Thursday, May 26, 2011

Review Day

There are no spoilers in these reviews.

Portal 2:
All of the thoughts from my Portal 2: First Impressions post are still accurate -- this was a great game and much longer than expected. There's a few issues with pacing in the middle third of the game and some of the plot twists are blatantly telegraphed, but I laughed a lot and never hit a puzzle that I couldn't eventually beat after taking a break. This is a game that's very good in short doses -- if you try to play it all the way through in one sitting, it might get a little tedious.

Final Grade: A-

the internet is a playground by David Thorne:
The new publishing paradigm is to find someone funny on the Internet and give him a book deal -- this is a collection of humorous exchanges and essays from 27bslash6.com mixed with a few new ones. The best ones, like Missing Missy, are already available online, but this collection is a nice coffee table book. This is another book that works best if you take breaks -- if you read more than a couple stories at a time, they all start to sound the same, but taken in isolation, they're sure to elicit a laugh.

Final Grade: B+

Weber Spirit E-310:
After seven years of heavy use, the flames on my old grill were more yellow than blue (not unlike a toilet bowl after the two thousand and first flush), and grilling steaks required a mix of cover acrobatics and witchcraft to accomplish. So far, all three steaks cooked on the new grill have come out perfectly, using just my basic timings, and the cast iron grille makes me feel like I belong to that elite group who likes old food on their new food (see also, pizza stones). The burners are lengthwise, so it wastes a little more propane when you're grilling small amounts, but it heats up quickly and cooks very evenly.

Final Grade: A-

Firefox 4:
I don't really have a problem with Firefox 4, other than the fact that the default UI must have been designed by the guy who thought that mouse gestures would be the next Big Thing. Out of the box, my beefs are:

  1. Merging the stop/refresh button and placing it to the right of the URL bar: I normally use keyboard shortcuts, but for the rare occasions where I click, I now have to drag the mouse a good 800 pixels between the Forward/Back buttons and the Stop/Refresh button.
  2. Moving the bookmarks menu to the far right: Maybe this is great on your 640x480 XP machine, but it's ostracized on any normal resolution.
  3. Eliminating the status bar: Converting the "loading webpage" messages into a POPUP that constantly resizes as the text changes and grabs your eye could be the worst usability idea ever. The Status-4-Evar add-on puts it back, but that forces you to install software with a lame name, which is win for exactly no one.
  4. Tabs On Top: Unless there's some sort of sexual innuendo here that I'm oblivious to, putting the tab bar above all of the menus and buttons is completely unintuitive -- it implies that "Firefox" is "inside a tab", when the traditional UI for every tabbed application out there is "an application containing tabs".

All of these "improvements" are easy to reset, but it really doesn't give me much faith in the Firefox design team. I hear they want to do away with the URL bar completely next -- it's time to start my second career as a phisher.

Final Grade: B-

Besides Noise, Vuvuzelas May Spread Airborne Germs
Best Illusions of the Year
Trucker a human balloon after falling on air hose

tagged as reviews | permalink | 2 comments
day in history


Previous Post: Kitchen Status Day


Next Post: Peru Day

 

You are currently viewing a single post from the annals of URI! Zone history. The entire URI! Zone is © 1996 - 2024 by Brian Uri!. Please see the About page for further information.

Jump to Top
Jump to the Front Page


May 2011
SMTWHFS
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
293031
OLD POSTS
Old News Years J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
J F M A M J
J A S O N D
visitors since November 2003