CE Wills

    Hey, everyone. It's a stay at home weekend here at the green retreat, which means a lot of gaming on the Padster. I bought a bunch of games this weekend, some of which are really good. In that category, for sure, is an offering from Gameloft called Star Battalion HD. Here's the recipe.     Do you remember when you watched the early Star Wars   movies and were glued to the screen as the X-Wing fighters and the Tye fighters were having those cool battles in space? Of course you do. Mainly because from that day to this you have wished that you could pilot one of those crafts in an aerial dog-fight. Well, tonight could be your night. That's what Star Battalion is all about. It's a fairly new game and it still has a few bugs but it is mega-cool and tons of fun. Keep in mind that I just bought it today and have not played it a lot.     You have a choice of 4 different styles of ships with differing armaments and capabilities. Then you ...

   Hey, everyone out there in civilization. Check out this mushroom that appears to have a tiny sun shining from it. If you look at its base, you'll see where it shoved through the dirt. I think I'll name this the 'sunshroom'. Sounds like a character from Plants vs, Zombies .     Yesterday we had the attack of the seed ticks when we walked in the woods. As long as you stay on the paths you are okay, but I stomped around the thick brush and wound up removing 16 of the tiny suckers from my anatomy.       Yesterday evening we sat around the fire out in the back yard for a while. When we came in we watched a movie titled Inception with Leo DeCaprio. I didn't like it because they intentionally kept you confused for an hour or so. At length, I gave up on it. My wife said it got better towards the end and things were more clear. The concept of the movie was interesting. Leo plays a guy who has learned to invade and manipulate people's dreams...

    What a great weekend to stock your I-Pad with games! Here in the USA it is a holiday weekend and the app store features a ton of games that have been marked down drastically. I'm not talking about games that are so bad that no one wanted them, so they had to mark them down to move them. There are plenty of games that are top-notch and highly popular.      EA Games is running a sale. Gameloft is running a sale. Other developers are running sales.     Let me start with NOVA 2. If you want a review of the game, look to your right. The graphics are among the very best on the app store. The action is intense in this space shoot-em-up. It is on sale for 99 cents this weekend. I think I paid $6.99 for it. This is a great game but I have been very upset with it. You see, I am not a good player. I'm old and I learn a bit slowly on some things. Plus, I don't have a lot of experience in gaming. I was stuck pretty early in the game and have re...

    Hey, everyone. Remember in the Clint Eastwood movie called The Good, The Bad And The Ugly? At the end, the three gunmen stood in a triangle to shoot it out, with no one knowing who would shoot who? It was tense and cool. Tonight we stand in the shadow of another showdown. None of these gunmen are bad guys. Most people like all the companies involved and none of them are doing anything wrong. Here's the recipe.     For the past 15 months or so, Apple has allowed companies to have apps on the app store which had provisions inside the app for consumers to buy things at another site. In such instances Apple received no money for that. Anything sold through the app store nets Apple a 30% cut. All this time, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Sony Books and others had apps through which they sold books to I-Padsters. Apple did not profit from this. It was very nice for us, and incredibly magnanimous of Apple to allow us to use their app store to buy books from...

    Hey, everyone. Carley took this cool picture of an odd mushroom on a stump. As I said the other day, we have a variety of mushrooms here at the green retreat. I suppose the white dots on the right are some sort of mold or fungi but that is not my chosen field of study.     Here is a pink and red example that has been chomped on by ants, I guess. Sometimes I see squirrels eating mushrooms but this doesn't look like their work. The Cherokee Indians watched what animals ate so they could learn what was safe for human consumption. Seems kind of humble for humans to acknowledge the superior knowledge of the creatures of the wild. For that matter, every person, every tree, every rock can teach us something if we are inclined to listen or observe.     Hey, if you want a free download of wallpapers from the Rage game, click on the link to your right labeled Rage.com. You'll get a kick out of the video of the upcoming game as well. I was surpris...

     Hey, everyone. We have had an abundance of rain lately, at the green retreat. When this happens and our creek gets a decent amount of water in it, we always start seeing more animals. This morning we had a fox drift across the back yard within 10 feet of our glass doors. The picture quality is poor because you just have time to blindly grab a camera and point it in the critter's general direction and fire. Speaking of firing, can you believe that folks around here sometimes kill a fox or a coon merely for the purpose of hanging his tail on the antenna of their truck? I hate to be critical but I find this a bit barbaric.      I know that your typical fox would be surprised if I mentioned this practice to him. I can see the fox looking at me with incredulity and saying, "On your antenna? You can't be serious!"     Back to the subject of animal sightings and rain. When the rains come you will see an abundance of deer if you are ...

    Hey, everyone, out there in the ether. I hope you are having a nice day. It has rained a bit here this morning but there is always something to see if you prowl around.     I thought I'd throw out a few pictures today. Pic #1 is just a wildflower with odd little yellow tips. I wish you could see it on the big screen. Pic #2 is a big mushroom that is the size of a salad plate. This place is freakish for mushrooms. We have purple, orange, pink, all colors. Pic #3 is some treeshrooms (my word). These are growing on the big oak I mentioned in my post titled Oak Wine. Pic #4 is a neat rock. More on that in a moment. Pic #5 is the same mushroom as in #2, just a different day. Funny how they change color from day to day.     Now I'll go back to the neat rock photo. When kids are real small, they have a sense of wonder that is pretty cool. It doesn't take a lot to please them or to give them a bit of fun. Their idea of treasure is different...