Believe it or not, that’s pretty much it. Well, except the compelling storyline.

Synopsis

So your character (one of three builds) decides for vaguely heroic reasons to hack their way across the world to the small town of Torchlight. It’s a mining town, and they trade mostly in ‘ember.’ Ember is a precious crystal that is imbued with magical powers. Think materia, if you’re from a Final Fantasy background.

Anyways, like the Dwarfs from Lord of the Rings, they miners went too deep, and got too greedy. The end result is that the dark n’ evil things living in the bowels of the earth are now free-roaming. This is obviously bad for business, the town, and probably for the world to some extent. Think of the market spikes!

You roll up into town and take it upon yourself to rid the mines of evil. You also get to rid it of any valuables along the way, which I’m pretty sure is the unspoken rule with heros. A sort of payment in lieu. You button mash your way down through the levels of the mine, getting ever closer to the cause of all the bad…ness. Badness. Yeah, sure let’s just leave that one sitting there.

Gameplay

I have no idea how this plays on a computer (it’s platform of origin) but it plays out pretty smoothly on a console. The controls are simple, and you can customize them to best suit your playing style. Well mostly. Some keys are perma-bound, but it’s not that rough.

So Torchlight does play almost exactly like Diablo, which makes sense given that the team that made it worked on Diablo in the first place. I’d say there was a conflict of interest or stolen IP or something, but I assume Blizzard hasn’t noticed; they’ve been to busy rolling around on their giant piles of money. It takes the same isometric angle, the same horde of monsters approach, the same skill tree system, etc.

Seriously it’s Diablo. If you enjoyed the mechanics of Diablo, you’ll enjoy the mechanics of Torchlight, as there is almost nothing that’s different.

You can gamble, you can socket, you can enchant, you can use town portal scrolls, you have to use identify scrolls, there are level portals you can use to quick travel. The music is even similar (again, same people working on it), so you’ll feel right at home ripping baddies apart.

A lot of effort was put into making the controls as simple as possible for the player. You have a smashy button, a block button, a healing button, and a mana restore button. Every other button can be mapped to whatever you want. This allows you to set up your skill load-outs as needed. On top of that, you can get use the D-pad to swap between loadouts, so that you can have specific setups for specific situations.

Graphics

The graphics are shockingly rich, though given it’s a 3/4ths view game where you can’t really zoom in, I doubt they had to work all that hard on the textures. Regardless, The environments look lush, the enemies match the style of the game, and your character looks reasonably bad-ass. The detail put into the spells and ambient lighting is impressive, I must say. If anything, they probably put more effort into that than the rest of the texture work.

Now that all being said, when you do get to look at your character close-up, they do start to look a bit boxy. For obvious reasons, the poly-count was probably toned back as much as possible. When you start trying to render 20-30 badguys on the screen at once, you really want to try and make that as easy as possible on your rendering engine. Sadly though, it does make parts of the game look cheap.

Music

Have you played Diablo or Diablo 2 at all? If so, you’ll feel right at home in Torchlight. I mean, they got the same guy that did Diablos music to write the score(s?) for Torchlight. While Torchlight does have its own feel in with the music, you can’t help but thing that the composer probably didn’t have to work all that hard to put it together.

Issues

It’s boring.

If you are looking for a deep, driving storyline, you won’t find it here. If you want to feel like a god as you mow down 20 guys at the same time, you’ll have fun. It’s not that it’s boring to play so much as it’s not compelling you to play through it. It really is a game for those who like to grind through levels and power up like mad.

In terms of story… well there is no story really. I honestly didn’t give a toss about anyone or anything in the game, and that includes my little wolf sidekick. There aren’t really other characters, so much as there are NPCs who will shower you with ‘quests’ and gold and such.

It’s easy.

If you spend a couple minutes looking over your skill-tree, you’ll realize that there’s a pretty easy setup that you can go through that will basically make you a god. That’s what I did, and even though I played well past the end of the main story, I only died 2 or 3 times. Those deaths were normally caused by me just not looking at the screen. Which brings me to the other part of this:

All you have to do is button mash. Never have I played a game that rewarded button mashing so much. It’s stupid. What’s worse is that you have to button mash. I’d love to target something and have my character bash the shit out of it until it dies, I die, or I decide to change tactics. I shouldn’t have to ruin 2 buttons on my controller just to play through a game.

Overall

Is it a bad game? No. Was it fun? Yes. Would I play it again with the other characters? Nuh uh. Would I buy it again? probably not. Do I feel like I wasted my money? Nah.

5/10

I have never been a total fan though. At the end of the day, they are tools that I use to get things done throughout my day. I don’t hold them in any higher regard than the PCs that I use at my workplace (or grew up with). I’ve had my issues with their products as well and I’ll be the first to point them out. I will also be the first in line to point out that Apple has ‘screwing their clientele’ down to a high art. I mean, they have a release schedule and setup that makes sure that everyone that purchases their wares will be jealous of those who purchase the next iteration. They can really be dicks like that. They engineer demand so well that there should be a degree in it available to higher education locales.

But as of Thursday, July 7th, 2011, I can say that I am now a loyal customer of Apple. Still not a fanboy, but they’ve secured my loyalty. And all it took was an email.

The Story

To understand my new-found loyalty, we have to roll back to July 1st, 2011. Canada Day, for anyone that is unaware happens on this day. As a proud Canadian I went off to the large London-based party that took place in Trafalgar Square. It was a fun day despite a gross lack of cider, and fun was had by all. I was decked out in Canadian stuff (shirt, tattoos, etc.) and I was even wearing shorts! I almost never wear shorts due to a general lack of ownership as well as a general distaste for them.

As the day wore down, I, along with my friends, decided to head on home as we were a bit drunk, a bit tired, and in my case a bit (a lot) sunburnt. We took the district line from Embankment, and then transfered to the National rail at Liverpool street. After getting off the train and walking half way home from the station to my house, I noticed that my phone was missing.

Now I knew that I had my phone when I got onto the underground at Embankment, so I had either lost it or my phone had been nicked whilst I was on the train. This can basically be blamed on my shorts – damn you shorts! – since they have wide, shallow pockets, and that’s a bad thing when you are sitting down with a long phone in said pocket. Regardless, my phone was gone.

Fuck.

For those that have never lost their phone, let me describe it to you: it sucks. It sucks badly. It sucks even more if you’re a tech addict like me, and even more so if you legitimately need your phone to do thinks like call people and services.

As soon as I got home, I jumped onto my mobileMe account. Thankfully, I’m involved in the iOS 5 beta (thanks @geofas), which means that I have free access to their Find My Iphone services (something that will be free for everyone, and was formerly a paid-for perk of the mobileMe service). I sent a message to the phone – ‘If you could turn this phone in, that would be amazing’ –  but I had to wipe the phone anyways. Why? Because it’s a company phone, and it’s got a lot of stuff on it that I’d get hell for if it leaked. Nothing sinister, but important work I.P. stuff.

Anyways, once you wipe your iPhone you can no longer track it. This was a sad reality that I just had to take. I had no hope of anyone actually turning in an iPhone 4. I mean, it’s an iPhone 4 in full working order.

On monday, I got the IMEI and SIM numbers from my work and logged the phone as lost with the TFL and National Rail. I wasn’t expecting much. I didn’t even bother reporting it to the police, because in all truthfulness, there isn’t really much they can do. I logged an order with my work for a new phone, and whimpered at the £450+ cost attached to my own stupidity. It was an expensive mistake.

