Monthly Archives: November 2011

Little “Tiny Wings” review

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Company: Andreas Illiger
Version: 1.1.3
Size: 10.2 MB
Platform: Optimized for iPhone/iPodTouch (2x mode for iPad)
Price: $0.99

The gameplay is very simple, you control a little birdie who’s wings are way too small for him/her to sustain flight on its own. You have to use gravity to help the bird gain speed and “fly” through the air. You tap and hold the screen to have the bird fold in its wings and drop to the ground. The strategy is to time the landing to land on a slope, and use gravity

Tiny Wings free flight

and your momentum to propel you farther on the next take off.

There are two different flight modes… You can fly normally, or you can fly in “fever mode.”  Fever mode is activated when you have 3 consecutive “perfect” jumps.  A jump is considered a “perfect” jump or “great slide” when you time the landing on a downward slope, and take off on the next hill.  In fever mode you get more points when traveling across the screen, have a great slide, touch the clouds, or collect coins.  In fever mode, you generally also fly through the stages faster, and thus can get farther before the end of the “day.”

As mentioned above you score points by traveling through the “islands,” getting great slides, touching clouds, and collecting coins.  You also get multipliers depending on what “level” you’re on.  To complete a level, you need to satisfy each of 3 different random missions which can entail being in fever mode for a set time or distance, collecting coins, touching clouds, reaching a certain island, getting so many great slides, etc.

Tiny Wings Coins

Tiny Wings Getting Tiny Coins

The game is very addictive, though at times it can get quite frustrating and hard to beat a particular objective.  If you find a set of islands particularly hard, just wait a day.  The islands you play on will randomize every day (real time).  Each day you play the game the islands will have different colors, lengths, heights, and different hill layouts.

Overall, this game keeps me very engaged, and I find myself playing whenever I have 5 – 10 minutes to kill.   Very well worth the $0.99!

Good monitor, bad monitor

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When our baby was born, we, like most parents registered for a modest monitor with decent ratings.  We figured with a name like Sony, we could hardly go wrong.  To be fair, maybe we got a lemon, or something, but the thing just didn’t work well at all.

Our baby’s bedroom is at the back of the house, with a bathroom near the middle of the house, and the family room at the other end of the house.  While my wife and I stayed home with our new baby for her first 3 weeks; we took many showers in the middle of the day.

With the base station in the baby’s room, the receiver at the other end of the house (well within the stated range on the box) and one of us in the shower in between… The static in the living room was so bad in the living room that we couldn’t hear the TV or other people talking in the room!

We got the monitor at Babys ‘R’ Us, and were lucky that they took it back and let us exchange it for another one.  We were told by the sales people there that our problem was likely due to the fact that the monitor was an analog monitor.  So we took their advice and tried a new one, this time a digital one.

The monitor we switched to was the Summer Infant Slim, and it was a night and day difference.  With the new monitor we were able to walk all around the house without any interference, static, or crackling like we had with the Sony from above.  The transmitter is so sensitive that we can hear her breathing when she has a stuffy nose!

The range is at least double what the Sony one was.  In the fall we can take it out to the fire pit in the backyard without any loss of signal.  When we bought ours 6 months ago it was considerably more pricy, but it was worth every single penny.

Take my advice, pay a little more and get a digital monitor over an analog one, it’ll save you a lot of sleep, and a lot of static.

Driving just got a helping hand

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I heard about an interesting new product for Android, the “ionroad” app is an app you install on your Android phone or tablet.  The application uses the camera in the device to analyze the road ahead of your car and tell you if you’re following too closely to the vehicle ahead of you.

For now the application seems to only be available to Android users, but the website (http://www.ionroad.com/) promises to have it available for other smartphones in winter 2011… Which hopefully includes the iPhone.

As an iPhone user, I have not yet been able to test the product, but am very interested in doing so when it comes out.  For Android users, the product is currently free and is available through the Android app store.