Best iPhone iPad Games

How can one use Dreamweaver on an iPad without resorting to using a VNC connection to a real computer? Good question as I spent about $70 trying to figure out the best way to work on my website. I tried a few web dev apps like Koder, Gusto, and FTPOnTheGo. Photo apps I have quite a few. But ultimately I ended up to do it with three apps all about $10 each.

Photogene this photo editor is quite robust and versatile in all it can do. Rotate, crop, filters, adjustments. I love the collage $2 feature as I used it to combine three of these images into one as seen in the screenshot above. I also upgraded to the $8 pro version and $1 for extra frames. Pro version mainly to save FTP history. It would be nice though if you could specify path or directory when uploading via FTP like you can with PhotoSync $2 for instance. However, PhotoSync you can’t rename the files like you can with Photogene but batch uploading is a bonus.

iSSH this is for moving the photos to the correct directory using the terminal logging in via SSH. Trying to use FTPOnTheGo for file management didn’t quite cut it even though it has a MOVE it’s quite tedious. Even tried some other file managers and still I had issues with them. Obviously you should know linux / unix commands to navigate around.

Texatastic is my favorite web editor with syntax highlighting, remembers remote path so easy to publish. Can batch download files you intend to work on. Displays size of files, line count, word count, modification dates, etc. Gusto was nice with image preview remote and local, however, you must when publishing navigate to the remote path for each and every file you wish to publish or modify.

Now when iOS5 comes out in a month or so it’ll have some nice rotate and crop functions. Not sure if it’ll have resize though nor renaming files names. If Photogene can get FTP with a directory then it’ll most likely eliminate the need for iSSH.

A big HUGE thanks to my family as “I broke down and ended up with a new iPad 2 64GB”. I don’t recommend this method to anyone though the way I got it. Can this end up being a laptop replacement? I suppose for blogs as I bought $5 Blogsy app which even works offline but not for inserting images though. Main thing I like over the first generation ipad is 512MB memory instead of 256MB. No more constant Safari page refreshes which were annoying. FaceTime, Skype, Yahoo video cam is a plus.

I tried over four different ipad 2 keyboard case combos. If I were to have to choose one as a case and keyboard your best bet is the $100 ZaggFolio that came out July 20, 2011. However, I need to type fast and so I got the Apple wireless keyboard $70 with a cheap $20 360 degree rotating case. They did have special specific keys but which ones I can’t get are SLIDESHOW and Lock screen.

Apple Wireless keyboard Bluetooth Keyboard Shortcuts for use with iPad
Turn off: hold power button for five seconds till green light turns off.

Copy, Cut, Paste: Command C, X, V
Undo: Command Z
Redo: Command Shift Z

End: Command Right Arrow
Beginning: Command Left Arrow
Page Up: Command Up Arrow
Page Down: Command Down Arrow

Select All: Command A
Select single letter: Shift respective arrow keys
Select to Beginning or End: Shift Command Up or Down
Select Word or Deselect Word: Shift Option Right or Left Arrow
Select Line or Deselect Line: Shift Command Right or Left Arrow

Delete Word: Option Delete
Delete Line: Command Delee
Delete Letter to Right of Cursor: fn Delete
Language Input Select: Command Spacebar
Cancel Spelling auto correct: Esc
Toggle Onscreen keyboard: Eject key

About to create a section very soon similar to the Japanese section I have on my site.  I’ve been going through tons of apps past month or so.  I think there is definitely more room for some quality Chinese apps in regards to ones offering quizzes, idioms, phrases, etc. like their Japanese app counterparts have.  So here is my rough draft.

Pleco is well worth the $100 (educational discount or $150 without) for those serious about learning Chinese. It’s a universal app so looks great on iPad. I plan on taking tons and tons of screenshots but I’m on an iPad and waiting for 2.2 cuz they say they’ll optimize UI a tad before I do.  So I plan on emphasizing why it’s worth the $100 cuz they don’t do the greatest job at marketing it. I do have some minor complaints though I wish it had a slideshow mode like two free apps below do and also wish one could increase the length of the popup window since I do like the fonts a tad bigger than default.  Maybe fine on iphone but for ipad there is much more room.

