ↁ's Notebook

I don’t spend a lot of time playing games on my iPad or iPhone. I’ll buy a handful each year and maybe get really interested in a couple of them. It’s rare that a game captures my imagination for more than a couple days.

But for the last three weeks, I’ve been loving Armor Games’ Kingdom Rush. I bought it despite several Internet warnings that it was hopelessly addictive. I can report, after three weeks or nearly constant play, that is absolutely true. If you buy this game, you will get hooked.

What’s so great about it? At first glance, it’s just another Tower Defense game; i.e. you face waves of attackers that you must arrange defensive forces against. Kingdom Rush comes with the twist of being set in a medieval/fantasy environment. It’s basically a D&D spin on classic TD games. You fight off orcs, goblins, trolls, gargoyles, spiders, and other assorted magical creatures.

Your defenses are a combination of infantry, artillery, magicians, and archers. Using your initial budget, you set up your defenses, summon the attackers, and start earning more gold to buy additional structures and upgrade your original ones. As long as you keep killing the attacking forces, you keep earning exciting new ways to destroy them.

I'm about to die.

It’s a pretty basic concept and, honestly, I never understood why this type of game is so addictive. And then I played Kingdom Rush. There’s something about those rolling waves of attackers, those brief moments of rest, and the ability to see your weak points and correct them during the game that sucks you in. Also, you get a bit of a rush from dropping a Rain of Fire spell on a swarm of attacking monsters. Just when you think you have it set up the way you want, a zombie slips through, you die, and you think, “OK, one more game.” Two hours later you’re still doing that.

That’s been me for the past three weeks.

There is also the clever combination of strategy and tactics, neither particularly heavy, that makes the game difficult to ‘solve’. The game gets tougher as your skills improve. It never gets boring because there is always something new popping up. There are 12 basic levels that can be played at two different difficulty settings. Solve those and two bonus levels pop up. In addition, there are a pair of one-off scenarios at each level.

Put it all together and there are weeks of fun packed into this game. Oh, and the 99 cent price tag makes it a terrific bargain.

Thus, I highly recommend Kingdom Rush. But be warned: once you start playing, you may find it difficult to stop.

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It's been a big few days for Cait.

Last Monday she lost her first tooth, her upper left incisor. It had reached that crazy, almost sickening level of looseness when Suzanne finally reached over and yanked it out. There was a scream of surprise then much happiness. Even more happiness the next morning when she found the Tooth Fairy's gift.

The upper right incisor looked to be about ready, too. It hung in a few more days, and when I picked Cait up from school on Tuesday, she big an even bigger gap in her smile. This time she yanked it out on her own. Tough girl.

In partial celebration of that and partially because it's been long enough, we went to the pet store Tuesday and she picked out a new Betta to replace the late Spike. She wanted one that didn't look like Meghan's, so she selected a small, blue female this time. She named the new fish Isabella, which is not a shock. That is Cait's (And Lia's) favorite name, and we've had about 1000 Isabellas in the house in recent months. Dolls, drawings, imaginary friends. Isabellas out the ass.

Meghan had a first last week, too. Her first sleep-over. One of her buddies from school called and invited her over Friday night. Everything went great. I'm sure there will be many, many more of these over the next dozen years or so, and eventually it will be our house that hosts not just one, but several goofy, wound-up girls at once.

Lia doesn't have any great, new accomplishments, but she has been making us laugh with her language. She's been dropping little phrases she's picked up from others that sound ridiculous coming out of a three-year-old into her conversations. Examples:

"What the...?" Fortunately she does not complete this one. "That's not what I expected at all!" "I can't believe it!"

She delivers each of these with much gusto, and always with a smile, as if she knows how funny she sounds.

She also gives me a thumbs-up all the time. The best is when she's chasing the big sisters around, looks at me, grins wildly and flashes me a thumbs-up as she runs by. Makes me laugh every time.

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Yes, I'm biased, but I love Nick Collison. He's pushing ten years in the NBA and, while he was a great college player, I'm not sure anyone expected that kind of pro career for him. And I've always enjoyed his thoughtful take on things.

He is blogging for GQ magazine on what life is like for a role-player in the NBA. His latest entry addresses finding your niche. It's something every player who gets drafted should read, because not everyone turns into the next LeBron.

This is where a little perspective and being secure in yourself can go a long way. If you have perspective, you will realize that your job totally rules. You get paid a huge salary to play basketball. You will be part of the 1 percent. You will get your summers off. You will be encouraged to take naps most days.

How To Survive in the NBA When You're Not a Superstar

You may recall that I took a crack at running a separate blog dedicated to my musings on Apple and technology. Like many of my Internet dreams, 1 it seemed like a great idea but in practice wasn’t such a huge success. Turns out it’s hard to write every day about the same subject, especially when there are about 1000 people out there doing the exact same thing. I admire those who can find something to focus their writing each day. And I’ll let them do it.

So I shut the Mac Daddy site down awhile back.

That doesn’t mean I don’t still have the urge to write about Apple-related stuff. And just because I only have a personal blog doesn’t mean I can’t share those thoughts here, right?

Thus, coming soon will be the first of my occasional reviews of iOS apps. I’ve been obsessed by a fun little game over the past couple weeks. So keep an eye out for that in the next day or so.

But, while I have your attention, a few thoughts on the surprise announcement last week of the next iteration of the Macintosh operating system, Mountain Lion.

Like many people, when the news first broke Thursday morning, I thought it was some kind of joke. After all, when Apple wants to surprise the world, they have a big event. They don’t talk to a select group of journalists and writers and let word trickle out. But, as they said, they’re doing things differently now.

After reading a number of the insider scoops, I’m left with a single impression: the operating system wars really are over, at least on the desktop. Apple, Microsoft, Intel, and the PC manufacturing community are far more interested in what’s happening in the portable device space. Desktop/laptop computers are still important and won’t disappear any time soon. But OS X and Windows are so advanced and the payoff for pushing them further is so little that all sides will scale things back dramatically there.

What makes that apparent to me is Apple’s announcement that they will now be doing annual updates to OS X, as they’ve done with iOS since its introduction. No more massive rewrites. No more starting from scratch. No more 18-24 month cycles that bring dramatic changes to the core OS. Every year they’re going to tweak some things, upgrade the security features another notch, refine some of the differences between OS X and iOS, and ship an update.

Along with the end of the massive update, we will also never again see a $129 price tag on the update. At least from Apple. The last two updates have both been in the $20 range. I expect that to remain the case. As iPhones and iPads have become the biggest components of Apple’s business, gone is the need to turn desktop OS upgrades into money makers. It’s better to keep the growing installed base on the latest iteration for a modest upgrade fee than try to goose revenues every couple of years with a major release.

And while it’s obvious Apple 2 is pushing their desktop and mobile operating systems closer together, I think this is a clear sign that while they may share more common elements over time, they will always remain distinct. The annual updates will keep the desktop side of the business as fresh as the mobile side, from a software standpoint, and make the overall experience even more similar. But running the same apps on your MacBook Air and your iPad is not happening any time soon.

Finally, you can’t help but look at this announcement and how it was handled and speculate on the changes in the company since Steve Jobs’ death. Maybe he signed off on this and it’s been in the works for a year or more. But it’s a very good sign for the Tim Cook era at how the company is moving forward. Execution is always the hardest part of any business plan, but so far it looks like Apple will not miss a beat in the new era.

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