Archive for June 2007

This latest entry into the hidden object category takes place in Abra Academy, a school for witches. Players help Wanda survive four years of school by finding hidden objects and adding them to the cauldron.

Unless you’re a fan of hidden objects regardless of the storyline or mini-games that occur between hidden objects puzzles, Abra Academy offers little to make it stand out from the other games of the hidden object genre. The game, however, does a good job of hiding many objects as they blend naturally into the scene. The game hides things so well that I needed help from the fairies to find them.

Unfortunately, those same fairies are a distraction. They’re flighty creatures that quickly moved around their little cage making it difficult to concentrate on finding the objects. Also, the number of fairies equals the number of hints available. Unless there are only one or two hints left, figuring out the number of hints remaining was tough.

The same thing applies to knowing how much time you had left. The cauldron, where the objects enter, sits on a fire. When the fire dies down, time is running out. But how much time is left? 30 seconds? Five minutes? You can extend time by finding four wooden matches in each scene, which keeps the fire burning bright.

Ironically, trying to click the stick thin matches to get more time leads to losing time because when you click too fast, a mean gremlin comes out and steals time. Other complications include having to back out of the scene to get to the main page to pause the game. You can’t pause the game from within the scene. The game does not include a help file. The only help comes from professors and students who pop in with advice. I couldn’t remember everything they said.

Mini-games appear when you complete a period. These games were more frustrating than fun. Most of them have letters or objects flowing in a jagged line making their way into a cauldron. As they move, they jerk making it dizzying and difficult to pick them up.

Abra Academy‘s ending was anti-climatic. I graduated, I got a diploma and that was that. Disappointing. The game does offer a good way to keep the eyes sharp for hidden objects games.

I believe in education for a lifetime, not just stop after college. I plan to take classes when time allows and eventually go to grad school — online preferably since lectures were rough on me (this is why). Of course, education doesn’t stop with formal classes. Reading books, researching a topic, and visiting related Web sites all contribute to learning. How To Study captures most of the strategies I’ve heard about.

Although, listening to music while studying perplexes me. I find when I listen to music and try to follow the lyrics, it distracts me from work. But perhaps to those with hearing, listening to songs is second nature where they can multitask.

Mindmapping makes a great learning tool. I’ve noticed that schools today focus more on mindmapping than when I attended school. My daughter’s 7th grade science class used a mindmapping tool. I haven’t relied much on this method and that’s probably due to the lack of learning and practicing the process.

Many resources — Web-based and downloadable software — make it easier to create flash cards. In my day, we used index cards or cut paper as flash cards. I’ve seen handheld-based applications for creating flash cards, so you can take them with you.

What studying tools and methods work for you?

Burgers must be the new black of casual gaming because this is the third burger game I’ve run into in recent months and they’re not sequels or related to each other. Burger Island resembles Diner Dash: Flo on the Go in that both main characters run into a bad situation in a tropical locale and must find work. Instead of Flo, we step into Patty’s shoes. Appropriate name, no?

Start by ordering the game in Kiddie, Regular or Jumbo Size. OK, so that translates into easy, medium or hard in game-speak. I like the take on “fast food speak” in the game’s menu and options.

Patty’s sailboat wrecks and she finds your way on a beach with no money and no I.D. Aha! Patty spots a “Help Wanted” sign — great opportunity to earn some dough. Unfortunately, the burger stand is located in a place where no one eats. The senior couple takes you in and praises your work. One day, they announce they’re retiring and leaving the restaurant to Patty.

Too good to be true, indeed. The couple gets the heck out of the Dodge — actually Mount Tikikola Beach — and takes advantage of the tax break. Something strange happens when Patty enters the burger joint. She meets Pierre, a French guy, who shows her the ropes. OK, a French guy on an island? Weird, but we’ll put up with his haughty attitude since he’s all she’s got for learning this business.

In Burger Island, Patty doesn’t see the customers — just the trays and the orders. Actually, customers sit at the tables in the background, but they’re not in my face to pressure me to complete the order quickly. Instead, I glance at the thermometers next to the trays to gauge the customer’s impatience. This is heckuva lot better than seeing customer faces turning red.

