random stuff
I finished Season 1 of The Wire last night, and I'm into Season 2. I think I'm in love.
I bought the expansion for Sins of a Solar Empire this evening, and played a bit. So far, it seems like a solid expansion to an already-solid game, so I'm pretty happy with the $10 price tag.
However, as much as I'm liking the game, I'm annoyed at Stardock's digital distribution platform, Impulse. It's basically similar to Steam, but much less polished and a lot more confusing to use. For some reason I've ended up with games registered to different email accounts, even though they're all purchased through my Impulse account. That's fine, but you have to enter your email when registering a new game, and if you don't enter the _current_ one attached to your account, it rejects the registration attempt. After purchasing a game, the only way to get it to show up in Impulse is to copy down the serial number it gives you when you buy it and enter it into Impulse - on Steam, it just shows up in your games list and starts downloading. It took me longer to figure out how to buy the game and get it into my games list than it took to install the original game, download and install the expansion, and get playing.
On a similar note, I'm continually annoyed at iTunes for not providing a single place where you can see everything you've purchased via iTunes, and re-download it. Sure, it's easy and convenient to buy content and get right to enjoying it, but if I want to re-download my iPhone applications because a backup failed (which has happened to me and several people I know) or download the TV shows I bought via my Apple TV to my laptop before going away, I have to a) remember what I bought, and b) find it again and click "buy", hoping that it will remember that I bought it already and not charge me again. I've never had that happen, but presenting a button that says "buy" instead of "download" or something similar is confusing. I'm already logged in, they have my account info - how hard is this?
I bought the expansion for Sins of a Solar Empire this evening, and played a bit. So far, it seems like a solid expansion to an already-solid game, so I'm pretty happy with the $10 price tag.
However, as much as I'm liking the game, I'm annoyed at Stardock's digital distribution platform, Impulse. It's basically similar to Steam, but much less polished and a lot more confusing to use. For some reason I've ended up with games registered to different email accounts, even though they're all purchased through my Impulse account. That's fine, but you have to enter your email when registering a new game, and if you don't enter the _current_ one attached to your account, it rejects the registration attempt. After purchasing a game, the only way to get it to show up in Impulse is to copy down the serial number it gives you when you buy it and enter it into Impulse - on Steam, it just shows up in your games list and starts downloading. It took me longer to figure out how to buy the game and get it into my games list than it took to install the original game, download and install the expansion, and get playing.
On a similar note, I'm continually annoyed at iTunes for not providing a single place where you can see everything you've purchased via iTunes, and re-download it. Sure, it's easy and convenient to buy content and get right to enjoying it, but if I want to re-download my iPhone applications because a backup failed (which has happened to me and several people I know) or download the TV shows I bought via my Apple TV to my laptop before going away, I have to a) remember what I bought, and b) find it again and click "buy", hoping that it will remember that I bought it already and not charge me again. I've never had that happen, but presenting a button that says "buy" instead of "download" or something similar is confusing. I'm already logged in, they have my account info - how hard is this?