KewlieTown

iPhone Game: Unblock Me Free

2009-06-10T09:11:00.013-04:00

Unblock Me Free is a puzzle slider game where your goal is to move the red block out of the board by sliding the other blocks out of the way. The Free version of this game comes with 400 puzzles in the Beginner level. That's hours and hours of play time! There is also 2 game modes - relax and challenge mode. It even keeps track of all the levels you've cleared. This is a really simple but very very addicting game that's worth a try, even for gamers who aren't extremely into puzzle games (like myself).

I play this game a lot, especially because I commute on the train every day to and from work - total of about 1.5 hours a day. Some levels can be quick and easy but some levels can be longer and more challenging. I am currently on level 344 and when I beat level 400, I plan on purchasing this game.

Currently, this game costs $0.99, has 17 reviews and a rating of 3.5 stars. The paid version will have 4 difficulty levels ranging from beginner to expert, making it 1600 unique puzzles total. I highly recommend giving the free version a shot!

乾杯!
Cheers!

iPhone Game: World of Tunes

2009-05-27T09:57:00.006-04:00

So many people are using their iPhones as a music player and a portable gaming device. It's unfortunate that there are so few (GOOD) music rhythm games out. Luckily, I'v come across World of Tunes, a colorful game filled with cool music and great graphics.

In this game, an evil bad dude has stolen all of the music from the World of Tunes. It is up to you and all of the Tuneys to get rid of the bad dudes and get all of the music back.

The gameplay in World of Tunes is very similar, if not identical, to Elite Beat Agents on the Nintendo DS. Tuneys, the little circular blue dudes will pop up from the bottom of the screen inside some sort of bubble circle. When that circle gets close enough to electrify the Tuneys, their eyes will bulge and you tap them with your finger. This is --should-- be all done to the beat of the music. Though, I can't really match the rhythm to the beat of the music. It may just be me! Anyway, the goal of the game, much like any other rhythm game, is to keep the meter at the top of the screen from going empty before the song ends. Every time you miss a Tuney, your meter will drop.

There are some other cool things in the regular gameplay such as getting huge combos (which result in a higher score per Tuney tapped), larger Tuneys that bounce around and require 3 taps, and Tuneys that you need to drag across a path.

The music is pretty cool. The song is different on every level, allowing for different experiences because of the the tempos.

The only complain I really have is that World of Tunes is too short. The entire game is made up of only 10 levels; 6 regular and 4 boss battles. I beat this game this morning on my train ride into work (~40 minutes).

A few other modes are available outside of the standard story mode. I've only played the story mode and DJ mode so far. In DJ mode, the Tuneys pop up in straight lines to make the game easier. It's similar to Tap Tap Revenge, Rock Band, or Guitar Hero.

Although being a short game and costing $1.99, I'd still recommend World of Tunes. It's an awesome rhythm game for the iPhone - it's very fun and addicting. Try the Lite version (2 levels) to see for yourself!

The 2 other rhythm games I own on my iPhone are: Dance Dance Revolution S & Tap Tap Revenge 2.

乾杯!
Cheers!

Deciding on what video game system to own?

2009-05-18T11:01:00.006-04:00

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The Little Doohickey

2009-05-13T09:52:00.004-04:00

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Just tink woomun!

2009-05-04T09:16:00.003-04:00

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iPhone App: Beejive IM

2009-04-28T13:45:00.012-04:00

If you've been looking for the best multi-IM client on the iPhone... here it is!

For a limited time, you can purchase this via the iTunes App Store for only $9.99, original price is $15.99. It's on sale until 4/30/09 so HURRY!!! ...only 2 more days :)

I've only had this app for a few days but I can tell you if you've used IM+, Nimbuzz, Palringo, and Fringo.... Beejive has the best interface and most custom settings! One major complaint I have is the keyboard lags from time to time when you type but it is a known issue and they will be fixing it - when??? you ask.... I don't know! Hopefully sooner rather than later though.

