September 2013

MaUsE
DoubleClick
Home
And Away
September 2013
2013 MaUsE Executive
• President: Michael Shaw
[email protected]
• Vice President: Ian Winton
• Apple Liaison: Marcel Dufresne
[email protected]
• Treasurer: Ken Jansen
• Photographer: Irma Shaw
• DoubleClick Editor:
Michael Shaw
[email protected]
• Director: Stan Wild
• Director-in-Training
Brian Elston
• Director: Marcel Dufresne
MaUsE Contact Information:
The MaUsE
c/o Michael Shaw
237 Huntingwood Drive
Oshawa, Ontario, Canada
L1J 7C6
w w w. m a u s e . c a
Don’t forget to
pay your MaUsE
Membership fee.
Still only
$45 per year.
From The Editor
What you are looking at is the September 2013
edition of the MaUsE DoubleClick, the online
publication of the Macintosh Users East,
(MaUsE), a motley collection of mostly harmless
cranks who reside in Southern Ontario with their
motley collection of old and new Macintosh,Hackentosh & MacClone computers.
The DoubleClick is published using a 2.8 GHz
Aluminum iMac and QuarkXPress 9. An antique
Kodak DX7590 is STILL being used for all pictures. Everything not specifically attributed to
someone else can probably be blamed on the
Editor. Back issues can be downloaded from the
MaUsE website: < www.mause.ca >. Submissions from MaUsE Club members are almost always welcome. Maybe that last bit is an
exaggeration.
Send your submissions and articles to me at:
< [email protected] >, especially if there are
files or pictures attached. I have never refused a
submission yet. Because we care about the environment, the MaUsE DoubleClick is created
using only recycled electrons: matter was neither
created nor destroyed in the process of creating
this issue. There is always room for another piece
on any Mac-related topic and Iʼll make room if
there isnʼt. I would like your submissions. But I
won't beg.
About MaUsE
Macintosh Users East.
also known as MaUsE,
is the most active
Apple-authorised MUG
(Mac User Group)
in Southern Ontario.
MaUsE is here for users of
all Apple products,
including Apple computers,
iPods, iPhones,
and iPads.
Apple, Macintosh, and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the
U.S. and other countries.
The MaUsE (Macintosh Users East) is an Appleauthorised Macintosh user group
Michael Shaw, Editor
MaUsE Meetings are held in Room 1 at the new Whitby Public Library on
the south-east corner of Henry and Dundas West in Whitby, Ontario on the
fourth Wednesday of each month except December, July and August. Meetings start at 7:00 PM but there is an early session from 6:30 for people who
wish to discuss hardware or software issues or problems. Macintosh virus
problem are discussion from 6:58 to 7:00 PM
NuGuard GripBase Podium for the iPad
from Newer Technology (OWC)
I have tried out a lot of iPad cases during the course of my
monthly reviews. The one I use the most is the NuGuard
GripStand. The thick plastic case protects the sides and the
back of my iPad. The grip at the back offers the most versatility of all the cases I have tried in terms of viewing angle. It is unlimited. The swivel grip at the
back can be set to whatever angle you want. The
grip at the back acts not only as a stand for setting down the iPad at the correct viewing angle,
but it also serves as a very convenient handle to
carry the iPad. With it, I can hold onto the back
without getting my oily fingers on the glass surface. You can
read more about this case and the additional GripBase
Stand by checking out the July 2012 DoubleClick. The only
drawback to this case is that there is no cover to flip over in
order to hibernate the iPad. I have to push the power button
to put it to sleep when it is not in use. This small problem is
more than made up for in the flexibility of the case.
The above mentioned case has an 8 cm hole in the back. It
is to this hole that the GripStand is attached to the case. By
pushing in the two side buttons, the GripStand locks into
place. Removing it is a snap. The GripBase Stand can be
substituted in, having the same push button snaps to hold it
in place. The GripBase Stand holds the iPad about 15 cm
above whatever flat surface it is on. It can tilt from flat to vertical and swerve to any angle with 360° of rotation. I have
found many uses for this stand, but it is limited to flat surfaces.
This review is in fact for another addition to the NuGuard
modular iPad line. There is now an attachment called the
GripBase Podium which permits the use of your iPad without
the need of a surface to sit it on. The Podium looks just like
a microphone stand that one would see on stage. There is a
heavy (12.55 pound / 5 kg) weight in the base which
keeps it firmly rooted in place. It has a hand grip
that can be loosened and tightened so that the
inner tube can be raised and locked in. The
only difference is that the top end of the Podium
has the exact same button pushing attachment
that the other NuGuard holders have. With the
Podium, you have all the viewing angles of the previous
holders with the addition of any height requirement from 32"
to 53" (these measurements were taken with the iPad attached and tilted flat). With this Podium you don't need a
table or flat surface to sit the iPad on. It can be placed anywhere on the floor for easy access to the iPad.
OWC, which sells the Podium, compiled a list of possible uses for it, submitted
by appreciative owners. Although I have not tried all of these out, having played
with the Podium some, I can see how it would be useful in each and every situation. The following list gives some new ways to use an iPad thanks to the
Podium:
1) in a boardroom or presentation hall.
2) as a music stand.
3) in the kitchen, as a counter space saver and for spill avoidance.
4) using the iPad's camera to bring in visual of a guest in podcasts.
5) videotaping and displaying training sessions.
6) as a speaker stand.
7) for recording sessions.
8) for conducting Skype calls.
9) for filming stop motion with the iPad as the camera.
10) a digital 'Check-In' device at public event
11) to access and display Sheet Music, Guitar Tablature, Song Lyrics
(karaoke).
12) for reading or watching movies in bed.
13) as a classroom aid for teachers: lectures and presentations; student small
group use.
14) as a floor stand alongside treadmill to view movies, stream TV while exercising.
15) podcaster display to stream live comments off-camera during podcast.
My wife found that it worked well in kitchen, using the iPad as a recipe display. It saved counter space and kept the iPad at eye level and out of the
"splatter zone". I will try it at school. I have a few ideas about using it to video
tape the students doing labs or demos. This way I can just turn it on, have it at
eye level, away from the chemicals and not have to be at the iPad while the
tapping is going on. I must admit that I am a bit nervous about the possibility
of a student knocking it over. It does have a very heavy weight at the bottom,
but I am well aware of how accident prone students can be. I pushed the
Podium over at various angles and it popped back into place even from a 45°
slant. All stands of this type can be tipped too far. It would have to be hit quite
hard to topple it. As long as care and common sense (keep students away
from it) are used, it will work just fine. The beauty of this stand is that it is
portable and can be moved around or taken apart. It unscrews into four separate parts: the Podium Weight, the Weight Cover, the Podium "neck"
and the screw to tighten it all together. Putting the GripBase
Podium together is a piece of cake, and is one of its advantages.
It is easily assembled and taken apart. If you're looking for a
podium to travel, this is a great option.
There's not a lot to say about the functionality of the GripBase
Podium, other than to say that it works exactly as advertised. The stand is quite
sturdy with the heavy base, and it stays put. It is a bit wobbly when you try to
tap anything on the iPad. The further up it is, the more evident this becomes.
However, any vibrations caused by tapping on the screen of the iPad are
quickly damped out, even when the stand is extended to its full length. It settles
back into place quickly.
It is not really meant as a surface to do work on. Rather, it is meant to
be in place and act as a visual display, as most of the above uses attest to.
In conclusion, with the weighted base, the Podium holds your iPad
safely and securely while putting the display closer to eye level. With
the twistable knob on the neck, it's extremely easy to adjust the height
on the fly, even during a presentation. Orientation is also very easy.
Adjustability is a huge plus. Your eyes and body will thank you when
you place your iPad atop the GripBase Podium. No more leaning
over, straining your neck, or squinting your eyes to view your iPad's
display. The model I have easily attaches to the included protective
GripStand case which holds an iPad 2, 3, or 4 securely while still allowing full access to all controls and connections. The modularity of
the unit means that when Apple comes out with a different iPad size
or configuration, you need only purchase the corresponding NuGuard
case. The GripBase Stand, GripBase and Podium will just snap into
the new case. At $49.99, it might seem a bit pricey but similar designed microphone stands sell for even more. The Podium is not for
everyone but if you're a public speaker, presenter, videographer, or
musician who wants a sturdy extendable stand for your iPad, or in
fact anyone who needs to use an iPad and keep both hands free to
move then the GripBase Podium is an affordable and well-designed
solution.
