G IOMSE OFNBE AWREE USNHM KEYHD AYTDS OATWH TOENF IX

In case you readers out there are wondering… yes, I did write the above line.

This is just a test to see if I’m able to stump most people in my sometimes-excursions into the world of cryptography. I’m inviting anyone who happens to read this to take a crack at decoding the message. No prize is involved, mainly because I can’t think of any, since I don’t really think it’s the best codework I can do. A government cryptoanalyst would easily be able to decipher the message.

If it’s truly as easy as I think I’ve made it, then someone should be able to decipher it without any technological help. If I happened to make it harder than I thought, well, then that is something to get me thinking of using the technique more often.

This is also a thanks to Wil Wheaton for the insightful blog entry that he posted yesterday on the issue of privacy.

Cheers!

(… And Other Stuff I May Feel Like Writing About!)

If you have been reading my Twitter updates, you’ll have seen that I’d finally got the replacement power supply for the iMac yesterday. I installed it almost immediately and practically did cartwheels around the house when it started up with the iconic Mac chime. So, last night I did some catch-up work on it and also initiated some overdue backups of the computer’s files. I hadn’t backed up any of the files since late June! The reason for this was because I was sick of having Time Machine hogging the resources every hour. However, in hindsight after this experience, I’d rather have to deal with that then the possibility of having to switch over incomplete backups to a new machine, if truly need be.

Right now I’m writing this as the computer is backing up the iPhone’s files in preparation for more info-synching. I’m also happy to have that interoperability back in control of my information. This whole situation just teaches me that:

– you can NEVER back up your files enough!

and…

– invest properly in the things that you wouldn’t want to, or can’t, do without.

We all like to have some kind of cool technology in our lives. However, we have to make sure that we have fall-back contingencies just in case our techie stuff gets broken (or lost!). Sure, we can live without the best computers and cellphones… but would we want to?

Speaking of investing in tech, I’m still glad I bought the extended warranty on the camera. Best Buy will hopefully be calling me soon to have me come in and pick out a replacement camera. However, they’re dragging their heels on the issue, and I’m getting mighty impatient. That is very rare for me, as everyone knows how patient I can be. With a big vacation coming up soon, though, I need to get this thing sorted out with them and get a new camera in time for the trip. I’ll need the extra time to get acquainted with any new features I’ll have to deal with.

Well, I have to go and do some quick dinner prep. Cheers!

On one of my posts, I was showing off talking about my new iPhone, and I got a comment from Bill that said I should mention some of the iPhone apps that I like. Of course, I could talk about some of the IM apps or utility apps that i’ve been using. Or I could just talk about how cool it was yesterday to 1) look up a take-out eatery’s menu online, 2) get the directions and 3) hit the link to the phone number of the eatery, making the iPhone call the place immediately so I could place my order. But noooooooo!! No one kids themselves into saying that games aren’t awesome to have on a touch-screen, motion-sensitive device! (Why do you think Nintendo is selling vast numbers of gaming units??) So, with my few weeks of experience, I’ll give a brief synopsis and review of three games that have caught my attention…

Trism: This is one of the first games that caught my attention when I was shopping around Apple’s App Store. It was the excessively-high reviews that caught my eye (4.5 stars out of 5 averaged from 346 reviews!), so I had to see what the buzz was about. Ever play Bejeweled? This is Bejeweled on crack. It actually has 3 modes: Infinism, which is their classic free play; Terminism, which is a time-attack game; Syllogism, which is a special puzzle mode. The object is to make 3 or more colors in a line or group. When you make those groups, you’re rewarded with a pleasant sound and more blocks to move around. What’s interesting is when you get new blocks, the lines of blocks don’t always have to fall downwards. You can change the direction of gameplay by tilting the iPhone so that lines can fall sideways or upwards. I won’t spoil the rest of the game in this post. Just download it. At $4.99, you get enough challenging gameplay that makes the price a real bargain!

CubicMan Deluxe: This game is a variation on the popular Flash game, Bloxorz, featured on albinoblacksheep.com. The objective is to guide a rectangular block across a platform, filled with hazards and narrow pathways, to a standing finish at a designated goal area. There are 80 levels, with varying degrees of difficulty. Again, it seemed like a good game based on what I had read, and I loved Bloxorz, so I spent another $2.99 on this app. That is a decent price considering that this is a game that was challenging and gave me a mental workout. However, in a few days I beat all 80 levels, so obviously the designers have some room for improvement in the game. They have promised an update with more levels and harder gameplay, so I’ll be looking forward to that.

Moonlight Mahjong Lite: Here’s a nice surprise from Christine, my wife, who really is not much of a puzzle gamer! (Although I guess calling it a puzzle game is a misnomer) This is but one of many versions of Solitaire Mahjong that you can get anywhere, for free or otherwise. For the uninitiated, this kind of Mahjong is really kind of a cross between Klondike and Dominoes. I haven’t had any experience with any variation of Mahjong before last night, when Christine turned me on to this game, so it was a good thing that it was a freebie. The non-Lite version costs $4.99, but the lite version is sufficient for newbies like myself. It’s a really fun game and the interface design and workings are very impressive for being a freebie. You can view the board by pinching to zoom in and out and you make a rotating gesture with two fingers to rotate and tilt the board. I had fun just by rotating the board and going “Oooooh, cooool!!”; that’s how impressed I was, sad to say! When you win the game, you’re shown a view of tiles perpetually zooming into the camera. Very neat!