Get Survival Mandarin 347MB cuz of videos but free until Sep 2nd then back to $10 I believe.  They had a 7 day learning Mandarin app for $2 which I thought is good for one totally new to Chinese like myself.  So gonna see if that Survival Mandarin app is worth the $10 or not. Well going through Anki $25 and nah I don’t think I’m gonna include it.

eZi Test Chinese $free has a great slideshow mode and nice multiple choice mode.  Recently was updated to include a few more cards.  Also has built-in voice pronunciation syllables only though. Why is this slideshow so great?  You can choose what to display on first side toggle on or off Simplified, Traditional (choose which one is on top or bottom) Pinyin (choose which kind of Pinyn tones), English definition (choose all, first meaning, or just first word, Spoken Mandarin. Now once it flips you can choose how long to display front and back side of flashcard.  You can toggle again Simplified, Traditional, Pinyin, English and Speak Mandarin.  So on the front I like it to show me only Simplified and Tradition and have it speak Mandarin then after 5 secs or so it’ll show me that again speaking it again with the pinyin and English definition.  I wish Pleco could do this!

Flashcards Deluxe $4  or demo has some decent vocab lists and it is a universal app so that gives it a bonus. Also recently added a Simplified and Traditional fonts to choose from in an update. Slideshow is decent but not as good as eZi Test Chinese though since you can’t have multiple fields display at once so that limits it’s flexibility in configuring it. Still this is a great app and not only for Chinese but tons of other subjects, etc.

Dinhua Dictionary Audio Module I bought for $1 when it was on sale but it’s back to $5 now.  It’s decent and has prerecorded words on many of them rather than just syllable recordings.  You must manually search and add each vocab though as it doesn’t have importing of pre-existing vocabulary lists.  I’d be more inclined to recommend this one if it did.  There is a free version without the audio.  Quiz mode is decent and I like the style.

That’s basically it for learning Chinese apps.  What that is just a few.  Your right but that doesn’t mean I didn’t purchase a ton of others or tried out their demos.  I did, it’s just I felt underwhelmed.  The Japanese apps are much more diverse so like I mentioned there is huge room for improvement (dictionaries and flashcards field is solid though).  Here’s a few more Chinese related apps I recommend.

MetroNav Beijing $1, MetroNav Shanghai $1, MetroNav Guangzhou $1, MetroNav Taipei $free  these are excellent subway maps and displays times and has taxi cards to show to have a taxi take you to a particular subway station.

Pocket Timetable $3 universal app by far the best for looking up train routes, ticket prices, times, etc.

Shanghai WOW! City Guide $free or Chinese version $free contains lots of info of places to visit with prices.

Fancy Food ipad $2 or Eating in China iphone $2 both are excellent showing you lovely photos of turtles and frogs among many other exotic and traditional cuisines.

These are the board games coming out for iPad and iPhone.  They better all have an iPad version or I’ll be ticked.

Wits and Wagers bgg coming out for iPhone October 2010 by North Star Games.

Six below all programmed by Codito’s company.

Tikal bgg and El Grande bgg by Wolfgang Kramer
Brief History of the World bgg by Ragnar Brothers
Le Havre bgg by Uwe Rosenberg’s
Age of Industry bgg by Martin Wallace
Ra bgg by Reiner Knizia
Tigris & Euphrates bgg by Reiner Knizia

Through the Desert bgg by Reiner Knizia programmed by TribeFlame who did Keltis Oracle for iphone/ iPad.

Board Game apps  I currently enjoy on iPad are:
Carcassone, Zooloretto, Keltis Oracle, Mu, Small World, Honey That’s Mine, Gipsy King, Knizia Money, Dead Man’s Dice, Kachina, Roll Through the Ages, Blokus HD, Pathology HD, Rush Hour, Quoridor.

(bolded games mean they are iPad version or are universal iphone / iPad games)

update Sept 30, 2010 a couple more announced are Through the Ages A Story of Civilization and Summoner Wars and Modern Art and Kingdoms and Crazy Chicken and Bang!

Ones that have been released are Medici, Samurai, High Society, Tichu, Settlers of Catan, Neuroshima Hex, Kingsburg, Wabash Cannonball (Chicago Express),

Only took about a month till a hack solution was found to this ridiculous problem Apple created in their update of Snow Leopard 10.6.3.  Still could use webcam for iChat or Photobooth or Quicktime but not for Skype video, Yahoo chat video or Google chat video (third party apps trying to access USB 2.0 webcams).  Solution is download this QuickTimeUSBVDCDigitizer.component.zip 246KB and unzip it and copy it to your Macintosh HD/System/Library/Quicktime overwriting your current one.  Problem solved no need to reboot or anything.

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.

Update Feb 2010 now got all 1.5TB drives and Samsung still running cooler than Western Digital.

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 at twice as slow (50Mbps compared to 100Mbps) Japan and Korea.

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

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 (cable)
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
7200rpm 21MB/s = 8 mins

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.

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 simultaneously.

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.