Overall, I was happy with the GripBase Podium and would recommend it to anyone looking for an iPad Podium. Whether you're doing
presentations, podcasting, or even just watching some TV or playing
games and want a special stand, the GripBase Podium is what you
want.
Submitted by Marcel Dufresne
Have a look at http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/PADNUGGPB/ for the complete specs on the Podium.
Exclusive to the DoubleClick
Stellar released the update to their Drive ToolBox utility suite
for Macintosh on August 26th and we received the download
link and registration code the same day, just as quickly as it
could be sent. Drive ToolBox 3 is a big upgrade from the previous version and includes four new tools: Smart Mac Care, Smart
Finder, Drive Monitor and Benchmark.
What can Stellar Drive ToolBox do ? It might be more appropriate
to ask what it can’t do. As you can see from the icons displayed
on this page and the next, there are so many tools to play with
and they each do a job that you might consider worthy of a standalone utility or application. Stellar Drive ToolBox 3 provides a
comprehensive solution to deal with Mac hard drives and improve
the OS X performance. The software aims to enhance Mac experience by providing users with a set of 14 simple yet robust disk utilities. These disk
utilities help you conveniently optimize, repair, manage, protect and sanitize Mac
hard drive volumes. The ToolBox also incorporates a free bonus tool 'Data Encryptor'
for protecting your confidential data against any unauthorized access.
With Stellar Drive ToolBox, you can solve all the disk related problems quickly in the
best possible way. The SpeedUp Mac module of the application speeds up your slow
Mac by removing unnecessary clutter from your hard drive, i.e. Caches, Logs, Large
Files, Duplicate Files, Language Files, Universal Binaries, etc. The 'Drive Clone' feature enables you to either clone a Mac hard drive/volume or take snapshots of a particular region of the storage media. Using Stellar Drive
ToolBox, you can wipe selected data files or the entire
hard drive in a single operation. Furthermore, you have
an inbuilt Partition Manager that allows performing all
basic partitioning tasks on your OS X drive, including
adding, deleting, formatting, resizing, and hiding/revealing a partition. The advanced 'Raw Data Editor'
module helps you make changes in the file structure of
the drive and manually resolve any minor corruptions.
You can also verify and
repair errors on your Mac
OS X volumes using the
'Volume Repair' module of
the toolBox. Stellar Drive
ToolBox allows safe and
risk-free initialization of all
raw Mac hard drives. You
can choose the desired
partition scheme and file
system at the time of
drive initialization. With the 'Surface Scan' module, you can scan your
hard drive block by block and identify all the bad or damaged blocks
on the media. The toolbox also features a 'Shield' functionality that
takes automatic backups of your Mac hard drive and helps to restore
accidentally files and directories.
 SpeedUp Mac: An optimizing tool that cleans up your Mac. A tool
that helps you improve system performance by removing unwanted
data & clutter from your Mac. Stuff you never use, like obscure foreign
languages, System and browser cache files, duplicate files, and redundant binary files can slow you down more thanyou’d think.
 Drive Clone: To help you back up important data. Helps you to create a replica of your entire hard-drive. You can also create a
bootable backup image file and use it to restore from in case
of a hard drive crash.
 Smart Mac Care: It is a scheduler that can schedule important tasks to optimize your Mac’s performance, monitor your
drive, remove confidential data from your machine beyond the
scope of recovery & repair your corrupt volume.
 Drive Defrag: Improves your drive performance if you are
experiencing slow system performance while writing large files
or loading heavy files. Defragmentation consolidates all of the
free space on a drive and unites all of the fragments of a broken-up file together.
 Volume Repair: This module is a multi-purpose utility to resolve file system permissions and related errors. It gives an
option to rebuild file system structure in extreme cases where
repairing is not possible. Volume Repair verifies volumes and fixes 76
errors common to the HFS and HFS+ file systems.
 Wipe: Maintain privacy & security by securely erasing confidential &
private files beyond the scope of recovery. Wipe files, folders, free
space or complete volumes using any of 12 different security algorithms. Wiping can be done by automatically, manually, or by schedule and once data is Wiped it is irretrievably gone. Remove internet
browser and messenger history.
 Partition Manager: Resize your boot volume partition
without any data loss. Save time & manage, create &
delete disk partitions. Even hide volumes.
 Data Encryptor: Allows you to securely protect and
hide sensitive files by encrypting them with an encryption algorithm of your choice. Opening an encrypted file
requires a password (set by the user).
 Shield: Module is pre-installed deleted file recovery
utility that enables you to recover deleted files from
hard drive. Deleted files are backed up to a special
image and when a file is accidentally deleted it can be
recovered from the image.
 Smart Finder: An advanced path finder for Mac to
quickly locate large and duplicate files on your hard
drive and open or remove selected files. Drive contents
can be viewed in Graphical, Column or List View
 Drive Initialize: Initialize a new hard disk and create a fresh partition
map by formatting it either in HFS+ or FAT32 file system.
 Raw Data Editor: Modify volume by editing raw data in hard drives
or volumes.
 Benchmark: Run a test & compare your Mac with the prevailing
standards. Speed test results for your CPU, hard drives and operating
system can be compared to stored data of other systems.
 Drive Monitor: A benchmarking & alerting tool to monitor your hard
drive, check its performance, know its status & search for bad blocks.
Drive Monitor can be preset with temperature limits for your hard
drives and is able to flash warnings on your screen to indicate the instances when your drives are running hotter than normal.
As you may imagine, the secret to getting the most out of Drive ToolBox lies in how well you set up the program’s Preferences. Drive ToolBox is a powerful set of utilities, capable of monitoring lots of
conditions and of doing all manner of things to your drives and files if
you let it but it will only do what it is told to do - so for each of the tools
it is important to go through all of the settings and set the Preferences
sensibly.
Stellar Drive Toolbox has 9 Preference windows and each of them may have access to
several more: a quick perusal of the Preferences will open up at least 23 different pages
of Preference settings and when any tool is
active it may require more additional settings
and guidance from the user. At each step
along the way the user will be warned if
the specified actions are able or likely to
cause potential data loss. The image above
is from the SpeedUp Mac module, the one
that reduces the clutter by locating useless
language files and slating them for removal.
All of the other seven preference windows
associated with the SpeedUp Mac module
are equally detailed and extensive.
Here at the right is the progress window for
the fully configured SpeedUp Mac module
during a scanning process.
Sometimes, understanding what is going on with your Mac is merely a
matter of seeing it from a different angle. The Smart Finder will show
the contents of your hard drive - or the contents of and file, folder or
volume - as a List view, Column view or as a Graph of the drive. At
this month’s MaUsE meeting we will be exploring various ways to
view drive contents and how to use this information to speed up your
Mac, but for now just look at the drive image above: With Stellar Drive
Toolbox Smart Finder it is possible to distinguish the relative sizes of
every folder on your hard drive.
As brilliant as the Macintosh graphical user interface is, with its analogies to the Desktop, there is one place where it fails miserably. In a
real office environment, with printed-on-paper forms, there is a vast visual difference between a folder containing four or five one-page documents and a folder that occupies dozens of file cabinets stacked up
from the floor to the ceiling. On your Mac, however, they may both be
represented by icons that are indistinguishable from each other. The
relative sizes of the two folders is masked by their similar icons.
With Smart Finder it is possible to see your hard drive with its contents topographically spread out to make size comparisons easy and
obvious. Older folders of huge files like movies, downloads, system
disk images, updaters and other stuff that is easy to lose, forget, misplace or ignore really stands out when viewed as a picture.
