Download Squad

I've had the Sonacom Experience site on my list of things to blog about for a long time, but could never really figure out how to describe it. It appears to be a front-end for a French design and production firm's website.

The site is a Flash-based web toy, where you click on floating globes to unleash visuals and sound stored inside of them. You can control the color of the globes, and the colors match up with feelings or themes. For example, red is Aggression, purple is Vibration, and blue is Imagination.

Sonacom Experience is intriguing and fun to play with, but there isn't really a point. And maybe the lack of a point is the point - Sonacom is more of an art installation than it is game or application, sort of a "look what we can do". It has the same addictive quality as popping bubble wrap; I keep thinking I'll just burst one more globe to see what's inside, then close the site. Just. One. More.

If you have the ability to install software on your work computer, by far the easiest way to move files back and forth between your home and work computer would be a file synchronizing product like DropBox. But if you don't, what's the best way to move a relatively large file between two remote computers? For small files, email is usually the answer, and for users of Gmail that expands to files of up to 25 MB in size. But with what can often be a big catch: Gmail won't allow you to transfer executable files, even if they are inside a zip archive.

However, if you're simply wanting to move a file between computers, you can exploit the fact that Gmail doesn't actually scan a file to see if it is an executable until you actually try to send the email containing the file. This means that you are free to attach any file up to 25 MB in size to an email in Gmail, as long as you don't send it. You can then log into your Gmail on another computer, and download the attached file, without ever running into the executable file restriction.

Of course, the other easy way around Gmail's limitation is to change the file extension of the file you are sending. If you have an executable file inside a Zip archive, and you change the archive's file extension from .zip to .zzz, for example, Gmail doesn't know what a .zzz file is and does not scan it. Voila, you can now easily send executable files through Gmail.

Ninja Roll 2 is a simple ball rolling game that has you drawing a line for your "ninja ball" to roll and bounce down. The goal of the game is to collect all of the stars on each level.

The game has a very sparse look, and the physics of the ball remind me of the superballs that I played with as a kid. It's actually frustrating how bouncy this ball is. Sometimes it's hard to maintain momentum because just as your ball is about to ascend a ramp, it hits some tiny bump and bounces off in an unexpected direction. To be fair, part of the fun of playing Ninja Roll 2 is watching the ball make crazy moves.

Some of the levels appear physically impossible at first, but that's where your ball's incredible bounciness becomes an advantage - you can make it perform moves that you would have never thought possible.

My only gripe with the game is that for some reason it was choppy to the point of almost being unplayable when running in Firefox, but in Safari it is perfectly smooth.

Downhill Snowboard is a physics game with a human dimension. You play the part of the snowboarder, and your job is to successfully navigate down the hill, while pulling off tricks over the various jumps you encounter along the way.

The game is very similar to side-scrolling car-based games that require you to maneuver over jumps and other obstacles, but in this case you do not have an engine, and must rely on the power of gravity to pull you down the hill.

My favorite part of Download Snowboard is how your character moves on the screen. Though you only have very limited control over his movements, somehow the developer managed to make the snowboarder's body move in a relatively natural way, particularly with how the knees flex when landing from a jump.

As mentioned, the controls in the game are limited; you can lean your snowboarder back and forth, jump, and grab either the front or back of the board while in the air. While the graphics in the game are simple and repetitive, there are a wide variety of courses ranging from shallow and long high-speed courses to steep and short hazard-ridden courses.

I hate packing for trips. I will put it off until the last possible moment, and even then some. Part of the reason I hate it is that I'm never quite sure exactly what I need to pack.

If you're in the same boat, you might find the Universal Packing List site as interesting as I do. Basically, the site is a very compact user interface that asks you a set of questions about your upcoming trip, ranging from your gender, to whether you will be washing your own clothes, if you wear glasses, and where in the world you'll be traveling to.

Once you've completed the questionnaire, it spits out a very comprehensive list of things to pack, as well as a to-do list to take care of before you leave. When I say the list is comprehensive, that's a bit of an understatement. For a hypothetical 3 day trip with my kids, here are just the headings it came up with:

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