Penny Hero (dot) Net

Last night, Graham called me 3 times and I never even knew it because my phone was not notifying me in any way that I could see that I had a missed call. I periodically picked up my phone and pressed a button, assumming that somewhere on the display, I would get a missed call message. Nope. I only got the “unlock keypad by pressing menu and *” message. But really… the “3 missed calls” note WAS there… it was just not visible until you unlocked your phone and it popped up.

Stupid.

My roomie and he both tried to convince me that I had my phone settings wrong and tried to show me where to set “notify” or “alarm” or “reminder” to vibrate or beep. I did. We tested. Still didn’t notify me of any missed calls until AFTER I picked up the phone and unlocked it.

We all agreed that this seemed wrong, so I googled, and found the general forum chatter of people asking “how do I turn on notifications” and everyone advised everyone to do exactly what I had just done. No one ever confirmed that this had fixed their problem though.

Graham’s phone notifies him periodically. So does my roomie’s previous motorola phone. granted, the L2 is newer… but whatever.

This notification/reminder feature seems like a really basic thing. What happens if I miss a call while out of the room? What if I actually prefer NOT to physically pick up my phone and unlock it every couple of minutes to see if I missed a call?

I’m already compulsive enough when it comes to checking my email. I think my phone should be smart enough to let me know when I missed a call. So did Graham. So did my room mate.

So I called Cingular. Cingular claimed that the L2, and most other motorola cell phones, do not have a feature to notify people of missed calls OTHER than that missed call message. They referred me to Motorola.

So I called Motorola, who had me do a master reset, and told me to change the alert and reminder settings just like everyone told me to. So I hung up, tested it, and discovered that it had not in fact restored (created?) any audio or buzz missed call notification.

I called Motorola back, and described the situation. What followed was a long round-about conversation about how according to whoever he talked to while he put me on hold, no motorola phone has this “missed call reminder” notification.

Graham’s phone does. I told him the model.

He replied with “perhaps older models have it, but the L2 and other phones with its OS don’t”.

So I asked him for more detail like, “what’s the difference between ‘notify’ and ‘reminders’. After putting me on hold again for about 15 minutes (no joke. Dean called me and talked with me for a while while I was on phone), he finally replied that one is for notifying you of text messages, and the other is for your calendar reminders…. which is slightly funny because I realize now that I mis-asked my question. My phone doesn’t have a ‘notify’ setting. It has “alarm” and “reminder”. So… how on earth he figured out that “notify” means “for text messages” is beyond me. Maybe that’s why I was on hold for so long. He was off inventing truth somewhere in a motorola back room. :)

So… in conclusion, the Motorola cell phones don’t have any audible “missed call” reminder or notification whatsoever. it’s not a bug, and it’s also not user error.

This feature simply doesn’t exist.

Reading digg and jumping to Wil Shipley’s blog post slamming Larry Bodine’s essay on why he hates Macs… is hazardous to my attention span.

Yes, if you insist on running a ten-year-old browser on your Mac instead of any of the five or so alternatives, some web sites may not work. In other news, if you spread rotten shit on a hot dog, it doesn’t taste as good.

Can’t… stop… laughing.

Basically, it’s a case of Bodine being both totally incompetent and a crappy writer. None of his claims are substantial or substantiated, it’s obvious to anyone who knows ANYTHING about technology that his few “real” complaints are actually Microsoft’s fault, and not Apple’s, and he implies that the things people claim are great about Macs (like the whole “less viruses” and stuff) are not true, but doesn’t address one way or another if he had a problem with it.

Anyway, i’ll let you read the article yourself. It links to Bodine’s essay.

I’m just… very disappointed that someone like this is a member of any kind of Law Technology News Editorial Advisory Board, although his other title is “Law Firm Marketing Consultant”…(oh and he can be reached at Lbodine@LawMarketing.com btw.)

I think I’m almost at the very end of Dirge of Cerberus, and I’ve only logged about 5 hours of game time. I could be totally wrong though. I’m not cheating and looking up guides or anything. hm… btw… god. Vincent is so hot. (*snickers*)

so… time for some Dirge of Cerberus reviews and reviewing by penny!

I like:

1. The style/tone of the game.
   With the exception of one small side-scene where the point of view shifts to that stupid cat Cait Sith… the entire game is pretty dark and serious. I like the odd combination of mysterious-vampire/demon-like-magic that vincent seems to radiate, combined with the political/technological/environmental stuff that final fantasy VII is all about.
2. Vincent (duh).
   I like his character, his story, his twisted and broken body. I have to admit that I HATE his stupid cell phone and it’s stupid gothic silver cross style. it makes his character more like a costume complete with matching accessories! omg ponies! … but whatever. He was my favorite character from the original game… his story never got explained fully. Now it has, and my jaw has sorta… dropped. (nope, no spoiling.)
3. Gameplay style:
   I love the 1st/3rd person shooter thing. woo for mixing it up in the FF genre. And as far as the 3rd person action style game goes, it seems like the time the creators spent on Kingdom Hearts influenced this one… it’s sort of like KH, only you’ve got a gun in your hand (well, 3), and you actually have to fricken aim. Not that aiming is all that hard or anything. It’s like halo without the funky controls, and with a lot more auto-aiming. So… Halo minus about 200 in difficulty. plus mele combat. and materia. woo shiny materia.

What I don’t like:

1. The leveling system.
   I HATE that the whole “leveling up” system is now pretty much non-existant. Unless you’re really really good and get a really high score at each chapter, you’re not going to get all that much experience. The drop-rate of items is also really controlled, so you can’t gain enough gold to upgrade your weapons very well… which I suspect is one reason the second thing I dislike about the game is a problem for me:
2. The Tsviets
   Granted, I haven’t beaten any of them yet (not for lack of trying), but the fight with Rosso the Crimson (and I assume all the other Tsviets, although I haven’t gotten past her yet) is DISPROPORTIONATELY hard compared to all other battles before her. It’s really fricken annoying. I’ve only died once in all the other boss fights, and I can’t get her down past about 1/2 health before she wipes the floor with me.

What I’ve got mixed feelings on:

1. Inventory limit
   The limit to how many items you can carry makes the game a major challenge. At first I thought this was really really lame, but now I realize that the challenge is there for a reason. It keeps people “playing fair” and keeps people from just stocking up and maxing out on all the potions you can hold. it makes sense, considering ALL of your items are a usable at any time. The creators put a lot of care into the small logistics of the game to make sure that even the most experienced FF player isn’t going to be using any of their old tricks to get through unscathed. On that note… next item:
2. The lack of any save-points.
   Probably for the same reasons that they’ve limited your items inventory, they’ve also limited how games are saved. For one thing, you can never actually “save” your game in the conventional sense. You can’t save a copy just before a boss you like and then re-play it later (or even just as a precaution before a boss in case you die). There are NO save points. Your game is auto-saved, and I still haven’t quite figured out how all that works because when I return to a game, I sometimes expect it to pick up in a place a little farther along from where it ends up starting… I don’t know. I’ll leave that to someone else.
3. Related: the Temp Save system
   Both this and the lack of save points is frustrating PROBABLY because I’m used to being able to be a little more reckless. Back when I knew I could just make a temp-save, go nuts and learn the level, and then just restart, I’d do it. But this temp save system is meant to prevent that. Once you re-open a temp save file, the file is destroyed, preventing you from just resetting the console. It’s pretty obvious that the creators know the kinds of tricks players like to use to “cheat.” On the other hand, this system solves one of the biggest problems of any other RPG with fixed save-points you have to manually access: you can save and quit your game at any time. So, if your mother tells you to get your ass down stairs and do the dishes, you have no excuse (or in my case, if my ride is about to leave or something). I love AND hate both these details. They show the kind of thought that was put into it, and it steers players more into playing the game how the creators want it to be played.

Overall, I love the game so far. I love the FF saga, and you really can’t have that saga without vincent (Soooo odd that vincent is an optional character in the original game.)

I also find it kind of strange and cool that I bought the game only a few days away from Oct. 13… Vincent’s birthday (according to the original FFVII booklet).

I wonder why they didn’t try to release the game on that day and see how many fans would notice.

(or titled “part 2 of the “hole in the wall” India literacy experiment post!”)

Google announced yesterday that it’s launching the Google Literacy project to help spread literacy and provide resources and lots of other stuff for teachers, parents, mentors, students, and just regular people (with internet access) to help do so.

While promoting literacy worldwide via the internet is not a new thing (just do a google search. basically every self-respecting university, and a number of big organizations also are working to create a more literate world), I think google’s visibility, their philosophies, and their resources can add a lot to this.

Google’s literacy project basically acts as a portal to some of its services, like book search, google scholar, and other things, all acting as a kind funnel and pointing to things related to literacy. It draws attention to literacy, education, and pro-actively does something about it in the google-way of doing things… by organizing information and making it more accessible.

That’s way more powerful than you’d initially think, really. Honestly. Because most people in “literacy initiatives” or projects try to open schools, try to gather volunteer support, write and publish, or they manually collect links to resources and re-post them. But google uses it’s own technologies to sort and find these resources for you, so there’s no manual lists of resources to sort and maintain, and all the results are current, relevant, etc.

Plus, making this kind of portal (rather than yet another technology/news/omg-cool-stuff! portal) shows what kinds of values Google celebrates and wants to promote.

So… India. The googleblog announcement talks about India, and how it has 1/3 of the worlds “literacy problem”. And just yesterday, I blogged about the hole-in-the-wall experiment from India, which showed that there was some exciting and active research going on involving literacy, technology, and accessibility to this education.

Coincidence? maybe. Awesome? yes.

Gotta read more.

But first, must go back to work.

Jeremy of Mozmonkey.com is my hero for making this extension.

It’s such a small, simple thing, but it brings me so much joy.

The fact that it can become the default copy function is what really makes me swoon.

*wiggles*

Alton Verm’s request to ban “Fahrenheit 451″ came during the 25th annual Banned Books Week. He and Hines said the request to ban “Fahrenheit 451,” a book about book burning, during Banned Books Weeks is a coincidence

Hahahahahaha. coincidence, my ass.

so… I’ve been hanging out on reddit.com this morning. can you tell?

“ New Delhi physicist Sugata Mitra has a radical proposal for bringing his country’s next generation into the Info Age”

I don’t wish to claim that this shows anything more or less than what it has shown, which is that curious kids in groups can train themselves to operate a computer at a basic level. In doing so, they also can get a generally good idea about the nature of browsing and the nature of the Internet … And, therefore, if they view these things as worth learning, no formal infrastructure is needed [to teach them]. (emph mine)

What he did was this: he mounted a camera in a tree, embedded an internet-connected computer in a wall in a “slum” area, and watched what happened.

He calls it “minimally invasive education” and believes that the key to promoting authentic computer literacy is “for teachers and other adults to give [kids] free rein, so their natural curiosity takes over and they teach themselves.”

Wow. Yes yes yes.

Another cool point was that the kids taught themselves in groups. it seemed that being in a group was a major component to self-learning.

How’s that for authentic education based on collaboration, social-ness, etc. de-centralized learning, and all those other literacy and educational buzzwords floating around! woo hoo!

But it makes sense. People don’t learn by rote memorization or being forced to learn something. They don’t really truly learn material by sitting at a desk and forcing it into their brains. we learn by practicing, doing, asking questions, figuring stuff out. NOT by lecture. we learn because we have a question, a problem, or out of curiosity.

lectures can help us prepare for tests, but this kind of “figure stuff out” method is what gets you to really learn something.

The thing that’s way cool is that this shows that this type of ‘decentralized’ learning model isn’t all that expensive.

So what’s the real difference between adults and kids? Just that adults “can’t” learn new things? No. it’s more like the sense of curiosity and self-confidence just fades or grows out of them or something. So the key to always being able to learn is to retain your sense of curiosity and spontenaety.

All these things are sort of “common sense”, but now there’s some sorta scientific “proof” that this is true.

I just wish that we had an educational system that matched research like this. individual teachers who model their classrooms around these ideas are awesome, but when they’re forced to “teach to the test” or their kids will fail and they’ll lose their funding… it just hurts everyone.

Anyway, gotta get back to work… just didn’t want to forget to write about this.