Aspect of the Daddy Episode 3 Toca Cars

On today's episode of Aspect of the Daddy, we talked about Toca Cars, by Toca Boca. Caleb who is three, just loves this game, and I really wanted to pass it on to other adults that care for kids. The game is available for iTunes, Google Play and The Amazon App store.

This game is a simple, but extremely fun car game. The game uses a touch system to drive the car, and since this is geared towards kids, driving is as simple as one finger on the screen. The car will head towards the finger on the screen, so there's no gas or steering to deal with.




Everything in the 'sandbox' is made of cardboard, and the art style is bright and colorful. There are a couple of ways to play, either in a preset world that has a road, ramps and traffic lights. There is also a creative mode where the child can place the cars, ramps, streets and buildings to her liking.

The music and sounds are not quite as irritating as some kid's games can get. I found myself humming along to the music and it was stuck in my head hours after he went to sleep. It's one of those games.

Cars is available on iOS, Android and the Amazon App Store for $2.99, and it's nice that you pay once and you have the game. All of it. In other words, there aren't any in-app purchases to worry about.

Hit up the Toca Cars website for the official download links. Download the latest episode of Aspect Of the Daddy here! 

Infinite Lives in Candy Crush Saga

Just don't patch in my cheats for Candy Crush

Does Candy Crush Saga have you wanting to kill kittens and set fire to orphanages? Well there's a quick and dirty way to get your fill of lives in Candy Crush Saga! Read on to find out a couple of ways to extend your playing session in Candy Crush Saga.

Candy Crush is by and large a very addicting game, and it is currently the number one game on Facebook, Android and iOS. Hahaha, I actually don't know that for a fact, but I do know that this is one of the most played games that I have seen in quite some time. I am totally hooked and that says a lot; I am kinda a snob when it comes to games.

So what makes Candy Crush so appealing to so many people? Well for one, it is simple. Just match up three of the same candies. There are also just a couple of different ways to play the game. You can pop squares until they are free of "jelly." You can also pop squares until fruit makes its way down from the top of the screen out of the bottom of the screen. Sometimes there are both fruit and jellies, but the basic game play revolves around those two points.

The game is also beautiful, the artwork is very unique, and there is a crap ton of people playing it. No wonder the game is so popular but there is one thing that you know deep down, but you didn't want to admit it:

Candy Crush is totally not fair!!!

The game cheats, and you know it. There is no guarantee that when you start a match that you can solve it. Have you had the game shuffle the board on you when you run out of moves? Yeah, me too.

Anyway there are a couple of ways to cheat the lives in Candy Crush, and you don't have to spend a dime to do it. Here's what works:

1. Play on Facebook at your computer or laptop.
• When you play on your phone, and run out of lives, you can hop onto your laptop and play there too. The game syncs your progress, but not your lives. You can use up your lives on one device like your phone, then go right to your computer and you will have 5 lives waiting there for you. Neat huh?
2. Delete the app and reload it.
• Yep you read that right. The game stores your progress on the central server, not your lives. In other words, the game knows where you are in the world, what level you are on. The game relies on the phone to keep track of the lives you have.  I imagine that this was done to help with the server load. It would require another data point to keep track of, and every time you lost a life, or gained one the server would be pinged. Multiply that by all the people playing the game and you can see why they didn't design this in. So when you delete your app you are clearing the info on the phone end, it might take a couple of minutes to redownload and link back to your FaceBook account, but it might be easier to do than:
3. Set your phone's clock ahead to trick the program into giving you lives.

• The app is just looking for 30 minutes to pass and it gives you a life. It relies on your phone's clock to tell it when to spit out a life. If you go into your phone's settings menu and manually set the time, you can get lives all day long. Just make sure that you uncheck 'use network time' and set the right time when you finish up playing.

This is going to get me in trouble

I started a couple of years ago with an iPod Touch, but sold it to pay the power bill. 

Then I got an iMac.

Then the 3rd gen iMac.

Now I've had the iPhone 5 for three days. 

There's been a billion articles written about the iOS vs Android back and forth, this vs that -- blah blah blah. For me the ONLY reason to switch was to see if the iPhone picked up better than the S3. The S3 has been a PITA since I got it the Jelly Bean update, dropping LTE and 3G, shaky connections and worst of all, the mobile hotspot didn't work worth a flip. I reset the phone almost weekly, tried flashing different radios on it, flashed a couple of ROMs on it to try and see if there was some magic combination of ROM and radios that would work for me. Nothing worked. Verizon did everything they could, even upgraded the equipment at the tower I use at home (it was scheduled to be upgraded anyway, they just did it faster.) Nothing worked, I was sent 3 different S3s, and even got an Ausrion replacement S3 that was refurbished in the USA. Nothing worked. 

My wife's Razr Maxx had this really bad thing where it wouldn't hold LTE even though the S3 was chugging along with a 4-5 bars of LTE. It would drop to 3G and sometimes 1X, flipping around like crazy, but the hotspot worked since she was on ICS and not Jelly Bean. This problem is well documented on the Razr line and maybe the Jelly Bean update would fix that. 

I'm sick of the bullshit. I've tried and tried to make this work, but I need my phone to have LTE, and have a good enough hotspot connection that I can get my schoolwork and such done. 

Anyway, you know how this story is going to turn out. I got the iPhone 5. I don't have any problems with reception. My hotspot works great and it even seems to work better than on Android since my iMac does USB tethering natively and the iPad works great off the iPhone hotspot too. 

My phone needed to have a strong connection, and I suspect that there is something going on with Android and CDMA that isn't playing nice when in a somewhat fringe area of coverage. For whatever reason, the iPhone just works for where I live and I have to live with that.

I'm not an Android fanboy, and I'm not an Apple apologist. Apple has conducted a hack and slash campaign of litigation that I personally find disgusting. I still have the Razr Maxx and I hope to get it updated to JB through WiFi. Hopefully I will get into the soak test. I still have my Nexus 7 and quite possibly will have this tablet until it just won't run anything anymore, I love my N7.

If I need to spell this out for you, I will. Android has a serious problem when it comes to carriers and OEMs mucking up the code. Android comes out clean, fast and for the most part problem-free. Some will argue that 4.2.1 was a clusterfuck, and it was but 4.2.2 has fixed most of what I had issues with. My Nexus 7 is pure Android. It works wonderful, I love the thing. I imagine that the Nexus 4 is a lot like the  Nexus 7, but I am tied to Verizon and I can't up and leave the only carrier that has LTE where I live. My last experience with a Nexus phone was the Verizon Galaxy Nexus. What a clusterfuck that was, thanks Verizon. 

So the only way to get a pure OEM experience, which is very important to me is to get a newer Android phone, and root and unlock the bootloader, and install an ASOP ROM, which voids your warranty. Or go to the one company that sticks a middle finger up at Big Red and get an iPhone. 

So what does this mean? Do I lose my Android Cred since I have an iPhone? Maybe. Maybe I love technology and need to know that my phone is going to work, and be updated in a timely manner. That's why I got a Nexus 7, updates right from the el Google. To be clear what drive a wedge between me and Android is Verizon. Carriers suck and they need to stop putting custom skins on stuff, this goes to OEMs and fuckWiz and Sense and all the other LG cartoon skins. It needs to stop.