Archive for April, 2005 Page 2 of 8

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Breaking In Office 2004

Published
by
Danny
on April 26, 2005
in Technology
. Closed

I finally installed Microsoft Office 2004 on my Powerbook this weekend. I don’t actually use Office much day to day, but my resume is a Word doc and I do write the occasional recommendation letter. Word 2004 launches noticeably faster than Word X, and the UI feels snappier. I didn’t try any of the newfangled features though. Open, type, save, quit. Excel and Powerpoint were installed as well, but I have yet to actually launch those.

I was very curious to check out Entourage 2004 and see if it would be a good replacement for my current combination of Mail, Address Book, and iCal. Setting up Entourage was a breeze. I was able to import all of my mail accounts and mailboxes from Mail without any problems. My .Mac account was also automatically converted to an IMAP account, so I could do live syncing with the server.

Importing my contacts from Address Book was just a simple matter of exporting everything from Address Book as a single vCard file and then dragging and dropping that vCard file into the Entourage address book. Most items showed up fine, although there are no pre-defined fields for IM accounts other than MSN Messenger (which didn’t surprise me at all), so those items were ignored. There were also some weird instances of IM account names showing up in the Home Phone Number field, but I never did figure out why that happened.

The only roadblock I encountered was getting information from iCal into Entourage. Simply put, I couldn’t just convert the data. There’s probably a very easy method for doing it, but I didn’t bother looking it up, since everything else was so simple and straightforward. No biggie though. I hardly have anything on my calendar beyond birthdays (which showed up in the address book just fine) and the occasional appointment (which I end up remembering anyway).

So, after getting all of my old data setup, it was time to actually do something in Entourage. The preview pane did a great job of displaying a variety of message formats, especially HTML-formatted mail. Mei forwarded me a message the other day that showed up in Apple Mail as a very skinny column of text about 8 words wide, making very tedious to read through the message. That same message filled Entourage’s preview window perfectly.

Message Grouping is a pretty nice feature that allows you to group items in the message list according to variety of criteria. I found it interesting that there wasn’t a default threaded view for messages. You could group by subject, but the groups can only sort alphabetically. I had to create a custom grouping option that would list by date instead. Other than that little hiccup, the grouping feature worked as I expected.

Composing messages was pretty straightforward. Popup address completion, drag and drop editing, text formatting, and other typical email-writing tasks worked well. I didn’t see anything here that was new or different in terms of functionality. I did, however, notice that everything was much snappier and more responsive than Mail.

Entourage’s address book is a mixed blessing for me. On one hand, there are plenty of fields for saving contact information. There really isn’t anything that you can’t save. On the other hand, it’s easy to build up a large amount of data for all of your contacts, making it harder to manage the content and causing the list view to lag when scrolling. Also, the custom field names in the contact window do not carry over to the list view’s columns, which I found to be annoying.

I didn’t really play around much with the other views. The calendar and task list worked as I expected (I mean, it’s a calendar and a task list…). I never used the notes features in previous version of Entourage or even Outlook, so I ignored it. I didn’t even try out the projects section. I might give it a shot when I have a project that needs to managed.

For the most part, I like using Entourage. It’s nice having my email, address book, and calendar available in a single program and being able to link data between various items, i.e. I can have relevant contacts and email linked to calendar events. The program is pretty snappy, even on my aging Powerbook. And general setup and usage is incredibly simple.

However, there are a few things that bother me. The WYSIWYG font menu is unbearably slow. I guess that’s why it’s turned off by default. The toolbar is not customizable at all. You can only turn it on and off. There is no system-wide integration with the address book. Somehow, there are a lot of background processes running, because the fan on my Powerbook always fires up after leaving Entourage running for more than an hour. And, although the application looks like a Mac app, it doesn’t feel like one. It still feels like Outlook with an OSX skin on it.

As nice as it is having all of the combined features of Entourage, I don’t think I’ll be switching to it for my daily messaging and contact management. I like the simplicity and elegance of Mail, Address Book and iCal. Mail fulfills 99% of my daily email needs, so there’s no reason for me to switch. I like being able to customize toolbars to have buttons that I actually use. The inter-application integration of Address Book (primarily iChat, Adium, and iPhoto) is incredibly handy and something I’ve taken for granted. Above all, I really like the UI of Apple’s applications. Mail, Address Book, and iCal just feel right.

