sorry to the guys who participated on the raid, I planned on being available more but went to sync my iPhone and it got stuck on "waiting for items to copy" and I only got back to the raid a bit too late to help. :(

FM

I tried, man. But my two lower level characters just weren't fast enough in the end.

Down the stretch, it was fun reading the ticker across the bottom. I was cheering our fellow guild members on!

We came close.

yeah, when I finally came back on, we were eating him up but too little too late. I have started a fourth character and will eventually start a fifth that will slowly level up to give us even more attacking power. :)

FM

I was out tonight and didn't know about the raid. Sorry.

don't be sorry, it was kind of me being bored so I started one without much notice.

Every time you win a round is 1% so it's 200 wins for the two phases, or 400 energy points. If 10 of us show up, it's only 20 wins per character. pretty easy...

FM

in other apps of interest, I downloaded Cycle Tracker Pro when it went free maybe a month ago without any idea if I'd ever use it. I already had Nike+ that I never used since I hate to run but I was thinking about maybe getting myself a nice bike and maybe, I say maybe, ride every once in a while since we have a very nice bike path maybe a mile and a half from our house that extends about 60 miles in the countryside.

We bought a bike for me and my son this week and I got to try this app and it's pretty awesome. It tracks the progress of your ride with the GPS signal of your iPhone and maps it out on a google map with stats and such. Was kinda funny to look back at the two somewhat leisurely ride I took today, one of them with my 8 yo son. :)

It's currently selling for $2.99 and it can also track running and even walking activities, well, or any other distance stuff. I'd say even track the distance you cover in your car, although I wouldn't take the evaluation of calories burned as a good measure in that case. ;)

You can also upload your activities to Free Training Log, Training Plans and Food Diary | TrainingPeaks where they will put them together on a calendar and give your some stats there too, in hope that you will upgrade from their free account to a 19.95 monthly deal. I'm not that serious.

The app is also programmable to do interval training or you could even set up a ghost run of a circuit you are used to do very often...

FM

for example here's the map it drew of the little ride me and my son did after dinner this evening...

Started from our house on the green dot, paused the app's timer on the orange spot when we got to one of his friend's house to drop the hat he had forgotten at our house and we came back home...

FM

Just asked in BoH's guild forum but anybody up for a raid around 8 eastern?

FM

I've got a lvl 15 & a lvl 10 in for a raid tonight.

I'm probably going to be a little late. Still cooking dinner.

I've got guests over so I may not get any shots in.

Probably will be a little later on. More like 9.

I'll be in.

I've just launched the raid, battle begins in less than 5, come one guys!

FM

I can't seem to get in at the moment. I'll keep trying.

well done guys, it went quite well with some 18 characters pinching in... For all of phase 1, I was only fighting with my two new guys, but they were having a hard time against Skar himself.

I'll start a new thread for us to coordinate our raids and not clog this thread with BoH talk from now on.

FM

This reminds me a bit of the RunKeeper interface (which can be used for any kind of exercise). Combine that with something like a FitBit and if you're the "challenge" type, all of a sudden fitness becomes a game of getting all the achievements.

I wonder how many people start exercising more in an attempt to get achievements.

/tk

you are right, it looks A LOT like RunKeeper. I'm not much into the achievement thing but I've always been a stats keeper so knowing how long I rode and how far I went and at what pace might be something that'll incite me to ride a bit more this Summer. That and I REALLY need to move a bit more. Ever since we took over the dojo I've pretty much been only teaching and not training a whole lot. Riding the bike will be at least a step in the right direction...

FM

I'm thinking that Slingshot Racing is something folks around here might be interested in. Think DrawRace topdown racing style with a one-touch type of control where you go around bends by latching on to a pole. Hard to describe but it's really fun. Some good reviews for it:
Slingshot Racing Review at Slide To Play
Slingshot Racing Review | Touch Arcade

FM

New Star Soccer has vaulted right to the top of my time-waster apps. Tremendous game.

yeah, I know, same for me. Have had it installed on my phone since it was first mentioned here but never even tried it until the NSS thread got bumped this weekend. Unlocked the whole game this morning after trying it last night. Very well done little game...

FM

Dungeon Story by Kairosoft is out

technically called Dungeon Village ;) Couldn't find it on AppShopper until I looked up all Kairosoft titles and found it under this name :)

FM

what never ceases to amaze me with the Kairosoft titles is that they are so small in size, yet they pack so much within them... I'm quite behind with their titles though. A few I bought but have yet to even play.