Features:

Be connected 24/7 (you can choose to stay online on their server even after you exit the app, you can choose to stay on from 10 minutes - 24hours after you exit the app)

Works with multiple IM networks & multiple accounts per network (I personally use AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and Facebook but there is also iChat/MobileMe, MySpace, GoogleTalk, ICQ, & Jabber)

Automatically reconnects in case of data service disruption, including phone calls & loss of cell coverage

Real-time chats: quick switch between multiple simultaneous chats (there is even a "shake to switch between chats" option)

Push email alerts for incoming chats

Click to browse, call, or send an email directly from the chat screen (you can even go to a website without leaving the app, gives you the option to use Webview or Safari)
Email yor chats

Customization:

Set custom status messages, be invisible, set an auto-away status, & change privacy controls

Buddy icon support for AIM®, Yahoo®, Gtalk®, MSN®, & Jabber

Customizable sound, vibrate, & LED settings and an optional global popup on new messages

Customizable chat skins, wallpapers & emoticon support

Full Unicode support, chat in any language supported by your iPhone

乾杯!
Cheers!

New Blog: Ninja CSS

2009-04-28T11:52:00.006-04:00

I've just started a new blog called Ninja CSS where I will put up HTML/CSS/Javascript issues I come across. If I have a solution to the problem, I will also post that. I'll also write about anything I come across that might be seen as helpful or cool to a front-end web developer (aka ME).

乾杯!
Cheers!

stoopid neenjas

2009-03-08T23:35:00.003-04:00

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Oh, heem? He choking.

2009-03-02T09:30:00.001-05:00

乾杯!
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Sennheiser RS 130

2009-02-28T17:59:00.003-05:00

I ordered a pair of refurbished Sennhesier RS130 headphones from B&H Photo Video over a month ago. They arrived very quickly!! So I ripped open the box as soon as it arrived - tried them on - they looked really big on my head. My coworker calls me Princess Leia now. I wear these headphones at work for 8 hours (straight - pretty much) every day (Mon-Fri). These are the most comfortable headphones I've ever worn. Well - I don't have much to compare it to. I have a POS pair of JVC headphones that would hurt my ears after about 1.5 hours of wearing them. These Sennheisers are great - sound quality and comfort. The charging base is awesome. When you need to charge your headphones, just hang it on the charger. There is nothing to plug it into.

On to pricing - I only paid $75 for them! List price at Amazon is $159. I'm extremely satisfied with my purchase. I'd highly recommend a pair if you can fork up the cash.

Source: Cindy Lee

Source: Cindy Lee

Source: Cindy Lee

乾杯!
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X BOX 360

2009-02-03T11:56:00.005-05:00

Source: Vinny's signature on CAG

乾杯!
Cheers!

Medicine Fail

2009-02-03T08:54:00.004-05:00

Source: Failblog.org

乾杯!
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Sony Playstation 3

2009-01-12T13:35:00.012-05:00

Finally, I gave in - so Daniel and I got a 80GB PS3! I mostly wanted it for Street Fighter IV. I did not own any next-gen consoles - well, I have a Nintendo Wii but that's not exactly "next gen". Anyway, I researched and researched and decided that the Playstation 3 is the ultimate (and only) next-gen console. It has everything I need and more. The main features that won me over were the built-in wifi and free online gaming/downloading. Daniel wanted the blu-ray disc player so... it was a done deal.

Source: Cindy Lee

Our first 2 blu-rays are Cars and No Country for Old Men.

Our first download-only game was Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. It kinda sucks, but maybe the "turbo" option is not turned on by default because the gameplay is VERY slow.

Our first store-bought game is LittleBigPlanet. This an exclusive game for the PS3. This is a platformer (like Mario) that has a cutesy feel to it. Highly recommended game!

乾杯!
Cheers!

Winter

2009-01-07T19:36:00.004-05:00

Lately, this pretty much sums up my opinion of winter in Boston:

乾杯!
Cheers!

