Media Recap: June 2013

Posted on Fri 05 July 2013 • Tagged with Media Recap

Summary: 2 games, 1 movie, 3 podcasts, 6 longer documents, 3 developer sources, 8+ videos

I often think about how to link games and movie titles. My internal debate is on whether to link the media’s official website or to simply link to the corresponding Wikipedia page. There’s merit in both of those solutions.

  1. Linking to the official site often offers the benefit of trailers, image assets, official descriptions and more. The downside is that all that simply disappears whenever the responsible companies lose interest in a IP or have to cut down on budget.
  2. Linking to Wikipedia has the benefit of persistence. The page describing the linked content will not disappear easily but on the other hand lack more visual details that could be enjoyed on an official site.

Games

  • Mass Effect 3
    Well, by now I should've finished Mass Effect 3, you think, right? To be honest I'm almost ready to move on myself. There's still the Citadel DLC and about three main missions to complete before my girlfriend and I can start another game for our companion gaming thing. (that might become a new category of posts)
  • Don't Starve
    I've had some extra time to burn and went back to check out the current status of Don't Starve which has been officially released by now. It's nice. I'm playing the OS X version on my Macbook Air from late 2010 which means it's not entirely without lag, but playable. From what I've seen skimming the changelogs on Steam there have been many content updates bringing different biomes and even seasons to the game. I look forward to hopefully sinking some more time into Don't Starve in the near future.

Movies

  • Shinobi - Heart under Blade (German)
    I found it pretty hard to believe but even though the month was filled to the brim with assignments and tests for university, there was time to watch a longish movie. I still like Shinobi even though I've seen it multiple times, owning the DVD. It's at parts very violent, but a refreshingly sad story.

Podcasts

I don’t seem to have as much time and dedication as before for podcasts, mainly listening to them when having a long walk or on cleaning duty.

Documents

  • What's New in iOS 7 (requires Apple Developer account)
    The developer document from Apple about upcoming APIs in iOS 7 offered a particularly interesting read and outlook on what will be possible for Apps making use of iOS 7 only features.

  • Marco's resume
    Was interesting, if only to recognize how different resumes in Austria are supposed to look like if you adhere to the guidance offered by coaching programs.

  • Evaluation of Purify Plus
    I was curious to see if something similar to Valgrind existed in the Windows world, seeing that as far as I'm understood it there's no way to run the clang static analyzer on Windows either. After some research I discovered this evaluation of Purify Plus, an IBM product for companies which aims to solve the same problems as Valgrind. To my delight I came across the linked document, which is an evaluation of said tool, done by students at the Carnegie Mellon University.
  • The Magazine - Loose Stuffing ("How Couchsurfing lost its kumbaya.")
    I wanted to look into The Magazine for quite a long time now and finally came across this article mentioning Couchsurfing, which caught my attention. While the article was excellently written, I would've enjoyed a story about actual Couchsurfing more than this business analysis.

The Master programs for Computer Science as well as Software Development at our university have changed a little and I checked out those presentations since I’m not sure whether to try and achieve a Master’s degree after completing my Bachelor’s. I haven’t found the slides online even though I’ve been told they were available.

  • Master: Informatik (EN: Computer Science)
  • Master: Softwareentwicklung-Wirtschaft (EN: Software Development & Economy)

Dev Documents

As I am currently very interested in developing for iOS and OS X I looked into some documents for starters and found the following to be helpful.

Videos

  • Apple: WWDC 2013 Keynote Address (live)
    In short the improved Macbook Air's 12 hour battery life sounds great, but I'm not tempted to buy one since I hope that Apple will bring those those improvements to the Macbook Pro line as well.
  • Polygon review: Remember Me
    Remember Me looks like a game worth playing to me, but I will wait for a discount instead of buying at full price. Even though the reviews were mixed I trust Gamespot's Kevin VanOrd opinion about it having an enjoyable story.
  • Extra Credits: More than exposition
  • Extra Credits: Not a babysitter
    I highly recommend this episode of Extra Credits to, well, almost everyone with an interest in video gaming, to parents whose offspring is into gaming and to children who'd like their parents to understand their world a little better. "Not a babysitter" is highly valuable and probably my favorite part of Extra Credits so far.
  • Extra Credits: When difficult is fun
  • Extra Credits: Like a ninja
  • Extra Credits: Global Games: Mexico, Argentina & Chile
  • Gargoyles 52 - "Hunter's Moon (Part 3)"
  • many Mass Effect 3 videos, including an entire hour of death scenes