Tiny Tower Update: Construction is moving right along. We're presently in the final stages of completing our 108th floor; this one zoned for a service organization. Overall commerce within the tower is reporting excellent business demand and brisk sales with a combined total rate of 1597 coins per minute, achieved by stocking only 3-coin inventory items. We're also happy to report that 174 of the 185 residents have found their dream jobs within the tower with more on the way - the Millspring Apartments just opened on the most recently completed 107th floor. Four minor issues have been reported to the tower developer. Meanwhile, the elevator operator reports that the new Infini-Lift Lightspeed is superb.

Tiny Tower Update: After upgrading to v1.3 and learning that a new elevator can be had for 499 towerbux, a shift in strategy was required. Instead of stocking only 3-coin items in stores, play the Dream Job Roulette game of leaving at least one opening per residential floor. This can be hard at first if there are happy bitizens in residence, but evictions are necessary, especially with the new 2 towerbux reward for dream jobs.

The reward is worth it! The new Infini-Lift Lightspeed elevator runs at 13 floors a second, going from the lobby to the 94th floor in 7 seconds.

Observed: Rain released a fabulous new album!
Awesome cover art is by Android Jones

Tiny Tower Tips

To maximize sales, don't bother stocking the 1- or 2-coin items in stores. Sales occur at a rate of about 10 per minute per store multiplied by the sector demand rate. 3-coin sales yield approximately 30 coins per minute at 100% demand. FYI: The stats page displays "coins per minute" even though it states "sales per min." Bitizens with a rating of 9 will help maximize profit and dream jobs maximize inventory.

Tiny Tower: Now at 60 floors with 110 bitizens and 106 dream jobs. Tip for more dream jobs...occasionally stop ordering and go into an eviction frenzy, then use accumulated towerbux to move in bitizens. The higher the tower, the more likely a bitizen matches a store. Often, when a biz has three happy bitizens, then give one of them a temp job in order to hire the new lesser skilled only to cash in on the 3 towerbux reward, then evict. In the end, you end up with more towerbux than spent and lots of happy bitizens. It's almost another game within the game.

Helpful sites:
Tiny Tower Wiki
Tiny Tower Guide
Tips & Strategies Thread on TouchArcade

Update note: uh oh...the new 1.2 release only rewards 1 towerbux for placing a dream job. This effectively eliminates the sub-game of moving people in to dream jobs for big towerbux gain. An alternative sub-game: evict everyone from the building and earn towerbux as new bitizens move into dream jobs.

Tiny Tower: Really liking this app...very addictive time waster. Presently at 50 floors with 78 "bitizens" and 74 dream jobs. Does this app teach cultural tolerance?

Tiny Tower tips:
Save bux.
Upgrade elevator.
Evict all bitizens without dream jobs.
Maintain one store with max 3-coin stock on order for big spender (e.g. Recording Studio or Doctor's Office). When he arrives, use bux if necessary.
Maintain a list of recent searches noting both the store and the home floor.
Group stores to make it easier to shuffle staff while awaiting perfect employees.
Send delivery person to max 3-coin stock (translates to 3 bux savings).

iPod touch tip: Moleskine has a new app for note taking. It took a while to figure out how to activate the drawing tool. Once you're inside a note, open the tool select screen at the lower right. Then, touch the pen tool and on the options page, touch the red check mark to activate the tool. This takes you back to your last open page and you can start drawing. There's an eraser at the top of the screen. When you're finished drawing, touch the input options icon, touch the text icon to open its options screen, touch the check mark and you are back to the text mode again.

Cubase 6 was announced last week. We're looking forward to the upgrade. The Studio version is no longer an option, but the upgrade from Cubase Studio 5 is under $200.

Update: Just ordered on 20110705

Apple's iPad 2.0 will not feature a 2048 by 1536 screen as rumored. See the PCWorld report. Apple will begin mass production of the iPad 2 by the end of February according to Digitimes, a Taiwanese trade publication. Maybe we'll hold off buying one until April or May because a dual-core graphics chip capable of playing 1080p HD video would be a nice feature!

Picked up a 12oz canister of  Trader Joe's Ultra Dark French Roast Coffee. Wow! Very strong, dark, and oily. Tons of aroma and flavor. Excellent when blended with hazelnut

Also looked at a Lifecore R100 rowing machine. They run about $1300.

The next generation of Intel Core processor scores high in the Passmark benchmark. With the reduction in pricing of memory, CPUs, and motherboards, the speed-versus-value of a complete system is improving dramatically.

Presently, we're measuring performance for a new studio system configuration. The orange spot on the diagram below is the speed and value measurement of our latest digital audio workstation powered by an overclocked Xeon W3520. The red spot is the speed and value measurement of a new configuration powered by a next gen, overclocked Core i7-2600K. Comparatively, the prospective system is 51% faster than the system we purchased in August! Value is computed as the Passmark score divided by system price. Again, comparatively, the prospective system scores a 90% improvement. The blue dots are other Intel and AMD systems for comparison. The two blue dots scoring the highest speed (above 12000) are systems powered by an overclocked Core i7 980X. Of course, it's challenging to configure a low-cost, quiet system using this rather expensive CPU.