Stellar Drive ToolBox 3 is an all-in-one pack of 14 Mac tools to optimize Mac OS X and speed up its performance. It only costs $99. You
can learn more about this suite of Macintosh utilities, watch a video,
read the press release, buy it, or download your own demo copy of
Stellar Drive Toolbox at: http://www.drivetoolbox.com/
Stellar has sent us some raffle items so make sure you bring your
MaUsE membership card to this month’s meeting to qualify for your
free raffle ticket for a chance to win a bootable copy of Stellar Phoenix
Mac Data Recovery.
Submitted by Michael Shaw
TruGlide Pro Precision Stylus
from LYNKtec
There are a variety of accessories for the iPad, some of which I have
already reviewed in the DoubleClick. I feel that the second most important accessory is some sort of stylus. These styli allow you to
touch the screen with a finer point than the end of your finger
and they also help keep the screen much cleaner. You
can look at my other stylus reviews in past DoubleClicks
from June 2011 (NuScribe), May 2011 (Platinum from
Logiix), Jan 2012 (ChopStakes) and Apr 2013 (Jot Pro).
The stylus conducts the touch of your hand down to
the conductive material on the end of the stick. The
end tends to be a conductive rubber or hard plastic.
The stylus frame is often a lightweight metal. These two
elements determine how responsive the stylus will
be. There are some factors that one should consider when deciding which of the many styli will suit
your purpose. The most important of these are resistance
(how easy the stylus slides across the screen), ergonomics, precision,
navigation (using the stylus instead of the finger), writing, line work
and painting.
Why does the stylus make using an iPad easier? Why are they such a
popular accessory? First, the point being smaller than the finger allows for more accurate screen touching. I always had trouble touching
the text in the exact right spot to make corrections to what I had
typed. The stylus is excellent for this. Typing is easier with a stylus.
You might not think that it would be but try a stylus when you have an
opportunity and you will be pleasantly surprised. Drawing and handwriting apps are popular and are so much easier to accomplish with a
stylus. A finger tends to get in the way, but a stylus allows you to see
where you are touching. If the iPad is used in a display mode, through
a projector for instance, then pointing with a stylus is definitely better
than with a finger. Moving across the multitouch screen is much faster
with a stylus than with a sticky finger. Which of course brings up the
absolute best reason for using a stylus; no oily finger marks all across
the screen.
LYNKtec makes a variety of products for iDevices. At the moment
they are producing four different styli. I am reviewing their most expensive stylus for this article. They also have iPad and Tablet stands
as well as cleaning cloths. Have a look at their website,
http://www.lynktec.com/,to find out more about their products. You can
also refer back to my older reviews to get more info on how in general
a stylus works.
Using the criteria I laid out in the past (size, weight,
glide, response, drawing, writing, painting, precision
work), I would like to rate the TruGlide along these
lines. I have come across two models of stylus tips:
semi-spherical ends and flat-ends. The TruGlide Pro
is a ball tip stylus with a very different design. It has a
microfiber tip rather than being simply rubber. The
squishy ball at the end ensures that it will not scratch
the surface of your iDevice. This stylus does in fact
slide very easily across the surface of my iPad. Some
styli are a bit clunky to hold, being either too thick or too
heavy. The slim design of the TruGlide makes it ergonomically balanced and very comfortable to hold and
move. It is shorter than a pen and it is light weight. It has
a clip on the end so that you can keep it always at hand in
your pocket. It won’t get lost or roll off a table. The navigation power of the TruGlide is evident the minute you start
using it. It slides along the screen, allowing quick screen
changes with the flick of your wrist. The end of the stylus is
very sensitive which makes choosing an app, or playing
games, a matter of tapping a spot. Some styli are not as responsive as others. I find that you get what you pay for. Expect a drop
in sensitivity with a cheaper model.
I have placed the last four criteria in a separate paragraph. The
TruGlide empowers you to do way better than your finger in terms of
drawing or writing. I want an instrument that will make my day to day
use of the iPad easier. One that I automatically reach for whenever I
pick up my iPad. The TruGlide does this for me. If the stylus you are
looking to use is for writing, painting or precision line work, then this is
the one for you. At 5mm, the TruGlide Pro features the smallest microfiber tip on the market. This produces the most precise response
for this type of stylus. And the ultra precise microfiber tip is meant to
be longer lasting than conventional rubber tips. LYNKtec is working on
having interchangeable tips for specialized use. The end already can
be unscrewed to make this exchange. A conductive silk artist paintbrush tip will soon be available as an additional tip style.
This stylus sells for $29.95. If this seems to be a bit too pricey for you,
then have a look at their other styli, each of which comes with the microfiber tip. I am sure one of these will fit the bill. This stylus will enhance your ability to write e-mails or play games on your iPad. It has
quickly become my favourite stylus due to its light weight and sensitivity. Avoid getting grease and smudges on your device and pick up this
most useful accessory.
Submitted by Marcel Dufresne
Read about this particular stylus at
http://www.lynktec.com/TruGlide-Pro-Microfiber-Stylus-p/lttg-0005.htm.
MACINTOSH USERS EAST
2013 ELECTION NOTICE – CALL FOR NOMINATIONS.
In accordance with the clubʼs bylaws, three of the currently serving directors will complete their two-year term of
office at the conclusion of this yearʼs Annual General Meeting to be held on Wednesday, November 27th, 2013
At the Annual Meeting elections will be held to fill the then available directorʼs positions on the clubʼs Board of
Directors which is usually known as the ʻExecutive Committee of MaUsEʼ. Hereʼs what you need to know in
order to be nominated:
 All paid up members of Macintosh Users East are eligible to be nominated for election to the clubʼs executive.
Nominations will open on Wednesday, September 25th and will close at the end of the October 23rd membersʼ
meeting.
 Any paid up member of Macintosh Users East may nominate his or her self for election, and/or, they may
nominate another member of the club for election.
 All nominations MUST BE IN WRITING, and, if you are nominating another member of the club for election,
that member must also state in writing their willingness to stand for election and to serve if elected.
Nominations should be addressed to the MaUsE Nominating Committee and may either be:
A / Handed in person to either the clubʼs President, the Secretary or the Treasurer at the clubʼs meeting
on September 25th or by the close of the meeting on October 23rd;
B / Mailed via Canada Post to the nominating committee at
ʻMacintosh Users East, 58 Rothean Drive, Whitby, Ontario, L1P 1L5,ʼ or;
C / Emailed to the nominating committee c/o [email protected]
If more than three members are nominated to fill the available directors positions, a formal election will be held
starting at 7.00 p.m. on the evening of Wednesday, November 27th, 2012.
Members elected as directors of the club will be expected to attend the clubʼs executive committeeʼs meetings
usually held each month three weeks prior to the clubʼs regular membersʼ meetings.
For further information the clubʼs bylaws may be consulted on the website: www.mause.ca
Note: Mailed or e-mailed nominations must be dispatched in sufficient time to arrive at the
nominating committee no later than 12 Noon. on Wednesday, October 23rd.
Stan Wild, Nominations Chairman, Macintosh Users East.
Snark Busters - High Society
from Alawar Entertainment
The Snark Busters series is a set of hidden
objects games produced by Alawar Entertainment. Snark Busters is a combination
adventure/hidden object casual game. It is
an adventure game because you need to
roam around from place to place locating
tools and such that will help you proceed
along the way. It is a hidden object game because you need to locate the items before
you can use them. This game does not use actual items, such as a
bat or a candle in the scene shown, but rather bits and pieces of
these that are scattered about. The bits and pieces of the items you
are trying to detect are kind of camouflaged and seem to blend into
the surroundings. Once the bits and pieces are all found for one item,
it can be used as a tool to perform a task that will allow you to continue on your quest. The main differences between all the various hidden object games are the story line, the amount and type of mini
games that often have to be solved to enter the next location, and the
type of hint that is provided.
