Categories
Video Games

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD

wind wakerI played and thoroughly enjoyed the Wind Waker when it came out for the Gamecube years ago. I recalled it being like playing a cartoon at the time. It was pretty great. So when I saw it was being re-release for the Wii U I was certain to pick up a copy.

The re-release was even finer than I recalled my previous experience when I played it before. It was really awesome and one of the finest games I’ve ever played. As a grown man, I really shouldn’t get that into a video game, but I was thoroughly hooked. I’d constantly find ways to squeeze in a few minutes here and there, searching for just one more treasure, etc. Addictive at times, but much fun.

The cel-shaded graphics really held up well over time and in HD they were amazing. Everything was so bright and the artistic style was truly impressive. I know some fools thought it was too kiddish with the art style, but I’m still impressed by it. It’s incredibly well done.

I thoroughly enjoyed this game a great deal and at times was almost consumed by it. It was that good. A fine reason to own a Wii U.

Categories
Adventure

Halloween Fun 2013

Unicorn maskI haven’t really been much of a Halloween person for quite some time. However, through the magic of the SJSL and younger friends, I did partake in a few more fun-tastic activities this year.

After shaking off my years of Halloween rust, I realized I had no idea what to be for Halloween. As simple as a task this should be, I was having much difficulty with it. Just couldn’t come up with a good idea. So I would visit the various stores on my lunch breaks.

On one particular break I randomly walked by a fairly large and somewhat creepy unicorn mask. I can’t quite explain why, but I just knew that it was right for me. I’ve long been a big fan of unicorns and all the magic and goodness that they bring to this world, plus it was also pretty creepy at the same time.

After purchasing the mask, I realized that I couldn’t see anything out of it at all. There were 2 small holes in the nostrils, but they were so tiny and far away due to the wonderful snout that it made for extremely limited vision. My only solution was to bring out the scissors and create new areas of vision.

First I expanded the nostrils a bit. While this did help a little, vision was still very much limited. I then decided to get bold and create a new hole were the unicorns mouth was. This did help out a lot, and didn’t deface the unicorn’s beauty that much at all. It seemed natural and allowed me some hope at not destroying everything in my blinded path.

The first Halloween party I would attend would be a jawn at dodgeball rookie sensation Dave’s home. He’s a good guy and really went all out in his party. It was pretty impressive, he even had a cauldron that let out an fine mist due to some dry ice. Very impressive.

What made this party so memorable to me was the age difference between me and the rest of the fine guests. During a match of dodgeball, age difference is harder to realize as we’re all just running and throwing for a few minutes once a week. But in a fine Halloween party (jawn) setting it becomes more noticeable.

I pretty much just stood behind my glorious unicorn mask and observed the ways of the young. It was pretty entertaining and thankfully the young Ricky and elder Kevin were on hand to converse with me. I didn’t stay too long, in fact I just abruptly left as Ricky would later call me out on. But it was a fun time while I hung in there. I was truly a grandpa unicorn.

The next night was another Halloween party at the Swift’s residence. This one would too turn out to be quite a fun time. Again I was a majestic unicorn. This night would however truly belong to the Honey Badgers. Nearly the entire dodgeball team was present at one time or another. It was pretty amazing to behold.

Soe stand out costumes to me were Jared who would transform into Bob Ross as the night great, Caitlin was a most amazingly well done Ms. Pac-man (and Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde), Dustin of course was Harry Pot-head, and Ricky was Quail man just to name a few. Though they were all pretty great and unique.

It turned out to be a pretty great time, and it was really nice to see most everyone on the team. They really are a pretty cool bunch.

So it turned out that I had a pretty eventful Halloween weekend.

Categories
Books

Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter

Abraham Lincoln Vampire HunterDecided that I would try to read something from the Halloween section that was setup in the library. The first thing that caught my eye was Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter. I recalled it being fairly popular a few years back and they did make a movie of it, so why not.

It was pretty cool. An interesting mix of actual history with a very healthy dose of fiction. Actually a lot of fiction, but that’s what made it fun to read. I have read up a bit on Lincoln’s actually life not too long ago, so the changes or “real” explanations that the book presents were timely.

