy either.

ATA error count has increased in the last day. Disk 3: Previous count: 6 Current count: 12 Growing SMART errors indicate a disk that may fail soon. If the errors continue to increase, you should be prepared to replace the disk.

Back in March 2009 I did a massive review of the two competing $15 Scripture apps. Since that time they both have gone through numerous updates and I’ve updated the review here and there. Now I’m going to chime in with my opinion (previously left that up to the reader). Both have nearly identical content now as both added October 2009 General Conference and new Church Curriculum which is Gospel Principles Manual 2010-2011 for Relief Society and Priesthood and for Gospel Doctorine Class is the new updated Old Testament Manual. Although LDS Scriptures still has more content.

LDS Scriptures App does have highlighting now and it works great. Choose from 8 colors and just tap a word and another word to highlight a range. When using search it still does NOT highlight the resulting scriptures. Has auto scrolling now to to match LDS Scriptures. My content is just html and some reason isn’t being parsed so it’s pretty much useless. LDS Scriptures App still fails big time for one area, search. Search does now have All Words, Any Words, Phrase. It crashes if I attempt to tap Phrase. It attempts to search in realtime but pretty much fails and locks up and exits to home screen. If I am able to type for instance slothful servant and filter Phrase it’ll search for about 25 seconds and crash the app. You can subscribe via sharescriptures.com to Ensign, New Era, Friend and it automatically delivers it each month. Does have Mac $19, PC $19, Linux $19 , Android $15?, iPhone $15 synchronization but it’s costly.

LDS Scriptures has had highlighting for quite some time with ability to highlight range with a color (now no white space), color just words, underline, bold, and italicize . Search is realtime as you type each letter (less than a second) and reliable and highlights the scriptures. Two things I wish for:
1) Ensign subscription would automatically download new one each month rather than manually having to choose it. Although this isn’t a huge deal since you can search from within the app itself without having to login to the website.
2) ldsscripturesapp.com would allow for password recovery in case you forget like sharescriptures.com has.

I’ve waited since March to gauge how well the updates would go. The clear winner in my eyes is LDS Scriptures by Standard Works even though I pointed out a couple of minor wishes which LDS Scriptures App does. I didn’t point out all the stuff that LDS Scriptures has that LDS Scriptures App doesn’t but trust me there are quite a few. If searching is of any importance to you at all and quickness of the app then you shouldn’t think twice as to which one to get.

Recently cable provider decided to bump all from 6Mbps to 10Mbps $55/month. I decided to bump from 10Mbps to 18Mbps for $67/month.  Still though not fair since San Diego gets 25Mbps for $57/month.  However, still 25Mbps is still behind Japan.  In 2006 used fiber there from a neighbor let me share his fiber connection ($60/month he said he paid for fiber) for 2 months and got 100Mbps (12.5MB/s).  America is still four or five times slower than Japan and Korea.

7200rpm NAS I can transfer via gigabit 1000Mbps (theoritical 125MB/s) huge files at 21MB/sec.  5900rpm NAS I can copy at 17MB/sec.

Dec 10, 2009 Update it is 21MB/s if I disable journaling just like I had on my other NAS.  So essential new harddrives are just as fast.

Now if I was on 10/100 Ethernet max is 12.5MB/s. Not getting 10 times more as harddrives are the bottleneck but twice the speed I believe it’s worth it.  Although my hard drive is so busy downloading stuff and unraring it I think I like just unrarring it directly to my NAS which done at 7MB/sec.

I know technically this is approximations but for all intensive purposes the following is correct.

