Category: Technology

Siri, With Headphones On

Today I learned that when using Siri with headphones on1 she will read back any text or email messages before they are sent.

From Apple,

“When you use earphones or a headset, Siri reads back text messages and email messages that you’ve dictated before you send them, and it reads back the subjects of reminders before you create them. This is especially helpful when you’re driving and can’t see the iPhone 4S screen.”

I wish this option was the default behavior. There have been numerous times when I’m walking between buildings or to the car and want to send a note without looking at the screen and I’m not wearing headphones.

Ideas of March

I’m all for bandwagons and blogs, so here’s my entry for Ideas of March. Chris Shiflett (Obviously a member of the Chris Club) came up with the idea to encourage more people to write more frequently.

Like most citizens of the Internet, I’m a heavy reader. RSS, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Draw Something (Wait, does that count?) I’m a reader of many personal blogs of people I find to be interesting and who have good things to say about the work they do. The simple act of consuming the thoughts and ideas from people whom I respect and admire acts as a fuel to create and share the things that I have in my own world.

I know I’m no Gruber or Kottke, but that’s OK. I’m not writing for them or anyone else on the Internet. I write for myself and my close friends and family.2

Seth Godin has this to say about blogging, “what matters is the humility that comes from writing it. What matters is the metacognition of thinking about what you’re going to say.” in such that the mere act of putting words to paper (or screen) is why you should write. It helps you form your thoughts around an idea or concept that empower you when conversing with others around the topic.

Writing for me is also about the enjoyment of life, the understanding of my short trip here on Earth and how lucky I am to be working in a profession that allows for such excitement and intrigue. I write because I love life and work and all the other wonderful experiences of being human.

Even if you don’t love to write, you do love something and there’s no better way to show that you love something than to tell the world about it. So write.

IT Needs to Market Itself

IT departments, in general, do a terrible job marketing their services, functions and value to the rest of the organization. While there are many business functions that an average IT shop needs to partake in, marketing is the first and most important. I’ve sat on both sides of the Marketing/IT table and have perpetually been frustrated by lackluster communication around what IT does3 (and is doing).

We’re technologists, the antithesis of the marketing person ,right? A large majority of folks working in corporate IT have more technical backgrounds which, I think, lends itself to the kind of person that either 1) doesn’t value marketing or 2) considers it a ‘soft’ skill set that 3) they often don’t feel comfortable doing.

Maybe I’m wrong, but the past paints IT folks as not being the best people persons. Now that is changing thankfully, in large part to the influx of young startups and entrepreneurs in the tech sector – people who were born into a part of the culture of sharing, collaborating and the Internet.

The “If we build it, they will come.” mentality does not work for any IT initiative. The result is adoption lacks, people don’t see the value to spending the time on ‘yet another thing’ and leadership often doesn’t put their full weight into it.

Marketing needs to be first, if we’re to operate like a business and need to be in the black.4 I think it’s tantamount that we invest in clearer communication and a little panache when talking to people about the stuff we’re working on. The value we bring as it were.

I keep hearing about this idea of commercialization of IT services as being something big shops are looking at, and while I’m not sure I buy it, let’s assume it pans out. Well, in order to get people to buy in to the service you offer you have to be able to sell them on the idea that choosing your company is a wise idea. Same thing applies to our customers – our fellow co-workers. I think some people have the idea that “we’re the IT department, we have a captive audience. They  have to deal with us.”

As we know, consummerizaiton, cheap cloud solutions and BYO movements prove that wrong. In order for IT to survive as a valued and important part of the business of any organization – regardless of size – it’s important to leverage the marketing of our services to remain relevant.

As Seth Godin puts it, “Successful people have discovered how to be better at self marketing.” the same applies to successful IT organizations.

SSX Review

SSX is the most recent in the long running series of over-the-top snowboarding games from EA. I’ve been playing the SSX games since Tricky5 and while there are some that I love more than others6, I continue to be a fan of the series. The most recent incarnation is a solid attempt to reboot the series, but is not without some flaws. Flaws which if you’re just now getting into the series might put you off the series.

As someone who’s played the earlier games, the controls take some getting use to. Even the option to use ‘classic’ controls isn’t an exact 1 to 1 to the layout of Tricky or SSX 3.7 The true classic controls would let you use the digital d-pad to pre-wind your flips and spins ahead of a jump. Holding right on the d-pad would lock your character in as you approached a jump. In order to maximize the effect, you’d also hold down on the jump button (X on the PS2/3) as you approach.

In SSX, the default controls heavily leverage the analog sticks, which I’m sure seemed like a good idea on paper. Left for spin/flips when in the air, left and right movement on the ground. In practice, it becomes rather frustrating. For movement you’d want to have the gradient of control analog gives you, but for precise input, such as tricks, it seems a little too loose and muted.