FYI...The prospective i7-2600K DAW configuration presently prices out at $926.

Mobo ASUS P8P67-M PRO $149.99
ODD ASUS Black 24X $19.99
RAM G.SKILL Ripjaws 8GB $89.99
CPU Intel Core i7-2600K $329.99
HSF COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 $29.99
HDD WD6401AALS 640GB $64.99
GPU ASUS EN8400GS Silent $34.99
Case Antec Mini P180 White $79.99
PSU COOLER MASTER Silent Pro M600 $99.99
Fans 2x Nexus PWM Series D12SL-12PWM $25.98

New Addition: We picked up a Capresso coffee burr grinder (model 559) from Costco for $30. It does a modest job at producing a fine grind. To overcome the grind inconsistency, we discovered a large sifter comes in handy to strain out the larger remnants from the grounds. The few remaining remnants can be dropped back into the upper hopper for regrinding later. With the extra sifting process, this grinder produces outstanding flavor - better than Starbucks! BTW, we load about 16g of beans at a time.

Happy New Year!

Here's a small, simple, fast, low-cost HDPC configuration:
LITE-ON Black 4X Blu-ray iHOS104-08 $59.99
G.SKILL 4GB DDR2 F2-8500CL5D-4GBPK $84.99
AMD Athlon II X4 640 Quad-Core Processor $99.99
WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache $49.99
Shuttle SA76G2 V2 $209.99
The processor in this configuration scores a 3474 on the Passmark benchmark.

An all-time favorite book is Replayby Ken Grimwood. A number of years after loaning our prized copy to an acquaintance and after they moved away from the area, we were browsing a second-hand bookstore and found a copy of this book. Imagine the surprise of finding your own name written in the book and having to buy it back. Oh, the irony!

Merry Christmas! Looking forward to the total solar eclipse in August 2017. Check out the interactive map.

Frozen Mocha: Boil 100ml water and then add 14g freshly-ground (finest grind) coffee and reboil twice or thrice. Within two minutes, strain coffee into mug and stir in 6g sugar. Bring to room temperature. Add coffee ice cream to fill mug. Stir carefully with coffee to create a smooth blend. Enjoy!

Playing: Michael Stegner Trio - Fantastic Adventures of An Amphibian Named Jamal

Studio Update: Delighted to report that the new studio computer scored a 7380 on the PassMark benchmark. This exceeds the reported speed of a stock Core i7 975 which scores a 7026. The Xeon W3520 processor costs less than 1/3 of the i7 975. We're overclocking the Xeon a modest 25%.

Now performing research to configure a new workstation for the design studio. The i7 950 and the Xeon W3550 are looking rather attractive at this point.

Playing: Madonna - Confessions on a Dance Floor

Make-A-Thon 2010: Interesting event, but the name is odd. Attended three breakouts: Gestural Ideation, Radically Agile Design, and Conceptual Models in Interaction Design. The last two sessions took opposing sides, one preaching to just jump in and design and make and do while the other reinforcing to think deeply first.

Coffee Break: Although the studio's Tassimo machine has performed well for the past four years, 50 cents-a-pod espresso is growing tired. A quick cost analysis reveals that we can whittle that per-cup cost way down to about 17 cents, not counting the cost of the espresso-making machine...still hunting for a good affordable unit. Meanwhile, after learning a little more about the espresso-making process, we've created an alternative recipe.

Smooth Turkish Mocha: Heat/stir 100ml whole milk with 3g of 100% cacao until smooth and set aside.
Boil 100ml water and then add 14g freshly-ground (finest grind) coffee and reboil twice or thrice.
Within two minutes, strain coffee into milk and stir in 12g sugar.
Perfection every time.
Option: Try hazelnut-flavored coffee.
Simple filter trick: use a quarter of a white paper napkin inside a conic strainer

Studio Update: New system flying at 3.52 GHz stable and now very quiet at idle running at about 41°C (40% fan) after a little rewiring of the existing fans (until a few pwm fans are obtained). Pulled out the noisy Antec tri-speed fans. SuperPi 1M is 11.122s / Cinebench 6.07. Remoting into Cubase is pretty cool! Oh, and the whispering cow is now being retooled as a streaming music file server.

Studio Update: The new DAW is performing well. Authorized Steinway from Garritan no longer sputters due to a lack of computing horsepower. Finding the x64 driver for the M-Audio Midisport 2x2 was challenging. (If you happen to need it, look here. Although it is beta as of this writing, it appears to be working.)

BTW: This is a new version of the Xeon W3520. The box was marked as V2 batch 3001B720.

Studio Update: We built the new system yesterday and powered up without a glitch. Now running at 3.37 GHz. The Asus Rampage III Gene operates with the Intel Xeon W3520 perfectly so far. Looks good in the Antec case. Not quite there yet with the silencing, but the performance is responsive. SuperPI: 12.455s 1M / Cinebench: 5.56 (scoring just above the Core i7 960). Below is the new heatsink.