1000KB = 1MB (3.5 inch floppy 1.44MB, CD 700MB, email attachment 10MB limit)
1000MB = 1GB (DVD 4.4GB, DVD-9 dual-layer 8.5GB, 4GB Memory, BluRay disc 25GB)
1000GB = 1TB (1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB hard drives)

CD/DVD/Bluray read/write speeds.
36X CD speed = 5.3MB/s
4X DVD speed = 5.4MB/s
1X BluRay speed = 4.5MB/s

Internet connection speeds
56Kbps = 7KB/s (remember dial up days from 1995, got DSL in 1997)
64Kbps = 8KB/s (ISDN ring a bell anyone, maybe was 128Kbps)
512Kbps = 64KB/s
1024Kbps = 128KB/s
3G (1,000Kbps) = 125KB/s (yea iphone is slow)
1.5Mbps = 192KB/s (some DSL still at this speed and T1s)
6Mbps = 800KB/s (cable and maybe DSL)
10Mbps = 1.3MB/s (cable)
18Mbps = 2.3MB/s (cable)
25Mbps = 3.1MB/s (cable)
50Mbps = 6.3MB/s (still waiting for this in USA)
100Mbps = 12.5MB/s (fiber, 10/100Mbps ethernet)
1000Mbps = 125MB/s (if all switches, routers are gigabit ethernet)

Time to download 10GB bluray.
1.5Mbps = 15 hrs
6Mbps = 3 hrs 45 mins
10Mbps = 2 hrs 30 mins
18Mbps = 1 hr 15 mins
25Mbps = 1 hr
50Mbps = 30 mins
100Mbps = 15mins

Time to copy 10GB bluray to NAS
unrar on the fly 7MB/s = 24 mins
10/100 ethernet 12MB/s = 14 mins
5900rpm 17MB/s = 10 mins
7200rpm 21MB/s = 8 mins

Yesterday got a WD TV Live which is a tiny device fits almost on your palm that’s how small this baby is.  XMBC I ran forever on original xbox but 550p is max the Pentium 700Mhz CPU can handle.  Xbox 360 and PS3 can run high def over network but only if transcoding on the fly and/or have to remux stereo sound only. My longterm plan was to get a $600 Mac mini and run plex or boxee (xbmc versions) but no need when the video chips handle the decoding of 1080p content and the speed of the CPU is pretty much irrelevant.

So how do you play BluRay rips 1920×800 with DTS audio and subs?  Obviously keep them in mkv (Matroska) video container with x264 video.  Every WD TV Live review I’ve read is bunch of crap they just rewrite the specs of the device…boring and pretty much only praise it.  Well I still recommend it but as long as you understand the list of  caveats.

When trying to play iso files it does NOT play with DLNA which is my preferred method to stream them from my two NAS devices.  It won’t display them and if the iso file is within it’s own directory it’ll just say “No media found in folder”.  It will play iso files if you connect via a share with username and password which remembers your login credentials.  In addition img files you’ll need to rename those to iso files.

Biggest issue however, with iso files is doesn’t support menus.  Basically it can’t read the .ifo file so dvds with funky timecodes to jump around VOBS randomly you’ll watch the movie all screwed up.  Same with VIDEO_TS vob files it just attempts to play them in order which works sometimes but not always. But multi-episode dvd iso files with tv shows you can NOT view the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th, etc. episode on the iso file only the first.  I don’t see this changing anytime soon unless they hire someone who knows how to read dvds properly. I doubt this is a licensing issue but who knows.

Photos and Music I will not use that much.  It has no recursive support like xbmc does.  To me that’s an epic fail so maybe turn on Pandora (40 hours per month max unless pay $36/year) once in a blue moon but that’s it. Flickr is a joke and another fail as it shows pictures the size of big thumbnails. Well going to have to throw all my mp3s in one massive directory and shuffle it.

Wishes
- display video resolution (1920 x 800 for instance) in the info bar.
- Press FF >> then press Next which skips 10 mins be able to change it to 5 mins in settings.
- ignore hidden files with a period at the start.
- recursive

Now let me list some positive things since I ripped WD TV Live a new one.