Plus who doesn’t like the epic battle of vampires vs. humans? It just doesn’t seem to get old.

The book also went by very fast, so I will chalk that up to it being pretty good.

Categories
Adventure Design

Lionel Ritchie Pumpkin Carving

I carved a pumpkin for work last week of our school’s logo. It turned out pretty nice and I had a lot of fun doing it as well. So I really wanted to carve another pumpkin. I really can’t explain why, but I decided to carve Lionel Ritchie. While I can’t say I’m a huge fan or anything like that, he is a solid artist and if by myself have belted out a Ritchie tune from time to time.

So the first step was to create a stencil. As luck would have it my co-worker Chelsea happened to have a pretty perfect image she came across a while back that would be perfect for a pumpkin carving. I scaled it and printed it out and step one was done.

Next I needed a suitable pumpkin. I stopped at Ronnie’s after work and after inspecting close to every pumpkin in the place finally found one that I felt was just right. I’m sure I looked like an insane guy picking up all those pumpkins, but well if I’m going to carve Lionel Ritchie I might as well do it right. There was also a very nice dog hanging out at Ronnie’s as a side note.

I got home and got straight to working cutting a hole in the bottom of the pumpkin and gutting it out. This guy had a lot of seeds, a whole lot of seeds. I took that as a sign of good luck by the pumpkin gods.

I then traced the stencil onto the pumpkin and began to saw it out. The fine lines in Lionel’s face were pretty tough. It’s really not much pumpkin to work with in many spots, but I was banking on him really shining through once lit up.

Categories
Adventure Development

Drupaldelphia 2013

Drupahdelphia 2013Decided to attend my second Drupaldelphia, I also went to the 2011 one as well. I do enjoy being around some like minded folk everyone now and again, and usually I walk away re-energized and eager to try developing new things as well.

This year’s was held in the Philadelphia Convention Center. I decided to take the PATCO train to 8th and Market from Lindenwold. I fully navigated the entire trip without getting lost a single time! This is pretty amazing for me!

The train tide was pretty simple. The whole experience made it seem like more of an exotic trip for me. Plus it was only $6 round trip, which seemed pretty cheap to me to get there and back.

I took in 4 sessions, most of which were pretty interesting. My favorite was the Intro to Migration session.

At this very moment I’ve been working on migrating much old data into Drupal, so the timing of this session couldn’t of been better. The speaker did a great job covering the various approaches and the pros and cons to each. I think it will be a very useful session moving forward.

Another treat of my Philadelphia adventure was meeting up with Honey Badger Hall of Famer Lauren for lunch. She works a few blocks from there and was kind enough to meet me for lunch and gave me a tour of the Reading Terminal Market.

It was pretty insane in there, with tons of dining options. We were a bit overwhelmed and couldn’t make a decision on what to get. Eventually I got a chicken parm sandwich and it was messy but good.

The ride home was a bit wet walking to the train, but besides that pretty easy. Just got on, got to my car then drove home. Again I didn’t get lost at all! So impressive!

I’m always impressed with the Drupal community, and this was no exception. Very well done, and very affordable! $25 and I got a t-shirt too! A great experience and I’m glad I went!

Categories
Development

PhoneGap with jQuery Mobile iOS 7 iPad Broken Display

I made a little iOS app using PhoneGap (Cordova 3.0) and jQueryMobile 1.3.1. All was working well in my xCode simulators as well as when testing out on my iPhone with iOS 6.x. But when xCode 5 and iOS 7 arrived I sadly noticed that my app was now not displaying correctly on the iPad simulators when running iOS 7.

Broken Avalon AppThis one had me stumped for quite some time. I hadn’t changed anything, so clearly something had changed with the iOS 7 update. After much research and quite frankly guessing it appears that the iPad under iOS 7 is measuring the device width and height a bit differently than it had in iOS 6, thus throwing off the CSS that was laying out this app.

Luckily a fairly simple change to the meta viewport tag was all that was needed to set things bad in order.

Removing  ‘width=device-width, height=device-height’ from the viewport meta seemed to set things back in order for me.

I’m not sure if this causes any conflicts elsewhere, but so far I haven’t found any (it’s quiet, almost too quiet).