FM

reminder to anyone here who hasn't got it yet - go and get "Hero Academy" if you like turn based strategy you'll love it ..

(my user name is predictably MarcVaughan)

Heh sorry about the wrong name.

Only played it for a short while but liking it much more than some of their recent releases.

Dungeon Village has restored my faith in Kairosoft that I was starting to lose with Epic Astro Story.

This game has, by far, had the longest commitment from me. It really is a very good game.

I'll request a game with you.

anyobdy here has tried Plague Inc.?

I' saw a few reviews on my RSS feeds that have got me intrigued to say the least. It's been mentioned that it's similar to Pandemic.

It's only 99 cents so I may give it a show anyway but I was wondering if anyone had tried it yet.

Link to reviews have popped up within the day:
Plague Inc. Review at Slide To Play
Plague Inc Review | Touch Arcade
Plague Inc. Review » 148Apps » iPhone and iPod Touch Application Reviews and News

FM

well, I splurged the big 99 cents to try Plague Inc. last night and I was engrossed in it for a whole hour and a half when I should have gone to bed. Goal of the game is simple, eradicate the population. You evolve a disease while the world eventually catches on to it, then tries to find a cure for it.

I wiped 90% of the planet with my first try and as I was learning a bit more what I was doing with my second try, did about the same but in a much different way. That second disease was too violent and killed people fast, but in the end, it killed them before it spread to some far away countries.

Very enteresting and somewhat realistic simulation, at least by the early looks of it...

FM

FM, you should get a commission on iPad/Phone apps. I don't think I have been able to resist buying any of the apps you recommend. It probably helps that all of your recommendations have been good ones.

hehehe, that's cool but I was gonna say, hopefully you don't think they're all crap once you've bought them. ;)

I follow three main RSS feeds for my game recommendations: 148apps, Slide to play and TouchArcade. Reviews from these three are usually spot on compared to my interests and I guess you, and I'm sure some others around here, share some gaming interests with me.

I also use appshopper.com extensively. You wouldn't believe how many games I add to my wishlist over there on a weekly basis simply because I read a review on them, or saw them mentionned somewhere but didn't feel like buying it at the time. Then boom, game goes free or drops in price to that so easy to buy 99 cents price point. Hard not to get your worth out of a buck of entertainment money...

Let me know what you think about it if you end, or already ended up getting Plague Inc. I only play on "casual" for now but found my first two games to be riveting. Can't wait to unlock the other types of diseases. (yeah, feels kinda strange to say that :D)

FM

If you were recommending crap games, it would be easy to ignore you. We do seem to have similar interests, so your recommendation takes all of the thinking away from me. I'll look at the RSS feeds you follow and see what else I am missing.

I just finished my first game on the medium difficulty setting. I went for an infectious but mostly harmless bacteria in Africa, waited for a big spread, and then turned it deadly. 93% population death. I thought I did well, but ended up with a final score of 52. That didn't seem all that impressive. Time to go back for round 2.

Very similar to my first two games. I scored 53 and 54 but played on casual.

FM

97% of the population killed in third game, I tried infecting everyone then killing in second game but that didn't work. 96% population killed in first game, which has my high score of 66, all three on casual.

Do you get these feeds on the iPad, or somewhere else? I don't have a lot of experience with RSS feeds other than as a way to feed data to another program. I'd take a suggestion for a good program to use for RSS monitoring.

Won my first casual game on my fourth try. :)

If you use an iPad I recommend Flipboard for RSS feeds. It's fantastic.

I like Flipboard but am finding I like Pulse better.

Plague make a ipad version, or is it just a stretched iphone version?

I use Google Reader as my main RSS reader and I usually read, or simply go through the various feeds on my breaks, on my PC but there are numerous good RSS reader apps that sync with Google Reader. Reeder has received good reviews.

FM

Won on my first try on casual. Started in Japan and focused on how it transmitted first. Cure got as high as 93%, but fell to 88% as the population dwindled. Took 1235 days to kill everyone though.

Score was 2,070.
Great but morbid game. Well worth the price.

How do you unlock things? Thought I would have at least unlocked virus.

You have to win on something harder than Casual to unlock the next virus type.

Thanks. I figured it out after I posted the question. :D

First time on normal and I only killed 98% of the population. Canada screwed me! :lol:

Canada has been doing that to me too. I think I'll lead with them next time.

That'll teach them f*uckers! :lol:

It's a universal app and I'd say that screenshots #6 to #10 on appshopper seem to show a bigger screen for the iPad...

FM