- Boots in five seconds.
- Downmixes DTS or AC3 5.1 Dolby sound for those who don’t have receiver or one that handles it (almost all recent receivers past 8 years do support DTS).
- my 56″ DLP TV only does 1080i but when I do eventually get 1080 progressive TV I’ll have one massive bluray 1080p collection and enjoy 1080 interlaced until then.
- played BluRay rips flawlessly with no hiccups. Subtitles work as expected. 15.6GB Twilight 23.976 fps 1920×800 DTS and 12.4GB Gladiator 1920×816 DTS
- Youtube implementation is pretty decent and works well.
- runs pretty cool and as far as I can tell has no internal fans thus runs quiet.

Due to the WD TV Live’s lack of true .iso file support it has lead me to find a solution to convert them to .mkv on Mac which I may end up ultimately doing.
- makemkv.com is a free solution (at least during beta period it’s free)  which takes about 5 mins to convert dvd .iso to .mkv with no reencoding of video or audio. Can also rip DVD or Bluray discs directly to mkv.
- Handbrake release came out November 23, 2009 so that takes about 45 mins to 1 hour to convert dvd to .mkv so that is an option if I have trouble with makemkv.

In the Year of the Dragon game I just decided I wanted to learn since I play Samurai on mabiweb and read how cutthroat and competitive it is.  Well hot dang this game seems pretty hard to teach let alone learn but hopefully I can point you in the right direction. First print out these one page PDFs except perhaps official rules wish you can read over quickly. Credit for PDFs you can find at bgg entry for Year of the Dragon.  12 rounds and each round consists of four phases (all players do each phase before next phase):

1. Action – Taxes, Build, Harvest, Fireworks Display, Military Parade, Research, Privilege
2. Persons – Monk, Builder, Farmer, Healer, Warrior, Scholar, Tax Collector, Pyrotechnist, Courty Lady
3. Event – Peace, Drought, Contagion, Mongol Invasion, Imperial Tribute, Dragon Festival. Decay occurs end of phase.
4. Scoring – 1 VP for each palace, each courty lady, and each privilege. Also there is end game scoring.

yotd_reference.pdf 957KB one page – shows actions and events and quick phase description.
yotd_player_aid.pdf 166KB one page – shows 9 persons with related 7 Actions and and 6 events
yotd_quickref.pdf 63KB one page – quick summary of rules
yotd_gamerules.pdf 4.35MB 8 pages – official rules from Rio Grande Games.

Showing screenshot of In Year of the Dragon game in progress on mabiweb.

May also wish to download and view this 200MB video YOTDMarch2008.mp4 which gives a detailed 25 min overview of how to play.

Now before you play on mabiweb.com you may wish to learn In the Year of the Dragon playing a flash version (my mirror) versus AI opponents.

Hoity Toity by same guy who did Settlers of Catan is one of my favorite bluffing games.  It’s really a love or hate game for sure. Definitely doesn’t win in the graphic department at least the online implementation.  Actual board game has decent graphics though. Object of game is to advance the furthest along the game board. On your turn you can either go to the Castle or Auction House. All players decide together and actions are revealed simuntaneously.

In the Auction House you can choose to play a check or a thief.  If you play the highest check amount you get to choose between the two exhibition cards.  If a player choses a thief they steal the check played this round unless of course there are two are more thieves then no thieves steal anything.

In the Castle you can Exhibit your cards which must be at least 3 consecutive for instance AAB or BCD or BCCD or CDEEF.  If you have the best exhibit or 2nd best exhibit you advance based on the two numbers on the board where the lead player is currently. However, when you exhibit you could have someone who played a thief steal from an exhibition card from you.  Thieves can be caught and thrown in jail if you play a detective.  Detectives advance using a catch up mechanism.  If your in 4th place you advance 4 spaces forward for instance.  Game ends when one player reaches the dinner table (pink section) and all players reveal their collections. Player with most valuable collection advances 8 spaces and 2nd most valuable collection advances 4 spaces.