Do The Kung Fu Hustle

Published
by
Danny
on April 23, 2005
in Movies
. 1 Comment

After a failed attempt to watch Kung Fu Hustle on DVD a couple of weeks ago, my buddies and I went out to downtown Kirkland to catch its US premiere last night. Man, what a fun movie. Campy dialog, hilarious characters, and kung fu action. Just watch the trailer, and you’ll get an idea of what the movie is like. I was laughing practically non-stop through the entire movie. Kudos to Stephen Chow for cranking another winner.

The fight scenes (which make up the vast majority of the movie) were incredibly well-choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping, the mastermind behind the action sequences in The Matrix. The combination of wire work and special effects really gave the action an extremely over-the-top and entertaining quality.

The story elements weren’t exactly thought-provoking nor groundbreaking, but they were a lot of fun and provided a nice framework for the action. I don’t think anyone really cares what the story is. It’s all about the fighting. :)

This is definitely a must-see for fans of martial arts movies, especially if you liked Shaolin Soccer (another Stephen Chow film). It’s amusing, jaw-dropping, and just plain fun.

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New High Score

Published
by
Danny
on April 23, 2005
in Games
. 2 Comments

I gots me a new high score in Lumines. 1 hour and 5 minutes of game play, topping out at level 95 with a whopping 296,014 points. It’s late and my eyes are burning, but it was well worth it. Well, worth it in a gaming-geek sort of way.

Alright, Dave. See if you can match that score. :)

Lumines High Score

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The Way of the Open Palm

Published
by
Danny
on April 22, 2005
in Games
. Closed

On my way home from work last night, I stopped by Best Buy and picked up a copy of Jade Empire. I had it stuck in my head that I would be getting it yesterday as a gratuity item for the usability research at Microsoft. However, since that wasn’t the case, I just had to buy a copy for myself.

The first thing you see after popping the game in the Xbox is a short gallery of character paintings. I thought that was a nice deviation from the standard company logos (which show up after the gallery images). It’s a much smoother transition into the game than your normal loud music and flashy logos.

Starting the game is pretty simple. Pick a character, customize it if you like, and jump right into the story. I didn’t bother reading the manual (who reads manuals?), so I had no idea what any of the controls did. Luckily, a good chunk of the introduction is devoted to training you with the basic skills needed to survive in the game.

General gameplay is relatively fluid and easy to understand. On-screen hints popup whenever there is an interactive item or person. When you interact with objects and people, the scene is presented in widescreen mode with subtitles. This, combined with the not quite exact lip sync of the characters, really gives you the feeling that you are in a martial arts film. There are even characters who speak in an “old tongue”, so the subtitles really fit in well.

The combat system takes a bit of getting used to, but it makes sense after a few battles. The free-moving camera makes it very easy to find good angles to view the fight. There aren’t many button combos required to attack your opponents. And there are small status indicators above each opponent’s head to help you keep tabs on everyone’s life levels.

The parts that were most difficult for me was learning to switch targets and changing fighting styles during a fight. By default, you’re locked to one target, and you must press the left or right trigger to switch targets. There is also a free targeting mode that allows you just attack in all directions. That’s still an odd thing for me, but I can see how that would be useful.

Changing fighting styles is also a new thing for me. The direction pad allows you to choose from up to four different styles. Since weapons drain you of focus energy, you have to be careful of how often you use them. Most of the time you want to stick with hand-to-hand styles and then use weapons for addition range/damage/etc. This is akin to switching weapons, but it’s just an odd feeling using the directional pad to make the change.

As far as story goes, I’m enjoying it so far. Instead of just sitting back and watching cinematics, your character actually plays an active role in the dialog. You can ask questions, choose from different types of responses, and initiate dialog with most characters. The neat thing is which questions and responses you choose determine how the NPCs will respond to you. You can be courteous and friendly or arrogant and demanding. How you interact with characters has a bearing on your character’s development in the game and whether you travel the Way of the Open Palm or the Way of the Closed Fist.

Jade Empire is the only RPG that I have played in a long time. Your character gains experience points and levels. He or she develops various skills and abilities based on how you assign your level points. You can purchase training and equipment. It’s pretty much a full-blown RPG, but it’s not set in your typical medieval world (which is definitely a huge plus for me), so it doesn’t really feel like an RPG.

I’m only 3 hours into it so far, and I really like it. I can definitely see myself spending most of this weekend plastered on the couch playing this game. Looks like another pizza and beer weekend for me.

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