Sero sed Serio

More new adventures at Zazzle, this time with a bit of abandonware!

I’ve been having lots of fun re-remembering lots of classic ZX Spectrum games by means of emulation. And with this fun, I’ve been selecting oldies with great graphics to make into T-shirts.

Go check ‘em out, and see if you can find an old favourite or two - Available in all colours & sizes, and not too hefty on the wallet despite the postage from America.
C’mon Zazz, open a UK manufacturing HQ already!

Well, yeah. You buy your name as a domain, you erect a blog, you just gots to, dontcha?

You might have noticed I’m blogging lots more. That’s ‘cos I gave up on being coy and not knowing how best to present myself online: it’s myself, and that’s what it’s about. It’s time for a return to the oldskool: I am Tom. I do various stuff. I never shut up. I like a varied buncha geekery. You might too. And forthwith, This is why I blog.

Why yes.

Buy Spore. Seriously, buy Spore, or I’ll come round and injure you. Okay, so I’m probably kidding, but on the offchance that I’m not, grab it anyway. It’s more accurate than creationism, more zen than Monkey Ball, and more fun than trying to watch Zita Swoon videos on Youtube whilst on a train. What, you can tell I’m on a train? Is it that obvious that I wouldn’t be blogging unless I couldn’t get into Second Life? You know me too well.

Anyway, if you don’t know Spore, then oldskool gamers may consider it an evolution simulator - from primordial soup to advanced civilization - but when I say simulator, I’m not implying endless screens of figures, more like stomping around being a darwinian nightmare.

Spore Origins (to give its iPhone incarnation its full name) is the first steps of evolution - you won’t be building cities or making horrifying penile rhinoceros monsters, but what you do get is a taste of life in the primordial soup.

And lo and behold, my train ain’t far from home, so it’s time to pop a cap in this demireview ’til I get more time…

Just…… get Spore. Okay?

So you’ve got an iPhoto library full of proper-sized images form your proper camera, but in amongst them are low-rez ones from your iPhone. Doesn’t mean they’re good, but they’re bound to occur all over the place, causing iPhoto 08 to spawn numerous events with only one or two photos in. Tedious. Better to have them all in one place, no?

then here’s a quick little one-shot solution for you. Make a Smart Album for them. Like this:

With the camera model set to iPhone, you’ll be able to see all your iPhone shots in one long reel.

Yup, it’s been a while since I had a phone I actually like, during which I’ve just about survived with 3’s SkypePhone v1, which is equal parts tolerable and absolute nightmare. But more on that another time.

Instead, I’m currently toting my cousin’s first-gen iPhone, which is in great condition, and barring a bit of teething (because of course the infamous infinite startup bug hit me while I was a few hundred miles from my home mac ‘pon which it was backed up) it’s pretty damn kickin’.

So, being an übergeek, I thought I’d wax technical now and again, and share some tips. Nothing has quite the nerdtastic satisfaction of blogging something that hordes of iPhone forum users haven’t worked out yet!

Also, since my loverly iPhone is my first bit of decent tech which can take photos and sustain a perpetual data connection, I fully intend to spend one day a month (if possible) photoblogging. And I’m not talking about 20 shots of ambient skyline and shots of what I ate that day, I’m thinking more like one photo every 5 minutes for 24 hours. Think it’ll be a horrible endurance marathon? Think it’ll be too much of a peek into my life? Think it’ll be hideously tedious? Think it’s an excuse to get USB gizmos to keep the battery juiced? Sure, it’ll be all of those things. But since I’m an artface, and since life can be pretty interesting sometimes, it might be a groovy little experiment. Keep an eye on mah Twitter, y’all!