February 2007 Archives

We got a Wii earlier this week. Oh man - is that a lot of fun or what?!

To start: the bundled (in the US) Sports game is BRILLIANT FUN. All the hype about the controller is completely true. I've had sore muscles in my arms all week just from playing half an hour of boxing a few times (ok, every day).

Friday we got a component cable for better picture quality (get it, get it, so worth it!) and Excite Truck. It's beautiful. I'm usually a picture quality snob, but the games look plenty great. Anyway, Excite Truck was super fun. If you every played the original Wipeout games on the Playstation then you'll have an idea how fast the action in Excite Truck is. But that's not all. The steering interface in Excite Truck is fantastic. You use three buttons (gas, brake, turbo) on the "remote" (that's what they call the standardcontroller) and then steer by tilting it left and right and forwards and backwards (when you are in the air). I tried playing sitting down, but as the tracks got faster and faster I had to stand to better be able to tilt and turn. So fun.

Only disappointment: The online integration is beautifully seamless in the menus and such - but there's a distinct lack of online games. Both the sports games and Excite Truck are just begging for online play. Oh well, I hear online games will start coming out later in the year.

If you have a Wii then send me your "Wii code" (whatever it's called, the 16 digit number) so I can add you to our system and see your Miis (and play online games when that time comes). Jabber: ask@plys.net or email ask@develooper.com.

Jeff Barr on Thinking on Your Feet, specifically how a certain president can't:

The man in charge of the Nuclear Football simply cannot think and talk at the same time. Its like he has a broken task scheduler, a bad threading model, or there's not enough RAM, or random interrrupts are constantly firing. Perhaps he's computing Pi in the background; I just don't know. Even at the pace of that faux-Texas drawl, his brain simply cannot keep up with his mouth.

Vani and I listened to an old Fresh Air (available as podcasts!) interview with Al Gore the other day and one of the enjoyable things were just how he beautifully and quickly comes up with coherent and interesting answers even to slightly off the wall questions.

Alex Shaffer made a genius little test that the various law enformcement agencies and TSA should make a required part of their training: Bomb or Not!.

Well, the police and officials in Boston definitely need it.

"It's almost too easy to be a terrorist these days," said Jennifer Mason, 26. "You stick a box on a corner and you can shut down a city."