Christmas

2008-12-30T11:46:00.004-05:00

I had a flight scheduled with United at 7:24pm on Sunday, December 21 and on that day (well - weekend), Mother Nature decided to send a Nor'Easter. I had to work TKD but it was a slow day because of all the snow so I was able to check the status of the flight all day. I was surprised to find that it was not delayed at all - at least that's what it said online. So, I decided to leave early at 2pm to get to Logan airport just in case. I arrived at the check-in kiosk and it told me that the flight I checked into has been cancelled and asked if I wanted to go on standby for another flight that was going to leave at 2:45pm but had been delayed until 4:30 or something - that flight didn't end up leaving until like 5pm.

So, my baggage got checked in with the flight I was standing by on. Perfect. I got to the gate and asked the gate agent to confirm that I was on standby for that flight - he said yes, so I sat around and waited for like 3 hours. Finally, they called the standby names and my name did not get called so I confirmed with the gate agent that there are no seats left on the plane for standby. Then, I went to another United desk to get standby on a flight for the next day (Monday) since all of the flights for Sunday and Monday were booked full. The lady finally got me a standby for 6am Monday... she said she would put me on a higher priority - not sure if it was because she was just nice or because I had Premiere Associate status with United. Either case, I didn't believe she'd put me on higher priority for standby.

I headed back to Quincy, without my baggage since it flew to Washington, DC on the flight I didn't get on. I had dinner with my family, then, I got home and there was a message on the machine from United. It was the lady that I talked to at the desk at the airport. She said she found me a confirmed seat on the 6am flight! YAY! United came through for me :)

So I finally arrive, just shy of 8am, in Washington, DC, and I find Daniel and run into his embracing arms! YAY! So began my Christmas vacation week in VA. On Christmas Eve, we drove up to Brian and Brandy's place in Pittsburgh, PA for dinner - which was very nice. We slept over at the Red Roof Inn somewhere, which was... subpar compared to the hotels Daniel has introduced me to :-p Anyway, we went back to Brian and Brandy's house for breakfast and gift opening! After we did that, 5 or 6 hours later, we were back in Winchester.

All in all, another wonderful trip to the South - can't really complain when I get to spend all that time with Daniel <3 oh yeah, he is up here in Boston with me for this week. Looks like I'll be getting that first kiss when the clock strikes 12 after all! ;)

乾杯!
Cheers!

Fast Reflexes

2008-12-18T10:03:00.006-05:00

Muntazer al-Zaidi, a crazy reporter based out of Cairo, Egypt, threw his shoes at President George W. Bush during a news conference in Iraq on December 14, 2008. President Bush dodged BOTH! shoes and was not hurt in the shoe-attack.

Articles on the incident:

Mahalo.com

Wired.com

ROFL:

乾杯!
Cheers!

AlienFX for Dell XPS 630

2008-12-14T18:40:00.003-05:00

If you are a looking for a program that will easily setup the colors of the LED lights on your XPS 630 (and maybe the other XPSs too? I'm not sure - I just have a 630), then you're looking for a program called AlienFX. With this, you can easily create custom color themes for your XPS. You don't need to go into the nvidia control panel to do it - I couldn't find it myself - and this program is pretty simply to use. Enjoy!

乾杯!
Cheers!

Dayquil/Nyquil

2008-12-12T13:30:00.002-05:00

<rant>This past week I've become ill with a slight cold. This morning at work, I went to open the Dayquil and could only manage to rip the packaging a little bit, where the slit is. I couldn't open the entire package. As I continue struggling, I'm thinking to myself: Why do these people make it impossible to open up the packages??? My friend came up with the same excellent answer I did: ...to sell scissors!</rant>

乾杯!
Cheers!

MY Dell XPS 630!!!

2008-12-11T18:08:00.007-05:00

Originally, my new Dell XPS 630 was slated to arrive at doorstep on 12/15. However, the estimated shipping delivery date was updated to 12/11 And then, it got bumped up to 12/10. Of course, I'm very, very happy about that! I was even more happily when the Fedex dude rang my doorbell at approximately 10am. I was expecting him to be here in the late afternoon so I hadn't even changed out of my pjs yet since I was working from home to sign for the computer. Anyway, overall, I am extremely satisfied with Dell's process and delivery time.

As for the computer itself, I've already seen one BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) but it's probably because my wireless usb adapter may or may not be compatible with Mojave (Microsoft Vista) even though I downloaded the Vista drivers for it. Anyway, that's a separate issue I'm having. Since that first BSOD, I haven't seen it again so I'm very happy. YAY! Some of you may have heard the horror stories about the first computer I had at my current job. It would Blue Screen at least 2 or 3 times a day and it was a brand new Dell XPS 730. Oh well, it was faulty, what can ya do?

Here is just two sample photos of my computer. For more, please visit my Flickr:

Oh, and I noticed a significant in graphic quality when I played Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on the XPS 630... tee hee! My all-time favorite feature of gaming machines is that it lights up! Look at the cool LED lights! There are 3 zones in the front and one in the back. The one in the back comes in really handy when I'm plugging in stuff.

乾杯!
Cheers!

Dell XPS 630

2008-12-03T12:49:00.009-05:00

Last night, I purchased a brand new Dell XPS 630 on Dell.com. A really cool feature of this gaming machine is that I can change the LED lights that are on the case. TOTALLY AWESOME! Here are a couple of pictures - one of the machine itself, and the second listing the specs and final cost:

It should ship out 12/9 so I should probably get it in 1.5 - 2 weeks I guess. I can't wait! It's going to be totally awesome :-D!!! I'm very excited to try out Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on it. Right now, I'm (trying to) playing it on my 3 year old HP computer and it sucks! Even doing normal-everyday things suck on that machine though. Sweet! I can't wait 'til a good 24", reasonably priced (on-sale) monitor is out. Hopefully there will be some post-Christmas deals out there for me.

Update: OH EM GEE!!! Dell has shipped my new computer today (12/5) and the new estimated delivery date is 12/11! If they (UPS) manage to actually get it delivered by then, they'll be 4 days ahead of the original schedule and I will then be super impressed by Dell.

乾杯!
Cheers!

Please remain seated...

2008-11-21T14:44:00.005-05:00

Source: engrishfunny.com

乾杯!
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Scrollable, non-editable text box

2008-11-19T12:55:00.040-05:00

I think I just spent like 1.5 - 2 hours of my (work) time, figuring out how to make a scrollable, non-editable text box that displays code. If you look at my previous post, I had black boxes that display a single line of code in each. I had trouble displaying multiple lines of code on here. At one point, I would get it to scroll but it was editable and then after that it would not scroll but it'd be non-editable. INSANE.

The code you want displayed probably looks like this "<html>" with the arrows. If you wanted to display this (instead of rendering it), you'd have to replace the less than sign with the character entity < and the same with the greater than sign >. If you did "<html>", it'll get rendered and that's not what you want.

Here is some (sample) code that makes the scrollable, non-editable text box:

<pre class="code">
  &lt;html&gt;
    &lt;head&gt;
      &lt;title&gt;Welcome to my site!&gt;&lt;/title&gt;
    &lt;/head&gt;
    &lt;body&gt;
      &lt;p&gt;HELLO WORLD&lt;/p&gt;
      &lt;p&gt;HELLO WORLD&lt;/p&gt;
      &lt;p&gt;HELLO WORLD&lt;/p&gt;
      &lt;p&gt;HELLO WORLD&lt;/p&gt;
      &lt;p&gt;HELLO WORLD&lt;/p&gt;
      &lt;p&gt;HELLO WORLD&lt;/p&gt;
      &lt;p&gt;HELLO WORLD&lt;/p&gt;
      &lt;p&gt;HELLO WORLD&lt;/p&gt;
      &lt;p&gt;HELLO WORLD&lt;/p&gt;
      &lt;p&gt;HELLO WORLD&lt;/p&gt;
    &lt;/body&gt;
  &lt;/html&gt;
</pre>