If you played either the original Snark Busters, Welcome to the Club
(see DC Dec 11), or the sequel, All Revved Up (DC Feb 13), then you
know all about the game play for this original casual game and you
can probably skip right to the end of this review and read my summary of this new version. In Snark Busters: High Society, you take on
the role of world famous photographer Elizabeth
Hughes. The day after she announces her engagement
to a handsome gardener named Nicolas Fortright, the
wealthy Duchess Daffington accuses the young man of
stealing a precious family heirloom. With her beloved
behind bars, Elizabeth sets off to learn the truth by investigating the dastardly deeds of this wealthy socialite
and proving her fiancé is not a thief. You will need to
solve dozens of intriguing puzzles such as switching
five panels of a picture using buttons that change one
or two of the panels at the same time. Once the picture
is complete, you collect some sausage to feed the dog.
As with most hidden objects games I play these days, I
don't spend too much time concentrating on the dialogue. The same can be said for this game. Much of the
dialogue is between you and the ghosts you meet. They
will ask you to perform tasks, such as getting a windmill
to work. Once their request is finished, they will give
you something that propels you to the next scene. The
dialogue does set up the scenes for you, but skipping
them does not affect in any way how well you will play
the game. I guess the more games you play, the less
important the dialogue becomes.
Instead of digging around for random stuff as you do in most hidden
object games, Snark Busters has you looking for pieces of items that
must be assembled and used. For instance you need to find various
parts of a fire hydrant so that you can fill a drain with water, thereby
causing a part of a clock to float to the surface. The tools are displayed at the bottom of the screen. The five or more items have been
broken into pieces which appear, like puzzle pieces. They appear as
a circlet around the key area. To make matters more difficult, some
pieces are not immediately visible and are coloured in red. A task
must be performed before its location is revealed. The cursor icon is a
very important part of the game. When you mouse over a key region
of the scene, your cursor will change. It can become a hand or magnifying glass. If you click on that area you will get an indication of what
task or action you will need to perform. Tools are used wherever the
cursor has spinning gears. To use an item, click on it from the inventory and move it to the action zone.
Hidden object searches in Snark Busters aren't especially difficult, but there are always one or two
pieces that are particularly elusive. Some levels include closed containers or pieces that need to be
moved to reveal objects hidden inside or behind
them. Fortunately the hint function is very useful
and fairly generous, with a fast-moving recharge
timer. The hint will also reveal which room to go to
next.
The main difference that sets Snark Busters apart
from other hidden object games is the Alice
Through The Looking Glass addition. Traveling
through mirrors adds an interesting twist by opening a dream-like, blue-tinged mirror image of some
sections of the game. Actions on one side of a mirror are reflected in the other, sometimes in lessthan-obvious ways. In fact, what happens in one
scene often has an impact elsewhere. Many hidden
objects simply aren't available until you've taken
certain steps at a different location. But the game
keeps the guesswork to a minimum by flashing to
other scenes when something important takes
place, showing you what's changed and where it
happened. This then requires you to travel back to
that location and obtain another piece of the puzzle. Each chapter requires you to roam between rooms, this universe and the other, many
times until all the items are found and all the tasks are complete. It is
quite confusing at times and I did get 'lost' more than once trying to
get back to the exact room I was looking for. There is no real searching for the Snark in this game. Certainly nothing like the previous two
editions. This does not take away from the game. After all, you never
do catch the Snark. It is the mirrored dual universes that make this
game unique. When I think of the Snarks, it is the mirrors rather than
chasing the Snark that I actually look forward to.
There is much back and forth travelling through the various scenes for
each of the five chapters. The game has many locations spread
through the main adventure settings. Each situation has its own specific tasks, culminating with a developed photo that allows you to
move along to the next chapters. I would assess the game as about
80% hidden object to 20% task and puzzles. Instead of using the normal puzzle games found in most other Hidden Object Games, the
mini-games in Snark Busters rely more on your powers of observation. They are more like logic puzzles. One task is to move playing
pieces past each other to opposite sides of a game board. Another is
to switch places between numerous tiles until each edge is correctly
matched to its neighbours. If you are stuck, click the Question Mark
icon and it will activate the hint. This will show an object piece that
you are missing or, if nothing is visible at the time, where to go or
what to do next.
The game options allow you to adjust the volume of the sound and
music. Eventually I did turn off the background music for this game as
it did not really add to the game play. You can change to the small
screen mode, but I don't advise it. The bits and pieces are hard
enough to find with a full screen. You can also turn off the custom cursor. This option is often present and I don't know why. Who wouldn't
want to use a fancy cursor? Once you are fairly familiar with the
gameplay, you can turn off the hints to increase the level of difficulty
of the game. There is no timer or point system to the game. Your only
incentive is to complete all the tasks. There are two modes of play
available, with the regular mode offering a standard hint function and
highlighted interactive areas while the expert mode forgoes the highlights and increases the charging time for the hint. I would recommend playing the regular mode first as some objects are very well
hidden. The game doesn't offer any kind of map or journal to keep
track of things, but none are really needed.
Snark Busters is an entertaining series of HOG. The first and the second game provided us with wonderful gaming experiences with
charming and attractive graphics. This third instalment of the series
comes with a brand new story, brand new characters and brand new
locations. The graphics are colourful, as great as usual, while the new
story carries us along. The music might sound a bit flat in this game
while in the other two the sounds were quite exciting, but you can always mute it. The gameplay is simply fun, with a lot of 'circle' style
HOG scenes where you have to combine items to make something
work. The items are not too hard to find but they
are not ridiculously easy either. There are
enough puzzles to solve, although these could
have been made more difficult. I was a bit disappointed with the level of difficulty for the mini
games. I did not find myself challenged by any of
them. Because of this I would say it does lack replay-ability. It is worth playing a second time at
the expert mode. The game could be a little too
easy for advanced players due to the fact that
the game is quite linear, and that makes it feel a
little bit short in the length. All in all, Snark
Busters: High Society is a very nice addition to
the series, and it definitely lives up its prequels.
The ghostly dialogue moves you along from task
to task. The exaggerated, hand-drawn visuals
are sharp and colourful, with plenty of animated
components. It offers a good amount of very enjoyable play time, with tons of hidden object
searches, puzzles and mini-games. You can
download the game from http://mac.alawar.com
and play an hour for free. This might get you
hooked. The full version of the game sells for
about $7CAD. Enjoy bright, colourful visuals as
you try to free your fiancee.
Submitted by Marcel Dufresne
www.iidrn.com
The Place To Go...
Every now and again you will find that one of the websites that you visit regularly no longer believes in you. It
happened to me just recently, early in September 2013,
when I logged into Kijiji to check out a few things I had
listed and found that my login and password were no
longer recognized. Instead of the usual login I got a
page with a bright red header indicating that no account
existed that agreed to the information I had inserted.
WTF ? I typed my information carefully and checked to
make sure that my caps lock was off (I have had that
one before !) and eventually saw the red warning again
and came to the realization that Kijiji did not know me. I
tried three or four more times and checked my Little
Black Password Book to make sure I was not experiencing brain cloud, and then gave up and tried to open
a new account identical to the one not recognized, just
to see if Kijiji would accept that information, or tell me
that there was already an account active with the information I was trying to give it. The same red banner
came up each time.
Then I remembered IS IT DOWN RIGHT NOW ?
This is a website where you can go to ping the website
you are having problems with. You will see a history of
recent problems with the server that hosts your problem
site. Although we often think that our problems most
often originate on our end of the internet, the fact is
servers do go down once in a while, sometimes suddenly and without warning.
Submitted by Michael Shaw
Gmail
Suspicious Activity Warning
Everybody has been getting bogus emails that appear to
come from Gmail that are designed to trick Gmail users
into revealing their Gmail account information. The latest
round of Gmail SPAM have been very cleverly slipping
past Gmail SPAM filters (the best in the business) and
showing up in users’ Inboxes.
If you open your Gmail and look at the very bottom of the
Inbox page that shows your messages, you will see very
important information. As a Gmail user, this info will always be there for you.
On the bottom of your Gmail Inbox window you will be given an indication at the left of how
much of the 15 gigabytes of storage (per account) you have used up. As you can see, I have
used up about 30% of my allotment. I am not entirely sure how much storage Gmail started
with, back when it first launched, but it was probably less than 5 gigs and has been expanding ever since.
