I never really used the Genius feature in iTunes much since I pretty much have all of my shuffling goodness taken care of by a bunch of Smart Playlists.  But I was pretty intrigued by the new Genius Mixes – 12 auto-generated radio station-like mixes derived from your library and Genius information.  So I decided to give it a spin because it does sound pretty fun if it works.

The one that first jumped out as me was a mix based on Electric Light Orchestra, Steely Dan and Suga Shikao – a Japanese singer-songwriter that I like.  I thought that this was an intriguing and eclectic starting spot for a mix.  I also had them filed in different genres, so Genius was clearly not doing simple genre-matching.  And hey, it seemed like it would work.  So while I was working, I fired that one up to see what it came up with.  Turns out that it would have been a good mix had I wanted to listen to an ELO song, followed by a Steely Dan song, followed by a Suga Shikao song, followed by an ELO song, lather, rinse, and repeat.  Not so awesome.

Went back to the selection screen to seek a different mix.  Perhaps the first one was a little too eclectic for the Genius algorithm.  Ah-ha – one based on Queen, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Tom Petty.  Certainly they can manage to toss together a serviceable classic rock mix.  That one got off to a decent start with Honky Tonk Women, but in a couple moves I was getting Roxy Music ballads and some crappy NeoProg I didn’t know I even had.  Now, while I realize having the crappy NeoProg was indeed my fault, in my defense I had forgotten about it, and either way, it really had no business being in that mix.

So I punted and went back to classic Genius configuration – select a specific tune and then hit the Genius button.  At least that way you can see what is in the generated mix.  I started off with Tempted by Squeeze – expecting a peppering of 80’s New Wave, assorted Power Pop and perhaps some other British singer-songwriters like Graham Parker or Richard Thompson.  Instead it coughed up some Rush and pulled tracks from the single Grateful Dead album I have.  Strike three.

Another flaw of note: it seems to completely ignore user ratings.  I know not everyone rates all their stuff since it can be a pain.  However, I would expect that it would prioritize on higher-rated stuff if someone had rated everything as I have.  Apparently not.

I really like the Genius/Genius Mix idea, but sadly it still seems to be pretty half-baked.  Time to go back to the good old Smart Playlists.

I was getting tired of dual-booting my MacBook Pro with Boot Camp when I wanted to play stuff like Portal or Civilization IV.  Dual-booting is a pain and the laptop fan controls do not function properly when Boot Camping.  So, I experimented with running things under the generally awesome VMware Fusion.  First the WinXP license business got pernickety with me when loading my Boot Camp partition under VMware.  After fixing that, some of the games worked pretty well, but I kept getting show-stopping map rendering errors with Civ IV and that was pretty much a deal breaker.  When I was searching around for a solution to that problem, I ended up stumbling across some information about CrossOver Games.  COG is a branch of the WINE-based CrossOver Mac/Linux products from Codeweavers that focuses on running Windows-based games rather than desktop/office software.  And after trying it out, I must say that I’m a convert.

Since this is a WINE-based solution, COG lacks the traditional performance overhead inherent in emulators (Wine Is Not an Emulator), does not require a Windows license, and does not have the disk space hit of Boot Camp or VMware.  Those are all significant upsides.  On the downside, not every game under the sun is supported.  But, it seems a lot of their recent development efforts have focused on games that run under Valve’s Steam distribution platform.  Ostensibly, supporting the litany of copy protection schemes is one of the big challenges of developing something like COG, but Steam’s consistent distribution method cracks that nut for a bunch of games at once.  Since Steam is becoming more and more ascendent, I’m guessing that this has been a huge boon for Codeweavers’ efforts.

- Installation:

Installation is easy for Steam under COG – there is a built-in option for a Steam installation option in the installation wizard, it automatically creates a WinXP WINE “bottle” and bootstraps in the Steam client for you.  Then you just fire up Steam, enter your account information, and you’re good to go.  If you don’t want to download everything all over again (and are familiar with the Steam file hierarchy), then you can just drag in the content/save files from a Boot Camp partition or from external media to the proper places in the new bottle.  Drag the Steam icon to your Dock and fire it up.

