Crazy Apple News Site

Every Friday we publish a list of inFrequently Answered Questions and answers to help you, the Crazy Apple user, get more out of your Crazy Apple products.

This week we answer the mysterious question: What the crap happened last week?

Q: So, what the crap did happen last week? You were all “I’m going to Cali, baby!” and nobody heard from you again.

A: Gaaah, I started that post like six times, but various computer glitches kept eating it, or scrambling the words, or some stupid thing. the most coherent thing to emerge from the wreckage was a comparison of my seat mate on the flight to a wildebeest.

Q: Weak. Sauce. Try. Harder.

A: Look, I’m not starting that post again, man. At one point the hard drive on my iMac self-destructed, and I had to take it into the shop for a new hard drive,¹ and when I rebuilt from my Time Machine backup my post was completely NOT on the backup.

Q: So those four of us who follow this blog are doomed to forever vaguely wonder if anything happened when you were in the home of the free Google Wi-fi?

A: Google Wi-fi rejected me. I wrote about that before the GREAT HARD DRIVE CRASH.

Q: So, you got anything for us?

A: Look, I feel bad, really I do, but writing about that trip is a curse. So instead I’ll just throw in something I wrote on that trip, that I was saving for your birthday.

Q: No, not gonna cut it.

Ngmoco Buys Freeverse

Q: And I get ignored again.

A: H2 tags can’t hear you. Now Shhhhh! the article’s starting.

We here at CANS HQ were distressed to learn that Freeverse, one of our favorite software vendors, from whom we have borrowed characters, is being purchased by Ngmoco, an iPhone game company. This news is odd, sad, and depressing, which is probably a good summation of the internet in general. But that’s beside the point.

Freeverse was our first introduction to mac games, with their Big Bang Board Games that shipped free on our iMac. The games were simple, but clean and Mac-like, with lots of polish and interaction. Over the years we found them to be equally excellent at other programs, from the actually useful Periscope² to the much needed port of Heroes of Might and Magic V to the Mac, we’ve relied on Freeverse to make easy-to-use, well designed software, and we’ve never been let down.

In recent years we’ve also done a very small amount of testing for Freeverse, and found their staff to be friendly, intelligent, and generous to a fault.

And now they’re being purchased by a company that formed, like, what? Three weeks ago? A company whose empire is based on Rolando: the story of a cartoon ball. This is kind of like some kid who just won a huge cash prize in a Risk tournament buying General Patton.

The question is: will they continue to make Mac games and programs? It seems unlikely. the iPhone/iPad platform is easier to write for, and has a huge base of people just waiting to devour your latest creation with minimal advertising. So desktop games and apps lose again on the mac and more people start to wonder if Windows is really all that bad.

Or maybe we’re blowing the whole thing out of proportion. (We are) so we’ll stop now. It’s not much, but we just wanted to thank Freeverse for the excellent games and wish them well in their new adventures. May the monkey ever be on your back.

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A: See! See? How was that, eh? Pathos, humor, nostalgia, that post has it all!

Q: Did you want to borrow some black nail polish emo-boy? Whiny. that’s what it was. Whiny.

A: Whatever man. That’s David Pogue level Pulitzer material.³

Q: So, what we get from your trip to California is NOT EVEN a stupid T-Shirt, but a stupid article.

A: Okay, well, maybe you’ll like this post:

MacHeist Mails it In

Three months after the expected beginning of MacHeist, we get, not a new heist full of interest and prizes, but a cheap bundle of good but ininspiring software. Well, we here at CANS arent’ going to stand for it. I mean, yes we’ll buy the bundle, heck, we already have. But we’re not going to like it–

Q: Nope! Not interested.

A: Hey! Stop that!

Q: Alright look, you had a hard week, got it. I’m gonna go hang out with the Macalope for a while. Come back when you got something interesting to say.

1. this actually happened. On the plus side my iMac now has a 1.5 TB hard drive [↩]
2. which I used as a security camera in my room in California [↩]
3. I put that in just so David Pogue would read this and get mad at me again. Hey, negative attention is still attention! Ask any three-year-old! [↩]

No iFAQ this week, sorry. Monday is exactly one year since my sister-in-law died and I can’t think funny right now. Go drop by her site for a moment, if you like.

http://laurasteelmusic.com/

Every once in a while I come across something so grand, so amazing, that I have to pass it on unedited¹ Today this gem comes from Mr. Maliki! of Wondermark.com  He found some classic humor, to which I must respectfully doff my hat and hope to imitate.  His post “True Stuff: Metahumor from 1927” ends with “A Criticism of the Theatrical Criticism in this Morning’s Paper” which is everything I wish I could be. Don Herold, I may fly higher than an eagle, but you, you are the one who did it 92 years earlier than me.

1. but not uncommented upon [↩]

The following is a translation¹ of a comment that was in my spam queue:

It compliments for idea of the site. Also we are lovers of the trekking. Why we don’t organize an encounter of gotten passionate for of the excursions together? Even not more than 6-8 in all? A salute.

I think it works out to a compliment. Or an invitation to a crazy fling in Italy² with, er, 6-8 trekkies. Either way, It’s at least kinda complimentary. And kinda creepy.

1. courtesy of the nearly-useless Translation Widget. Dashboard: occasionally slightly easier than using the Web. [↩]
2. the comment was originally in Italian. [↩]

While I was writing my little book I came across this site that makes a pretty cloud out of the words or RSS feeds you give it. So I fed it this site and this is what I got back…er, It’s a java thing, so I’m not going to embed it.  But here’s the link.

Book is going well, I should finish well before the end of the month. I’m talking, I’ll have hours to spare. Thank you both (okay, thanks to all the lurkers as well) for your patience.

You may have noticed a brief outage earlier today. Hopefully, looking at the site now, you’ll see why that happened.  This should be the last theme change for a while.  Until they come out with a Snow Leopard theme, anyway.

We thought this new theme was a bit more Appley.  You know, more Leopardy, less Linuxy. More iTunesish, less Amarokesque.  Also, you may notice a newish buttony thing down on the right hand side…

This is just a little note to tell you that the only-slightly-sane Ruby Ninja Androids upgraded CANS to WordPress 2.6 today. Let us know if you see any little bugs.  But not big bugs. Those scare us.

I’m somewhere between Moab and home, and this is all I have time to put up. I hope the androids have been good. I don’t think I’ll ever get the red dirt back out of my hair. Talk amongst yourselves. Er, yourself. I’ll give you a topic: Zion National Park is neither in Zion nor is there any parking. Discuss.