In the middle you will find the latest Google Terms & Privacy, or the lack thereof.
On the right side of the page, you will find information about your most recent Gmail session
and a “Details” link that will open a window with up-to-date information about your previous
sessions. Recent activity includes any time that your mail was accessed using a regular web
browser, a POP client, a mobile device, a third-party application etc. Gmail will list the IP address that acessed your mail, the associated location, as well as the time and date. At the
bottom of the recent activities panel you will find that you have the ability to request that
Gmail notify you if there have been attempts to access your Gmail account from a foreign location, or any other unusual activity. Make sure that you have this set up properly by clicking
on the “change” link and indicating that you want to be told if anything peculiar is detected.
At the top of the page you will find a VERY important link, the “Learn more” link. If you use
Gmail you really should have a look at this. If your Gmail account is ever compromised, there
is a very good chance that you will not realise it. The hijackers will make every effort to be
unobtrusive because they will want to use your account for as long as possible before you
find out about it and stop their access. The way you stop their access is to simply change
your password. People who do this regularly may be automatically stopping the SPAM being
sent from their accounts, but if you use the same password for your Gmail for over a year
and use it at internet cafes or at Starbucks, you really should click on “Learn more” to make
sure you are still secure.
The “Learn more” link will take you to the
Recent Activity window that is shown on
the next page. Check it out.
As you can see from the picture above, there is a peculiarity showing
on August 23rd of my Recent Activity, on a day when, according to my
social calendar, I was at home in Oshawa. (Oshawa is considered
part of the GTA and shows up as Toronto on Gmail security). Recent
Activity shows that my Gmail account was accessed from Quebec
City on August 23rd. Better than China, perhaps, but even so - I was
certainly not in Quebec City any time in August so this is suspicious.
The solution to this problem is very simple: rather than waste time try-
ing to figure out what has happened with my Gmail account that
would make the incursion possible, I decided to just change my password. That is the recommended solution to just about every suspected issue regarding email security. After I changed my Gmail
password (see activity below) I signed back in on Gmail and now it is
business as usual.
Submitted by Michael Shaw
Bastion
From Supergiant Games
One type of game I really like to play is the role
playing game (RPG) or as my wife likes to call it
'conquering the world'. As with all RPG, you
take your hero through fast-paced combats that
test your reflexes and reward your tactical decisions. As you slay hordes of monsters, you
grow in experience and ability, learning new
skills and picking up items of incredible power.
Old games of this type that I have played are
Realmz, Avernum and Diablo. In this game, you
will lead a hero through what resembles an old
frontier world complete with background western music.
The game starts off with an ominous voice narrating the happenings. In Bastion, something called the "Great
Calamity" has rolled in and taken out the entire civilization. The game
follows the exploits of "The Kid”, a voiceless, hack and slash, hero
who is one of the few survivors of the calamity. He sets off from his
destroyed home world to Bastion which is a place where everyone
agreed to meet during troubled times. To do this, you'll need to dive
into levels, defeat foes, and collect shards (these can be used as if
they are coins). This first part of the game serves as a tutorial to help
explain movement and battle tactics. Eventually The Kid arrives at the
Bastion, a safe haven that was built by his people in case of an emergency. Here he meets Rucks, an old man, who sets him on his quest.
The Kid heads out, using the Skyway, into the remnants of the world
in search of the building blocks necessary to fix the Bastion. In the
process, the true purpose of the
Bastion is revealed.
There are a few characteristics that
set Bastion apart from the regular
RPG. The first of these is the way in
which the world is revealed to you.
Right from the first screen you witness the beauty of the game as the
place starts to construct itself before
your very eyes with vivid colours
everywhere. Stairways, walkways,
walls, buildings all come to life as
you move forward. Alongside the
narrow path you are on is oblivion.
Don't move too fast or you might fall
off and die.
The second is the narrator. Many RPG are overloaded
with dialogue and cutscene clips which slow down the
game play. In Bastion the narrator often speaks while
allowing you to continue on with your moves. In the
background, he weaves a story as you move from one
region to another. From start to finish, the entirety of the
game is narrated by Rucks. It is his story and he is
there to guide you along the way without getting in the
way. Bastion seamlessly combines its story with gameplay so that both are experienced simultaneously, and it
does so extremely well. Each region of the Bastion has
its own set of background sounds which encourage you
to hustle around as quickly as possible. Lingering just
gives the aliens more time to attack. There is no hero
creation screen at the beginning. You are stuck with
The Kid for the duration of the quest. The Bastion's foes
are cute cartoon figures, not diabolically scary creatures. The first ones you encounter are called Gasfellas
which float above the surface. The cuteness of these creatures takes
some of the violence for the sake of violence out of the game. Gaining
expert combat skills becomes your primary goal and not trying to spill
blood and guts all over the place.
The first weapon you pick up is the Caelhammer, a bludgeoning instrument used in hand-to-hand combat. In Bastion you can smash almost everything that isn't the ground. Smash the rubble in front of you
and you find blue fragments which are called shards. These magnetically sweep towards you as you move among them. The more shards
you collect, the faster you can upgrade your tools.
Combat is the frantic heart of Bastion.
As you venture through various regions
on your journey, you'll be pursued by
aliens that rear up in the shadows or
dash towards you in swarms. Click on
an alien and, by default, your hero will
swing or shoot at it, depending on
whether you click for a melee or a
ranged weapon. If you hit your foe,
you'll do damage to it based on the
weapon. You can have a melee
weapon and a range weapon ready to
use at the same time. The right mouse
button activates the range weapon and
the left button swings your melee
weapon. The pointer you see has multiple uses. In melee attack, just move
your character close so that he faces
the enemy or thing you want to destroy
and use your pointer to direct The Kid
to the direction of the enemy. In ranged
attack, hold the click and you can see
arrows pointing. Align these arrows to your target and release the
click.
I found movement to be the hardest part of the game to become accustomed to. W, A, S, and D are your primary movement buttons. Use
two at once to move diagonally. The platform you run along is fairly
narrow and I often found myself falling off the edge. I strongly recommend playing the game at the easy, “no-sweat”, mode. This will give
unlimited chances to carry on when defeated. It is meant for the lessexperienced player, or the ones just learning the ropes. The only
drawback is that you are not eligible for some of the achievements.
Besides running, you can also push the space bar which causes The
Kid to duck and roll. This evasive movement is an important part of
survival during combat. "F" and "Q" are also important keys to press
when fighting. "F" lets you drink a healing potion, and "Q" causes a
special effect to occur. There is an awful lot to pay attention to while
killing and evading the myriad of creatures that are attacking you.
I hacked and slashed my way through many levels. As I played, I unlocked new weapons like a six shooter and a machete, and I found
new elixirs that increased the damage of my attacks. The gameplay is
well balanced and provides an adjustable challenge. It features an impressive array of combat and customization options. The Kid can
equip two weapons and one "secret skill" at a time. With a shield and
an evasive roll for defensive measures, these five tools are used to
fight off a wide assortment of enemies. As the game progresses, The
Kid will discover a total of eleven weapons scattered throughout the
remains of the old world. Each weapon is unique and has its own
strengths and weaknesses, and players can pick and choose to cre-
ate any combination of two. Players will also find crystals and special
materials that can be used to upgrade weapons. In total, each
weapon can be upgraded five times, and each time players will have
to choose between two possible improvements. While this can sometimes be a difficult choice, it's not a permanent one as once the upgrade is purchased, players can switch between either of them
without cost simply by returning to the forge in the Bastion. This allows players to experiment freely with their weapons without fear of
screwing them up. Players can choose from a wide array of special
skills in the same way, though only one skill can be equipped at a
time.
As with all RPG games, saving is essential. You never know when an
unsuspecting opponent will knock you off the playing field or pound
you into oblivion. Bastion does not have a manual save function. You
cannot save your progress in the middle of a region. There is an Autosave which activates only at certain parts of the game. It will autosave whenever you complete a mission. If you are in the middle of a
region and you need to quit, the game only saves from the start of
that adventure. A convenient feature of Bastion is how it handles the
death of your character. If you perish during a combat or by walking
off the precarious path, you are sent right back to that spot, often with
some healing potions to spare. This applies only in the no-sweat
mode. In the normal mode you get one extra chance only per region.
This level of play requires a real expert. Keep your eye on the health
bar. Make sure you drink some health potion before it runs out. The
game will alert you to this in case you are too wrapped up in the conflicts.
There is no limit to the amount of game play that Bastion will provide.
There are over 20 achievements to be won as you play. The first is to
complete the Wharf district. Another is to use the Forge to apply at
least one upgrade to every weapon. You get the picture. It is just another incentive to play and replay the game. There are practice areas
where you can go and perfect your skill with each of the weapons.
There is a dream world (reflection) where you can go to increase your
experience points. Some shrines can be visited which will increase the
severity of the alien attacks. This provides greater rewards for greater
risks. Playing and replaying the game is different each time. Performing
certain actions can sometimes trigger an ancillary aside, which helps
make the story flow. As the game reaches its finale, players will not
only discover who Rucks is telling this story to, but also why, and it
leads to a particularly intriguing twist that makes the ending far more
meaningful.
Yahoo Keeps Me Poor
I would call Bastion the poor man's adventure game because you get
all the game play of a big expensive RPG game but for less than half
the cost. It will take you as long, if not longer, to complete all your
quests. The graphics are almost as spectacular as those others, but
are you playing the game because of the graphics or because of the
adventure? Go to http://supergiantgames.com and read what others
have to say about this unique game or watch a video of The Kid in action.
You can order The Bastion from http://store.supergiantgames.com. At
$15, you will not be short changed. With all the customizations in terms
of weapons and choices, you will be playing Bastion over and over
again.
Submitted by Marcel Dufresne
When it comes to SPAM in general, but especially with business
proposals involving millions of dollars I’d likely be a bit careful
about engaging anyone in a transaction whose email handle is
“fat_idle_bastard” - but most SPAMers lack that much judgment.
Because of this sad fact, I routinely get offers from African bankers
in Nigeria and other sub-Saharan nations offering me huge sums
of money for posing as someones long-lost relative of a deceased
General. And I am frequently the target of phishing expeditions like
the one above. Its nice to know that even if I try to respond to one
of these generous offers, (and you must know I’ve tried), Yahoo
will not send the message. It appears that Yahoo mail is intent on
keeping me poor. Someone else will be getting my millions.
Is Privacy Really Dead?
An Opinion
You bought a box of silicon devices. Externally it has a screen and
keyboard. The box is physically so you control it. It comes with proprietary software (RAM) and you load it with a proprietary operating system OS X or iOS all not yours, only legally licensed for use in the
box. As I write this, each keystroke is being sent to the iCloud from
Text Editor for storage in my account (Apple free cloud account) Is it
secure? Legally its my original thoughts from my mind as I type, but,
who has access to my personal data when its on the cloud? Am I discoverable by the words I speak as in 1984? I'm reading a book by Kim Philby "My Silent War". (Philby was a
Russian spy inside British MI5 which did the "dirty tricks out side
Britain"). In the 1940's World War Two many diplomats "secure" bag
of secrets were commonly opened and photographed. Except for the
Russian bags. They had a bomb inside and two couriers took them
back to Moscow. They were secure!
The Russians love pessimism but they are realists. The Russians last week after the US government NSA confirmation of
the PRISM data gathering secret world wide data revelation. (This
were the US National Security Agency, in secret, by secret laws with
our court order ie. no judge gets in the way, saves & record your
Canadian telephone and internet communications. It was made public
by whistle blower, Snowdon currently in a Russian Airport. The security team around The Russian Prime Minister Putin has made an order
for $600,000 German manual typewriters. Not stupid those Russians.
At least secrets on paper can be burned. Ontario "liberal" cabinet security system.
I watched a committee meeting looking into how security is handled
by our liberal government at Queens Park. It's a simple system. All
cabinet documents emails memos are on cabinet computers and are
backed up each day. Then after 10 days all computers in use are
scrubbed clean. The cabinet backup system is wiped out and
scrubbed clean for the next ten day period. The outcome, as you can
see, is that any planning or plots or direction the liberal cabinet
records is completely lost. This way NO ARCHIVE record is ever kept!
And you though, we the people had a right to our employees thinking
for us 'for the historical record", in the great province of Ontar-re-reio?
Access to your Canadian telephone and data communication is a
plan. I travelled next to a tired Telus technician on a flight from Vancouver
to Toronto in the 198o's. We struck up a conversation about the fast
fibre-optic network just installed across Canada. We talked about signal loss when fibres were joined. Then I asked about the hub installation in each province or city. He said every hub had a secure RCMP
box which had the ability to listen in on any conversation and send it
back to a secure location in Barrie Ontario. Interesting planning.
Hopefully after a judge approved. A secure communications is in how you read it.
On another trip south I met a gentleman who oversaw the installation
of the first Canadian Bank interchange network. This was before
ATMs on every corner. He also was in federal government security in
the days of Prime Minister Chretien. Security was via fax mostly. Fax
is a method of reading text by recording line by line dots and white
spaces. Then transmission of each lines data to a receiving fax machine for printing on fax paper, usually via telephone connections.
He said that when a fax was sent for upper level viewing, say The
Prime Ministers staff needed to know the time and location of an arriving aeroplane the fax would have go through seven levels of incription. The fax at each level of incription, one through seven it would
make complete sense if decrypted at that level but would be inaccurate as to time and location. At the seven level, in the Prime Minister's
Office staff, the fax document, as to time and arrival airport which
would be 100% correct. Interesting?
What about tomorrow?
I'm not talking theory here, just reality. For example, believe it or not
90% of the worlds data has been created in the last two years. Data
farms are going online as we read, think, speak owned by Google, Microsoft, hundreds of government agencies around the world. So what
is the potential for abuse? Can a political foe target a source of personal information and use it against the individual or group opposed
to new rules? Your call.
Epilogue.
In the book 1984 and others of the ilk there is a hero. Could Snowdon
be the 2013 hero who looks at the world as a government playground? Is he saying look out? Is BIG DATA recording individual
"friends" activity, choice of words a good thing? Are all people good
people? Can we stop another 911? What is the trade off between your
privacy and public security? Should the Liberal cabinet make that decision for us? Your call.
Cheers
Submitted by
Chris Greaves
Genuine Spam from Gmail
Don’t be Fooled
Elsewhere in this issue I have written about unusual activity warnings
from Gmail. As good as the Gmail SPAM filter is, there is always a way to
get around it if enough enthusiasm is applied diligently. Recently, Gmail
users have been receiving bogus information requests that warn users
that their account has been accessed from another IP. There is a clickable
link in the bogus warning that invites you to update your account.
What happens if you bite ?? Naturally, the link in the bogus warning takes
you to a equally bogus web page (see below) where you are invited to insert your Gmail Password and to click on the Verify button to send your
information off to a phony website that is busily collecting and selling access to email accounts like yours. It is a numbers game. Spook a thousand, or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand Gmail users and hope that
some of them reply from good Gmail addresses with good passwords.
Then sell the account access information to people who need to access
email accounts to send thousands of SPAM messages from. That’s why
you can get 20 SPAM messages every day.
Submitted by Michael Shaw
Eye Candy 7
From Alien Skin
There is good news and there is really good
news. I’ll give the good news first to make
sure you get it: Alien Skin has just updated
their famous Eye Candy Photoshop plug-in /
filter suite to version 7 and it is available online now from the Alien Skin website. And
here is the really good news, especially for
all of you MaUsE digital shutterbugs : Alien
Skin has given us a copy of their newly
released Eye Candy 7 to be used as a raffle prize at our September 25 2013 MaUsE
meeting.
Eye Candy 7 retails for about $200 and is a package of filters that requires Adobe Photoshop CS5 or Photoshop Elements 10 (or newer
versions of these programs). You will need a Mac with a Intel Core 2
processor and there is no hanging back with the brutes: you will have
to have Mac OS X 10.7 or newer installed.
