James VanDyke

Lately I’ve been playing a new web game called Ikariam. It’s a slow paced version of Civilization only you’re playing with thousands of other people.

I enjoy games like Civilization and SimCity. However they have a downside, they take too much time. I invetably get sucked in and play for hours at a time. While that may not be a problem when you have hours to waist, it doesn’t happen all that often for me. Enter Ikariam.

Two key features for Ikariam are the pace of gameplay and interacting with other players.

First the game forces you to take a break by causing things to happen over a long period of time. For example, if you build a building, it may take 4-8 hours to complete. During which it doesn’t do any good to sit around babysit. This means you can log on once or twice a day for 5-10 minutes and not worry about falling behind.

Start playing at: ikariam.com (Choose world Epsilon if you want to be on the same server as me.)

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Wordpress released a new application for the iPhone today. The new self-titled application allows bloggers to post to their blog directly from their phone. The app also supports multiple blogs so prolific bloggers can update multiple blogs.

I wouldn’t expect long posts from the new application, those are still best left to keyboards and monitors. Like other applications you can download it from the iTunes store.

Update: One downside that I discovered is that you can’t edit a draft that is saved on the server. The app only supports drafts saved locally to your iPhone.

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I joined the bandwagon this weekend and bought an iPhone. So far I’ve been very impressed with it.

One of the biggest questions that I had was if the on-screen keyboard would be easy to use. So far the answer is yes. The software correction is what makes it especially useful. I can just type and the software automatically fixes most of the mistakes I make.

I took the train into work today and had another wow moment. I was able to clear out my email inbox while traveling to work.

The last feature I really like is the GPS and Google Maps combo. We drove to a baseball game on Sunday and used the iPhone to guide us. It worked well. one downside

One of the downsides to the iPhone is it’s battery. On Monday I charged it overnight and turned it on the next morning. Unfortunatly it only lasted until about 5pm. This isn’t ideal but as long as I remember to bring the charger with me to work it shouldn’t be a big deal.

So there it is. Apparently the iPhone is as great as everyone says it is.

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Since I promised an update, National Take Your Dog to Work Day was a no-show at our offices.

We all chickened out figuring that the poor behavior of our individual dogs might be a catastrophe when combined, sort of like an Anti-Power Ranger.

Maybe next year.

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Today I successfully navigated the Dallas public transit system thanks to Google Maps.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been taking the train to work two to three days a week. Today however I got an urgent request to pick up a presentation at a location that wasn’t close to a train stop. Just as I was preparing to take the train back to my car so I could drive past work to the pickup location, I stumbled on Google Maps Mass Transit Planner. It works just like driving directions except that it provides bus and train stops instead.

I was able to follow the directions and quickly make it to my destination and back. An hour long ordeal turned into a 20-minute experiment in mass transit. So here’s to Google Maps and DART for making my day easier.

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Tomorrow is Take Your Dog to Work Day. Our office is tentatively scheduled to participate, so after lunch time TigerMan will join Addy and Luke at our office.

A full report to follow, until then visit the TYDTWD website.

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I’m currently working to finish up a project for one of my classes at school and I came across a bit of a Microsoft Excel problem.

If you try to divide by zero Excel throws a fit telling you to “#DIV/0!”

If you need the possibility of a zero in the divisor of one of your formulas without your worksheet spewing obscenities use the IF command with the following template:

=IF(test, if true result, else)

An Example:

=IF(A2=0,0,A1/A2)

This would result in the number 0 placed in the cell, effectively censoring Excel from telling you that you can’t divide by 0.

This also works with Google Docs.

What were you doing?
I was trying to setup a spreadsheet to evaluate entrepreneurial ventures but sometimes the values for certain sections needed to be zero. An example, we needed to account for both retail and manufacturing firms. However since retail firms don’t have manufacturing costs the spreadsheet has to realize you might be trying to compute manufacturing numbers where the divisor is 0.

Thanks to LifeHacker for the tip.

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Part of this week I worked from home because the air conditioning was out at work. Along the way I learned a few important things.

• Keep a to do list so you don’t get distracted
• Having animals around makes for a better work environment
• Check your meeting calendar before deciding to work from home for the day
• Test your webcam/voice chat solution before your actual meeting

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I found an interesting site today, downforeveryoneorjustme.com. If you’ve ever wondered if a website is really down or just singling you out this site tries to give you an answer.

Tags:   tools · webNo Comments.

Erin and my favorite art festival was this weekend. The Main Street Art Festivial in Fort Worth is one of the highlights of our cultural year. This year we brought home our first real piece of art work, a print by Daniel Ng. Sunrise Tuscany (giclee print 4 of 450) is now hanging in our living room.

On our first trip to the Arts Festival in 2005 we saw an actual painting by David Oleski that we really liked, but it was $400. We hadn’t really concidered buying art for our apartment yet, so we figured surely we’ll be able to find something we liked that was cheaper. We were wrong.

In the three years since we haven’t bought any art to hang on the walls because nothing was quite right and  Mr. Oleski’s paintings are selling for much more now than they were the day we first saw them.

So, we’re very happy now to be able to finely display a fine art work in our fine home. Fine.

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