AlwaysMoveForward.com

I saw this post and felt sick to my stomach.  I can't believe that Disney is testing elminating a wait for any line.  To me part of a vacation is the ability to kick back and go with the flow, make things up as you go along.  I know with Disney there is a growing segment of the population that feels like its a once in a lifetime trip, and they want it to be perfect.  So they plan everything down to the last minute.   However these are also the type of people that come home and say Disney is a terrible place to go.  Once their finally laid out plans fail in some way either due to a kid being too tired to git up at the crack of dawn, or taking to long (in the parents minds) to eat their lunch, or a ride going down unexpectedly, or a lunch seating running late, or it starts to rain, or you get the idea...   Anyway once those finely laid plans break down these people just can't deal with the change and the whole day is ruined.   We experience

Now before I get into this.  I first want to establish that I'm a Disney fan.  My family and I have seen/own all the Pixar movies to date (including Toy Story 3, reasons below), and enjoy them  The Incredibles is one of my top 10 movies to watch.  We go to Walt Disney World at least once a year (sometimes more), we belong to the Disney Vacation Club.  In short, we're only a Disneyana membership short of being feral Disney addicts. That being said i really don't undestand the hype around Toy Story 3.  From what I can tell its just a rehash of Toy Story 2 wth the major roles reversed.  In Toy Story 2 (TS2 from now on)  Woody is the one freaking out about his lot in life, and the rest of the gang is trying to make him feel better.  In Toy Story 3 (TS3) its the opposite, the whole gang is freaking out about their lot in life and Woody is the one trying to make them feel better.  So right out of the gate the overall plot of the movie has a

Like all parents, my wife and I have been struggling with getting our kids to help out more around the house.  They're good kids and they do the chores when we ask them, but like most kids they aren't crazy about the whole thing. Then a few weeks ago I was reading Influencer: The Power to Change Anything and I got an idea.  I was reading the section on changing peoples behaviors and how its hard.  You know what, I get that, I've seen it first hand in my job over the years.  In one role in particular the people I worked with were gun shy about ever trying to change peoples behaviors because they've never gotten it to stick. The book talked about how you have to give them an incentive to change their behavior, one that appeals to their ethics, morals, and points of view while also interesting them enough to stick with it.  As I read about that I started thinking about how I could use this to help my kids do chores. Now I've also been a video gamer for years, a

I don't think I like this new version of Monopoly.  From what I remember about playing Monopoly as a kid half the fun was cheating.  And isn't that what a monopoly is really all about anyway? It was always fun trying to sneak out on not paying the rent when the property owner forgot to check, or slipping yourself an extra 50 from the bank when no one else was looking. Not to mention the fact for some reason that all seeing tower makes me feel like I'm sneaking through Mordor, Just saying.  

The latest game I've been playing is Magicka.  Its an action adventure game where you're a wizard running around you're typical medieval world casting spells. So what's the big deal?  Well there are a few great points to bear in mind. First there is the spellcasting system.  Essentially you're given a number of spell casting aspects you can combine for a spell.  First there are a number of elements (Fire, Earth, Lightning, Cold, Life, and Water), plus a couple of ways to enhance them (shield or arcane).  So you combine up to five of those and then specify how you want to cast the spell (as an AOE, on yourself, or as a projectile).   You can use your spells however you want.  Do you want to just blow things up from a distance?  Then create a fireball with lots of earth and fire.  Do you want to lure things in and do AOE damage?  Then grab some fire, lightning, and a little arcane for spice and anything close to you drops like a rock

There have been a few new browser games recently that have grabbed my attention lately. First is a Flash version of Valve's Portal game.  This game is a lot of fun. I loved the original portal, and this Flash based one really keeps the feel of the original despite being in 2D.  Next is Zombooka.  Its a physics game where you have to shoot a protectile and take out a bunch of targets.  Nothing really new, other than the fact that the targets are zombies. Who doesn't like to kill zombies?  If Left For Dead has taught us nothing its that killing zombies is fun. Last is a browser based strategy game called Lords of Ultima.  Its takes place in the Ultima universe from the Ultima games from the late 80s and 90s, which were hugely popular to RPG fans.  Strangely though it takes place on a new world?  Uhm so are they just using the Ultima name?   Regardless from what I've seen so far its a fun little Strategy game that's worth checking

Scott Guthrie just posted about a few new features in C# 4.0.  Optional parameters are now part of the language.  These are something that I've missed since I made the switch to C# from C++ back in 2001 (Dont' get me wrong, it wasn't the end of the world, its easy enough to work around when you dont' have them, but its nice to have them back). He also shows an example of how you could use them with ASP.Net MVC.  All in all, like usual, he has some good info so check it out. 

As someone who is an avid reader I find the ramifications of the Google Book Settlement disturbing.  If you want more information check out this post here.  Now I'm not a huge fan of how Google does business to begin with (in the interest of full disclosure I do have an Android phone so I do have some interaction with Google that I find enjoyable, but the way they infringe on privacy and copyrights bothers me, that and I totally don't buy they're whole "don't be evil" mantra). At any rate, the post covers 5 ways that the GBS will impact books, and it has some insightful comments so check it out

Admob recently postest the latest Mobile operating share number latest numbers, and its not good for the iPhone.  The Android is rapidly catching up to the iPhone in terms of US market share, to the point where its looking like the Android will pass the iPhone in the use sometime within the next month or so. Is this really a big surprise?  I've always thought this was inevitable.  The iPhone is only on a single carrier (currently), and only has a single vendor that makes and sells the hardware for it (Apple).  Android on the other hand has multiple hardware manufacturers making phones for it (HTC, Motorola, Acer, Dell, amongst others), and is available on a number of different carriers.   Android is just setting themselves up to have a bigger market right out of the gate.  On top of that, if one phone maker screws up and makes a bad phone, no big deal, there is another phone maker making a great Andr

Yes its true, after three years with the same phone I finally pulled the trigger and upgraded.  It was a long time coming.  For the last 3 or 4 months the battery life on my HTC 8525 had been nearly non existent.  On top of that the screen on the phone had been acting really funky for the last few weeks.  Every so often the screen would just go all white, and the only way to get it back would be to hard boot the phone.  Then just last week my screen developed what can best be described as a dying heartbeat.  The screen would fade to the all white state, then slowly come back to a normal screen, then fade back to white.  All within a very regular interval.  It was kind of bizarre.  Now I'm not complaining about my old phone.  Like I said it was three years old, thats gotta be like 90 in phone years right? So I switched to Verizon and got myself a Motorola Droid.  In addition to needing a new phone I'd also I had a few problems wit