“But Corey!” you sputter, ” Surely a man of your rugged good looks and shining brillance would have phone insurance, no?” No. I didn’t. I almost do now, I have to wait a week after upgrading my bank account but I didn’t have it at the time. Some friends suggested I get some for a phone that I no longer possessed, wait a week, and then report it lost. Basically they suggested I commit fraud. I declined, because I was going to take my costly lesson with as much good grace as I could muster. The high ground sucks sometimes.

I’ll skip the part where I went through horrible tech withdrawal. Suffice it to say, it’s horrible, and I totally understand people who are quitting smoking. Well, the mental portion anyways. I didn’t suffer from the shakes or anything, but I was irritable as shit and perpetually frustrated at everyone around me that still had their phones. It was bad, man, real bad.

As the week went on, I kept an eye on my email, hoping that I’d see an email show up from TFL or National Rail. On Thursday the 7th, I got an email from Apple Support. Now I hadn’t logged anything with them, and so I thought it was probably spam. Just to be on the safe side though I opened the mail, and was given the following:

Mr. Corey dutson

We were contacted today, because your iphone was found, it is in :
Shepherds Bush Police Station
226 Shepherds Bush Road
Hammersmith
London
W6 7NX

kind regards,
andreia, apple team*

*This is actually the address for the Hammersmith Metro Police station. Apple sorta screwed that up, but looking at the street name, I totally get why they could screw that up.

Now either this was the most specific spam email ever, or it was a legit email from Apple. I was willing to take that chance. I dropped what I was doing, jumped on the train, and made my way to the address. Then I went to the real address after I found out Apple gave me the wrong one. I walked into the police station and 5 minutes, some joking, and a lot of thank yous later, I was re-united with my phone.

We had celebratory Thai food that night. It was divine.

What happened?

As near as I can tell, when I logged into the Find My iPhone system and wiped my phone, Apple must have flagged the IMEI number in relation to my account. When the phone was plugged in, charged, and processed at the police station, Apple must have been alerted through the phone popping up in iTunes or the like. They then emailed me to let me know where it was, and I got my phone back, against all the odds.

The result?

Apple didn’t have to do that. I hadn’t logged a support request with them, nor ever paid for mobileMe. They had no obligation to do anything about it, and yet they did. Sure it’s not a large amount of effort on their part, and I’m sure most of it is automated anyways. The point is: they did me a small kindness, and I got my phone back.

What basically equated to about 40 seconds of effort on their part reunited me with my phone. If they hadn’t done that, I would have to purchase another one of their products. Their emailing me actually stopped them from making a sale. It did, however, make me see them in a new light and they’ve secured my pocket book for a good long while to come now. That’s an amazing long-term view and a gamble, and more companies should think like this. It fosters loyalty that you just cant buy with discounts or free soda.

So you know what? People can go on and on about how they screw their customers, their price-points are insane, and all their stuffs for hipsters, designers, etc. All I know is they’ve made themselves one more loyal customer, and all for sending an email.

One more thing…

The police wouldn’t give me the contact details for the woman that turned in the phone. I totally understand, but I’m a bit sad because I can’t thank her myself properly. I will say this though:

Thank you Ema. Thank you so much for doing what many others wouldn’t have done. You’re a swell human being, and I hope you get that promotion you want because damnit, you deserve it. Also, your hair looks amazing today. Seriously, you’ve got like, TV hair goin’ today. And hey, have you been working out? You’re looking really good! I am totally jealous.

You’re awesome, but you already knew that didn’t you.

Pretty much everyone who played the first Portal has been chomping at the bit for a sequel of sorts to come around. That being said, Portal was a bit of a sleeper hit (and meme generator). It took a while for it to become popular. It took even longer for for it to become popular to release on its own. It did, of course, and I’ve been the proud owner of Portal: Still Alive (the XBox 360 release) for a good while now.

So when I heard about a Portal 2 coming out, I became very excited (along with a good portion of the Internet). What’s interesting is Portal came out in 2007. There is a 4 year gap between the two games, which is a long time in the game industry. With that kind of gap, people are going to be expecting a lot from this release.

So the question is: does it stand up?

Yeup.

A friend of mine who happens to be on Steam gained access to Portal 2 early due to Valves early release crowd-source thing. A brilliant marketing scheme, it has to be said. Get loads of people to buy and play other titles on the Steam network, and they’ll release the game that everyone wants early… maybe.

Brilliant.

Anyways, his description of Portal 2 was two-pronged. The first statement I got was “It’s like Portal, but with money thrown at it.” The second: “It’s what Portal really should have been the first time.” I think these two statements sum up Portal 2 almost perfectly. I’d go on to say that a re-release of the original Portal with the new engine used in Portal 2 would gain a whole shedload of new sales for Valve. Yes it’s that good.

I should say that this review is based on the single-player experience of Portal 2. I haven’t had a chance to play the co-op mode, so I can’t speak to how amazing that most certainly is. If anyone reading this has Portal 2 on the Xbox and wants to play, lemme know. When I do get a chance to play the co-op, I’ll update this review. Anywho, on with the review!

Synopsis

You’re back in Aperture Laboratories.

After a brief wakeup from your stasis (for tutorial purposes), you’re woken again to a very different scene. You’ve been asleep a long, long time, and now Wheatley – that’s the robot that cares for all the humans in the facility – is trying to save you from dying. You get a refresher course on how to use the portal gun, and then you’re off the races.

You run into GLaDOS again, and she’s just totally psyched to see you since you killed her ‘n all. You get thrown back into the testing ring, with GLaDOS feeding you back-handed compliments and offering up some of the best writing ever. You work your way through the tests, until things get weird, and then they get much, much weirder. I’d explain the whole thing, but I can’t bring myself to spout off any major spoilers because, honestly, it’s so much better to just play the game and experience it.

Gameplay

Portal 2 plays out almost exactly the same as the original. The portal gun still shoots 2 portals, you can still fall from any height, but can’t swim. Also, pretty much everything can kill you. Nothing too surprising there. The floaty electro-orbs have been removed, in favour of using more of the thermal discouragement beams that you have to aim into targets. You also get excursion funnels, repulsion/propulsion/conversion gels, light bridges, cubes for redirecting lasers, and faith plates. Yeah, you lose the bouncy energy murder balls, but you get a lot more to play with. I’ll try and break it down for you:

Thermal discouragement beams (and the redirection cubes)

Lasers. Seriously that’s what these are. Lasers that go in a straight line, hurt anything that isn’t a cube, and are used to power switches and the like (just like the bouncy energy balls from the original Portal). The redirection cubes do exactly that: redirect. Specifically, they redirect the beams. Straight-forward really, much like the beams.

Light bridges

They’re bridges. Made of light. You can walk on them, block bullets, etc. It’s a wall you can walk on, basically.

The gels

The gels were probably some of the neatest additions to Portal 2. They more or less do what they say on the tin. The Repulsion Gel makes you (or anything else) that hits it bounce. Objects you coat in the blue stuff will also become high-speed bouncy balls. Propulsion Gel makes you move fast (somewhat exponentially). Conversion Gel turns any surface it’s a part of into a Portal-friendly surface. This is something I wish you had access to more often throughout Portal 2, but sadly is rather limited.

Excursion Funnels

These are basically levitation tunnels. You go in them (or put anything into them) and you will be pulled along in the tunnel until you hit a wall. You can slide out of the tunnel at any point, but you cannot fight the flow of the tunnel or move faster within it. You can basically only go sideways.

