BobbyVoicu.com

Curious about stuff

Apple Vision Pro Sold Out

By Bobby Voicu

I wanted to order an Apple Vision Pro today. And it was sold out! I mean, I can still order it, but it will come in 5-6 weeks, at least.

Yeah, I know, first world problems, but still. I expected the device to sell at the most 100,000 devices this year, see how expensive it is. What do you know, though, 180,000 Vision Pros might have been pre-ordered!

This is really good news for the Mixed Reality/Augmented Reality space, after Meta Quest 3 selling more than 1 million devices for the holiday season of 2023.

Blogging from The South Pole

By Bobby Voicu

Not me, don’t worry about it!

But there is someone blogging from the South Pole base where they stayed over the long winter.

Here’s the first post in a series about actually leaving the South Pole.

During the winter, many departments, IT included, are subject to a more casual daily task schedule. Our goal over the winter is to stay on top of day-to-day upkeep, to execute on long-running projects, to respond to incidents, and to tackle any larger maintenance items that can’t be done when the station is “full” over the summer.

There’s more to read there, so stop by and say hi!

Kuno Lechner; cropped by H Debussy-Jones (talk) 08:31, 14 November 2009 (UTC), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

My New Alarm Clock

By Bobby Voicu

I’m trying not to use the phone before going to sleep, so I decided to get an alarm clock to know what time it is during the night. I looked for one cheap enough on Amazon and tonight’s the night!!

I haven’t owned an alarm clock for the last 20 years or more, since college, probably (when we didn’t have smart enough phones, initially).

So, here I am, using this kind of clock:

Candlelight Concert Experience

By Bobby Voicu

I recently went to a Candlelight concert. If you don’t know what it is: a string quartet playing tributes of popular music.

I’ve been to a Coldplay/Imagine Dragons mash-up concert and it was one of, if not the best, concert I’ve ever been to.

Here’s an idea of what you can see:

Best Video for Retention and Virality in Social Games

By Bobby Voicu

This is an old video we watched in the early years of MavenHut to understand how to improve our games.

A lot of it is obsolete on the actual tactics and tools, but the thought process behind analyzing and improving the First Time User Experience for any player is what you need to know.

I looked for it for about 2 hours for a friend, because I forgot the name of the game that was the subject of the case study: Pretty Simple’ Criminal Case.

My search keywords, in case I need to remember it again: retention, virality, GDC, Casual Connect, game, case study, ftue, onboarding.

Kouign-Amann

By Bobby Voicu

I recently found out about this French sweet pastry and I want to try it:

Kouign-Amann

I just don’t know if I can find it anywhere close to me in Portugal.

Later edit: well, maybe here?

Speed Puzzling

By Bobby Voicu

For Christmas we did jigsaw puzzles in our home.

It’s a nice way to spend time together with my wife and we really enjoy the challenge.

What I didn’t know, though, is that there’s a competitive side of jigsaw puzzle: The World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship.

I’ve been mesmerized by the competition and there’s a nice series of videos on 2023’s edition that happened in Valladolid, Spain. Where the 2024 competition will happen, as well. And I might actually go and watch, since it’s just a few hours of driving from where I live.

Best Quest 3 Quality of Life Tip

By Bobby Voicu

I’ve bought a Meta Quest 3 recently for VR and Mr gaming.

The best thing I’ve done was to buy an Elite Strap. It made putting on and removing the headset almost as easy as putting on a cap.

If you have a Quest 3, just go and buy an Elite Strap. It’s about $70 on Amazon (I paid about 90€ on Amazon.de).

Thank me later!

Blue Eyed Samurai

By Bobby Voicu

I’ve been a little bit more tired than usual these days, so I wanted to watch something on Netflix. I remembered hearing a lot of good things about Blue Eye Samurai, a made-for-Netflix anime.

It is really good. The art and animation are really good, the voice acting is amazing. Weird to hear English in an anime, especially since there’s no Japanese audio (at least I didn’t see it), but really good.

Here’s the Wikipedia entry.