Since I have had no luck finding such a list online, I plan to start a new Apple TV page that will cover the various multiplayer and 3-D games.
Multiplayer implies more than one player at the same time. There is no category for this in the app store, so unless the developer puts that word in the description, you won’t find these games with a search.
I was very surprised to find that the new 4th generation Apple TV supports 3-D content. The Pangea Software games (some of which I’d played on the Mac years ago) are the only ones I’ve found so far that work in 3-D. Really neat.
I have a few dozen different websites, but none for a subject like this, so I’ll just post it here. Maybe you will find it interesting.
Since a big portion of this site is topics from my 8-bit computer days in the 1980s, I now find myself wondering if I remember any of the stories I tell correctly. Most of the things I think I recall, I think I recall correctly … but now I am wondering if anything I say here is accurate. Join me on a quick detour and let’s have some fun with memories…
On December 22, 2015, an e-mail newsletter I receive from DIGG had a subject that caught my attention. It said:
Your Memories Aren’t Real
The newsletter usually contains around a dozen links to articles on other sites, but the first one was titled “The Movie That Doesen’t Exist And The Redditors Who Think It Does“. The description talked about hundreds of people remembering a cheesy 1990’s movie called “Shazaam” and that no such movie exists. I initially shrugged this off because I was well aware of a movie called “Kazaam” that started the basketball player Shaquille O’Neal.
I was curious about how this could be “a thing” so I read the article. Here it is:
This article discusses something called the Mandela Effect, named after groups of people who incorrectly remember Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s. Some news or event must have happened back then that confused many people the same way.
I had previously heard references to Mandela Effect on Free Talk Live, a liberty-minded syndicated talk radio program. They occasionally brought it up, using the example of how the children’s book is Berenstain Bears and not Berenstein Bears like many recall. I always heard it as “stein” so I had repeated it incorrectly my entire life.
This led me to do some quick web searches to see if there was anything more to it than that, and I found all kinds of amusing posts and YouTube videos. Most of them are in the same league as “misheard song lyrics” and made me think of a book a former coworker friend of mine, James, had pointed me to ages ago. A quick search right now shows that there is even a website dedicated to this:
(That’s a reference to the Jimi Hendrix song, which some mishear as “Excuse me while I kiss this guy!”)
I went through various lists of movie quotes everyone seems to get wrong (“NO, I am your father!”, “Life WAS like a box of chocolates”, “MAGIC mirror on the wall”) and even TV items most of us heard hundreds of times if we grew up in the 70s (“It’s a beautiful day in THIS neighborhood”). I was stunned at how many I was wrong about.
The Mandela Effect folks say this could be a sign of parallel worlds/dimensions/etc. and folks slipping between them, noticing something is off in a product logo, or song lyric or something they swear they remember and know.
It’s quite entertaining.
One actually hit me pretty hard. When I was first getting involved with Renaissance Festivals in the late 1990s, I had some smart friends that would often explain some of the historical inaccuracies these events propagate. (No, pirates like you recognize don’t belong at a typical Renaissance festival – they are closer to the Wild West era than medieval times.) One of these items was turkey legs and how turkeys were from the New World and didn’t even exist in Europe until they were brought over at a much later time (1500s?).
So how did turkey legs become so popular? I was pointed to a painting (which I always thought was of one of the King Henrys). It showed him holding up something that looked like a turkey leg. My friend explained it was likely some other type of meat. I remember looking the picture up (a color painting) back in those dial-up internet days.
Over the years, I’ve mentioned this to other festival newbies, and you can certainly find tons of references to such a painting, as well as find the pose parodied all over the place.
But there is no such painting. At least, not of King Henry.
I am confident such a painting exists, tho for all I know it was painted in the 1960s (the first Renaissance festival started around 1963 in California). It may have even been a parody painting, making fun of the King’s gluttony.
One this is for sure … it apparently was not King Henry.
And although there’s alot of science theory lately about parallel dimensions, I somehow think it’s just that my memory is crap.