One neat feature that takes getting used to — if you have an item in your hand (such as buns), you can put buns on all orders ready for buns. This could also be a downfall. Sometimes I get wrapped up in working like a assembly line that I forget about something that’s cooking and it burns.

As soon as profits come in, Patty can use the money to buy new recipes from some Tiki guy to keep the natives coming. Unlike most food entrepreneur games, Patty makes one item per round rather than a mix (burgers, fries or drinks). But even so, the game challenges players to keep the orders straight and not overcook the food.

While one round might call for milkshakes, the milkshake could be vanilla or chocolate. So players have to watch out for that. It gets harder as I add more secret recipes to Patty’s repertoire. Eventually, I deal with nine ingredients for one recipe and that turned me into a patty melt.

Burger Island comes with 60 levels, over 30 recipes, over 40 ingredients and five burger restaurants. It’ll be tough to get bored with this mix. If you like the heat and want to stay in the kitchen, you’ll like Burger Island. The game is a typical fast food entrepreneur game that should keep fans of the genre satisfied.

Download the game from your favorite site:

• Amazon
• Big Fish Games
• Reflexive GameCenterSolution

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I like and respect the client, but the work has turned tedious. It keeps falling on my list of priorities in serving my clients. I do good work — the trouble comes in when I do the work. Something prevents me from updating the content as much as I should. It bothers me when I feel that way. So rather than not give 100% to the client, it may be better to leave or take a break.

But how? I don’t want to give the client the impression I like the other assignments better, that other clients are more important or that the work isn’t for me. How can a person — in a nice and professional way — tell a client that it’s time to go and that you want to keep in touch?

My tennis team discussed the state of the newspaper because one of the players works for a major newspaper’s sales and marketing division. She said that the newspaper’s subscriptions were down, but readership went up. People pick up the paper in places like Starbucks, thus driving up the readership.

The newspaper employee said that the newspaper has to find ways to stay in business or else. But I always start my day with a cuppa coffee and the newspaper — print version. Sure, I could get my news online anytime, but unlike a newspaper — there’s no start and end. It’s too easy to go from one news item to another and soon too much time will have passed.

I can’t get carried away with a newspaper except doing Sudoku. I do the Sudoku puzzle every day, but if it takes me too long — I stop. I don’t have that kind of willpower with online content and news.

Travelers often read USA Today even though they have their laptops with them and can connect to the Internet from their hotels. They might not want to hook up their laptops just to get the news highlights.

While news sites and newspapers give readers the ability to select the sections they want to read and provide that by e-mail, feed or a personalized home page — reading online is a different experience from print. I hope the future of the printed newspaper isn’t as bleak as it sounds.

I always subscribe to text version of a newsletters when given a choice since I don’t use the traditional e-mail client — usually Outlook. Plus, I use Web-based e-mail applications, which don’t display HTML e-mails very well.

Jeffrey Zeldman rants about HTML newsletters, something I addressed in the past. Many respect him and listen to him — so it’s good to have a designer’s confirmation.

Simply put, if you can do it — offer a text version of the e-mail newsletter, or provide a link that takes the reader to the online version where HTML works fine in a Web browser. If you can only offer one e-mail formatting option, I recommend text. You can reach a wider base with text than one with HTML that doesn’t display right. Certain common e-mail applications used in an office network struggle with displaying the newsletter at all.

Marketers don’t like to hear about text being a better choice than HTML since HTML-based e-mails can track metrics better. That’s true. However, I’d rather have little metrics information and more readers than the other way around. After all, you can see the results of your newsletter by the visits to the Web site, those who took advantage of the call to action and so on.

In managing a big family weekend, I used Excel to track everything from invitations to RSVPs. I tried to create a macro to do something, but deleted it after figuring out it wouldn’t do what I wanted. Yet, every time I opened the workbook, Excel asked if I wanted to run macros as shown in the below image.

What the hey? I deleted the macro. Why are you asking, Excel? So I thought the macro wasn’t deleted. I opened the Macro dialog box (Tools > Macro > Macros), which showed NOTHING indicating no macros existed in this workbook.

