iPhone and Linux

Monday, April 20, 2009

Odd description for the movie Top Gun

from tvlistings.zap2it.com

"Top Gun (1986)
A hot-shot Navy jet pilot tangles with MiGs and flirts with a civilian astrophysicist."

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Nice script

This is a pretty sweet script for any linux weather geeks. it downloads a base reflectivity radar map from the National Weather Service and notifies you if there is any precipitation within x miles of your location.

I've actually been looking for this forever because we have to bring things inside at work when it starts to rain, plus I often have the top down on my Jeep and want a little warning if it's going to rain.

I had problems with stateMon.pl so I wrote a simple script to run the other scripts and handle the notification.

(rewritten to a much better looking script Jan 2010)
#! /bin/sh

wget -q http://radar.weather.gov/ridge/RadarImg/N0R/MRX_N0R_0.gif

current=$(perl ./getprecipstate.pl MRX_N0R_0.gif 226 314 20 20 | awk '{ print $3 }')
old=$(tail -n 1 record | awk '{ print $7 }')

[ $current = 'raining' ] && [ $old = 'clear' ] && add your notification method here

echo -n `date` >> record ; echo " $current" >> record ; rm MRX_N0R*
That script is set up as a cron job and it will send a txt message to my phone whenever any precipitation shows up on radar within 10 miles of my home. Pretty cool!

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

iMob hints

I've been playing the iphone game called iMob for a week or two. There's a lot of cheaters. Apparently you can install several versions of the app on a jailbroken phone and use them one at a time and your stamina and money never depletes. I've only made it to level 34 and make $110 per hour, but I think I've figured out some tips for the non-cheaters.

Money tips:

Take out hits ASAP. You have to be faster than a zillion other players if you want to collect the bounty. Always try to keep 1-2 stamina points for marks.

Except the first levels when you are broke, don't buy property unless you can buy in groups of ten. The price goes up every time you buy property. I haven't paid attention to the amount it rises, but let's assume it's 10% and the property you want is $1,000. If you buy 10, you spend $10,000, but if you buy them one at a time, here is what you spend:

1 1000
2 1100
3 1210
4 1331
5 1464
6 1610
7 1771
8 1948
9 2142
10 2356
total 15,932

Also, pay attention to the prices of the more expensive properties. Everyone knows the casino is a ripoff at $100 million for a payout of only 250k per hour. The shopping center is your best bet. It will give you $100,000 per hour, so buying ten gives you $1 million per hour. But the price keeps going up, and at some point, you're better off saving for other properties. The night club and casino eventually become a better deal.


Experience tips:

Money aside, under level 40, the best mission to do is the one that costs 10 energy and pays 13 experience points. I don't even know that it's called, but I currently have 40 energy points and can do the mission 4 times and receive 52 experience points. No other combination of missions can pay off that much for leveling up. I heard there is a better mission at level 40, but I'm not there yet.

Pick fights. You can gain 0-4 experience points in a fight and $0-70k. If your stamina is, say, 10, pick 8 fights and maybe you'll gain some experience points.

Your mob:

Everyone wants a mob with 100,000 members, but it's certainly not necessary. You can only fight with your level x10 mobsters. I'm level 34 and have 1350 mobsters, but can only use 340 in all my fights because 34x10=340.

You don't need to buy weapons for all your mobsters, only the number you can use in a fight.

Having a lot of mobsters does have two advantages. First, I've noticed that no one ever attacks me now because I have more mobsters than most people at my level, but I am not really any stronger than they are. There's no reason to worry about fighting someone on your level with a huge mob because they can only use the same number as you.

Secondly, with a large mob, you don't have to worry about getting more members. If I got no more members, I'd be fine until level 135.

Oh, and add me: 165-662-468

Is it Judgement Day?

Is today, April 1st, Judgement Day? Today, Google announced the switching on of CADIE, an artificial intelligence system in development deep in the bowels of the Google lair. CADIE has already started her own blog, which, I'm sure, gets more hits than mine.

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