Another small change that is related is the pre-wind for jumps, spins and flips. In the previous games you’d have to line-up ahead of a approaching jump many seconds before you actually reached the apex of the ramp. In SSX the pre wind is not as necessary and if you try to pre-wind too soon your character will veer off course 9 times out of 10.

For an old-timer to the series I would love to just have my digital d-pad, face and shoulder buttons for tricks, spins, boost and jumps. Let me use the left analog for steering and leave the right analog out of it.

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My second biggest beef beyond the controls (which I hope I can adapt to over time) would be the addition of the Deadly Descents.

From what I understand, during development the title was “SSX: Deadly Descents” and the element of ‘deadly’ was to be a prime focus for the game. There were to be these super harsh tracks with all sorts of obstacles. They changed the title during development and the ‘deadly descents’ became 8 boss peaks, each with a kind of hokey and unnecessary gimmick along with taxing and honestly un-fun tracks. These 8 peeks, all required to enjoy the single-player ‘story’8 detract what the game is about. Undoubtably EA spend lots of money on these tracks and as they progressed away from “Deadly Descents” to just SSX they couldn’t just cut them. I wish they would have.

One deadly descent has you press an additional button every few seconds in order to keep oxygen flowing to your player. Doing this on some of the more tame tracks would prove an additional challenge. Doing it on the unforgiving and frustrating “Deadly Descents” proves to be maddening. These tracks are not SSX tracks. It’s not easy to create a solid line downhill during a race, or to create a series of never-ending tricks in trick events. It’s sadistic when you add in the super dark tracks that need headlamps or wingsuits to glide like a flying squirrel.

To compound things, instead of having a reset button to reorient your character in the occurrence of falling off the track (which you will do often as these tracks have more blind spots than an 18 wheeler) you have the ability to rewind time. This time rewind feature has multiple penalties rendering it totally useless and just as frustrating as crashing. First you rewind time, but your opponents continue on unabated. Second, you can rewind, but will break whatever combo you had going. Third, the severity of the slope in most tracks will have you rewinding numerous times, compounding the existing two penalties. In most cases it’s better/easier to just restart the race from the beginning.

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Another design decision is the absence of synchronous or traditional multiplayer. No jumping on Xbox Live to play head-to-head against your friends – much less any form of local multiplayer.9 All multiplayer features amount to racing ghosts and best times of other people. It’s not all doom and gloom with the multiplier. There’s a very primal competitiveness to besting your friends times and scores, but in 2012 I would think generic old multiplayer would be a given. Like windshield wipers.

The other hokey aspect of multi-player (and single player as well, the line is blurred as far as levels and unlocks are concerned) is the progression mechanism for unlocking new equipment. New boards and suits appear randomly in the store upon each visit, and even with minor loading times, it becomes tedious to determine if what you’re buying is any better than what you have. To add the illusion of customization, outfits for your characters offer nothing more than palette swaps. None of which appear that appealing and none that impact gameplay.

The unlocks are a little Zyngafied as well. You unlock stuff by earning gold and the crap you unlock is random, so you can’t save up to buy cool gear, you just have to get lucky in the store with random stock.

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That said, I do like it. It’s not as good as 3, most of the tracks are either too frustrating to be enjoyable or to bland to be memorable as in Tricky and SSX 3. As a long-time fan it’s a solid game and so close to it’s predecessors that I can taste it.

It’s apparent that there’s an influence from the Call of Duty generation to make games more gritty, dark or realistic, but SSX is the last game where this makes any sense. This is a series that has been all about being over the top with crazy characters, crazy tricks and crazy tracks. None of which exist in this game. Well maybe the tricks. Barely.10

It’s SSX in HD, it could be better, and I hope they make another with some lessons learned.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/ssx

Adium 1.5 SIPE Plugin Borked After Update

Adium just auto-updated to the latest version (1.5) and upon restart I was alerted that my SIPE Plugin was not supported on this architecture. Bummer.

I’m not sure, but it looks like I was running a 32bit version of Adium and the update pushed me into 64bit territory. I’m totally fine with that, but the SIPE plugin was 32bit.

This morning I found this ticket in which some intrepid individual posts a complied 64bit version for our enjoyment.

Download the “SIPEAdiumPlugin.AdiumLibpurplePlugin(64bit).zip” file linked to above. Uninstall the old via the Adium Xtras Manager (From the Adium menu) and double-click the new plugin contained in the aforementioned .zip file. Voila, back to chatting on the corporate Microsoft Communicator/Lync network.

Update: Edited language to be more clear.

Update 2: This plugin will install in Adium 1.5.1, but will not work without running this command in the Terminal.

Update 3: I just updated to 1.5.2 this afternoon (July, 24, 2012). It appears this update undoes the work in update #2. If you view the Accounts tab in Adium Preferences you’ll see your SIPE account hang at ‘Connecting’. Close Adium and run the commands linked in update #2 to get thing working again.