…creating heavily arpeggiated electronic music, it should come as no surprise that I find this interesting:

I’m not worried that we’ll all be replaced by machines, in fact, I’m thinking that I would probably spend some iTunes money on tracks from Shimon’s band!

I’ve been meaning to write a post about a game for a week or so, however in my free time I’ve been playing it instead.

The game? iAssociate (iTunes store link) by Fredrik Wahrman (iPod Touch or iPhone OS 2.2.1 or later)

Before I get into the gameplay, or even why it appeals to me, I just wanted to affirm that games can indeed help keep you mentally limber.

It makes me think, and I think I like that.

So, the gameplay?  Essentially, this is a very simple word association game, where you start with one word at the center of a web of several words.  Based on that word (and the theme of the level), you fill in the letters of the connected words.

Easy,  right?

Well, not so fast. There are some challenging connections, first of all, and if you play the game the way it is intended (more on that in a moment), it can be downright tricky (think: numbers, special characters, umlauts?).

Because this is not an action game, it is perfect for the few minutes (or hours) you have to wait at life’s little rest stops (Dr. appointments, picking up kids from events, human waste recycling, you get the point, right?).  Plus, did I mention that it makes you think?  I did?  Sorry.

So, what do I mean about playing the game as intended?  You see, it is possible to use brute force to grab the first few letters of a word in order to give yourself a few clues.  This is accomplished by clicking on either a blank word, or the word to which that blank word is attached, and one-by-one entering the letters of the alphabet until you stumble across the first letter (hence the brute force), as the game will give you partial credit for partial correct entries.

Do I do this?  Sadly, yes, I’ve been reduced to using this technique when I have ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE as to what the word is.  However, after a letter or two, I generally have an educated guess, and feel much better about myself.

One other interesting aspect of the game is that you are continually ranked as a player of the game based on the levels you’ve completed (as of this writing, I am 1669 of 29428, although I don’t really know what that means).

This game has also caused me to rethink my position on Apple’s fairly recent decision to allow in-game purchases (i.e., once you’ve purchased an application from the iTunes App Store, you can purchase new levels, characters, etc.).  I would absolutely purchase new levels for this game, as long as the developer kept creating them.  Although, it might be interesting to have user submitted levels added, especially if you could use a tool like Webspiration to construct your word associations.

Finally, if you have an iPhone, or iPod touch, you can always download the lite version of the game, or the number of free standalones to try it out before spending $1.99 for the full version.

If this type of game just isn’t your thing, I still urge you to find something like this to stimulate your brain during your downtime.  Read a book, do Sudoku, wear a bucket on your head, whatever!

This week we experienced some sadness, as my wife, Mrs. Havasnak, lost a dear friend.

Well, temporarily, at least.

You see, the hard drive in her Macbook began ticking ominously, and then completely died. After the initial freakout, I assured her that she would be ok, as soon as we could get to the Apple store for a new hard drive.

Why so calm on my part, you may ask?

We use a Time Capsule from Apple for backup storage as well as our wireless broadband router.

Now, some may dismiss this as an extremely overpriced solution, compared to configuring a much cheaper router and a network hard drive, but I submit that there is an additional value not accounted for yet: supreme convenience.

While we did have to wait until after Thanksgiving to get to the Apple store, once there, they removed her battery and checked her serial number.  Our Apple Genius then informed us that the hard drive replacement would be covered by warranty (thank YOU AppleCare!). Additionally, he notice that the keyboard area of her computer was chipped and asked us if we could wait a few minutes more while they fixed that.

Again, no out of pocket.

While you may think that THAT was the convenience, you would be mistaken.

The convenience came when we got home and plugged the laptop directly into the Time Capsule and recreated her disk image from her last backup (no more than one hour prior to the crash).

It took about an hour and a half (and an iTunes reinstall) and she was back in business.

I love technology, I just don’t love fixing it.

Currently, thanks to a wonderful gift, I am sitting on a $30.00 balance in my iTunes account.

Of course, my wishlist in iTunes is currently topping out at $140.84, so I’m going to need to do some pruning and “make some tough choices” ®

Can’t believe I’ve been sitting on this since the beginning of the month without a single purchase to this point…