How to lose at iPad games

I've been playing Lords of Waterdeep and Pandemic on my iPad lately.  Lords of Waterdeep is hard.  I was surprised.  Eryn and I watched Felicia and Wil play it on Tabletop and I didn't think it looked particularly difficult in practice.  But when I started playing it for realz it was certainly challenging, even after the game walked me through the first several turns as a learning demonstration.

Strangely, when it was over and I'd handily lost to two computer opponents, I realized that the guy I was playing looks a lot like me.  Or at least a lot like younger me.  The one of the top there.  Sort of creepy.  The tablet is scanning me.  Or perhaps the game was developed by someone who knew me when I was younger.

And here's Pandemic.  You know how often I win at Pandemic on the iPad?  Never.  Ever.  I've cured one disease.  I've cured two diseases.  I've never cured three diseases (out of four).  I lose in new ways.  I run out of cubes.  I get pandemic-ed slowly.  I get pandemic-ed in a glorious domino chain that throws me over the edge in mere moments.  Sometimes at the end of a slow burn.  Sometimes so quickly it's obvious the world never stood a chance.

That last picture...me losing.  This picture.  Me losing. Wait...those are the same game.  Now it's like I'm losing every game twice.  You can see I kept the triples away from each other and perhaps there's hope.  But that's wishful thinking.  Doom is near.  The ebola-zombie-birdflu-rage or lymes-plague-malaria-influenza conjunction is nigh.  Put on your mask and pray you don't bleed out if I'm in charge of saving your ass.

Organ Trail

I'm a little late to the game, but recently I've been playing Organ Trail on my iPad (still works on the 1).  Takes me back to the days of Oregon Trail and Bard's Tale.  My favorite interlude so far, for which I don't have a picture, basically, "Kyle dicked around with your ammo and destroys 23 ammo."  Their choice of the word dicked.  I can picture Kyle in a car full of zombie survivors speeding across country messing with the ammo because he's got a way to make it better.  Not 23 necessarily, but at least one.

My wife came down with dysentery.

This doesn't seem out of the question either, although I'd be more likely to have attributed it to Jay back in the day.

And if it weren't enough that Kyle was dicking around with the ammo, he doesn't even know how to read a map.  Good one, bonehead.  You know I mean it, because bonehead requires using the broken b key on my keyboard.  I recommend the game.  A very good time and Eryn gives it a thumbs up from a kid's perspective.  She noted the graphics look ancient, but she understood the appeal of filling in the details mentally on your own.

An iPad App Overview

Been a while since I thought about what apps I'm using on a regular basis.  I don't think I even had the iPhone last time, which has some apps I don't use on the iPad, like the flashlight app Kyle got me, and Draw Something, which was fun during recovery, but everyone has fallen off.  Mostly I just remind Klund and Pooteewheet it's their turns, despite not caring if they actually take a turn.  So what am I using on my iPad?

• Kindle - obsessively.  You can't begin to imagine how liberating it feels to be able to just buy a book while you're stuck in a small room and not capable of going to the library or book store.  And I could justify it because I wasn't paying for gas or coffee.  That's a book every other day.
• Zite - the Board games and Doctor Who categories make it worthwhile alone.  Adding in the science blogs is frosting.  I've found myself looking for a comparative app for the PC.  I wish Zite would just let me sync my subscription to a PC version.
• A link to Geek and Sundry - Felicia Day's Flog and Wil Wheaton's Table Top.  I taught Eryn to enjoy Wil's videocast.
• Facebook and Twitter- no surprises there.  Although I like Facebook better on the PC.
• Caring Bridge - I am not the only injured person I know.  I have a friend with cancer and a friend with...cancer.  I keep track of their progress and chemo via Caring Bridge.  Invented by a Minnesotan - cool beans.
• Notes - because I added the Harvard Business Review to my Kindle downloads, and notes lets me summarize what I've learned and I can send it to my email.  Only downside is my first gen iPad can be rather slow to hop back and forth.
• Calorie Counter (Fat Secret) - so I don't blow up while I'm not bicycling.
• Dragon Vale - I help Eryn keep her dragons in check.  Just a click game, but it's impressive that they add new items on a regular basis.
• Scramble and Words With Friends - I find myself using them less and less.  I could respond immediately when I was in bed all the time.
• Dominion - free card game based on the real card game.  Obsessive!  Easy way to learn strategies you don't get to explore playing with a person/s.  Very easy to get 100+ games (or perhaps 177) under your belt in a very short time.
• Tigris and Euphrates - no one will play me the board game.  So this is a true to the original rendition that's a lot of fun.
• Elder Sign - still a favorite.  Recommended on Twitter by Felicia Day. Plays so much like the board game without all the overhead that takes hours to set up and play.
• Ascension - another card game.  Less like Dominion and more like Magic the Gathering, but without the endless variety of cards.  Once I learned the rules and the expansion rules, I play it all the time.  I taught Eryn, who picked it up quickly, and we play over breakfast if we go out.
• Morphology - I play around with it because a friend created it.  It's card packs for the game, which I received as part of their Kickstarter Morphology Jr. campaign.
• Hacienda HD - I can't tell if I really like this or not.  But I've been playing it lately because it's different.
• Not: Minecraft.  I know I can play it on the iPad.  I just haven't chosen to do it, despite Eryn's interest in Minecraft.  I don't want to dissuade her from the PC version which seems much richer.  Topic of conversation over lunch with some of the developers today.