Faith plates

These launch you (or other things) through the sky to land on a target somewhere across the way. These are probably the most terrifying things you come across in the game, and yet they are the safest thing you’re likely to interact with in the whole game. It’s one of the few things in the game that can’t really kill you, since the landing spots are always the same.

Graphics

In many ways Portal 2 looks like the original Portal. At the very leave the look ‘feels’ the same, except it’s been polished so goddamned much it burns an awesome-shaped hole in your soul. It looks stunning. Effects aren’t over-done, but look stunning. The lighting is impressive, and their attention to detail with all of the decay is astounding. The views you get in this game are enough to make you stop and stare. The Ratman’s artworks are back in Portal 2, and these ones are very much of the ‘art’ variety. They’re worth finding, if only to look upon them and be moved.

All of the normal elements you interact with in the game have been obscenely polished as well. Companion cubes hum a little tune and glow pink in their cores. When you walk into rooms, Panels clean themselves up. Liquids are really, well, liquidy. Everything you interact with just shines with the effort and love given by the Valve team.

The writing/storytelling

Oh my god the writing. The writing in Portal 2 has been on a level beyond professional. The writing in Portal 2 surpassed the writing from the original by a mile. It’ probably helped that there is more than one person to write for, and back and forth banter is always better than writing monologues at the player. Here are a small, hopefully not very spoiler-y sample of the brilliance within Portal 2:

“Most test subjects do experience some, uh, cognitive deterioration after a few months in suspension. Now, you’ve been under for quite a lot longer, and its *not* out of the question that you might have a *very* minor case of serious brain damage! But, don’t be alarmed, alright? Uh, although, d-do feel alarmed. Try to hold onto that feeling, because that is the proper reaction to being told that you’ve got brain damage!” – Wheatley, upon waking you up from stasis.

“Well done. Here are the test results: You are a horrible person. I’m serious, that’s what it says: A horrible person. We weren’t even testing for that. Don’t let that “horrible person” thing discourage you. It’s just a data point. If it makes you feel any better, science has now validated your birth mother’s decision to abandon you on a doorstep.” – GLaDOS, upon your finishing one of her tests.

“Most people emerge from suspension terribly undernourished. I want to congratulate you on beating the odds and somehow managing to put on a few pounds.” – GLaDOS, basically being a bitch.

This is, of course only the lightest sampling. Much, much better stuff exists in Portal 2, but to avoid massive spoilers, I’ve opted not to include them. The fact that Cave Johnson is voiced by J.K. Simmons really should be enough to have anyone play. If you’re from the UK, Stephen Merchant does the voice for Wheatley, and he does an amazing job as well.

Moving beyond the basic banter writing (which is some of the best game banter I’ve heard in forever), the story itself is compelling in its simplicity. You are given a lot of history and a lot of explanations. The story is paced out perfectly, and you get a lot of closure by getting through it all.I have to commend the Valve writing staff for this one. They’ve always done good work with their writing, but Portal 2 is a work of art in terms of writing and story-telling.

Music

Not much to say with the music in Portal 2. Well, not much that I can say without giving away even more of the game. What I will say is that where there is music, it’s used to very good effect. Never really over-bearing, but still helps set the mood of the scene and gets into your head. Also, do yourself and have a listen to companion cubes, and the end points for lasers and switches. They all have little tunes that both delight and annoy.

Issues

Nothing I can really say other than one or two of the puzzles just baffled the crap out of me. I did well overall, but some of them just had me sitting there wandering aimlessly until I happened to notice some platform or ledge that I needed to get onto.

My only advice is that as you get further into the Lab, you’d do well to take a moment and look around (in every direction) and note anything out of place or interesting. Chances are, you’ll need to interact with that point in order to finish the puzzle. Don’t forget you have a zoom option in Portal 2. Seriously, don’t forget that. It’ll help.

The other issue is that the single player campaign (as I haven’t been able to get into co-op yet) is shorter than I would have liked. I logged somewhere between 10-15 hours, and I would have been fine with another 5-10 in there. Then again, maybe the co-op will handle that. I guess I’ll have to wait and see about that.

Oh, and while not actually an issue, this is more of a note: If you haven’t played Portal 1, you do yourself a disservice if you don’t play it before playing Portal 2. You’ll still enjoy Portal 2, but you’ll be missing out on a lot of the jokes.

Overall

Brilliant. One of the best games I have played in a very long time. brilliant story, brilliant writing, everything’s been polished to a hefty sheen, and it’s basically amazing. You will be doing yourself a disservice if you don’t pick this one up.

9.5/10

Most of the time, these bugs are a small oversight on my part, or just straight-up stupidity. I’m not perfect, and I’ll gladly fix these things as they come up. I don’t consider bugs in my code that people find to be an affront to my skill; in reality I find them an opportunity to get better at what I do.

Then you run into something like a bug using setInterval, and things just stop making sense.

Edit

Wow. I didn’t expect nearly as much traffic on this article as it ended up getting. I feel I should just put the learnings, work-arounds and the like up here, just to speed things up and to clarify.

I don’t like how setInterval works because if you lose the id reference, you’re hosed. That’s pretty much my gripe here. It’s just not a good implementation. Id’s that start at 1 (or 0!) and increment would at least allow a brute-force loop. A way to get back a collection of intervals in action would be swell. A proper ECMA addition to access the intervals in an object-esque manue would be awesome. Basically anything that didn’t require me to store every id somewhere for use later.

None of those options exist, and that’s the point of this article. The setInterval function returns something akin to a thread id, which you need to hold onto if you plan on killing the interval later (by passing it to clearInterval). It’s effectively a random integer, and the fact that there’s no way to access the intervals in any other way is silly to me. I will continue to think so until the logic can be explained in a way that makes sense.

The result of all of this? Don’t use setInterval if you can avoid it. If you can’t avoid it, pay close goddamned attention to when you use it so you don’t end up losing those all important references

Here are some ways to avoid losing the reference(s) / getting around setInterval:

Option one (original idea at the end of this post):

Use setTimeout with an external trigger of sorts. Gross, but it works well when you need to kill the function, and you may have left a closure / need to kill the function from somewhere else in your code.

//
//
var counter = 1, myTimeout;

function loopFunction () {
	if (counter < 5) {
		counter++;
		myTimeout = setTimeout(loopFunction, 5000);
	}
}

myTimeout = setTimeout(loopFunction, 50000);
//
//

Option 2:

Push the ids into an array, and use the array to kill them all later. Cleaner, but slightly more complex. Solves a slightly different issue to the last one.

//
//
var intervalArr = new Array();

function intervalOne () { alert ('foo');};
function intervalTwo () { alert ('bar');};

function killIntervals(){
	while(intervalArr.length > 0)
		clearInterval(intervalArr.pop());
};

// adds the intervals
intervalArr.push(setInterval(intervalOne, 2000));
intervalArr.push(setInterval(intervalTwo, 2000));

// removes them
killIntervals();
//
//

TLDR;

Click here to view the demo. Look at the source code, you’ll see what I’m demonstrating with this post. Be wiser for the fact and you’re done.

Some basics

So some basics on JavaScript for those that don’t know. review the following code:

//
//
var myVariable; // declare a blank variable

myVariable = 'Hello'; // sets the variable to 'Hello'
alert(myVariable); // will bring up an alert box that says 'Hello'

myVariable = 'Hi there'; // sets the variable to 'Hi there', overriding the old value
alert(myVariable); // will bring up an alert box that says 'Hi there'
//
//

That’s all basic JavaScript variable stuff. The reason I put this here is so you understand the concept that you can overwrite the value of a variable that was previously set. This is pretty much how variables work. It gets a little grey when assigning variable references but that’s not the point of this post.

Now there are two automating functions that people generally use: setInterval and setTimeout. I’m aware of web-workers and such, but I’m not getting into those here.

They generally work like this:

//
//
var myTimeout, myInterval; // blank variables

myTimeout = setTimeout(function(){ alert('Hello'); }, 5000); // After 5 seconds, alert 'Hello'
myInterval = setInterval(function(){ alert('Hi there'); }, 10000); // Every 10 seconds, alert 'Hi there'
//
//

Now in this example, I set up a function instance right in the timeout and interval assignments. You can also choose to to reference a function (not to be confused with a function call, which they dislike but you can work around), but for the sake of keeping my examples small I am using a function instance.

Basically setTimeout will call the function once when the timer (set in milliseconds) ticks, whereas setInterval will call the function every time the timer ticks. The reason You store them in variables is so you can use the clearTimeout and clearInterval functions. These are supposed to remove the timeout or interval from existence, stopping the functionality from happening (or happening again, whichever).

//
//
var myTimeout, myInterval; // blank variables

myTimeout = setTimeout(function(){ alert('Hello'); }, 5000); // After 5 seconds, alert 'Hello'
myInterval = setInterval(function(){ alert('Hi there'); }, 10000); // Every 10 seconds, alert 'Hi there'

clearTimeout(myTimeout); // kills the timeout, so it will never fire off
clearInterval (myInterval); //kills the interval, so it will never fire off.
//
//

Given this information, you may think that you can now go and do loads of timed stuff care-free! Well no, you can’t. You see I ran into an… oddity with setInterval and setTimeout. I couldn’t find any documentation showing this quirk, hence this blog post.

How I found the issue

So today, a colleague found a bug with a plugin I wrote. It’s a plugin that fades between slides. Pretty straight-forward. It has options to enable autoPlay, render paging buttons, etc. The autoplay functionality – that is, rotating between the slides – is being handled by setInterval.

Basically when it starts, I set an interval to rotate. If you skip slides (using a navigation) it stops the slider by clearing the interval. In theory, that is. Apparently somewhere down the line it stopped working, and I had to go hacking through the code to figure out what the hell was going on. As it works out I’ve found a rather odd issue with setInterval and setTimeout.

The issue manifested

Code:

//
//
var myInterval;

function alertOne() {
	alert('One');
}

function alertTwo() {
	alert('Two');
}

myInterval = setInterval(alertOne, 2000);
myInterval = setInterval(alertTwo, 3000);
//
//

<!-- snip -->
<a href="javascript:clearInterval(myInterval);">Kill stuff</a>
<!-- snip -->

Now given the idea of how variables should work, if you were to run this code, you would expect the first interval call to be overwritten by the second. That’s what I expected anyway. As it turns out, his is not the case. You see apparently it actually stacks the calls into the variable. Sort of like an array, but without any of the actual array properties or functionality.

Given that it stacks them, you would think that the clearInterval on the anchor would then remove both intervals. I mean they’re both attached to the variable, so it stands to reason that clearing the variable with clearInterval would sort it out right? Nope! It actually only clears the last interval set to it.

Don’t believe me? run it yourself, or click here for a running example. So I started trying to find ways of totally clearing it.

How about setting the variable to null? That won’t work because it treats the variable as a function reference, and not an instance of the interval system.

What about stacking the clearIntervals? That doesn’t work either. It only ever clears the last one that was assigned. The rest seem to become buried, and I haven’t found a way to surface them.

Oh and everything I just said about setInterval here? It also applies to setTimeout. I’m using setInterval though, because at least a timeout ends after the first call. That is, unless you made a self-replicating timeout function. You may as well use setInterval at that point unless you actually need to change the amount of time between calls, or you have external flags (see further down for an explanation of this).

So basically if you assign more than one interval or timeout to a variable, you’re screwed. You can’t clear them all with clearInterval, you can’t null the variable as it’s just a reference, and you can’t stack clearIntervals, because it doesn’t surface the previous assignments, even though they continue to run.

Solution?

Sadly there’s no sweet fix for this that I’ve found. Basically if you’re going to be using setInterval, make damned sure you use clearInterval before setting it again. If you don’t, you bury the old intervals and there’s no way to stop them from continuing..

A gross but possible solution would be to use a self-replicating setTimeout function that had an external flag that it could use to halt it’s loop.

Here’s a basic example:

//
//
var counter = 1;
var myTimeout;

function loopFunction () {
	if (counter < 5) {
		counter++;
		myTimeout = setTimeout(loopFunction, 5000);
	}
}

myTimeout = setTimeout(loopFunction, 50000);
//
//

If you do that, at least there’s a way to stop buried Timeouts. You don’t get such a luxury with setInterval.

This took me far too much time to figure out today, and either I missed a rather important class in JavaScript school* or not everyone knows about this. I went looking on the Googles, but didn’t come up with anything outlining the dangers of setInterval. Hopefully this will help someone out there. At the very least it’ll be a reminder to me to pay more attention when I use it.

* I don’t think there is an actual JavaScript school, even though that would be very, very useful.

But of course there are always drawbacks. The number of font-files you need is staggering, and the CSS you need to set up borders on the insane. Here’s the best CSS code I’ve seen for that. Then there’s the licensing issues: font’s ain’t free (mostly). If you want to use a good collection of the fonts out there, you have to pay. There are loads of services out there at this point that can serve up almost every possible font you could ever want. Some you pay for, some (like what I use for my own website) are free.

Getting past the pay barrier and the CSS file drudgery, you are left with another issue: rendering. Some fonts, while applicable for the web, have not been optimized. There’s a big difference between a web-optimized font, and a print font that has been released to the web. That is to say the latter look like shit most of the time. This is a major difference between a mac and a PC.

Let me explain further.

The problem

Macs render fonts amazingly out of the box. The webkit engine comes with a special property for font-smoothing (called -webkit-font-smoothing) that is used in tandem with this. These properties do affect the PC versions of Webkit browsers, but not quite. For more info on this css property, read this article, which explains it in great detail.

For all the other engines (excluding the recently released Firefox 4, where fonts look mostly awesome), non-optimized fonts will look ragged because they aren’t aliased at all. Think of what the font looks like on ie6 (for those that can remember). This is what happens. the Cleartype property that Windows applies doesn’t actually work on these fonts.

The fix

After some playing around, I’ve come up with a fix, though it does come with some caveats that I will outline after.

/*The following example assumes the selector already has the custom font applied to it.*/

.customFontSelector {
color:#000000; /* you can use rgb as well */
text-shadow: 0px 0px 1px rgba(0,0,0,0.1); /* same color as the normal color item */
filter: dropshadow(color:#000000, offx=0, offy=0); /* color needs to be a hex, near as i can tell */
/* sometimes the shadow actually needs to be the background color. It seems a bit variable*/
-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; /*stops mac 'thick font' syndrome */

How this works:

Basically you make a super tiny, light shadow around your text that will simulate the anti-aliasing that the mac does. The filter: dropshadow will allow the font to render more smoothly in IE. The webkit-font-smoothing stops fonts from ending up fat due to the macs sub-pixel anti-aliasing in addition to a shadow.

Caveats

• The ie fix works most of the time. Far better on solid backgrounds. It can (but doesn’t always) halo if you put it on transparent-background-ed items. Even if that item is in a container that has a background color, it can halo. The fix is to put a background color on the element itself (not every layout will allow for this, obviously)
• This doesn’t work well on small font-sizes. In fact, this will just cause your small fonts to look blurry and terrible. This fix works best for headings or other larger font-size items.
• It also seems to have a problem with certain thin fonts. Not all thin fonts, just enough to screw with you.

So yeah, this isn’t the be all and end all solution. It does however work in a variety of cases, and like so many other fixes on the net, you have to know when to use them and when not to. The best fix for web fonts is, really, to use a web font that has been tailored for the web. At the very least a font that has had a lot of attention given to its hinting.

As always I welcome discussion, and ways to improve on this technique.

When the expansion for Costume Quest came out, I burned through it and found that Double Fine threw in an easter egg/achievement that advertised their new game (and subject of this review), Stacking.

With some interesting mechanics, and the Double Fine sense of humour, Stacking makes for an interesting addition to the Xbox Arcade.

Synopsis

Stacking, by Double Fine Productions takes place in a semi-russian universe where everyone is a russian stacking doll. I have no idea how they breed or anything, but that’s just how it is.

Anyways, the story revolves around Charlie Blackmore, the tiniest of the Blackmore family; a family of chimney sweepers who’s motto is “Ain’t no mess we can’t address!” One day, their father comes in saying he’s been given a new job for The Baron, and that their money troubles are over. Sadly though, the Baron is a bastard and instead kidnaps your father. The rest of your family goes to get him back, and are subsequently kidnapped. The Baron’s men then come for your mom and Charlie, but opt to leave him behind since he’s so small. Apparently Charlie’s no use to them. This makes no sense, given there are many Charlie-sized holes in the areas that would be a perfect fit for him.

I totally meant that pun. I am un repuntant.

Yeah. Yeah.

Now this sound’s like a terrible situation for wee Charlie to be in, but he has an ability that is, under normal circumstances, terrifying. Charlie can hop into a larger doll (one size up) and take them over and use their abilities. They can then stack them into the next step up, etc.

Using this ability, Charlie works through different parts of the Stacking world, freeing his family as well as ending child-labour and ruining the Evil Baron’s plans.

Gameplay

Stacking is basically a situational puzzle game, using the skills of the other dolls around you to overcome challenges. Most of these challenges are story-driven, and come with a guilt-free hint system that will basically spell things out for you if you’re totally lost. Each challenge has more than one solution, and it’s neat to see what ones you can come up with on your own. Some are less obvious than others.

The mechanics are polished, which is good considering how simple they are. I’d be pretty upset if the controls were jerky in a game as straight-forward as Stacking is. I found the follow camera to be a bit wonky at points, but overall worked fairly well. performable actions are in the top right of the screen at all times, which is helpful for telling you when you can/cannot perform things like stacking, talking, etc.

The level designs are cute bordering on whimsical, and utterly non-threatening. The levels are generally sprawling, but very linear. Stacking does a lot of hand-holding if you want to just go through the motions of finishing the game. If you get lost, there’s even a button to point you in the direction you need to go.

As for extras, Stacking comes with two options:

Collectable Dolls

In every level, there are a number of unique dolls that you can collect by stacking into them. These dolls are, in many cases, the ones you will need to use to get through most of the challenges, so you will end up collecting a good portion of them as you go along. There are also dolls that have a special ability that will make any unique dolls in the area glow.

Like I said, there’s a lot of hand holding.

Hijinks

These ones are far less obvious. The names of many of the hijinks are vague or just straight-up unhelpful. The only saving grace is that they all have to do with using a certain dolls ability on something or someone a number of times. When you get one the first time, the hijinks is registered in the menu and you then find out what you actually have to do.

Basically if you stack into every doll, and use it’s ability on a man, a woman, and a child, you’ll probably find most of them. I won’t blame anyone for using a guide for these though. Otherwise they could be quite a time-drain.

Graphics

Stacking is a cute-looking game. That translates into ‘not super high-def’. Does that mean the graphics are poor? Far from, but for those out there that dool over things like the new Crysis 2 demo, Stacking will be a bit underwhelming, visually. Having said that, there are many little details that made me smile; paintings on walls, the little russian-doll motifs worked into carpets and wallpapers, etc. It’s in the details that this game shines, graphically. Special detail has been given to the dolls themselves, which I’m sure is a hat tip to the intricate designs you will find on more traditional matryoshka dolls.

The videos are also an interesting change. They’re all shot in a silent movie format. They look gritty, they’re all shot to a tinkling piano score that’s very appropriate for the supposed timeframe of the game, and they even have the interruption of video to have the speech text displayed as a black and white panel.

Issues

Nothing major with Stacking, really. It’s not trying to do too much in terms of inovation, which could be considered a problem. The linear nature of the main storyline will be a turn-off for those that prefer a huge open-ended world.

I think that Stacking, much like Costume Quest, is amied more at people (or children) that are new to the genre (or gaming in general), as opposed to the hardcore gamers. This will stop some from purchasing it, which is a shame, given how much fun it really is to play and explore. It can be a bit boring if you’re used to more complex puzzle games, but that’s more of a personal preference for masochism.

A major hang-up I had with Stacking was an inability to skip some of the key videos. I’m aware that they did this so that you knew what was going on, but If you are good at understanding what’s going on well ahead of the script, these videos are a slow torture.

My biggest issue is that Stacking is pretty short for it’s cost. I’m pretty sure I clocked about 6 hours on Stacking (that includes doing all of the extras) and finished. I know it’s an XBL game and all, but that’s pretty damned short. This is doubly true when you’re paying 1200 microsoft points for it. If it’d been priced at the more normal 800 points, I probably wouldn’t have made it a point, but it’s not and so I am.

Overall

Stacking is fun. Stacking is cute. Stacking has some interesting game mechanics. It won’t blow your mind, but I’m sure no one would outwardly dislike it. If you can’t find something else to spend 1200 Microsoft points on, you won’t go too wrong dropping them on Stacking. I’d suggest waiting for a sale though.

6.5/10

Anyone that’s in the business will know that there are some common functional elements that you end up having to build with javascript: accordions, tabs, faders, sliders, lightboxes, filters, etc. Many of these items can bleed over into non-report sites, such as intranets or even public-facing sites.

Now some of those are fairly straight forward: an accordion is just a simple animate of a content section, repeat per title; tabs? Same deal. So you might be pretty inclined to just write the script adhoc on a project to project basis, copy and pasting it as you go. We were doing that at my work when I started on, but I found that we kept on having to add something, remove something, add hooks at certain points etc. In some cases we used someone else’s plugin to do these things, but we ran into some issues when it came to having to tweak the plugin for our needs.

As I was hired on as the senior front-ender, I was given the task of trying to help simplify things in our working process. This required me to dive right into plugin development, because one spot we were spending a lot of time was reinventing the wheel project to project. Even more time was spent debugging random plugins, or lashing them together.

As my place of employment works with jQuery, I wanted to develop something that could be maintained in-house, and would be a good starting point for repeating functionality. I ended up developing a jQuery plugin template, which I am sharing today.

Now, while I can’t feature the plugins I’ve made for my work here on my site (I’m pretty sure my they’d be less than impressed with that), I feel it’s fairly safe to distribute this template (boiler plate?) to the internets. It’s a compilation of a couple tutorials, as well as my own exploration into javascript. I’d be more than happy to give credit where it’s due, but I cannot remember where the heck I got some of the snippets I integrated. If anyone reading this happens to know, leave a comment and I’ll be more than happy to give said credit.

Below you will find my jQuery plugin template code in it’s entirety. I’m open to suggestions on how to improve it, so feel free to comment.

/*
*
    Name:      my.blank.plugin.js
    Purpose:   Shell to use for jQuery plugins
*/
(function ($) {
    // DONT FORGET TO NAME YOUR PLUGIN
    jQuery.fn.myPlugin = function (options, i) {
        // This handles multiple elements (like a class selector)
        if (this.length > 1) {
            var a = new Array();
            this.each(
                function (i) {
                    a.push($(this).myPlugin(options, i));
                });
            return a;
        }
        var opts = $.extend({}, $().myPlugin.defaults, options);

        /* PUBLIC FUNCTIONS */

        /* reInit is a flag that you can pass in case you don't
           want to remove everything during the destroy phase. */
        this.Destroy = function (reInit) {
            var container = this;
            var reInit = (reInit != undefined) ? reInit : false;
            $(container).removeData("myPlugin");
            // this removes the flag so we can re-initialize
        };

        this.Update = function (options) {
            opts = null;
            opts = $.extend({}, $().myPlugin.defaults, options);
            this.Destroy(true);
            return this.Create();
        };

        /* iteration will give you the index of the item
           in the selection. If not part of a loop, I'm
           prett sure this will be null. You've been warned. */
        this.Create = function (iteration) {

            // this stops double initialization
            if ($(container).data("myPlugin") == true)
                return this;

            // call a function before you do anything
            if (opts.beforeCreateFunction != null && $.isFunction(opts.beforeCreateFunction))
                opts.beforeCreateFunction(targetSection, opts);

             // reference to the object you're manipulating. To jQuery it, use $(container).
            var container = this;
            /* Failing that, you could just use 'this' without the var declaration,
               but if you are doing a lot of child looping, you'll be glad to have
               a reference to the target object. Also, performance improvements! */

            ////////////////////
            // DO STUFF HERE
            ////////////////////

            // Set a flag to show that this element has been plugin'd
            $(container).data("myPlugin", true);

            // call a function after you've initialized your plugin
            if (opts.afterCreateFunction != null && $.isFunction(opts.afterCreateFunction))
                opts.afterCreateFunction(targetSection, opts);

            /* Make sure to return, otherwise you can't store the element in a varaible,
               which means you can't use any of the plubic functions (you may not need
               them, but it's still good practice.) */
            return this;
        };

        /* Example of a public function, this can be used if you store
           this object in a variable.

           e.g. var foo = $("#target").myPlugin();
                foo.PublicFunction();
        */

        this.PublicFunction = function () {
            // do something
            myPrivatefunction();
        };

        /* PRIVATE FUNCTIONS */

        /* These aren't accessibly externally, and so can only
           be called from within the enclosure code. */

        function myPrivatefunction() { };

        /* arguably, you could wrap your private (or public)
        functions in an array such as the following: */

        // Private helper functions
        helper = {
            firstHelper: function () { /* do something */ },
            secondHelper: function (somevalue) { /* do something with the variable passed in */ }
        };

        //Public helper functions
        this.Helper = {
            FirstHelper: function () { /* do something */ },
            SecondHelper: function (somevalue) { /* do something with the variable passed in */ }
        };

        /* Personally, I don't see the point of doing this for
           anything OTHER than helper functions, I could, and
           probably am, wrong here... or at least ignorant. */

        // Finally
        return this.Create(i);
    };

    // DONT FORGET TO NAME YOUR DEFAULTS WITH THE SAME NAME
    jQuery.fn.myPlugin.defaults = {
        foo: "bar",
        something: "else",

        // Remember: these are function _references_ not function calls
        beforeCreateFunction: null,
        afterCreateFunction: null
    };
})(jQuery);

I’ve tried to comment the hell out of the code, so that it’s as straight-forward as possible. I assume that anyone that uses this will strip out the comments, as well as any of the functionality that isn’t required.

Please feel free to use this, but If you’d be so kind as to give me credit, that’d be swell. I can’t force you, but we’re all friends out here, aren’t we?

I made the last one basically because I have an impulse to change my layout roughly once every year (or two). I was suckered into the whole pop-out style that was going around at the time, and I wanted my piece of the action. As a side-effect, The site sort of fell on its ass when certain browsers hit it. I had already given up on the layout before I had even really finished it.

That’s always a good sign.

First off, you may have noticed that the site has a bit more… character to it. I think this layout is a bit more me. At the very least, it gives viewers a brief glimpse into the borderline insanity that is my mind. I’ve removed my resume from the site, since no one actually cares about that. I’ve split the site – quite literally – down the middle. To the left are my ramblings for your continued enjoyment. To the right is my portfolio… such as it is.

Changes to the blog

So on top of having a bitching yellow background, I’ve narrowed things down. Comments are on the left (a couple styles still need to be applied there) and the main section is more narrow. This makes the page longer, but is more friendly for mobile readers, and actually is fairly readable for screen-readers. Pictures should take up the whole width of the column now. I haven’t gone back into old posts to correct them, so the wide picture thing is a ‘from here on out’ scenario.

Archive pages exist again for things like Categories, Tabs and such. You could probably url-hack the site to get the archives for dates ‘n the like, but I have opted to not include any straight-up way of getting to them. Really they’re just not that important.

I’ve also got search going again! I’m a but surprised that not a single person complained about that on my old design, despite it being a total oversite on my part. And when I did notice it, I had absolutely no intention of adding it (read: giving up on the layout).

Changes to the portfolio

The portfolio is far from complete. After talking to some designers that are far superior to myself, I’ve had some gentle instruction to rethink what I was going for. Very valid arguments that I agree with. So as of right now, it looks the way it looks. When I get done with it, it’ll look totally different. I think I may just skip to the next part, which will talk about what I did here in greater detail.

Suffice it to say that it’s currently an alpha layout at best. I wasn’t happy with it when I started, so think of the current layout as more of a tech-demo.

Code changey stuff

First off, with my running this blog in WP 3-point-whatever version it is this week, I wanted to try and take advantage of some of the new features.

Custom content types! Gone are the hackey days of hidden categories and private posts. Now I’ve got Posts, Portfolio items, and Code items (subject to change). This allows for an easy separation of content, which has made my life so much easier. It requires me to do some custom loop stuff on the portfolio page, but man oh man is it easier.

JQuery stuff! In the last eight months or so, I’ve gone from knowing a smattering of jQuery stuff (how to make plugins go… barely) to writing my own. This is down mostly to my being a senior front-ender at Radley Yeldar, and the ever-pressing advances the designers want to go for with their designs.

Hm. That sounds bitter. I’m not, actually. It’s been a great learning experience for me, and I’m happy to have the challenge. Seriously every day it’s something new. Regardless, I’ve opted to gussy up my site with a bunch of interactions based on some more basic jQuery. Some are more obvious than others. The most noticeable one is the portfolio/code area functionality.

Basically I’ve ajax-ed the whole thing so that when you enter an article, it’ll load it up right there. The nice thing about it is that the fallback for non-js is that it will just link to an article-style page. Simple but effective. The final version of the portfolio will probably maintain that functionality, though the layout will be changing. I’m not sure to what yet (I was just glad to get the layout complete enough to release), but you can assume that the final version will be stunning.

Other changes that are afoot

I’m trying to get into a more regular posting schedule, if only to train myself to stick with anything for longer than a couple of weeks. Normally on Thursdays, but recent things (like releasing and altering a new layout) sort of took over. I’ll try and do a double-post this week. Key word: try.

I’m also going to be investing some more time into varying my posts up a bit more. I’ll be doing more tech-posting, since I’m back in that world. They will probably range between ‘pointless rants’ to ‘something useful and/or downloadable.’ Hopefully more of the latter, but knowing me – which I should – it’ll probably be more of the former. I’m a bit of a bitch that way.

Anyways, I’d love some feedback if anyone has any. I generally take constructive criticism into consideration, but saying ‘ It sucks lol’ will just be met with a sage nod, knowing that the Internet is maintaining the status quo.

That said, the new Professor Layton came with a veritable feast of new mini-games, new puzzles, and one of the best story-lines in a game I’ve played in the last while. As a result, the newest addition to the series (Professor Layton and the Unwound Future) ends up being the best of the series (thus far).

Synopsis

The Unwound Future takes place after the events from the Diabolical Box. Layton and Luke have been invited, somewhat at random, to a scientific demonstration of an apparent time-machine. Things go south (as all preludes in this series do), and days later you get a letter from Luke that has a posting date from 10 years in the future. Now since Layton has conquered ghosts, missing peoples, phantom trains, and imaginary clockwork people, solving a temporal mystery just seems the next logical step.

Luke and Layton follow the instructions, and end up at a mysterious clock shop (surprise, surprise). When brought into the back of the shop, a giant clock awaits them. This is, apparently, a time machine, and before they can think it through, the shop owner throws the switch and Luke and Layton are thrown into the future. Here they notice the changes (and similarities) between them. Eventually they run into Future Luke, and things just get weirder.

As the story unfolds, you find out that the scientist from the demonstration and Layton have some shared past. Namely, they went to the same school, and happened to be in love with the same girl: Claire. The scientist (Dimitri, in case you’re wondering) at first seems to be out to get Layton due to Layton’s winning the affections of Claire. Things, though, are not what they seem. As the story progresses, things get well messed up, and it really does take right up to the 11th hour for everything to come to light.

It ends with, in my opinion, one of the saddest endings I have ever witnessed on the DS. Possibly one of the saddest endings on any Nintendo title that I’ve played. Things are tied up well, if not nicely, and you’re not really left with any questions other than ‘WHY DID THEY JUST DO THAT TO ME?” I was honestly more upset than I thought possible, given the game I was playing. I didn’t sob or anything, but it did move me.

Mechanics

The core mechanics of the game have been left pretty much unchanged. New faces, new places, but the environmental stuff hasn’t moved on much. It doesn’t really need to, either. They got it right the first time, so there’s not much of a need to change it. Tap everywhere to find puzzles and/or hint coins. Solve said puzzles with or without the help of said hint coins. Move on.

The mini-games have changed again. You now get a toy car game, a parrot-guiding game, and the sticker-book game. The toy car game is similar to the hamster game from the last Professor Layon, with a few obvious changes (water, comes to mind). The sticker-book game is fun because you have to put the correct stickers in the correct spots on the page. When this is done, you get to read the whole story. It’s a bit juvenile, but entertaining.

Then there is the parrot game. I hate the parrot game. I hate it more than slider puzzles, and I really hate slider puzzles. The idea is to draw ropes from peg to peg in order to help the parrot (who can only seem to hop short distances) get to end flag before the timer runs down. I’m just going to say right now: I cheated. I don’t even feel bad about it. Know why? because I spent hours and hours trying to legitimately figure the damned parrot puzzles out, and to no avail. Well screw that noise, I have better things to do (shutup I do so) than to run the same parrot simulation over and over and over and over and over and motherfucking over.

The Highs

The laytest installment (see what I did there?) comes with a heaping dose of wonderfully animated cut-scenes, which are pretty much par for the course by this point. The music is wonderful (the alteration of the main/professors theme is sublime) and as goes well with both the puzzles and the story points. Some new items have been added to the score selection, though the puzzle theme remains just as ponderous as it always was.

A special shout-out has to be made here for the grace in which the Professor’s history is handled. While I enjoyed the previous two stories for being entertaining, the Unwound Future is the first in the series that actually made me care about any of the characters. Even Luke, who in many cases I find to be grating, was given a lot more … Luke-ness. That’s a good thing, surprisingly. They really went the extra mile to make the characters mean something more to you than simple puzzle gods, and it shows.

The Lows

Slider puzzles make a shining return in the latest installment, which of course means that I stared at the DS’ screens for a while, scowling in hate until my fail-safe method of random sliding paid off. On top of that, the writers really went out of their way to include more utterly ambiguous riddles. I’m talking about the kind of riddles that legitimately have more than one answer (which makes them shit riddles to begin with) but will only accept whatever cryptic answer they keep locked up in their brain-can. Also, there were a small number of puzzles that looked eerily familiar to past Professor Layton puzzles. I worry that they may be running out of puzzles for the series. Hopefully not.

I also have to say that one of the lows was the feeling of utter depression I got upon finishing the game. I could spoil the ending for you (though I will not) and ruin your day, but suffice it to say that it really struck a chord for me. The only thing that makes a depressing ending worse though, is an unnecessarily depressing ending. They didn’t need to do what they did,  but I guess they felt that the best ending to a light-hearted puzzle game would be to break everyones heart. Repeatedly.

Woe upon the parents who buy this game for their 11 year old daughter, only to have her run into their room, sobbing uncontrollably.

Overall

A great addition to the Professor Layton series, and what will probably go down as my favorite. That is of course until this comes out, and I am forced to purchase a 3DS just to play it.

Regardless, it’s a great title, if not a bit depressing at the end, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is a fan of the series. I would suggest picking up the previous two if you’re new to the series because it will allow you to appreciate Unwound Future so much more.

9/10

Putting aside my moment of Little Tim, Theresa got me a present I’d have never thought to get myself. Hell, it was a gift I would have never guessed, as I’ve never exhibited that much outward desire for it. Now unless you’re not paying attention or you’re simple remedial, I am talking about the
Amazon Kindle.

Now I would have never thought to buy myself a Kindle, because I am a huge proponent of physical books. Books can do so much that the Kindle cannot. Such lists exist out there, but I won’t start ranting about it in this post. I love books. I love their smell, their feel, the sense of accomplishment you get from finishing them, all of it. I love books, and have since I was a wee lad. So when I saw the eReaders start to come out, I just sighed gently and continued going to book stores, knowing that eventually these wondrous bound tomes would eventually go the way of all great things.

As such, I’ve never had the desire to own a Kindle. I have a reader on my iPhone and iPad, and figured that was good enough for when the physical book could not be owned. I can’t buy a lot of books here, so this is for the time being, quite the requirement for me.

So when my Kindle did arrive (January 7th, thank you very much. Next day delivery my ginger-haired buttocks), I was pleased to have it, but more because I could finally open my Christmas present. I wasn’t really salivating at the thought of owning the Kindle itself. However, since my girlfriend did spend a decent chunk of money to purchase the Kindle for me, I decided that I should at least give it the old ‘college try.’

Here’s what I have to say about it.

First Impressions

I own the Kindle 3, graphite with wifi and 3G. We decided to go big or go home. If nothing else, the fact that I have some sort of access to the Internet anywhere I can get 3G signal is, I admit, a selling point.

The first thing I noticed was how light it was. It weighs next to nothing. I’d argue that it’s lighter than my phone, and I carry that around all the time. I also noticed that it has roughly the same dimensions and feel to it as the PADDs from Star Trek. This is of course a point in its favour.

The next thing I noticed was the display. They go on about how you can read it, even in direct sunlight. This is almost true. You can read it in direct sunlight, just so long as you don’t have the sun bouncing off it just right so that it refracts into your eyes, readily blinding you. It’s not colour (obviously), which I’ll get to in a moment.

It’s got an a-z keyboard, with most of the extra keys (symbols, numbers, etc) tucked away in a sub menu. It’s a device for reading, which means that a keyboard doesn’t need to be overly thorough. It would have been nice though. I miss the touch screen of the iPhone/iPad but I understand that the Kindle isn’t an iPad, and a touch screen wouldn’t do that much for the user experience (or the weight).

There are a slew of usability options for those with bad-eyesight, or other difficulties reading such as font-sizing, changeable fonts (though only to condensed or sans-serif) and more. There’s almost an irony in the fact that they work so hard to help those with reading difficulties, but utterly fails everyone else on a number of points (this is covered in the issues section). There’s also some neat experimental stuff that I’ll get to at the end of this review.

The Kindle can also store upwards of 3000 books at any given time. That’s a lot of goddamned books for any one person to carry around. Does the term ‘choice paralysis’ mean anything? It also boasts a month-long battery life, assuming you keep the wifi off. I can’t really complain about that. Heck even with the wifi constantly on, it lasts a lot longer than I expected it to.

That all being said, there are some issue with the Kindle. Some more glaringly obvious than others.

Oh, and before we move on, it should be noted here that you can leave notes per page/book; you can add bookmarks for easy jumping; you can post quotes to mail,twitter and Facebook; and some other features that I will honestly never use. I am merely mentioning them for the sake of completeness.

Issues

Paging buttons

First up, the paging buttons. On the left and right of the Kindle are 4 buttons (2 per side). One goes forward, and the other backwards. Pretty routine, yes? One button on each side is larger than it’s sibling. Now at first glance you would think that the big button on the right would page forward, and the big button on the left would page backwards. You would of course be wrong. Both big buttons page forward, leaving the page back function to the little sibling buttons.

Now I do understand why they do this: no hand-held bias.  Hold it with either hand, and the controls are the same. That’s fine and dandy, but when you hold it with two hands like, oh I don’t know, a book, your brain gets confused. This irritates me. Basically if you read with one hand, you’re fine, but with two, you actually need to think about things if you want to go backwards.

The display

Great though the display is, there are some issues with it due to the materials chosen to construct it. You see the screen uses an e-ink technology that allows the Kindle to shock an image into the e-ink and walk away. There is no charge required to hold the image there, and this is part of the reason the battery life on the Kindle is so good; it doesn’t use much to just sit there, showing text.

My issue with the display is two-fold: first, e-ink only comes in one colour: black. you can do shading on the Kindle, but that’s it. No other colours can you have. Second, every time you have to turn a page, the screen goes all black before showing the new text. Now I get that this can be a visual queue for people, but unless you’re into your book, this ‘black flash’ can get distracting. It’s the most noticeable when you are skimming a book; it’s damned irritating, and there’s nothing to be done about it. Apparently this flash is worse on the older models. My version turns pages 20% faster! Yikes.

Speed (or a lack thereof)

The Kindle isn’t nearly as snappy as I expected it to be. It reminds me a lot of the hand-held games from times of yore. You know, the shitty little beeping things where you dodged hammers or raced a car. I’m spoiled with my flashy iDevices, so I’m used to my tech responding quickly. The Kindle seems limited in its speed due to (I think) its screen. It can only go as fast as the screen can refresh, which isn’t all that fast. It’s not terribly slow, but it’s slow enough to get annoying when you’re just trying to move around the device quickly.

The Keyboard

It’s awkward, it’s stiff, and having to access an on-screen menu for additional characters (like say, the comma or the question mark) is insane. I don’t really want to mention the horrifying 5-way cursor … thing that you have to endure.

No Goddamned Backlight

For serious? You want me to spend how much on a case to have a light? Fuck you. You could build one in and give me the option of turning it on or something. I’d have paid for that, no problem. Easily my biggest hang-up with the Kindle.

No fucking backlight, I mean seriously now. Cocks.

General usability issues

If I gave the kindle to my mother, and told her to do anything on it, the following would happen:

• Pick it up
• Look at it
• Click some buttons
• Frown
• Look at me
• Look back at the Kindle
• Click some more buttons
• Smash it against a rock and throw her feces at it like an enraged orangoutang.

The reason for this is that my mother isn’t tech-savvy. As such, things need to be made as simple and as obvious as possible without taking away from the experience. The Kindle isn’t any of this. Contextual menus don’t retain common options that you’d expect; the 5-point navigation abomination is a method of slow torture; visual queues aren’t that noticeable; and buttons that don’t do what you expect. Hell, the first thing you see when you turn it on is the manual. If you don’t read through the first 15 pages of this thing, you’re going to be super duper lost.

I read the manual, and I never read manuals.

Also, unless you make yourself some collections, once you start adding more than say, 10 books onto the Kindle, you’re going to have to start paging a lot to get to the books at the end. On that note, collection creation and management could be improved immensely. Took me a while to figure out how to add books to an existing collection.

Despite it all…

Despite everything listed above, the Kindle does it’s job shockingly well. Yes, in spite of  itself, the Kindle does allow you read a book, and quickly. I’m devouring books on this device like a fat man in a skittle factory. I’m not sure if that’s just because I’m getting right back into reading, or if the device actually allows me to read faster. I don’t know, but I’ve been using it for less than a week and I’ve finished 4 books.

for the record, yes I have a job, and no I don’t just sit there and read all day. I actually do work. I do so! Shut up, you don’t even know me. You’re not my father! You don’t own me!

Buying books through the Kindle, while a bit janky, is surprisingly easy and the 3G option allows you to get books pretty much anywhere. This will spell disaster for my bank account. The Kindle store is simple enough to navigate, and the prices are alright. Not as cheap as I really think they should be (for godsake it’s a stripped-down PDF, not a bound book.) but still cheaper than buying the paperback.

The Browser (and the other experimental stuff)

I have to tip my hat to the Kindle team with the experimental portion of the Kindle. While I have not tried everything (such as mp3 payback or audio books) the browser and the text-to-speech tools are impressive.

Now with the browser (a webkit-derived browser no less!) you have to remember that it’s black and white, and it’s on a Kindle. Basically, don’t expect to be blown away. You have to zoom large pages, scrolling around is weird, and it can crash. That said, I did manage to use my Kindle to chat to someone using the meebo mobile site, which was doable, if not entirely enjoyable. I should state that if you plan to visit Facebook, for the love of god, visit the mobile version. The main version is heavy, and it broke my Kindle. I had to do a hard-reset just to fix it. Normal off/on wouldn’t work.

In case anyone is wondering, a hard reset can be performed by sliding the power switch over and holding it there for at least 20 seconds.

The voice-over tool actually impressed me. While not as smooth as Apples text-to-speech AI voice actor thing, the Kindle does a decent job not sounding like Steven Hawking on a bad day. I don’t know if I could have an entire book read to me in that voice, but it is far better than I expected.

Overall

I’ve learned to like the Kindle. I don’t think I’ll ever truly love the device, but I’ll probably miss it when it goes away. It does its primary job very well, and web browser doesn’t totally suck. There are som obvious issues with the usability that hopefully will be removed in later iterations of the Kindle.

6.5/10