Here’s a fun graphic showing various product logos and names. How many of them are you wrong about?
After having a Drobo 5C for a week, I’ve decided there are a few changes that I do not like, and one that I do like…
Don’t Like
Enclosure. As previously mentioned, the enclosure is now more of an outside shell that is no longer flush against the front of the device (when the removable face plate is on). Now, when the face plate is installed, there is a small gap running all around it. It just doesn’t seem as polished of a design. Also, when my laptop is set in front of the Drobo, if I open the lid too far, it now makes contact with the metal strip at the top rather than more gently rubbing against the plastic cover as it did with the previous 2nd and 3rd generation modules.
Power Supply. For some reason, the round power connector that goes in to the Drobo 5C now has a right-angle connector at the end. This causes extra tension on the cable (and probably power connector) as the chord is pulled at an angle a bit before running straight out the back and down behind my computer desk. I really don’t care for this, but if you put your Drobo at the far back of a desk (where the power cable would then point directly down), you may prefer this.
Drobo 5C right-angle power connector.
LED Status Lights. Since the front panel no longer covers the bottom row of status lights, the lights are brighter than the rest of the LEDs behind the panel. If I set the Drobo 5C brightness to 5, and have it next to a 3rd generation Drobo also set to 5, the blue LEDs on the 5C are much brighter because they are no longer being filtered out through the clear plastic of the face plate. It also means the 5C lights behind the faceplate are dimmer than the ones below it.
Drobo 5C (left) with brighter blue lights versus 3rd gen (right) with lights behind the face plate.
Can’t See LEDs. And, if your Drobo 5C sits a bit lower, the bottom row of blue LEDs can be hidden below/behind the face place. As I look down at the 5C and 3rd gen models, I can clearly see the front panel blue status LEDs on the 3rd gen, but cannot see the bottom row on the 5C. When sitting at a lower level, I can see them both. Not a big deal, but a change. I first noticed this when I walked in to where my computer is, and thought the 5C had locked up since all the blue capacity lights were off (or so I thought).
Drobo 5C (left) has recessed bottom lights, versus 3rd gen (right) that showed them through the face plate.
If they used the same power connector as they did on previous power supplies, and had kept the enclosure design the same, I would not have anything to gripe about.
Like
Face plate. There was one thing I did like, which I had not noticed before. In the previous photo, notice how the green drive lights on the 3rd generation (right) can be seen through the face plate. The black face plate is a bit transparent, and I had never noticed this until taking these photos. The 5C face place is opaque.
(Cross posting from my Appleause.com website. Over there, I post things related to Apple, Mac, iOS, etc.)
The Drobo 5C was introduced in October 2016 for $349. There has already been a $50 discount code ($299) and a one-day Amazon.com sale (also $299). Yesterday, the price tracking site, Camel Camel Camel, alerted me of a $279 price on Amazon:
By the time you see this posting, the price may no longer be valid, but you might consider activating a Camel Camel Camel account to do your own tracking. You will receive an e-mail alert when the desired item (anything on Amazon) reaches the price you want. It also shows a historic graph of the price the item has been since tracking began.
The Drobo 5C was introduced in October 2016 for $349. There has already been a $50 discount code ($299) and a one-day Amazon.com sale (also $299). Yesterday, the price tracking site, Camel Camel Camel, alerted me of a $279 price on Amazon:
By the time you see this posting, the price may no longer be valid, but you might consider activating a Camel Camel Camel account to do your own tracking. You will receive an e-mail alert when the desired item (anything on Amazon) reaches the price you want. It also shows a historic graph of the price the item has been since tracking began.
If you have an iPhone or iPad, and want to take 360 photos like the Ricoh Theta does, you may soon be able to do so with a $249 add-on from Giroptic:
https://www.giroptic.com/us/en/giroptic-io
This Giroptic IO connects via the Lightning port and has two lenses. It allows the recording of 360 photos or video which can then be uploaded via the iPhone or iPad.
The device has its own rechargeable battery (charged by a second port).
It’s an interesting product, though it seems it would be easier to just carry a Ricoh Theta with you instead of a clip on camera. It also does not look like it would connect to phones in thick protective cases.
But, it’s still neat… I’d love to get one to do a review of.
Hey, other Drobo owners… Have you ever seen this happen?
Where, oh where have my Drobo volume names gone?
My volumes all have custom names, but occasionally I see Drobo Dashboard only show them as “Drobo”. I believe they always still show up as their proper names to Mac OS X, but Drobo Dashboard seems to have a problem reading them.
I have seen this on a 2nd generation Drobo, a 3rd generation Drobo, and on my brand new Drobo 5C (the second day I had it hooked up). I have seen it hooked to three different computers (all Macs) via FireWire, USB 2.0 and now USB 3.0.
I contacted Drobo support about this, and they asked me the typical list of support questions, which makes me wonder if I’m the only one this happens to.
Previously, I discussed the unboxing and setup of the new Drobo 5C. Today, I will walk through the migration process from an older 3rd generation 4-bay Drobo to this new 5-bay model.
Setting up Drobo 5C is no different than the previous models… Plug in the power cable, plug in the USB cable, insert drives, then turn it on.
Since the topic of this article is migrating from a 3rd gen model to the 5C, here are some important additional comments:
APPLY FIRMWARE UPDATES FIRST. The code that came on my 5C was already out of date. The first thing you should do it hook up new new Drobo (with no drives inserted!) and power it on. Run the Drobo Dashboard software and it should recognize the new Drobo, and offer to update the firmware (if an update is available). Allow this to happen, and for the unit to reboot and be seen by Drobo Dashboard.
Next, you want to power down the new Drobo, and move the “drive pack” (all the drives used together) from the previous Drobo to this one. DO NOT HAVE THE UNIT POWERED ON WHEN YOU INSERT THE HARD DRIVES! If you do this, the Drobo will see the drive inserted, and format it. You must have the new Drobo powered off, and then insert all the drives at the same time, then power it up. The Drobo should boot, then recognize the drives and have the same name and volume(s) you saw on the old Drobo.
FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS GIVEN ON THE DROBO WEBSITE! Don’t trust some random stranger’s website… The information I gave you may be incorrect and cause the total end of life as we know it.
Mine seemed to have some problem and it was not recognized by the computer after I did this. I had to power it down, and start it up again. It mounted just fine after that, and it showed up with the same device name and volume names since all of the information is contained on the drive pack itself.
At this point, the new 5-bay Drobo should act exactly the same as the former 4-bay model.
My next goal was to enable dual disk redundancy. When I looked at the Drobo Dashboard, the option to enable this was grayed out. I suppose that makes sense. My unit was quite full and there probably wouldn’t have been enough free space to make a third copy of all my data. However, my understanding is that as long as there is enough space available, you could switch over to dual disk redundancy. (But I may be misunderstanding.)
To get the needed space, I acquired a brand new 3TB Western Digital Red hard drive.
NOTE: When I get a new hard drive, I like to first zero-byte format the entire drive. By writing to every sector of the new drive, any severe problems can be located. I would rather spend the hours it takes to do this, than blindly put in a new drive only to find out it had some severe issue far at the end of the drive which doesn’t show up until months (or years) later when the drive finally fills up to the bad spot. (Yes, I have found bad drives this way, but only two so far.)
After I plugged in the new device, as expected, the option for dual disk redundancy was available:
Drobo 5C dual disk redundancy option.
I checked it, and the drive began the long process of migrating data so every bit existed on three different drives (thus, two could fail, and data would still be protected):
Drobo 5C rebuilding for dual disk redundancy.
It initially stay it would take over 40 hours to do this, but it was actually completed in about 24 hours. The newer Drobos certainly handle rebuilding much faster than the early models which could take all week even with much smaller hard drives.
The end result was a new Drobo with a few more volumes available and some extra peace-of-mind.
