I wasn’t really sure what was in American Nightmare until coverage for the game started picking up prior to the release.

Alan Wake’s story was kind of like Twin Peaks. Alan and Alice Wake, his wife, visit a sleepy northwestern town for a vacation and mystery ensues. Alice’s wife is trapped by “The Dark Presence, ” Alan rescues her only to find himself trapped with the same “darkness” that has been controlling the townsfolk and causing them to turn against him.

In American Nightmare’s the “darkness” is a villainous parallel version of Wake, Mr. Scratch. Each level is presented like an episode of The Twilight Zone, featuring decent Rod Serling-esque narration and a campy plot. The story is engaging and has enough going on to keep you interested until the exciting conclusion. I was definitely surprised a few times at what the developers were willing to do outside of a disc-based retail game.

It sounds awful when you find out that you’re going to play the same three levels three times. The developers have understood how terrible that might play out and instead change each level with each visit. Initially you’re seeing almost everything a stage has to offer, but on repeat playthroughs you’re getting the gist while the developers put in twists for Alan.

Once you’ve completed the game you’ve got Arcade Mode still to play. Nowhere is it more clear that Alan Wake is Max Payne’s literate cousin than in this wave-based survival mode. With ten minutes on the clock Alan has to stay alive until sunrise.  Weapons are more automatic than the previous game, and is still the unique blend of third-person shooting where you’ve got to weaken enemies by illuminating them with your flashlight before lead can do them in. The slow-mo effect from Max Payne is back whenever you’ve cleared a set of enemies. This camera effect also occurs when a foe is about to sneak up on Alan, pulling back to give the player a second to react. The camera can be a little frustratingly inconsistent in giving the player this glimpse of danger. Sometimes you’ll be left wondering why you’ve lost your score multiplier due to a hit that could have been avoided if only the monsters were a little less subtle.

Though entertaining, American Nightmare is short. Despite returning to the same locations over again I only got about 4 hours out of the story mode. This isn’t too little, instead it feels just about right for what I expect from a $15 side-story from the original Alan Wake.

If you haven’t played the first game, I can’t recommend this one. The original game is referenced through manuscript page collectibles strewn around the game but there isn’t any reason why you wouldn’t want to play it when it can be had for about $20.

Speaking of manuscript-page collectibles, one addition to the game is really nifty. Each area in the game has a TV with a short FMV sequence featuring Alan’s nemesis indulging in some of the finest b-grade movie villainy witnessed on the small screen.

One final note, If you do decide to purchase American Nightmare on Xbox Live Arcade, please make sure to switch the HUD to “fading” on the options menu. Otherwise the HUD will obscure your view for far too long.

I loved Alan Wake’s American Nightmare and it is one of the best games to be released on the 360′s downloadable service. While the story-mode content could have made more sense as DLC for the original game, the arcade mode is fun enough to justify the price. Get the original if you haven’t played it, and then have a Nightmare.

It’s almost unsettling how many choices you have when deciding what kind of iPhone case you’d like to buy.

Do you get one that charges your phone, or looks cool?

Is it a wallet?

Or a steering wheel?

The BookBook fits into the wallet category.

It’s small enough to fit in your pocket, though of course it adds a bit of bulk to encompass a few cards, some cash, and your iPhone.

Lets talk about the look.

The spine and sides of it are designed to look like a worn, pocket-sized, tome.

You can alternate between being insulted that it is phony, or charmed and amused.

There isn’t any way to get around this, you either like that look or you don’t. I wasn’t convinced until I saw the thing in person, having dismissed it previously as a trifle.

There are cutouts for the sensors, speakers, mic, dock, sleep/wake, home button, headphone, and the mute switch, though the volume buttons do not get a cutout.

The BookBook is about as smooth as you’re going to get for removing a case and docking it. Pull a red tab on a strap from behind your phone to enable removal, and push the phone up and out. Simple and not frustrating.

Unfortunately this is also the process for taking pictures or video. Though you don’t have to slide the phone out all the way to do so, if you choose to keep the phone in the case the top edge and speaker cutout will block some of the screen. An unexpected upside is that it gives you something to grip that isn’t the screen when shooting, so I find that to be a little more stable. Of course you’re also now going to be slightly concerned with the phone tipping out when held horizontally in landscape mode.

The friction of the leather’s grain holds your phone in until you’ve tipped it at a fairly extreme angle. If you slide the phone out for picture-taking until the volume-down button is resting inside the cutout for the mute toggle switch it’ll feel fairly secure. Of course, this is on a day-old product, and I can’t say that this will remain the case (rdrr) after several months of use.

There is minimal screen protection when the case is open. Nothing to prevent an object from impacting with the screen, but the leather frame that holds the phone in should be enough for any drop that isn’t face down. I actually like that this case doesn’t include a screen protector, most of the plastic built-ins would lock dust and pocket lint in and make touch controls that much more difficult.

It is actually a little difficult to hold the phone and use it one-handed. You have to flip the front cover back over the rear and the springiness of this configuration changes the way you touch the screen and the distance from thumb to edge. It isn’t an issue for quick taps, or reading, only for swipes and more complicated thumbage. I don’t find it too impractical, but this is actually the limitation that is the most bothersome from day-to-day.

I chose to be amused by the faux-book style, and am surprised at how well this case functions. For about $60, you’re getting what is actually a quite good leather wallet and iPhone 4 case. If you’re bothered by the style initially, the functionality may win you over.

Long story short: if you have issues with a PCI-E card like video cutting out randomly and never returning it’s because the designers were on meth. The solution is to only have RAM in DIMM slots 3 and 4. If you put anything in 1 or 2 you’ll want to commit suicide.

What the hell, Dell. This is why I build my PCs.

Anyway, I had a battery die on a controller again and write cache was disabled. Replacing the battery on that controller did not fix it — it was still saying the write cache was suspended. After a LOT of poking it finally came back, but I don’t know exactly how or why. I currently have a theory though that I hope helps someone out some day.

1) Known issue that MD3000i units ship with writeCacheEnabled=true and mirrorCacheEnabled=true, which puts the write cache into a suspended mode because it can’t mirror with only one controller. (They come with one controller unless you order two)

2) Fixing the above problem requires disabling both, then re-enabling only the write cache.

3) Trying the above did not work. Mirror disabled, but still suspended. Somehow with mirror disabled and forcing it to ignore the battery (cacheWithoutBatteriesEnabled=true) would get write cache working again. That’s not a good or safe solution, though.

4) Disabling all write cache settings, doing an offline/online of each controller, and then enabling all the write caches and fixing paths seemed to work.

I think it refuses to mirror the cache which keeps it suspended because the controllers still have some weird cache setting that doesn’t get cleared until you offline/online both controllers to “reset” them. It’s currently the best theory I have, but doesn’t explain why I could force it to work by setting cacheWithoutBatteriesEnabled=true.

tl;dr this SAN is a big box of shit.

We’ve never had much luck with mysql-proxy as we’ve seen it crash its fair amount of times or not start properly on boot, but this was unending. Core dumps weren’t giving anything useful; logs were no better. Here’s the MySQL-Proxy alternative that we should have implemented ages ago. Note, we’re running FreeBSD, so adapt to your own OS/Linux distro:

What you need:

net/socat
net/haproxy

FreeBSD’s rc.conf:

# mysql_proxy alternative
socat_enable="YES"
socat_flags="UNIX-LISTEN:/tmp/mysql.sock,fork,reuseaddr,unlink-early,mode=777 TCP:127.0.0.1:3306"
haproxy_enable="YES"

HAProxy’s config:

global
log 127.0.0.1 local0
maxconn 4096
daemon
#debug
#quiet
#
defaults
log global
mode tcp
option tcplog
option dontlognull
option tcp-smart-accept
option tcp-smart-connect
retries 3
maxconn 200
#
listen mysql :3306
mode tcp
option mysql-check
balance roundrobin
server mysql1 1.2.3.4:3306 check port 3306

Ultimately, HAProxy manages the connections very well and socat fixes any old clients trying to talk over the /tmp/mysql.sock file.

Enjoy.

via Hidden warning message found in Samsung’s Galaxy tablet » Technology Blog » Chipworks.

The other night I was browsing the web and somehow stumbled upon GameCenter Live. A friend told me he subscribed recently, and the price for the rest of the season was reasonable. I was still hesitant to buy it because I was unsure about watching games on my PC, and I also run Linux or FreeBSD often so it needed to work OK in their terrible flash player. Somehow I spotted a mention of the PS3. That sounded fantastic — not paying for cable but watching games on my TV? SOLD!

The GameCenter Live for PS3 is $10 if you’re not a PS3 Plus sucker subscriber, so I figured that’s not too bad an entry fee if I only have to pay it once. The download of 18MB only took about 15 minutes which is hilariously slow, but I’m not going to complain if it works.

My experience has been partially satisfying so far. I’ll give you a rundown of the current features:

GOOD

These problems are not only on the PS3 — it’s also mentioned on the Boxee and Roku forums. My googling so far has found instances of people complaining on non-Sony / PS3 forums. Someone must be keeping people quiet about it. I’ve read people mentioning that they’ve heard back from Sony and they claim their engineers don’t have this issue. Others say it’s known and being worked on. My only guess is that the streaming done to the PS3, Boxee, and Roku devices are not the same as the one to the web. It’s probably encoded differently and uses different servers to do the streaming. Either way, it needs to be fixed.

At this point I’d rate the app 2/5 because of how unwatchable the Capitals vs Hurricanes game was last night. If you can handle these issues go ahead and buy it. I’m sure watching the game after it airs will be a decent experience. However, if you want to watch it live you’re going to get frustrated quickly.

I have high hopes for this market. NHL is getting my money and there’s no reason why this format should be treated like a second class citizen. As more things move to the web the situation should improve, but it needs to improve soon because I’m getting impatient….

edit: For anyone who wants to blame the issues on internet connection problems:

Lots of interesting stuff including Ryan discussing OS/2 at length. This portion is especially compelling:

I find if you’re targeting Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X right from the start, your code will probably work anywhere else that you might try it later.

Not to long ago, people would say, “why bother? Everyone runs Windows!”

But then the consoles became important.

And smaller shops might still say, “well, I’m not targeting those anyhow!”

But now they wish they had an iPad port.

You never know what will be important tomorrow!

via Interview: Ryan C. Gordon.

The English version of the interview is unfortunately lacking this great picture so I have provided it for reference.