Nerd Up!

Comics on my iPhone, Excelsior!

ComicZeal is a great little app for comic fans. Developed by Bitolithic, ComicZeal is a digital Comic Book reader for your iPhone or iPod Touch. While other applications offer the ability to purchase and view comics on your iPhone, ComicZeal provides something rather different: the ability to turn your iPhone or iPod touch into a storage device allowing you to enjoy your existing collection (i.e. Scanned Comics).

Features
The application benefits from apple’s native “Pinch/Swipe” interface. Pages can be pinched, expanded and advanced with the user’s fingers. Just like Safari, double tapping on a certain panel zooms you into a panel; another double tap takes you back to full page. Another great feature, you can view comics in either portrait or landscape, whatever suits page or panel you’re reading.

In addition to its function as a reader for users’ existing collections, ComicZeal also offers a huge number of public domain Golden Age comics for free. Titles include “Forbidden Worlds”, “Police Comics” and my personal favourite, “Romantic Adventures”. Unfortunately, public domain means you won’t find the latest issue of “Old Man Logan”, but it does offer you a great way to show off the application.

F#ck Ups
Syncing the device is a bit of a lengthy process. First the application uses its own proprietary format (CBI), so any documents need to be converted. Thankfully, the developers have provided an desktop application that will do most of the heavy lifting. Then, you need to sync those new files with your device, this is where things can get tricky, you have a variety of options, most of which require a comp-sci degree. The one positive is, this application is constantly being updated, I’m sure the syncing issues will be worked out over time.

Conclusion
Available on iTunes for $1.99, this application does offer a lot of great features for a great price. While it will never replace the feel of holding a real comic or the excitement of visiting your favourite comic store, its worth checking out. I’ll see you in the aisles next Wednesday.

EGM May 1989

Just a couple of words about EGM…This was the first Gaming mag that I had ever read (other than Nintendo Power), and its kind of sad to see it gone…Personally I think the brand is still pretty strong and that it should be used for an online presence.  But that would be up to the license holders anyway.

1 issue short of 20 years…

Thanks for the memories.

Cover from Issue#1 of Ender's Game from Marvel Comics

Well the on again, off again movie based on the Ender’s Game/Ender’s Shadow series written by Orson Scott Card, is off again.  Which IMHO is a shame because I think the story would lend itself very well to the big screen…Of course this is based on Hollywood “doing it right” which doesn’t always happen, actually usually doesn’t happen.   This may be a blessing in disguise for those that hold the series in high regard.

I did think that when Wolfgang Petersen was attached my hopes had perked up a bit, but when OSC is not comfortable with the film’s direction, I am cool with the decision of him being let go…my feeling on the movie is that when, nay if, it ever gets made the focus should be on the emotions and experiences that Ender and his army go through, not on the sci-fi aspects of the story.  Of course the Sci Fi parts would be the set pieces that would attract a larger audience because of the wow factor, and I’m not saying that they don’t have their place, but they shouldn’t be the focus of the movie.

Woo-Hoo!

[Yeah, I know I said Noise.io but I'm not ready yet.]

Here’s a handy tool for ya’ll who are into sound… Oscillator by Masayuki Akamatsu is a digital audio frequency generator application for the iPhone and iPod touch.

I thought it was strange that the oscillator’s parameters had a relatively limited bandwidth by default, but one can adjust this by hitting “Edit”. From there, this App can be used to test your system by employing a sinewave to sweep the frequency from the lowest audible signal to the highest in the hearing spectrum – that’s provided your speakers can reproduce it (and you can hear all that)! This can be handy for finding bumps in the frequency response of your system, which can have issues because of speaker placement/damage and crossover settings. Over the entirety of the sweep across the spectrum I’ve found the sound to be a smooth transition, which is unlike some digital oscillator plugins I’ve heard.

Oscillator can also send out “white” noise (and it is ONLY white, no pink or brown for some unknown reason)  for a general signal for setting your levels. Other waveforms one can select include Sawtooth and Squarewave, which I haven’t found a use for yet (please add any suggestions in the comments) but they might be part of Oscillator’s pretense that it can also be a “strange instrument”.

This is a cool App, especially for .99 cents. I’ve impressed other sound guys with this application. It actaully made one guy want to turn in his Blackberry! I’ve already used it in a few venues to check out the setup, in my home and on my various pairs of headphones. Very revealing. One thing it’s definitely missing is Pink noise, which still baffles me. It baffles me infinitely (audio joke ripped off from max cooper on gearslutz.com).

The one thing I haven’t done is check it with a frequency analyzer for accuracy, which the author admits isn’t perfect. Whatever. This is still handy to have.

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Oscillator by Masayuki Akamatsu

Available in iPhone app store.

Find out (little) more on iTunes.

Common's action figure from the "Terminator Salvation" line

It actually looks more like Black Thought if you ask me.