GameLog 117 & 118

Been up the farm fighting fires over the past week so the count is down somewhat.

Depths of Peril (10h) - Filled out a weekend after Ben and Levi started playing it again. $20 was an easy buy to go past level 7. Should probably get back into it to finish a lev 25 character. Still trying to figure out if it's best to just concentrate on the story or grind the others into the dirt as soon as you can.

Dominions 3 (10h) - Listening to 3 moves ahead got me interested in this one again. The demo is still long enough to get a good jump into the game. I'd buy the full version if it were <$30, but $50 for a 3 year old game is a little too steep.

Bejewelled Blitz (5h) - 311K. New week 269K. I can pretty consistently get above 100K and am attempting to get the 75K-100K up to 5 star before the 50K - 75K one. ~20 left to go on the 50K one, and about 90 on the 75K one, but I'm getting about 5 to 1 75K's over the 50K badges so it'll be close.

Quake Live (3h) - De-stress after work

Tiger Woods Golf 10 (2h) - Got my 4 amateur wins and am averaging ~67. Only need to see out the season to get up to the pro's.

Wii Fit (1h) - Soccer heading and advanced marbles.

Geodefense Swarm (1h) - Figured out the scoring mechanism rewards killing them right before they exit, so it's even more interesting to finely tune a level to get a high score.

Trackmania Nations (1h) - couple more laps around the F1 circuits.

GameLog 116

Bejewelled Blitz (4h) - New version has a lot more options for matching, and not having to wait before matching another triple means that it is more skill based too.

Tiger Woods Golf 10 (4h) - Couple more rounds. Still going great. Hopped online for a go at some of the public tournaments and people were averaging 21 under in one round! Got to 13 under using super tiger, but I'll have to get into the swing of it more before heading back online.

Zynga poker (2h) - had some weird sleeping patterns over the weekend and found myself waking up to play poker at 4 in the morning. Usually that almost bed time.

Wii Fit (1h) - Couple of Skiing attempts.

Geodefense Swarm (1h) - The goto game on the road at the moment, but only in dribs & drabs.

Trackmania Nations (1h) - couple more laps around the F1 circuits.

Smart phone GPS Illegal?

A recent article by the News Mail stated that Smart phone GPSs are illegal. The headline certainly caught my eye, and the picture of a policeman holding up an iPhone sporting a GPS app certainly nailed the point home. Wha ??

I rang the police department later that day for clarification. If using the GPS features of an iPhone are classed as using a phone, what about using other features such as, say, listening to music? If this point stood, you may as well fine everyone with an iPhone. Fortunately the clarification made the point clear: OPERATING a phone is illegal. Using the phone in hands free mode for any feature is acceptable.

GG News-Mail. I think that distinction is critical to the balance of the article.

MOTORISTS are being warned that smart phones such as the iPhone will cost them a $300 fine if they are used as a navigational device while on the road.

Uhh, I would expect the people who have shelled out ~$50 for GPS maps have also shelled out for an in-car cradle to make it easy to use, placing it in exactly the same legislative position as an ordinary GPS unit.

By the way, I don't see any laws against using a laptop while driving. Maybe the legislation surrounding phones needs to cover distractions in general caused by in-car devices?

GameLog 115

Revelling in not having any more assignments or Uni work. Guilt free gaming!

Civilization: Beyond the Sword (20h) - Pulled out my old HDD to scratch the Civ4 itch. Various modes of 3v3, Meso-America scenario and Fall from Heaven II total conversion.

Dwarf Fortress (15h) - 2 more settlements taking shape. Was thinking of documenting one, but the seasons seemed to just slip away.

Tiger Woods Golf 10 (10h) - Happened across a 2nd hand Wii, and I liked TW10 enough that it was worth the purchase (and the Wii Fit board sounded alright too)

Majesty 2 (2h) - Bogged down a little about 1/2 way through. Bit disappointed you can't build temples anywhere.

Wii Fit (1h) - New Wii and its exorbitant battery demands now graces the living room. Record of 505 on Soccer heading, one miss early in the piece.

Bejewelled Blitz (1h) - Nearly time for the new version!

Geodefense Swarm (1h) - iPhone game recommended by a number of podcasts (or possibly Rabbit on a number of different podcasts). Nice mix between TD and puzzle.

Wordle cloud

Fiddled around with Wordle pointed at this site. Pretty awesome service, and making the images creative commons makes the site more useable. Pity there isn't a way to automatically embed the generated image into the post, but a cut/paste isn't that hard: