What happens when Mario dies?  Something found via facebook this weekend :-)  Happy Halloween to you out there :-)

Το είχα ξεχάσει αυτό το τραγούδι, και μου άρεσε αρκετά όταν βγήκε. Η μουσική μου θυμίζει λίγο ταινίες δράσης της εποχής.

This past week I was looking on the web for interesting news, research, and funny humor, relating to language and linguistics for my department's social media presence (here, here, and here are some places - if you are interested).  I came across this Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic strip which made me chuckle, but it seemed inappropriate for work...so here it is :-)

This comic strip of Jurassic Trek makes fun of themany time Kirk had a torn shirt... (you'd think Starfleet would have more durable materials!)

(original archive here)

As is customary for me, when I travel abroad for an extended period of time I tend to get a local SIM card to put into my phone, so I can have a local number, some local SMS, and more importantly data!  It makes it easier to communicate with the locals and verify AirBnB information.  Luckily, in recent years, T-Mobile allows for free 2G (GPRS) data roaming, which made things a little less painful than going from full-data to no-data, back to full data.

So, in researching Spanish data packages it seemed that Orange was the better deal, which is why I preferred to go with them. Lebara Mobile seemed to have pop-up kiosks in train stations which made them more convenient, but I'd prefer to get top-up cards from Orange stores.  The annoying this is that there wasn't an Orange store at Barcelona's international airport. There was a Vodafone retailer (with huge ads) but nothing with Orange.  Not a problem, a day or so later we went to an Orange store down the street from where we were staying and started the process.  The line was pretty big. I feel like it took an hour to get through the line, even though there were only 5 people ahead of me.  I needed a passport to get the SIMs for our phones (a passport card would not do...heck my Greek ID card wouldn't do either, which is silly considering you can travel within the EU without passports if you are a citizen...).  Anyway,  once we got our SIMs we were activated right away.  None of this "wait 24 hours" crap we had in Italy.

The Ballena 14 package was the most economical if you wanted only data.  15 euros gets you 2GB of data, 30 minutes of call time for Spanish numbers, and some SMS messages included.  In our trip we ended up spending 30 euros per person (2 Ballenas each) for our data needs.  We had JUST missed a special where they doubled what you get for 15 euros, so depending on when you top-up you might just get 4GB for 15 euros.  Orange has an app on android called "mi Orange" (pictured above) which allows you to see the remainder of money on your account, how much data you've used, how much talk time,  and  assume you can top-up from there.  The problem was that since my address on the Google Store is in the US, I was region-locked out of downloading it (it wasn't even showing up in my search I don't think). I ended up finding the APK file and installing it as is.  The App works marvelously, no passwords required. When you try to log in with your phone number you get some secure SIM thing happening in the background and you can authorize from a pop-up authorization. This saved me from having yet another password. The only issue I really saw with the app was that the notification of how quickly you use data lags behind what you actually use.  For example, I was stuck on "you've used 25MB" for a few days (maybe a week) after top-up, and then BAM, you've used 600MB. The good news is that even though you can check your data via the app, they also send you a notification when you've spent 80% of your data via SMS.

Now, I ended up using 80% of my data 5 days into our trip (on the first top-up) because I've had Flickr and YouTube uploading in the background when they shouldn't have had.  On the second top-up I disabled background uploading and enabled the upload only on wifi feature.  That lasted me the remaining 2 weeks. Imagine if I were roaming - that bill would have been huge.

All things considered, I really liked Orange. Service worked, maps worked, Pokemon GO worked, and prepaid data was fairly cheap.  I would use them again if the lines weren't too long at their stores :-)

Funny gamercat comic strip from this past week.  Can slay tons of beasts in games...but not a spider.

A while back, during a Humble Store sale, I got Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China (as well as India and Russia). I had downloaded the China version of the Chronicles when I first got the game, but it had quickly gone into disuse since I was focusing mostly on Star Trek Online and on Bully on the xbox. While I was on vacation, with little access to good wifi, I ended up going to the only game I had on my computer for some entertainment.

While I was on vacation I actually finished the game! The reason I had put the game away (at the time) was the control scheme. The control scheme, using the keyboard and the mouse, was a little too clunky for my taste. However, on the tablet, with a trackpad instead of a mouse, the control were (amazingly) easier. I think that the distance between keyboard controls and mouse make all the difference in this game, and playing on the laptop was amazingly more pleasing than on desktop mode. The game itself reminds me a lot of the Prince of Persia heritage of the Assassin’s creed line of games. The game is mostly a 2D side-scroller, however there are moments where you can go backward into the background or forward on the foreground which gives the game a feeling that the word is much more three dimensional than it actually is.

The plot of the game (edited and augmented from Wikipedia) is: that the story takes place after the film Assassin's Creed: Embers (which I need to see again…). The game takes place in 1526 China and focuses on a female assassin called Shao Jun. After being trained by legendary Italian assassin Ezio Auditore (the connection to Assassin’s Creed II), Shao Jun returns to her homeland to exact vengeance against the Templar group Eight Tigers, who wiped out the Chinese brotherhood. Her quest takes her through Macau, Nan'an, the Forbidden City and the Great Wall, as she kills the Tigers one by one and finally assassinates the final target, Zhang Yong. Years later, Shao Jun, who becomes an Assassin Mentor and has rebuilt the brotherhood, plots the assassination of Jiajing Emperor by sending him an elixir of life. The story ends with Shao Jun telling us the lesson she learns through this entire adventure: Those who seek revenge better dig two graves, one for their target and one for themselves.

In this game I liked the story, I liked the 2D side-scrolling nature of the game, and I loved the art! The art of the game really reminded me of eastern ink drawings, and the way the cinematics were done underlined the ink painting nature of the visuals. The thing that I didn’t like, in the end, were the controls. While I (stubbornly) made my way through the game to completion, I feel like I was battling the controls most of the time. I am currently playing Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India, and the controls on the desktop are a pain still. I might just get the type-cover back out and put it on my Surface so I can continue the game.

Overall, I liked this game because of the visuals and the story. I’d give this game a 7.5/10

Your thoughts?

Back in the early 2000s when I listened to JPOP and KPOP this was one of the first songs I came across.  Still don't speak much Japanese, still don't understand the lyrics, still love this song ;-) The video is that great in terms of audio (as most live recorded performances), but it gives you an idea :-)

Nintendo's new gaming console seems like a mix of mobile and at-home console gaming.  Seems pretty interesting, and it reminds me of the stuff that OQO tried to do with computing. Let's see how it goes :)