Archive from October 2017
GamesLucasarts
23. October 2017

Two years ago, I wrote an article about Thimbleweed Park, the Kickstarter-funded adventure game project from Lucasfilm Games legends Ron Gilbert, Gary Winnick and David Fox – and then sadly never got around to mention it again. In the meantime, the game has been successfully developed – which was extensively documented on their website – and finally released this Spring. Ironically, I was not able to play the game in its PC version because, despite its retro look, the engine has some requirements in the graphics department that made it impossible to run on my aging computers! But recently, more than half a year after the initial release, the Android port has finally been released and to my delight it runs on my tablet and phone. Time to go back to 1987, which is very appropriate since 2017 is the 30th Anniversary of Lucasfilm Games’ first point-and-click adventure Maniac Mansion!

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WWW
22. October 2017

Twitch has recently become much more than just a game streaming site, but the website is very resource intensive and can be difficult to use on slower and older computers. Twitch is unfortunately not directly streamable in third-party players, but there is a workaround involving the Livestreamer tool making streaming with VLC and other players possible. Because the Livestreamer solution for Twitch requires a little bit of setup, I thought I'd write down an easy tutorial. This is primarily for Windows systems, but it should work on all systems Livestreamer and VLC are available for.

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Kategorie: WWW
Android
18. October 2017

I only rarely do product reviews, but getting a new Android device is always a good excuse. Recently, my trusty Huawei Ascend G610 smartphone broke – actually for the second time, because the first one I got in Spring 2015 bricked itself in December of that year and I had to get a warranty replacement. I still have a second identical phone as a backup, but it was finally time to look for something new and replace those ancient devices which still run Android 4.2. My main concern was finding a comparable inexpensive smartphone in the same sub-100-Euro price range, something that Huawei doesn’t seem to offer anymore. But I found a great alternative in another Chinese company which manufactures phones unter the Cubot brand with good hardware, recent Android versions and really fair prices.

Cubot has a couple of phones that are priced under 100 Euro in Europe, but I chose the Rainbow 2 because it had the best reviews and I was looking for a 5” phone with dual sim capability and a good camera – and for only 85 Euro it was almost to good to be true. There is actually another model from Cubot’s budget brand called Hafury Mix which is even slightly less expensive and basically seems to be the Rainbow 2 without the dual camera, but I only discovered this after I bought the other model. I was understandably skeptical that this phone could really deliver the goods at this low price, especially because it was a recent model and not even marked down – but I didn’t have to worry much.

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