- What works:

It appears that COG game compatibility under Steam depends on a variety of factors.  Some games are officially supported and those will obviously work.  High-performance modern FPS games like Bioshock or Crysis will categorically not.  Some games are not officially supported, but run just fine as-is.  Sometimes (as is the case with Civ IV), only the Steam version of a game works.  Their website has a very good compatibility list that includes hints and reports from users about non-supported games.  So just because a game is not listed, does not mean it will not run.  When in doubt, download the demo from Steam and find out for yourself.  Game complexity is not necessarily the deciding factor either.  I’m running the “unsupported” W40K: Dawn Of War RTS series just fine, but a whimsical download of the much simpler Geometry Wars just plain does not work.  From what I gather, they throw their support efforts behind games that the user base is clamoring for the most.

I am running the following games flawlessly:

- The Orange Box (Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress 2, etc)
- Civilization IV and it’s expansions (note: have not tried Colonization yet)
- Warhammer 40K: Dawn Of War and expansions
- A handful of causal games like Bejeweled 2, Luxor and Peggle

Check out their longer compatibility list for more.

- How it works:

Performance has been pretty good overall.  When initially invoking the Steam client there is a bit of startup lag while wineloader does its thing initially.  After that things run pretty smoothly.  The games are snappy, start up in an acceptable amount of time, and I (mostly) run everything at maximum resolution and have not had to downgrade the graphics settings for performance reasons.  The only game I needed to tune down was Civ IV when I got to the mid-game and lots of things are moving around on the map.  But stuff like Half-Life and Portal are perfectly fine graphics-wise w/out tuning things down.  Things seem happiest running in full-screen mode rather than windowed or the “full screen but you can still see your menu bar and use Spaces” resolution mode.  Occasionally some splash screens will not display – the Valve splash does not.  There are occasional issues like this with startup but when you get to the game itself, things seem fine.  The games perform well, but may take a little “nudging” at install time.

- It is worth it:

It depends on the user.  If the supported games hit your pocket right (Civ IV fans for example) then it is totally worth it.  For me, the Orange Box, Civ IV and Dawn of War hits most of my current non-console gaming needs, so that makes COG quite attractive to me.  The modern FPS fan, who most likely already has a teflon-cooled PC gaming rig, will probably not care about this as much.  The satisfied user will also probably want to have at least a journeyman tinkerer’s badge when using the product as it is a little rough around the edges at times and so may require a little tweeking.  Codeweavers offers a 7 day uncrippled demo that one can install and try for oneself.  The license is only $40 and comes with a year’s worth of “talk to a real person on the phone” support when you are dealing with problems with a supported game.  Their forum support also seems pretty responsive as well.  And hey, supporting a commercial deployment of open-source software is a good thing in my book.

In conclusion, this is a really solid product if you are an Intel-based Mac user, don’t want to bother with dual-booting, and your gaming itch can be scratched by Steam games in general and Valve games in particular.  With the rise of the new Intel-based Macs, I’m guessing/hoping that the need for products like COG will become less and less of an issue as more games see native/concurrent releases on both Win/OS X.

Spore has had a bit of a bumpy launch.  Of course there was the massive shitstorm about the DRM that is deployed with the game (which upon a closer look, may not be as bad as initially thought).  The gameplay has gotten mixed reviews as well – for the people that were expecting “Will Wright’s Civilization 10″, it is a letdown.  As someone who generally agrees with the newly presented “Gamers Bill of Rights“, I do think that they misstepped somewhat with the DRM.  I am also finding that you can progress through the first 4 stages of the game pretty rapidly once you grasp the basic mechanics.  So, I can sort of understand why it got the mixed reviews that it has (I guess I am just adding another one to the mix here).  All that said, I must say:

Spore is a fun game.  Full Stop.

About the DRM: my first taste of non-console games was games distributed via Steam.  Then when I later learned about the long-standing “disc in the drive” model of game authentication I was aghast.  I game on an Intel based Mac laptop and the idea of shuttling around a bunch of media just to play a game on my lapper was unacceptable.  Especially since laptops are, you know, portable devices.  So, the authentication that Spore is using (that is, online registration) seemed somewhat more palatable to me.  I have no idea why they limited your installation to 3 machines, and this is where they screwed up – at least from a public relations standpoint.  The game already has online hooks so why don’t they just use the same “as many machines as you like just not at the same time” model that Steam uses?  Granted, I won’t be needing to install the game on more than 3 machines (current count: 1 – eventual count when I upgrade my desktop to Intel Mac: 2), but the restriction still seems somewhat artificial since we how have the Steam model to lead us to a new era of non-console gaming with sane piracy controls.  So yes, some criticism is warranted, but I suspect that Spore caught an extra heaping helping of blowback just because it happens to be a muchly anticipated/hyped game.  So my verdict on that is not glowing, however, not as evil as evil as presented by the angry masses – especially in the light of the Ars Technica experiment.

About the gameplay: No, this is not the biggest baddest strategy game on the market.  But it is charming as hell.  I’ve never played a Sims game (nor did I ever have a desire to), but the whole business with tweeking your race, and designing your buildings or your vehicles is just fun.  Jamie and I both hit the Tribal phase at the same time and were both sitting there giggling and having a grand old time outfitting our new tribesmen.  I read an astute comment somewhere online to the effect of “the Will Wright games are half game, half toy”, so I fail to see why people are surprised that this is not some hardcore RTS game.  Yes, you can move through the Cell to Civilization phases pretty quickly, but it is sort of the “ride” that’s fun.

I have moved into (but have not yet completed) the final Space phase.  The game sort of hits a blip at that point and turns into more of a proper strategy game.  Since this is my first run-through, I’m playing on easy mode to get used to the game mechanics (and am greatly looking forward to further run-throughs on higher skill levels on different planets).  Even on easy mode, the game hits a perceptible bump in complexity when you progress to Space.  At first blush, it reminded me of an old-school pen-and-paper RPG called Traveller I played when I was a youngling.  Hauling cargo, terraforming, spacecraft combat, colonization, obtaining items, managing planetary resources, etc.  Real time events start hauling you away from whatever you’re in the middle of.  Coming off of a little love affair with Civ IV, I’m totally liking the Space phase.

The game, as predicted, is beautiful, charming, has great music and an amazing amount of polish.  The controls are very intuitive – I love how you move from planet surface to deep space just by scrolling your mouse wheel.  I’ve needed to look at the manual rarely if ever.  Having a single save file per planet keeps you honest, but is not too punishing since you can restart a certain phase without having to backtrack too much.  Is it sort of awkward from the standpoint of some parts being too easy for seasoned players and perhaps too hard for casual/Sims-style gamers?  Probably, but you can just tweek your difficulty to taste.  Moreover, once you’ve unlocked a certain phase, you can just jump that when you want to.  Don’t like creature building?  Grab a pre-made from the Sporepedia and play with that instead of rolling your own.

As a personal aside: one unintended place I think that Spore shines is that it is excellent training fodder for someone (like myself) starting to dip their toes into the world of real-time strategy games.  I’ve played lots of turn-based games (JRPGs, SRPGs, Civ IV) but have been trying to evolve to titles like W40K: Dawn of War and the impending Starcraft II.  Spore is a great starter RTSG.  For me, it is worth it for that alone.  Suck at Warcraft?  Play Spore and come back later.

So, is Spore the game of the century?  No.  Did it introduce a new mature game distribution model the way Valve did with Steam?  Not at all.  Is it the ultimate strategy game?  Nope.  Most consistent in its pacing?  Nay on that mark as well.  Is it a unique game that is fun to play, worth playing if you like video games, and might offer different things to different gamers?  An unqualified Yes.

Oh and they give you this cute and useless little flash deal to show off your goods in your blog.  So why not?

I upgraded my Mac OS X from Tiger to Leopard yesterday. Overall I got nice things to say offset by one big honkin’ rant. Read on if this may concern you in the near future.

First off and most notably, it took a long time. I mean over an hour to just upgrade the OS – not counting installing all the development tools and running the software updater to get fresh patches. Probably two and a half hours door to door. I don’t remember the Tiger upgrade taking so long. However I do applaud that the installation disk verifies its own integrity before installing. You don’t want a bunk disk failing during upgrade thereby trashing your current installation. So after upgrading, restarting, installing more crap, restarting, installing patches, restarting and finally upgrading the firmware in my Airport Extreme/Express units, I was apparently good to go. So I did some looking around to make sure some of my crucial settings were still in place.

Cue the rant…

I had made some custom modifications to the firewall – opening up certain ports to accommodate certain things. So I went looking for that to make sure all was well. First I found that the firewall settings are no longer to be found where they were. I tracked them down under the “Security” pane in System Preferences. They re-did things a bit and here is what I saw:

So first off, the firewall is disabled by default. And that is so not OK. Next off, what do those other options actually mean? Especially the second and third options? Are they independent or do they work in tandem? I did some poking around and found an excellent discussion that shed a little light on the subject. First off, “Block all” does not actually do that. It sort of does. So, most importantly, hit the Advanced button and enable Stealth Mode. Then it actually functions like a proper firewall. You want this enabled for whatever mode you want to run the firewall in. But what if you want to open up ports for specific apps? Well, then that’s what the third option is for. When you run in this mode, if an app (a torrent client, doing point to point file transfers using a chat client, etc) attempts to start up on a port and accept connections, you will get a dialog box asking if this is OK. So one may allow or deny certain services through the firewall. Unfortunately, when you shut down the app in question, the firewall does not close the port. Moreover, it’s rumored that the OS digitally signs the apps that it opens up the ports for, so if they change – it all breaks. A for effort security-wise but D for execution.

Point one: what the fuck Apple? Leaving the firewall disabled by default? What gives with that? Point two: I get trying to streamline exposing pinholes in the firewall, but what reason is there to remove a power-user option to configure port exceptions manually? Not many people need to use it, but the ones that do need that. The feature existed in Tiger, so why remove it? Argh! So yeah, if you upgrade, tidy up that firewall. The link above give a more in-depth discussion of what’s going on under the hood. God bless the people that have the drive and the time to tinker and write it up for the rest of us.

So after I got done frothing and foaming about the firewall issue, I got down to tinkering around with all those nifty new features. Gotta say, pretty slick at points. Apple has a video that goes over much of it (worth watching if you upgrade) but some comments of mine:

The hacks to the finder – the new Cover Flow browsing mode coupled with Quick Look – are really nice. Plus the whole Stacks thing (another desktop/finder tweek) also looks really slick and could be potentially very useful for re-organizing the messy desktop. I just watched the video of those features and giggled and the sheer Apple-y-ness of the finder hacks. Spotlight is quite a bit faster now and it really speedy if you use it as an app launcher – so you Quicksilver users may not need that anymore. The iChat app has lots of multimedia eye candy jammed into it. Meh. Use Adium instead. Preview got a facelift and a bunch of nice (most PDF oriented) features added as well. The terminal no longer lets you set an image as a background. Boo to that. The Mail app got a slew of new cool features. I like the Notes and To Do features – the To Do notes also tie into the iCal app and that is slick. Notes take any sort of media you care to jam into them and can get all the sticky notes off of one’s desktop. The mail reading window has some neat additions – if there is something in the body of the email that looks like an address or email address or chat handle, it makes it easy to suck it right into the Address Book app. Nice job with that.

However, as a long time UNIX user, I’m mostly stoked about having real native virtual desktop support (Spaces) rather than having to rely on the other ones that have their problems. They even mapped the desktop movement hotkeys to Control-Arrow – just like we did it back in the day. Spaces is hands-down my favorite thing about the new upgrade. Furthermore, Spaces plus the Growl notification app is a win.

I’m not going to go on about all the new features since you can read about that anywhere. Overall, It looks like a worthwhile upgrade and it went painlessly. It just takes a while to accomplish it all, and the sins with the firewall left a bad taste in my mouth that has not gone away yet.

Cheers all.