The results that will be displayed on your page:

<html>
  <head>
    <title>Welcome to my site!></title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <p>HELLO WORLD</p>
    <p>HELLO WORLD</p>
    <p>HELLO WORLD</p>
    <p>HELLO WORLD</p>
    <p>HELLO WORLD</p>
    <p>HELLO WORLD</p>
    <p>HELLO WORLD</p>
    <p>HELLO WORLD</p>
    <p>HELLO WORLD</p>
    <p>HELLO WORLD</p>
  </body>
</html>

To make it look nice, we'll use some CSS. Feel free to use my code and modify to your own liking. My "code" class looks like this:

.code {
  width: 450px;
  height: auto;
  background-color: #000000;
  color: #FFFFFF;
  font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;  
  border: 1px dashed #FFFFFF;
  padding: 6px 3px 6px 3px;
  margin-left: 15px;
  overflow: auto;
}

So, today, I've learned two new things already... favicons and scrollable, non-editable text boxes displaying code!!! KEWLIEZ!

If you happen to understand my tutorial, I'd appreciate you dropping me a comment and letting me know. Thanks!

乾杯!
Cheers!

Favicon

2008-11-19T10:48:00.034-05:00

A favicon is short for "Favorites Icon." Many professionally developed websites include a favicon. The original favicon was created by Microsoft for Internet Explorer. In IE, the favicon is shown in the navigation bar (where the URL is) and also in the Favorites menu. Even though other browsers like Mozilla Firefox have a "Bookmarks" menu instead of "Favorites", the name "favicon" stuck.

As you would have assumed, the image is pretty simple since it would be difficult to create a fancy picture for something so small. Implementing the favicon is relatvely simple. The favicon image must be 16x16. Then, you would upload the file (.ico, .gif, .png all work) to the root directory of your website and it will automatically display for you. If you can't see it right away, you'll probably just have to clear your cache - that's what I had to do. If you can't upload to a root directory, you can type a block of code into your html page in the <head&> tag.

.ico image:

<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico">

<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">

.png image:

<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.png" type="image/png">

.gif image:

<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.gif" type="image/gif">

For favicons on Google Blogger (Blogspot), you'd have to insert this code just before the </head> tag:

"<link href='http://pathto.youricon.png' rel='icon' type='image/vnd.microsoft.icon'/>

Favicon.com is a great resource for favicons!

乾杯!
Cheers!

Our first biracial President of the United States

2008-11-06T11:26:00.003-05:00

Who else is annoyed that Barack Obama is announced by the media as our first "black" or "African-American" president? He is not 100% African-American. His mother is a Caucasian woman from Kansas and his dad is a man from Kenya. He is biracial. Get the term right people! I wonder how many people don't know that Obama is actually half white and half black because of the misrepresentation by the media.

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National Public Radio

2008-11-05T12:43:00.004-05:00

NPR is a non-profit media organization that produces and distributes news and cultural programming. Through NPR, I've learned about the 2008 election, financial crisis and general news that's happening in the United States. I owe many thankyous to NPR for providing me 8.5 hours of audio entertainment while I sit at my desk at work. Before I started listening to NPR everyday at work, I was undecided as who I wanted to vote for to be President. I have voted before - this time around, I just never got to know any of the candidates. I didn't bother to. As an American, voting is my civic duty. If I choose not to, I am disgracing those who fight and give up their lives for this right to vote. Now, I feel bad that I didn't care as much as I should have at first. Anyway, after listening to NPR for 3 or 4 weeks straight, NPR encouraged me to be an American and vote for who I want my next President to be. And so, I did.

After this whole Obamamia thing blows over, I wonder what they will talk about on NPR. For the last 4 weeks, all they have been talking about is McCain and Obama. The weekend edition of NPR is great as well. It's actually "fun". I enjoy listening to the Car Talk show with Daniel <3

乾杯!
Cheers!