For years, my go-to tablet was an iPad Air from the early 2010s. In December 2023, I got a surprise upgrade to the iPad Pro when my wife and mother-in-law bought me one for Christmas. It’s a hell of an upgrade. The old iPad was functional but, well, old. Battery life was getting worse every … Read more
Christmas has come and gone. I wrote this post back in December … and then promptly forgot about it. Having remembered it, let’s see what showed up under the geek tree in 2023! Video Games Role-Playing Games Books Technology
I began playing Dungeons & Dragons in grade school, and I used Apple computers almost as long. I started writing up adventures on my Apple II and printing them on an dot matrix printer, took a brief sojourn into the world of Windows PCs during and after college, and then returned to the Mac with the release of Mac OS X.
Akalabeth: World of Doom came out in 1980 for the Apple II. Written by Richard Garriott aka Lord British aka the guy who created the Ultima series, it features a lone adventure exploring a dungeon-filled wilderness. Quote I downloaded every game mentioned or referenced in the Almanac, from Akalabeth to Zaxxon. — Ready Player One p. 64 Game Play Akalabeth … Read more
It’s time for a new Mac. My old MacBook Pro, purchased in 2008 was a great machine, and worked great for four years. I put off upgrading for a year by adding more RAM and a bigger hard drive, but eventually I reached the point where the hardware wasn’t meeting my needs any more.
I want an iPad. It’s not because I’m a raving Apple fan boy or obsessed with the latest gadget – it’s because it fits the way I want to use technology, and addresses frustrations I’ve had with contemporary form factors. There are three specific products that I want to use with a tablet: Pen-and-paper role-playing … Read more
I recently did a full restore of my my Mac from Time Machine, Apple’s built-in backup utility for OS 10.5 (Leopard). I had to undertake this radical step because Boot Camp refused to create a Windows partition, complaining about “unmovable files” that could only be eradicated by reformatting the drive and reinstalling Leopard. Overall, I … Read more
I love it when a geeky plan comes together. A few weeks ago I heard a story on the Geek Acres podcast about a grade school teacher who installed Ubuntu Linux on a bunch of iMacs that had been donated to his school. I have a lime-green G3 iMac at home that’s been running Mac … Read more
Last weekend my wife and I were out computer shopping. Her for a new Dell laptop, me to dream of the laptop I might be able to buy around about 2007. We traveled to the King of Prussia Mall in southeast Pennsylvania, where Dell allegedly had a store, and to keep me quiet during Sue’s … Read more
It’s no great secret around here that I’m a Mac fan, but I’ve got to say that Apple’s design for the new iMac has left me cold. As with the previous iMacs, it’s an all in one design. This time around though, that design takes the form of a flat-screen monitor that’s been bulked up … Read more