iPad Rundown

iPad rundown.  I've done it before, but this time it's for Kristine.  Caveat - I'm still running on a first gen iPad.  No camera in mine.  And I have other things on my iPad, but these are the things that are commonly used (although Eryn has some tap games she likes to play that aren't on here, like Dragondale).

Education:

• TED talks
• NASA
• Star Walk 
• BrainPop (Eryn)
• See games

Media Consumption:

• Netflix
• Kindle
• Link to Kindle store (instead of buying through the Apple store)
• Zite - news, not current, but based on topics - best way to get programming posts on the iPad
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Pulse - aggregator (I don't use Flipboard since I got it, but my wife still uses Flipboard)
• Pandora - free music
• YouTube
• Flixster - movies (rotten tomatoes ratings, local theaters, & hook to netflix)
• Trailers - movie trailers
• Westlaw Next
• Maps
• McSweeny's

Productivity:

• Fat Secret (calorie counter)
• Dropbox
• Textastic
• Penultimate (probably better out there - for free form notes)
• Timer (countdown)

Games:

• Carcassonne
• Small World
• Life
• Tichu (cards)
• Words (with Friends)
• Ticket to Ride
• Civilization
• Toontastic - Eryn, make kids videos
• Lots of chess apps
• Lots of math/geography apps
• Sudoku (Kids)
• Angry birds (Eryn)
• Cut the Rope (various versions - puzzle)

Music:

• L&M Guitar
• Guitar Toolkit

Food:

• Whole Foods
• Epicurious
• AllRecipes
• BigOven
• SparkRecipes
• RecipeGrazer

Links:

• Work Email
• CBS (local news) - most newsreaders suck
• Kickstarter
• Khan Academy
• MIT Open Course

I wanted an iPhone...

Felicia Day pointed me at these links via Laughing Squid:

Disgruntled people complaining about their Christmas gifts on Twitter... Compiled by Jon Hendren.

 Below, Jonathan Mann turns it into a song...WTF?! I Wanted An iPhone!!!

iPad App Review - What I Use

I blogged once before about some of my favorite apps on the iPad, but it's time for a reassessment of what I play with most often:

Kindle - love it.  I read at lunch most days.  I try to find a big book so it lasts a while.  So far I've read A Short History of Nearly Everything, The Gone-Away World, and I'm finishing up Pandemonium.

Zite - I like the news feeds, particularly the programming feed which prevents me from having to pull together my own set of feeds.

Pulse - good for reading the Daily Afternoon Randomness on The Chive.

Facebook - I do most of my Facebooking from the iPad.

Ping.fm/Twitter - I do most of my Twittering from the iPad.

Exoplanet - because you never know when a new planet might show up that you want to emigrate to.

Dropbox - file sharing between all my machines. I use it obsessively.

Netflix - for obvious reasons.

Words with Friends - sometimes I have up to half a dozen games going.  95% of the people on Words with Friends suck.  Kyle is good.  I've met a few people who are challenging.

