Tuesday, May 25, 2010

'The Mirror Maze' Review – Ow, My Brain Hurts

'The Mirror Maze' Review – Ow, My Brain Hurts

posted by Eli Hodapp on May 25th, 2010 4:34 AM EDT in $0.99, Games, Puzzle, Reviews, iPhone games, iPod touch games

Re-posted by Yonatan Frimer

Last weekend, Assyria Games' unleashed The Mirror Maze [$1.99] on the App Store. Like any good puzzle game, the entire premise of The Mirror Maze can be explained in a single sentence: Control a red and a green ball, and get each of them in to their matching color zones on the other side of the screen.

This goal is accomplished by touching where you want the red ball to go. The green ball then goes in the opposite direction. The first few levels are very easy, and it doesn't take you long to understand the remarkably simple concept of the game. This is the exact moment that The Mirror Maze starts throwing increasingly difficult mazes at you which require a surprising amount of brain power to complete once the levels advance to the point of not being symmetrical at all.

Not only do the mazes become completely asymmetrical, but they eventually start being composed of both moving barriers and the warp gates seen above which act like little portals warping your ball between them. All of these obstacles must be successfully avoided using a single input for both balls, and it's really surprising how much thought goes in to figuring out the movements of both balls using a single touch input.

The Mirror Maze has online leaderboards powered by Agon, and while there are currently only 36 levels included in this version of the game, the following gameplay trailer makes mention of more levels coming soon:

There have been a ton of maze games released on the iPhone, but few offer much variation on just getting a single ball to the end of a maze. It would be nice if there were more levels, and there is an odd pause as mazes reload upon each retry (of which there will likely be many), but The Mirror Maze is worth trying just to see how difficult it can be to not only avoid obstacles with the ball with regular controls but also constantly thinking in reverse while you manage the other ball.

App Store Link: The Mirror Maze, $1.99

Friday, May 21, 2010

Oil won't grow on trees, by Yonatan Frimer

Maze Cartoon Oil Growing on Trees - By Yonatan Frimer

Oil growing on trees getting harmed by BP oil disaster, by Yonatan Frimer maze cartoon, political maze

Editorial cartoon maze of a tree that grows oil, and a hard hat worker tells a suit that "This kind of tree won't survive if that oil slick damages the environment" Created by Yonatan Frimer.
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Click here or on the image for the solution to the maze.

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This maze topic in the news:

Despite the partial success of the new siphon British Petroleum is using to help stop an undersea oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, the company admits the actual cost of the environmental catastrophe remains quite high.

On May 10, BP reported the price tag at $350 million. In a fresh statement on May 17, cost... (Read More)

a_oil_spill_gray_0506

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

stocks effected by human error, cartoon maze by Yonatan Frimer

Maze Cartoon - Effects of Human Error on Stock Market

human error in stock market maze cartoon

Maze cartoon editorial showcasing how stocks are effected by human error, buy having a bull represent stocks and a cowboy wrangling him to represent human error.
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Maze Topic in the news

Sharp stock market drop likely human, computer error

By Lucas Mearian

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted almost 1,000 points in a half-hour today, the cause of which appears to be human error exacerbated by a market made more volatile by high-speed trades and automatic sale orders that are measured in milliseconds.

Sources said a trader attempting to short-sell 16 million shares of S&P 500 stock, possibly involving Proctor & Gamble profits, entered a "b" for billion instead of an "m" for million. That error sent high frequency traders scurrying, causing liquidity to vanish.

The Dow fell as low as 9,867 points from its previous day's close of 10,868 before rebounding to 10,464 points by the close of the market today.

Chris Nagy, managing director of order routing strategy at TD Ameritrade, was moderating a panel on market structure at a trade operations conference at about 2 p.m. EST, when he was notified of the market drop.

"It seemed a little suspicious at the time. That's our conclusion," Nagy said. "But we've warned the SEC [U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission] of a lot of the problems created with some of the high-frequency trading in the marketplace."

"When you have some algorithmic error, which this is appearing to be, the impact of that trade caused the pricing in the markets to collapse," Nagy continued.

For example, Nagy said some of TD Ameritrade's client orders, where the normal price of the stock was $60, received trade fulfillments at .11 cents.

In another example, The Wall Street Journal's MarketBeat blog reported one stock price on Accenture's platform plummeted from over $40 at 2:47 p.m. to $.01 at 2:48 p.m. today.

"So clearly there was a flaw in the system and there were some algorithmic events that triggered a much more cataclysmic event in the marketplace," Nagy said.

At the time of the drop, the Dow had already dipped about 300 points due in large measure to....(Click here to read the rest of the article)

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Maze Cartoon on theory by Albert Einstein on World Wars by Yonatan Frimer

Einstein's Theory of Warmaze cartoon new start treaty by Yonatan Frimer
Editorial Cartoon Maze on Einstein's Theory that World War 4 will be fought with sticks. In the foreground an HTV-2 rocket flies off, a weapon that is intended to replace the atomic bomb.
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Saturday, May 1, 2010

Maze cartoon of Obama's camaign promise of "Change" By Yonatan Frimer

The Promise from Obama Maze

maze of obama change
Editoral Cartoon Maze in Larger and Printable Format
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Editorial Maze Cartoon "Obama's change"

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Maze Cartoon topic in the news:

GDP grew by 3.2 percent in first quarter

By Ian Swanson - 04/30/10 09:18 AM ET

The nation’s gross domestic product increased 3.2 percent in the first quarter of 2010, bolstering the Obama administration’s arguments that the economy is improving.

The jump in GDP was lower that the 5.6 percent increase registered in the last quarter of 2009, but still represents significant economic growth. It’s the third quarter in a row that the U.S. economy has expanded.

President Barack Obama is scheduled to make a statement on the figures from the Rose Garden on Friday morning. (Read More)


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