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--- Saturday, November 25, 2006

Mobile17 mentioned in "Men's Health" 2007 Tech Guide!

Permalink: 11/25/2006 04:48:00 PM

Mentioned exclusively in their 2007 Tech Guide. (It's the December 2006 issue, then you flip it over and the tech guide is the second half of the magazine. Sweet!) The "computer-geek creators" thank you for the plug, haha. :)

P.S. The counter on the site rolled over to 3 million on Thanksgiving. (I think!)
So, an extra special thank-you to everyone who made this possible!

Labels: mobile17, ringtones

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Nintendo Wii, the best game console ever.

Permalink: 11/25/2006 04:08:00 PM

So earlier this week I camped out for 8 hours at Walmart to get the Nintendo Wii. I would have pre-ordered it but I was on an airplane at the time. :)

Game List: Zelda (haven't played it yet, it's under the xmas tree so I can finish Windwaker first), Red Steel, and Excite Truck. (plus Wii Sports)

The system was really easy to setup and I was delighted to find it had built-in Wifi, with full support for security. (WPA/WPA2/WEP/etc.) Getting used to the "Wiimote" at first was challenging, and even more so was finding the best place to sit so that the controller would read accurately in such games as Red Steel, ...speaking of which...

I was a little surprised to find that there's only support for Progressive Scan, not High-Def. Unlike the PS2, the Gamecube's progressive scan was a huge improvement over standard "Composite" video, so I'm hoping the Wii's will be as well. (I'm highly suspicious over the similarities between the GC and Wii hardware at this point... did they change much?)

Red Steel
-- Rating: Awesome in small doses, boring for the addictive gamer.
-- Baseline: Yakuza-esque Japanese mafia first-person shooter. Full use of the Wiimote and "nunchuck".

Learning to play this game is extremely frustrating, especially if you're new to the Wii. However, it is definitely worth purchasing if you can be patient. (I've really enjoyed playing it.)

Excite Truck
-- Rating: Basically a party game, there's no real point in playing it solo.
-- Baseline: Use the Wiimote (no nunchuck) sideways as a steering wheel and drift/race fourwheelers out in various challenging open-roads.

Easy to learn, really fun to play. Very competitive with power-ups as you drive, huge jumps, and points for drifting/crashing/etc.

Wii Sports
-- Rating: It's free with the console, so that's cool. The games are Tennis (awesome), Baseball (pretty bad), Golf (awesome), Bowling (decent), and Boxing (pretty good).
-- Baseline: A collection of sports with which you can play virtually using the Wiimote. Nunchuck needed for Boxing only.

Some of the games have a bit of a learning curve, but overall Wii Sports is understandable to most. Even my parents enjoyed playing it. I applaud Nintendo for including this for us!

My XBox needed a Wii sticker:

Labels: nintendo wii

--- Sunday, November 19, 2006

Camping for the Wii!!

Permalink: 11/19/2006 03:08:00 AM

Since I missed the pre-orders, I'm with around 25 others camping outside our local Walmart. Its not that cold (46-degrees F), luckily. I have a blanket and a laptop. It's so quiet... our Tetris DS battles have ended and most are sleeping.

By the end, had about 7 people playing at the same time over Wi-fi. Thank you Nintendo for only requiring a single game-pack for multiplayer!

--- Thursday, November 16, 2006

'Minesweeper' built in Pixel Blocks.

Permalink: 11/16/2006 03:34:00 PM

Link

--- Wednesday, November 15, 2006

"Gift" Credit Cards.

Permalink: 11/15/2006 03:58:00 PM

So companies like Visa and American Express have these gift cards that work like regular credit cards... but they're tied to nobody. So what's the problem? Well, all someone needs is your card number and security code to steal it... and there's nothing you can do about it!

The procedure to retrieve a lost or stolen card is simply, you call, you give them the number, code, and your address, and they send you a new card with a new number. The old card and number no longer work, and the money is transferred to the new card, which is sent to whoever called it in. There's no reversal procedure! (since the original and new card aren't tied to anybody)

Just thought I'd bring it up. ;)

--- Thursday, November 09, 2006

It's "SimCity in real life"... Floripa.

Permalink: 11/09/2006 02:33:00 PM

Special thanks to Fabio Marim for Flickring this amazing picture from Brazil for everyone to enjoy!

Link

--- Sunday, November 05, 2006

Review of 'FairGame'.

Permalink: 11/05/2006 04:10:00 PM

On the 30th, news started to surface that someone had built a program which used iMovie for the Mac to convert songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store to regular MP3 files. This trick has been around for a while, but nobody's ever made it into an automated process.

I was excited to try the program, but found that I only received error messages. Today, I gave it a shot again. The first error message was from iMovie when trying to export the file back to iTunes for re-importing and conversion. I solved this by copying the preferences file for iMovie to the desktop, deleting the old one, and re-configuring it for use with FairGame.

This worked fine until FairGame tried to process files without album artwork, which it doesn't seem to expect. In theory, all files from the iTunes Music Store come with artwork attached, but I delete it on songs I don't have the entire album of. So, I may be out of luck until the creator releases an update (which I hope they will!), or the AppleScript source code. (or someone duplicates this)

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