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Have Yourself a Chippy Little Christmas

Brett — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:01:08 +0000

I love chiptunes. I also love Christmas time, and even Christmas carols (after the 1st of December, of course). So this is my annual reminder that there are some excellent chiptune re-imaginings of classic Christmas songs. I actually like these albums.

So, pop these on and chip out!

The 8bits of Christmas - The 8bitpeoples (FREE)

8-bit Christmas - Rush Coil - USD $3.00 +

8-Bit Jesus – Doctor Octoroc - USD $9.99

And if that’s not enough ghost chips of Christmas present for you, @hubs curates a exhaustive list of even more Chiptune Christmas, a lot of which is free too. Wow.

And when your family tells you to turn it off, then turn on Mariah’s two albums. Cause Mariah is retro enough by now

Peace to you and yours this Christmas!

My Favorite iPhone Games, Part 1

Brett — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 09:08:16 +0000

I’ve been meaning to write this one for a while, so here we go with Part 1:

EDGE – NZ$6.49

EDGE is an platformer where you are a cube trying to navigate an isometric landscape in search of the tiny glowing cubes. Some levels are really easy, some require timing, some have cubes hidden away in secret areas. Here though, the music shines, so much that Mobigame released the soundtrack for free! KAKKOI!

Canabalt – NZ$4.19

Canabalt is a free flash game gone iPhone: a one-button ‘daring escape’ platformer. No story up front, but the game has one to tell! Addictive, try the free web version first.

Hook Champ – NZ$4.19

You’re a Jake T. Hooker, an Indiana Jones style tomb-raider stealing idols from dangerous caves and escaping with your amazing grappling hook styles! Easy to learn, hard to master, harder to put down! Try the lite version first, and then buy the full version with more maps and achievements!

Zen Bound – NZ$4.19

A strange game in which you are to bind up a wooden figurine with string. This is meditative gaming at its best: no time limit, but you do eventually run out of string. Again, amazing soundtrack here, with a free download when you buy the game! Get the lite version first to try it out.

Eliss – NZ$4.19

Eliss is a multi-touch puzzler. Gather same coloured circles together, enough so they fit into the ‘squeezars’ to score points. Don’t let different colours touch or it’ll soon be game over. You’ll need all your fingers to play this one, maybe both hands at some points. Lite version also available.

Flight Control – NZ$1.29

A simplified air-traffic control game: draw flight paths for aircraft so they can land on the appropriate runway or landing pad, but don’t let them collide! Harder than it sounds, but quite addicting!

More to come!

iPhone App Store: My Application Picks

Brett — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 09:01:13 +0000

After having an iPhone 3G for about as long as it is possible for someone to have one, here’s my must-have list of apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I’m going to cover just applications now, and go over games in a future post.

Apps (no internet required)

Things

An excellent to-do manager that syncs up over WiFi with a program of the same name on the Mac. Really good if you’re a GTD fan.

DataCase or AirSharing

These apps let you use the left over space on your iPhone or iPod Touch to store your own files. When connected to a WiFi network, you can use your computer to upload files to and from your iPhone using Explorer.

DataCase is best on Mac as it appears in Finder really quickly thanks to DataCase’s Bonjour AFS support, but also works on Windows with FTP, or you can download files from your device using a web-browser. AirSharing is also really good, but its supposed Bonjour support doesn’t perform to the same standard as Datacase, and is only accessible over WebDAV. While AirSharing isn’t as intuitive to connect to as DataCase, it does have better in-app documentation to help with connecting when you forget.

Evernote

A note manager much better than the built-in Notes program. If you have an iPhone or 2nd Gen iPod Touch, Evernote will also support creating photo and audio notes too. The best part about Evernote is that it does sync with the Evernote website, which will perform optical character recognition on your photos (it can READ photos) and makes that text within the photo searchable.

WifiTrak

If you’re always looking for a free ride, WifiTrak will tell you what wireless networks are around you, and even tell you if you can get to the real internet through them without logging in.

Ocarina

A reasonably new app on the scene, Ocarina turns your iPhone into the world’s first social-network-enabled musical instrument. Sorry iPod Touch users, this one needs a microphone. Seriously check this one out, even if you wouldn’t consider yourself a musician — it’s extremely easy to learn, and you don’t have to be able to read sheet music either!

RjDj album

Combined with a microphone, this one listens to your surroundings and gives aural feedback to you to enhance and alter your perception of the world around you. I ran this app commuting to work one day: trip. py. Try the free lite version, RjDj single, first if you don’t believe me!

Apps (internet required)

Shazam

Hold your microphone up to the music for twelve seconds and Shazam will check online and come back with the name of the song and its artist, the album, the album cover, and links to iTunes for you to buy your own copy. Surprisingly, this works almost anywhere, off the car radio, or even off a PA system in a noisy bowling alley.

Wikipanion

Wikipedia has replaced all the encyclopedias of yesteryear as the first place to go when you are curious about something. Why not carry a portal to that resource in your pocket? While there are tons of free and not-so-free apps that all do the same thing, I like Wikipanion‘s interface the best.

Bible (YouVersion) or Mantis Bible Study

YouVersion.com’s bible app appropriately named Bible has many translations available to you, including ESV, NIV, NASB, NCV, The Message, KJV, and many others, even in languages other than English. The cool thing about YouVersion Bible is that it also lets you download copies of some translations for use offline, so you can still access the word of God, even if the 3G broadband doesn’t perform well on Sunday morning. Mantis looks really powerful, but unfortunately you have to pay a lot to download extra translations, commentaries and other resources, most of which are free over the internet via YouVersion Bible.

Google Mobile and Google Earth

Google provides so many services that it’s nice to have one button that lets me do searches quickly and also lets me get to my Reader and alternate Gmail accounts easily. Google Earth is just amazing: once you’re hovering over a location, raise the device upwards like you would a photograph and the map becomes 3D – WOW!

Mobile Fotos

A on-the-go tool for accessing your Flickr account. Upload photos with geocodes generated from the GPS, or access your other photos.

Twinkle and Facebook

If I had to go with only one social network, I’d pick Twitter. Twinkle is a stunning interface to one of the world’s most useful social networks. The Facebook app is good too, but going through Safari works just as well.

That’s all for now. I’ll talk about my pick of iPhone and iPod Touch games in the next couple of days; stay tuned!