Ib & Ob: IOP Paradox Part 9

Ob: Well the Bio Emitters turned out to be some what expensive and then I got distracted with the Trilons.

Ib: I thought the hull do not look as shiny as it should, basically you are telling me the ship is unprotected.

Ob: We have defenses I just thought out here in the middle of no space I did not think we would meet an hostile force.

Ib: And you said and I quote "Chance happens in the strangest of places..."

Ob: Nothing strange about this place.

Ib: Haxians, artifacts and a seeder ship not strange! Mmm.

Ob: Maybe the best thing to do would be to hide somewhere. Err and quickly there is a ship on the scanner.

Ib: Well Haxians are very two dimensional in their thinking I really do not how they made it into space.  Have you seen the inside of their ships it is all flat surfaces and no place to sit.

Ob: How does it help us?

Ib:  Easy drop into a lower orbit, it will take them at least a couple of rotations before they figure out where we have gone.  And by then we will have come up with a better plan.

Ob: Do you really think they will fall for that?

Ib: Only one way to find out.

Ob: One interval.

Ob: Errr there appears to be a lot of radiation here in the southern hemisphere at this altitude.  Was not this the place you dumped your beta nano swarm last time we were here?

Ib: Yes well they taking up space in the cargo bay plus they never did anything useful.

Ob: That is why they call it beta.  According to the scanner there is a central mass in the center of the radiation.  It is ten times our mass.

Ib: How close are we to it?

Ob: Hold a panug! Purple Monopods! It is coming closer at velocity.

Ib: Well if the swarm survived technically they are Grey Tech and it attracts other Grey Tech, hence Grey World.

Ob: We are getting a signal on the encrypted channel.

Ib: And?

Ob: They are requesting a power transfer and have given us landing signals.

Ib: I am not sure about this, Nano-swarms can be very needy.

Ob: It is better than hanging about waiting for the Haxians to turn up.

Ib: Fine.

Human Interlude #4

J: Mr President, NASA have reported an unknown object at the center of the South Atlantic Anomaly.

Mr President: What do they want me to do about it.  Did that space station see it?

J: NASA had to turn off the live feed again, you know it makes all the Alien Conspiracy theorists jumpy when they do that.

Mr President's Hair: yes they love feeding the trolls.

Mr President: I don't see what they expect me to do, all they ever do is ask me for money and avoid all my questions.

Mr Berg: That is simply not true Mr President, your just not suited to the answers they give.

Mr President: What does the object look like?

Mr Berg: Excellent question Mr President, shows the true scientist in you.

Mr President: What's the answer?

Mr Berg: Well apparently it was very big and black.

Mr President: Was? How do you see something black on the blackness of space exactly?

Mr Berg: It only appeared for a few moments some Youtuber caught it on the live feed.

Mr President: What you are telling me is that NASA watches YouTube?

Mr Berg: Not all the time.

J: Mr President I think perhaps now would be a good time for one of your tweets.

Pokermon Go 1st Review

This new mobile app game recently released by Niantic the makers of Ingress is taking the world by storm the only problem being is that the high demand from users has made a pig's ear out of the servers running the game.  It has only been released in the USA and Australia, the UK released is on hold until they can guarantee good service.  That being said if you have an Android phone you can download it from here: APK Pokemon GO download

Which is exactly what I did earlier in the week, once installed on the phone it takes up a whooping 116 Megabytes (MB), admittedly it took a couple of attempts at downloading it the surge for the game was already building.

I am assuming the 116 MB is mostly for the 3D aspects of the game unlike Niantic's previous game Ingress whereby the screen is a very flat 2D environment in place of a walking Avatar that you have in Pokemon GO you have a filled in triangle.  There is augmented reality aspect to the game as well which uses the phone's camera to show the Pokemon's in the real world, I found this slowed the game down somewhat.

Niantic has used many of the portals created in Ingress for the PokeStops and Gyms in Pokemon Go however they have thinned them out quite a bit.

The basics of the game are simple:

• Catch Pokemon's by walking around and throwing PokeBalls at them when they appear
• Collect items from PokeStops (blue portals): PokeBalls, Potions, Eggs etc
• Power Up/Evolve your Pokemons using items you pick up when you catch them
• Hatch Eggs using a Incubator - walking powers it.
• Use the unclaimed Gyms or friendly Gyms to help train your Pokemons
• Capture Gyms (white portals) for your team (Blue/Red/Yellow)

The more you do the more experience (XP) you get which levels you up, you need to be level 5 before you can enter a Gym.  That took three lunchtimes to do so.  There are also badges for collecting different types of Pokemons, walking, evolving etc.

Now the following issues maybe because the servers were already falling apart due the high load, I will list them in reverse chronically order:

• Niantic/The Pokemon Company logo on opening screen covers the entire screen which means if you want to swap to a different app you cannot
• Can no longer login it is stuck in a loop which makes the above really annoying
• The loading screen plays a really annoying tune, had to turn the sound off on the phone
• Augmented Reality switch only on the Capture Pokemon & Battle screens, should be in the settings menu as well
• The Battery Saver turns your screen off when you turn the phone sideways away from you sounds good in theory but in practice when you turn it back to face you the App has crashed/locked out.
• It goes through the battery fair quicker than when using Ingress, it took just under 50% of my phone charge in less than hour.
• Even with the sounds & music off the game sounds like it is running a mini fan maybe this is what is taking all the battery power
• Game freezes and reboots quite a lot more so than any game I have downloaded in the past
• Scrolling is very unresponsive
• Clicking on the menu items is really slow

There does not seem to be much in the way of team play you basically capture Gyms (white portals) for your team and you deploy your best Pokemons to the Gym to defend it from other teams.  You can attack another team's Gym with up to six other players but you are still only playing one on one battles.  There needs to be a team score that everyone can access, the scores could be split by worldwide, region, country and towns.

The ability to trade items would also be a good thing too.

The game for me became unplayable after being unable to login for two days so it got uninstalled, I will wait for the UK release hopefully they will have ironed out some of the kinks by then.

Unless you are a Pokermon fan (which I am not) I think you might find the game quite dull in its game play.

It is curious to note the other reviews I have read about this game suggest that it is first game to get you out walking which is ironic because Niantic's marketing for Ingress was the same thing.

Additional:  Is this the thin end of the wedge?

Of course Ingress was much the same.