OK, so why are you giving me these macro messages? If I can’t find an answer to a Microsoft problem, I post the problem in the Microsoft forums where MVPs often provide the answer. This time, I lucked out on finding the solution myself (which doesn’t happen often as I guess I find the rare problems). Here are the steps I used since my situation didn’t need to do all the steps shown in the solution — the only folder that appeared as the Microsoft Excel Objects.

1. Save a back-up of the file and work from the back-up. If it works, you can save the back-up over the original file.

2. Right-click any tab and select View Code.

3. Double-click the first item in the Microsoft Excel Objects folder.

4. Press Ctrl+A to select everything (even if nothing shows) and press Delete.

5. Repeat Steps 2 and 3 until completed for all items in the Microsoft Excel Objects folder.

6. Close the Visual Basic Editor.

7. Save the workbook.

Open the workbook again and the Macro message should be gone for good.

If you have a modules folder, expand it (click Modules folder once to expand) and right-click the module. Select Remove Module. Excel asks if you want to export it — up to you. Repeat the steps for all modules. Once done, do Steps 6 and 7.

I guess Adobe Acrobat and its developers are not on speaking terms? Click image to view larger.

Came across this unfortunate spelling error that I see often (click the little green box below to view larger). This could happen out of habit since we’re used to simply adding “ed” to change a word from present tense to past tense. I’ve caught myself doing this on occasion. Sometimes my fingers have a mind of their own. I’d be thinking, “You won’t find any there.”

My fingers decide to type, “You won’t find any their.” Eww. I immediately catch my error most of the time, but when I don’t — talk about horrified. No spellchecker can save me hear (yes, pun intended).

Stephen Hopson of Adversity University asks how people deal with adversity. The following lists ten ways I attack adversity.

1. Perseverance.

2. Do it. You stare at blank page. You can’t decide whether to accept a scary new assignment. Instead of dwelling on fears and roadblocks, do something. I recently accepted a writing assignment that scared me. Rather than worry about the beginning of the article — I just started writing what I knew and little by little, more content came in.

3. Do something tedious. Sometimes I can’t get past something or get in the right mood. Rather than wasting time, I move on to an easy and mindless task. Accomplishing the mindless task sometimes motivates me to return to what I couldn’t do before.

4. Accept things as they are. This is a biggie especially with my deafness. I know I’ll always meet a kid who makes fun of my speech or looks at me in a weird way. I’m used to it and accept that it happens. I don’t like it, but I let it go. Recently, I mustered up the courage to talk to second graders — it wasn’t their making fun of me that concerned me, but the reflection on my son.

5. Try it. I had the opportunity to write news articles five days a week for a Web site. That’s not the hard part — the hard part came in getting two original quotes from sources. This meant making lots of phone calls since not everyone checks e-mail multiple times a day and I needed these quotes before noon. Rather than thinking about the barrier of making phone calls (a tedious process through the relay service), I tried it. It didn’t work out. But I gained experience and learned from it.

6. Educate / speak up. People act the way they do because they don’t understand something. Teaching them makes a difference just like I taught the second graders about deafness. I’ve met people who thought I was a snob (among other things) because I didn’t respond or ignored them. I educated them and their thinking changed.

7. Use tools. Technology and knowledge give me the power to do things I might not have done before. Instant messenger lets me chat with family, friends and colleagues. Knowledge such as I know I can’t lipread from far away — so I sit in the right place to ensure I can follow the speaker. I also learned that some speakers like to walk and talk — with this knowledge, I ask speakers if they walk and change seats accordingly.

8. Find the heart of the problem. Many of us argue with others and that argument slowly moves further and further away from the real issue. If this happens, I stop and return to the heart of the problem.

9. Practice. I’ve always been determined to show that I am just as good as anyone else whether it’s sports, school or work. Practicing helps a person improve. This entry on creativity shows how lack of practice hurts.

10. Honesty. If I discover that I can’t do something well enough after trying, I face it rather than fake it. I’d rather admit my fault than turn doing something subpar.