Many plug-ins and filters for Photoshop enhance the Adobe program
by making it easier or faster to achieve results than can be had by
using Photoshop on its own. Eye Candy on the other hand, is all
about textures, and doing things quickly and well that are difficult or
impossible to do with Photoshop alone.
No matter how much I “show and tell”, you will not be able to appreciate Alien Skin Eye Candy 7 until you actually either see it in action or
get your hands on a copy to play
with. Both of these options are
possible: if you go to
http://www.alienskin.com/eyecandy/videos.aspx you will be
able to watch over a dozen short
video tutorials that will show the
interface in action as real Photoshop users run the Eye Candy 7
program through some of its
paces applying various textures
and effects. The videos are made
by people far more familiar with
Photoshop than I am and far
more familiar with the new Eye
Candy interface, which is visually
striking: In Eye Candy 7, effects
are chosen through easy-to-recognize icons (see image at right)
rather than through text menus.
Presets are rapidly previewed by simply mousing over them. The theme in
Eye Candy is less clicking and more visual browsing. The filters and effects
are all over the map but are loosely
categorized into two mixed bags of sixteen effects each, a set of 16 Shapes
and a set of 16 Textures.
To invoke Eye Candy 7, you will have
to first get a copy and install it (more of
that later). Once installed it will be necessary to launch Photoshop and open
an image. Launching Eye Candy is as
easy as going to your
Photoshop Filters menu
and navigating to the
Alien Skin -> Eye Candy
7 tab. Depending on which of the 32 Eye Candy 7 effects you intend
to use it may be necessary to go one step further and select a specific
layer you want to work with.
When you launch Eye Candy 7 it will open over top of your open Photoshop window and you will be shown the image below in the application window. Each of 32 the icons is actually a button that will invoke a
completely different filter package with its own interface, presets, controls, sliders and results. As you can see, the variety of potential effects that are contained in this suite is extensive. On the next page
you will see how the Alien Skin interface appears when the Bevel
shape is selected and applied globally to an image.
If some of these effects look reminiscent of another program from
Alien Skin, it might be because of your familiarity with Xenofex, which
was reviewed last year in the DoubleClick. Xenofex has been discontinued but three of the most popular effects from alien Skin Xenofex ,
Lightning, Electrify, and Clouds, have been re-written for the new Eye
Candy 7 framework in order to provide faster previewing, better preset management, and easier experimentation.
The Eye Candy 7 window will always show in the upper left corner
which of the 32 Effects is active. Once you choose an Effect, you can
explore presets fast using the Navigator, which is a small preview window in the lower left that instantly updates. You don’t even have to
click: Just mouse over Preset names below the Effect and the Navigator shows how the effect will affect your design. Among the 32 effect
categories, there are over 1,000 factory presets and the user can create and save more. The large View window shows the results of the
Effect and the Preference panel at the right provides fine-tuning sliders and other texture and lighting controls.
Want to try out Alien Skin software for free? You can download fully-featured demo copies
of the latest version of Alien Skin
products to try before you buy.
The installers will perform a first
time installation - or update an
existing install. These installers
will work in trial mode for a limited time.
Unlike the AKVIS software we have recently written about, which can
function either as a stand-alone program or as a plug-in, in order to
use Eye Candy 7 you must have a host program (see first paragraph,
above). To see a list of downloadable Alien Skin demos, go to:
https://app.alienskin.com/downloads/
Submitted by Michael Shaw
7 Grand Steps - 1. What Ancients Begat
From Mousechief
"By the great river, when cities first grew, two field workers fell in love,
and they started a family...". With these words, you begin playing 7
Grand Steps - 1. What Ancients Begat. This is the first game in a long
time that I am not sure how to classify. It resembles a board game
when you first start to play. In fact, it was reminiscent of "The Game of
Life", a game I used to play a long time ago. But there are no dice to
throw. All of your moves are, for the most part, strategy based on
what education tiles you hold. The strategy comes from playing the
tiles you get dealt and how your opponents move, which is controlled
by the computer. This is akin to playing Settlers of Catan or Carcassonne. There is a lot of story telling going on at the same time. It describes the ups and downs of a family through many generations.
With that said, I am going to call this a narrative driven strategy based
board game. I had many hours of fun working my way through the
various levels and I am sure you will also. Keep reading to learn more
about this unique strategy game.
First, I found it resembled The Game of Life in that you had to marry,
get some children and educate yourself. The resemblance ends
there. In 7 Grand Steps, you will be living through many generations
of families. The education is not limited to your main character but to
all in the family. The education that you accumulate is then passed on
from one generation to the next, hopefully increasing your lot in life.
The more children you have, the more one must worry about being
fair to all of them. Treating one as the favourite will cause dissension
in the group with possibly a loss of playing tokens each turn. You are
also never sure when another addition to the family will pop up to
complicate matters. Harmony among all family members increases
the chance of an extra bonus token once in a while. At the end of your
life cycle, you must choose which of the children will be the heir and
carry on the family fortune. Again, the greater the harmony, the better
off the heir will be. Doesn't this sound like a real-life family with all the
drama that entails? Therein lies the enjoyment in playing this game. It
is a struggle to juggle all of these family members.
The game plays out as a survival through the ages contest. You begin
at the lowest level as a menial labourer. The field of play is shown as
the top half section of a circle, about 150°, broken into four arcs
(tracks) of larger and larger size. Each track is composed of a series
of spaces, 12 on the bottom rung, on which the players move. The
bottom left of the tracks has some crocodiles just waiting for a pawn
to drop in. The next track up represents merchants, the third is nobility
and the last is the ruling track. The game starts off in the Copper Age.
Before the next age begins (Bronze then Iron), your family will be
challenged. They must survive the historic circumstances that ended
that age. Usually, when all of a track's discoveries have been made,
one age ends, another begins. To speed up game play, choose only
discoveries when you are given the choice. This tact will be faster, but
it takes away the challenge of trying out the ruling class. The game
will end when all the discoveries for the first three tracks are found.
Besides the wheel of life, the playing field consists of pawns, beads,
ingots and education tokens. There are four types of pawns. Two of
them represent you and your mate. They are shown with the appropriate garb and head ware to help tell them apart. Shadow pawns represent your neighbours who will be competing with you in terms of
advancement. Sometimes a green striped pawn will show up. These
are allies. Landing on their space gives you a boost to the next space
with the same education token. Playing a token always moves you to
right of the track. A red striped pawn is an enemy. These block you
from landing on their space, causing problems and more strategy to
worry about. Education tokens are used for movement up and to the
right. They come in various categories such as brewing, masonry and
irrigation. Playing a token moves you to the next nearest space with
that token pictured on it. It also increases your education for that category. You can move from an F rating right up to AA.
Ingots are used for mating and increasing the number of tokens you
have available. You can play either an ingot or a token on your turn,
never both. Just as the token moves you to the right, an ingot moves
you to the left, closer to the crocs. Playing an ingot moves you back to
the closest pawn on your left. You will get tokens for this move. If it
happens to be your mate, you get the added bonus of possible procreation. If two pawns are together on the space when you move
there, you will get a lot more tokens. Three players on a space blocks
this move back. If you are the last pawn before the dreaded crocs,
then either you get a token or you get nothing. Tokens played for children increases their education but it uses up your moves. On your
turn, you will need to decide whether to make more tokens or gather
beads. The more tokens given to the children, the more have to be
made. Fortunately children can learn without having to give them tokens. On their turn you can give the child a token to increase that
skill, use an ingot to have them try to make more tokens, or do nothing which means they play together. Playing will allow them to slowly
and randomly become more educated. I like this route as the harmony between them is good and they do get educated. The drawback
is that you have little control over which fields they learn and they will
not get AA ratings for anything.
Your first task is to find a mate. You will find your pawn placed on the
wheel in a track somewhere to the left, a few spaces removed from
the crocs. Ahead of you are three eligible mates, each with a character rating and a certain amount of tokens. You also have a few tokens,
found on the left. Play one of these tokens to move to the space of
the mate of your choice. The courtship then begins. If your family is
well respected from the work of your ancestors, then the courtship
should result in a marriage. The two pawns then secretly move off the
playing board for a second or two. The result may or may not be a
child. Play then continues. Each time your two pawns occupy the
same space on the track, they retire to attempt procreation. Your
character changes through each generation, sometimes being a male
and others a female. That choice depends on whom you designate as
the heir.
