Game of Threes and Finding Aeroplanes

The Game Of Threes

I don’t often get drawn into playing games on my iOS devices, as I prefer to make use of them for creating content and being productive. There are occasions now and then when having something to fill a couple of minutes that are not otherwise going to productive, where a game can be useful. The last game that I got really into was Temple Run and I ended up spending quite a lot of time running across the walls trying to avoid the pitfalls and tree trunks. The game that has me hooked at the moment is the one called Threes. It is a really simple game where you join the ones and twos together to make three. After that you add the threes together and the sixes together, continually doubling them up to get the highest number you can. The board is a 4×4 square that you play on. It starts off very easy, but it obviously gets a little bit more difficult as it fills up. There is a strategy that you can use because you can see the next colour or number that is coming next. You plan your move based upon what you have already on your board. It is also a game of luck, because you can never be sure exactly where the new tile will be coming in. It is an enjoyable game and my wife has also got hooked to it and I think my mum is going the same way. My best score so far is 7746 and a couple of times lately, the best I could manage was around 500!

Finding aeroplanes

In the latest podcast for Mac 20 Questions I was talking to Allister Jenks from New Zealand who likes to use an application to track aeroplanes. The one he used was called FlightRadar24 and from what he was saying about it, it seems that it is fairly accurate. I have been using a similar application called PlaneFinder HD and I have been trying it out again. It doesn’t seem to be very good in terms of accuracy. You can use one view where you point the camera out at the aeroplanes in the sky. It gives you a pop-up banner where the aeroplane is, with the information. The thing is, when you change to the other view where it looks like a map, the information seems to be different. I was also looking at aeroplanes in the sky and there was one going north nearly overhead and I couldn’t see it on the map view. Maybe I will have to give the other application that Alistair Jenks has been using and seems to be happy with.