I could have spent some premium money on well-known titles such as Super Monkey Ball, Enigmo, or Cro-Mag Rally, but money’s tight and sometimes you can find real gems in the cheap-or-free category. You can view all these title and more in the App Store in the iTunes Store. I may get one of these soon but, for now, I’m happy with what I’ve got.

Well, that’s all for now. The next post will probably be written if and when I can raise my computer back from the dead! Cheers!

I’m taking some time out before my dinner ritual to update the blog on my going-on’s. This is written on my now-trusty iPhone.

First, the power supply is being shipped and should be here by Monday. This is according to the guy who runs Mac-n-PC-Specialist.com when I spoke to him over the phone today. As you may imagine, I’m itching to install it and (hopefully) have my iMac running again. Yes, this iPhone may have been a lifesaver, but it has its limits without the computer and the library metadata it’s attached to. It’s in sore need of an OS update, the phone’s data needs to be backed up in case something else catastrophic happens, and I’d like to switch out some music, all of which I can’t do on Christine’s computer without wiping the phone’s files completely. I’m glad my external drive has backups of my files (thanks Time Machine!), but that will be a last ditch effort, since those backups don’t include the iPhone metadata.

Work is still going well, so no big problems there… although, I was sad to see one manager leave for another location in another state. This guy will be missed; he was well-loved by the majority, an enviable position for any leader. If he’s reading this, I bid him godspeed.

Let it be known that my new phone hasn’t detracted from my puzzle hobby. I’m having a lot of fun with the V-7 Cube and the Pyraminx Crystal. Getting my solve times down has certainly been a challenge, and I hope to make some solve videos soon. Of course, that’s if the computer comes back from the dead, in which case I have two vids that I was working on to complete and post.

I’m finally breaking down and getting a cholesterol test tomorrow. Yay. Christine really wants to find out how I’m doing in this area. She’s had to lay off the juicy burgers since her test. Hopefully, mine will turn out ok, but I’m also hoping that her next test will fare better so that we’ll be able to enjoy the occasional greaseball.

Everything else is good here. The house is fine, just need to get on the ball with small upgrades. The birds are doing good, with Thommen having some attitude problems. All in all, I can’t complain a bit.

Cheers!

Most of my family and friends are on some kind of social networking site. Of course, the two big ones are facebook (yes, with a lower-case ‘f’) and MySpace. Of these two, I greatly favor facebook over MySpace for many reasons. In fact, the only reason why I haven’t dropped my MySpace account altogether is because my cousins use it and I use it as a form of communication with them. I’d much rather see them on facebook. (BTW, I didn’t bother posting any hyperlinks; you can see all the links to my social-net pages in the blog sidebar.)

Anyways, let’s get down to the reasons for this post’s inflammatory title…

1 ) facebook = social engineering (practically) down to a science. MySpace = social disease that has a rather painful cure.

2 ) facebook seems more maturely oriented with less chances of running across questionable people/groups. With MySpace, you can be sure that every bit of sleaze is going to be promoting itself to you in the form of friend requests.

3 ) facebook user pages are much less customizable. This may be seen as a bad thing, but consider this; you may have (as have I) run across some MySpace user pages that had embeds that did really funky things to your browser, thus making your processor temporarily go into a fit. Tie that in with the fact that MySpace pages are more easily configurable to enable phishing attacks.

4 ) Going along with point 3, the main way of customizing your facebook page is through the use of facebook apps. MySpace, in an effort to compete, enabled the use of these kind of apps on their pages. However, these apps can interfere with some of the customization that the user has already implemented on their page. As if the typical MySpace page doesn’t look jam-packed enough!

5 ) facebook gives you the option of letting people find you based on your educational and work history, and it makes an effort to show you people that you may know. This is what it’s there for! I’ve had my facebook account open in much less time than the MySpace account, and I got reconnected with a dear high school friend through facebook. MySpace is mainly geared towards making new friends and self-promoting, and it definitely shows.

6 ) With all this in mind, facebook is geared more toward an adult, or mature teen, crowd. I’ve joined groups in both sites, and I’ve had more stimulating conversations in facebook. MySpace, on the other hand, is more for the immature, party-hardy mentality. (Disclaimer: I’ve nothing wrong with partying and you can be mature and let loose, but I guess I’ve met more immature people with that kind of mentality.) IDK… Maybe I’m just a boring clod!

7 ) How about privacy? I’m an open book to even my casual acquaintances, but I like the fact that users have a greater range of privacy settings on facebook. MySpace is more limited on privacy but, to its credit, has gotten much better on privacy issues.

8 ) Last point, and this is about look and feel. facebook just seems much less bloated and jury-rigged together, unlike MySpace. Maybe facebook simply has the benefit of being a newer site; MySpace is one of the first, and still the biggest, social networking fish in the cybersea. facebook just feels much cleaner and faster than MySpace.

Maybe I was nitpicking through those points, maybe not. However, anything that I can say good about MySpace, I can also say about facebook. In fact, anything that I love to do in MySpace, I can also do on facebook! If any of you run across this article, and want to share your thoughts on these two social-net giants, please do so in the comments. I’d love to hear everyone’s take on the issue!

Cheers… and have fun connecting, or reconnecting, with friends!