Lastly, some spaces have beads on them. They come in different
colours depending on their value, the largest being 10. They represent legend points. Two pawns can land on a bead. The first one
there gets the full value. The second pawn gets less. There are three
legend types. Discovery legends, once completed, will take one of the
education fields and move it up a notch in terms of technology. Your
family will be given 10 tokens for
that space, and no one else will
have any. Social legends will
move you up to the next track.
You can move from one track to
the other as long as you have the
correct tokens. The last legend is
a heroic quest. Once this set is
completed, you will be asked a
series of questions and given options as to how you want to handle the situation your pawn has
been placed in. The choices you
take will make or break your family. It is a risky game play with better rewards but with crushing
downfalls. The legend points accumulate in a stack off to the left.
When the stack is full, the legend
takes place.
At the top of the screen you will
find pictured your main character
for this generation. Next to him or
her will be a mate. Lastly there
are seven slots for the children
that may come along. You do
have some control over how
many of these slots get occupied.
Each person gets his or her own name so you can keep track of
them. As the wheel of life turns for this generation, the images of your
family begin to age. As the mother and father age, their chance of
producing offsprings gets reduced. Start your family early and do not
limit yourself to one child. Tragedy might occur. Dad might get eaten
by a croc, or a plague might strike down your first born. You need to
plan accordingly. Every once in a while an owl icon will appear. This is
like a "Chance" card in Monopoly. It might be good news or it might be
bad. It matters not whether you read what the owl has to say because
the outcome will occur. I liked to read it to keep up with the world
events. Under the main character's image is the cemetery. Here you
can access the data on the various generations that have passed
away. It is kind of like a family tree.
There is much narrative given, which you can skip over if you so
choose. The narrative is an integral part of this game. It is the story of
this family. The story will change every time you restart.
How you manage the various situations thrown at you will determine
your success. I tended not to skip over the story as I didn't want to
miss out on some important info. Part of the fun of playing is reading
the tale woven for this family.
Legends and Challenges are only a
small part of the stories told. There
are also rites of passage, romance,
snapshots of daily life, sibling rivalry,
and more. These stories bond players to each family in the lineage.
Every generation is guided long
enough for a player to know them.
Every family tells a unique, engaging, interactive story.
The ruling track offers a new game
to play. If you lose at this level, your
family will fall back to the noble
track. If you win, then your family
will be crowned absolute rulers. To
play this level, click the owl button
each turn. Clicking the owl is not
mandatory as default choices will be
made but the chances of success
will be considerably lowered. You
will not be exercising your strategy
and you will be relying on the whims
of chance. To survive at this level
you will need to decide on how to
use four things each turn: grain,
planting, land and bribery. To win,
make citizens happy by distributing
grain and earn official respect by acquiring land. The goal is to gain
more power. This is extremely hard to do as nature and fictitious
neighbours try to unseat you.
There is much to like about this game. It so resembles actual family
life with the struggles to improve and to keep everyone happy. The
strategy removes a lot of the luck from the game. Certainly, you have
no control over which tokens you get each turn, and how the other
pawns will move, but you do control movement and education. In the
ruling track, plagues and enemy attacks are also out of your control.
But again this resembles life. You can never predict when a tragedy
will strike your family, nor do you have much say in what your neighbours do. You can take the easy route and never end up in the ruling
class by only going for discovery legends. This is OK but the challenge lies in trying to succeed at the ruling class track. This is where
the men get separated from the boys. You really only get your
money’s worth out of the game by trying to be the absolute ruler.
The way the game is saved allows more than one person to play the
game. Just save under a different family name and when you resume
play, choose the right family. Every time you quit the game, it saves
your progress at that point.
If this seems complicated to start with, it is. Reading about the game
play does not give you much feel for how much fun playing the game
will be. You will need to try it for a while before it becomes clear. I
strongly recommend playing the tutorial game as your first attempt. It
will not take you long to figure out how to play. Go to the Mousechief
website, www.mousechief.com, and read about this original game.
See what others have to say about it. Download a free demo version
to try it out. The full game costs $15. You will get many hours of game
play out of it. It can be replayed over and over again as each game is
different from the others. See if you can become the absolute ruler.
For my part, I am awaiting the arrival of the next step in this game of
life.
Submitted by Marcel Dufresne
Take Control eBooks
Spotlight
DoubleClick features an ebook from Take Control Books every month.
These ebooks have been published in PDF format and cover issues
related to Mac OS. Because they are in PDF format, these ebooks
have a lot of advantages over the traditional paper books. Electronic
books are a new experience for many people, but they provide you
with a good deal of flexibility that isn't available with printed books.
With your purchase of the ebook you get expert advice on various
topics but with an Apple perspective. These are the same expert authors of some best-selling print books. The download is immediate
and you don't have to leave your house to get it. Because it is paperless it can be purchased for much less than a paper edition. Also, if a
new edition of the book comes out, your original purchase of the book
allows you to easily update your current copy for free. There are clickable links right in the text so that your book immediately leads to other
sources on the same topic. It is readable onscreen which means you
can control the size of the print. If you use Preview you can even
highlight sections without messing up the book (use a copy of the
original if you are worried). You can even print up a paper copy of the
book if you feel the need. The catalog is very extensive and can be
accessed from http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/catalog. They offer
free sample sections of all their ebooks and a money-back guarantee,
so try one out anytime. As readers of the DoubleClick, you also now
have access to this coupon (CPN90219MUG) which entitles you to a
30% discount on the purchase of a book.
The book featured this month is Take Control of Take Control of Spotlight for Finding Anything on Your Mac by Sharon Zardetto. Explore
the hidden depths of Spotlight searching, one of Mac OS X’s most
powerful yet least explained features. No matter how carefully you organize files and folders on your Mac, it’s easy to lose important items.
With this ebook’s help, you can aim Apple’s Spotlight quickly and precisely, and stop rummaging around in the darkness of your hard disk.
Read how Spotlight indexes your data and learn the "grammar" behind Spotlight searches. Discover the many ways you can start Spotlight searches: the magnifying glass in the menu bar, the search field
in Finder windows or the Open and Save dialogs, a keyboard shortcut, a contextual menu, or the customized and saved searches you’ve
made for yourself. Then it's on to learning how to find exactly what
you're looking for using keyword searches, multiple-criteria searches,
Boolean searches, and more. And here's where you'll learn the most
valuable lesson about Spotlight, which Apple has never shared, which
is how to search directly using Spotlight's internal search language,
making even complex searches quick and easy.
Remember, searches aren't just about finding lost files, they're also
useful for selecting a set of matching files to work on. For instance,
we've used Spotlight to identify which photos in a folder are small
thumbnails or which of our ebooks lack a certain phrase. You can
even do things like find every GarageBand song in the key of E-flat.
Read this 158-page ebook to learn these search-related techniques:
 Improve search accuracy by limiting Spotlight to searching just
where you want.
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in the Spotlight menu.
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it should be able to find.
 Use criteria bars (and even the elusive Boolean bars!) to create
complex search queries.
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Spotlight search field.
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search results precisely.
In addition, you’ll find out how to make your files even easier to find
with these techniques:
 Customize a file’s metadata.
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tags.
 Set up sophisticated smart folders that provide dynamic file organization.
In these days of terabyte drives, your Mac has enormous storage capacity, and you may have many thousands of files squirrelled away
(we don't even want to admit to how many hundreds of thousands of
files are filling up our disks!). But with the Spotlight expertise you'll
gain from this ebook, you'll be able to retrieve anything on your Mac,
no matter how deeply it's buried or how specific you need to make
your search.
Become a Spotlight search
savant with the help of this
essential book!! This ebook
costs $15.00 normally but
using the coupon will make a
difference. Check out this
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www.takecontrolbooks.com.
Submitted by
Marcel Dufresne