NS Hex - took me quite a while to figure out this challenging game.

Small World - don't play it as much as I used to, but a solid board game.

Wesnoth - if you like Might and Magic style games, this is pretty much the only one.

Carcassone - good rendition of the board game.

The Game of Life - better than the board game.

Tichu - cards games have better longevity than most games on an iPad.

Kingdoms - my latest obsession.  Incredibly difficult for a game that takes a few minutes to play.

Shredder and iChess Pro - pretty much equivalent for Chess purposes.  I usually lose.

Toontastic - for Eryn.  Teaches story making/structure while allowing her to create her own cartoons.

Food Apps - I like Epicurious (after it got rid of some of its bugs), AllRecipies (not as much depth, but very easy to use), BigOven (GREAT recipies), and Whole Foods.  Pooteewheet can attest I make a wider variety of food owning these apps.

Calorie Counter - down 32 pounds and counting.

Pandora/iPod - music

Star Walk - pretty, and always fun to come back to.  Coupled with the NASA app, these are a nice set.

10 Things You Didn't Know About Orgasm

The TED talks on the iPad (or web, I prefer to watch them on the iPad) are one of my favorite features to use on the iPad. I can queue up a dozen ten to twenty minute talks on the iPad's storage and watch them at my convenience.  When Pooteewheet flew to Washington, D.C. to see the Rally for Sanity, she watched them on the plane (gotta love the iPad battery life).  Mary Roach's 10 Things You Didn't Know About Orgasm is a hilarious example, with bits about Danes sexually stimulating pigs and nine other anecdotes.  I'm now halfway through her book Bonk as a result of the TED talk, although there are plenty of other talks on the social web, astronomy, and a variety of other topics.  You can even look for those specifically comedic or irreverent if you dig through the topology of themes. If you like short chunks of science, give TED a tour.

Photo of Mary by David Paul Morris.

My Favorite IPad Apps

• Flipboard - for twitter feeds and blog like newpaperishness.
• Netflix - for movies, although I wish the iPad was about 30% louder, more ergonomic, and easier to see in the sunlight.
• Twitter - because Twitter didn't make any sense on my pc or blackberry, but it does on an iPad. The app is easier to use for posting and looking at friends than Flipboard is, and I use it to retweet things I like to the right hand side of the blog.
• Dropbox - I even carry work files around so I can show diagrams and I can edit them from most of my machines.
• TED - we've queued up lectures on the Future of UI, 12 Pairs of Legs, The World's Oldest Living Things, Optical Illusions, How Bacteria Talk, The Design of the Universe, 10 Things You Didn't Know About Orgasm, The Hunt for a Supermassive Black Hole, Militant Atheism, I Am My Connectome, and All Things are Moleeds. If it's tagged with the adjective "obnoxious", I'm likely to watch it.
• Good Reader - because it handles zips from Dropbox that I'm likely to get at Code Camp.
• Stack the States - state trivia for Eryn.
• Cut the Rope - brain teasers involving cutting ropes
• Angry Birds - silly, but fun - blow up pig castles with various sorts of birds. New as of today.
• Star Walk - ultimately useless, but enjoyable for looking at the night sky.
• Shredder - Eryn's, for learning Chess.

We have Kindle, and some other games, and Pandora loaded up as well, but so far the above apps are my favorites, with Flipbook and TED outstripping the rest. I suspect I can find a good guitar chord app somewhere and some math cards to round out what Eryn plays around with in the morning, although lately she's teaching herself to type on the Mac using a typing program she ordered and paid for herself.

Tater Tour

My pictures of the Tater Tour.

Oops. Maybe there won't be any pictures as Eryn went up to Maple Grove with me and it was about 45 degrees and raining. We stalled for a while at Kyle's, then decided it was just too wet and too cold. I might have braved a bit of hypothermia if I had been on my own, but not with her along. We went out for a nice breakfast instead and she spent the morning playing with Kyle's iPad, enjoying Carcassone, a virtual pottery wheel, Scrabble, and a touch-driven screen saver . She's pretty sure she needs one. I'm pretty sure I need one, and she could just use it. But if I make her feel like it's her iPad, maybe she'd give up on the American Doll treehouse.