leopard body paint – for karinny, reportedly NSFW (though I haven’t clicked it yet)
Nintendo teams up with GameSpy again for multiplayer Wii
•March 14, 2007 • 8 Comments(via engadget)
If you’ve participated in an online game with your Nintendo DS, you’ve already enjoyed the fruits of this partnership, since GameSpy powered Nintendo’s first major foray into online matches, but it looks like Nintendo and GameSpy are about to take things up a notch with the Wii. The pair have just announced that GameSpy middleware will power the multiplayer aspects of online Wii games, with current Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection features at first, but eventually friend rosters, matchmaking and ranking at last. It ain’t no PlayStation Home, but it looks like Nintendo is finally ready to start seriously chasing online gamers. Pokémon Battle Revolution will kick things off on June 25.
Finally, some good news. *chuckle*
“I can’t seem to stop circling Uranus!”
•March 12, 2007 • 17 CommentsI busted out of work just before 5 (unprecedented for a friday), and once Lucy was done lollygagging dropping a friend off at the airport, we were on our way to Chi-town.
We got there late, of course, but her uncle is this amazing dude who says things like, “use this house as your own while we’re gone” and “please drink all my liquor”, so it was like, er, home. ‘cept with a plasma screen.
I’d said I wasn’t going to stay up reading things in the guest room, but then I found Charlie and the Chocolate Factory / Great Glass Elevator, and well, it was 3 am before I knew it.
Breakfast was fantabulous egg muffins, and then we grabbed some tasty/strange caramel/cheddar corn while we waited for the train.
I love riding the train through interesting territory, especially with good company. ;) Blue skies, warm weather, and fun snacks to munch!
We hauled our clothing and toys to Vanessa and Brian’s place, where they greeted us with wii matches and mii trade-offs. Woo hoo! They took us out for tappas (my first), and it was fabulous food all around, plus a bit of drinkery to round the night out ;). We pounded the floors with some DDR and flung things about with elebits, and collapsed exhausted into beds.
Sunday, we sat about the place in our jams while vanessa made a feast! Mmmm boy, I was livin’ large. SolarQuest was the name of the afternoon game, which is kind of like monopoly in space, except you also have to keep track of fuel. I made a respectable finish, and then Lucy and I were off to Fogo de Chaos.
If I’ve never mentioned fogo’s before, the food is… incredible. Just amazing. And also unlimited.
We finished just in time to make it to Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind, an awesome Chicago play I saw once before with the beekeepers. Krystyn joined us for this, after picking us up from the el, and Lucy and I were made to dance the electric slide or one of its variants. I’m told Krystyn has some wonderfully embarrassing photos of it ;)
We stopped for coffee and conversation before parting ways, and watched Little Miss Sunshine with Lucy’s crew before crashing out for the night. And today’s been a lazy day of catching up on LJ (me) and reading (her) before visiting V’s coffee shop on the way to the train.
It hasn’t been a typical city holiday, but it’s been totally fun. Much thanks goes to V and B for picking us up, dropping us off, giving us to place to stay, entertaining us, feeding us, and generally making our lives easy peasy.
Protected: Done. Whew.
•March 9, 2007 • Enter your password to view comments.Why do I hate RealPlayer?
•March 9, 2007 • 6 CommentsLet me tell you. Few things piss me off more than a software package that insists on installing yet one more monitoring executable for updates, wasting my processor time on every bootup (instead of every time you load the player, which I never use). Worse, it pops up saying “RealPlayer Needs to be Upodate – Automatic Download will begin shortly.” No. No No No. This is my computer, and I know what is best for it. Maybe your update will break something else I’m doing, or maybe it will change functionality in a way I don’t like. I get to choose whether you download an update, damn it.
Installation was even worse – It asks for information I just don’t want to give out to a company I don’t trust, and it gives me no alternative but to put in fake information, and even makes that a hassle.
Okay, the player program is free, and like most free things, money has to be made somewhere. I get that. But when you greatly inconvenience me, as a user, by asking me to do things I don’t want to do, I’m going to find and open source alternative. Or (if I had the skills) build one. Simple as that.
I have a rabbit.
•March 8, 2007 • 2 CommentsHis name is Sarsaparilla, and he roars like a lion when you squeeze his toe!
Woo!
•March 8, 2007 • 3 CommentsI’m working on my boss vis-a-vis the raise thing. This is what I got from
him today:
Don’t know if you are getting this attachment, but in January, we had
MORE THAN 700,000 HITS!!
I think Video has taken off
What he’s referring to is a quote from the CTO of our hosting company:
“When you review the individual usage reports please note that your usage
on January 9th and 10th needed to be across multiple spreadsheets due to a
limitation of Microsoft excel.
(The autoshow content appears to of been quite successful. Over 700,000 hits
total for the month.”
If my cameras ever form their own intelligence, I’m in trouble.
•March 7, 2007 • 17 CommentsIt seems I have now collected fourteen cameras (still and motion) in a wide swath of age and type (from my sweet digital on down to a rusty pinhole camera), as well as an 8mm projector.
I need to put up my ‘invisible shelves’. Someone come over. :D
Meanwhile, I’m cooking up some noodles to go with the super-hot but super super tasty szechuan beef that I got at a chinese restaurant in Livonia that Lucy sleuthed out this weekend. I’d never been there, and I almost never get beef dishes at chinese restaurants, so it was a wonderful surprise all around.
In other news – I’m eagerly anticipating folks sending me their mii’s. In fact, I’m antsy about it. In fact, if I could BUY systems for people who won’t otherwise get them JUST so I could see what hilarious miis they’d produce, I would. But I can’t. So I won’t. ;)
I’m selling some stuffs I don’t need or want anymore. Probably Ebay. I like to limit my exposure to the beast that is ebay, but I wouldn’t want to subject my friends to the sorts of prices I expect to get there. :D
Not for me, mind you. For my stuff. ;) I’ll let you know when *I* go on sale (and trust me, I’m a bargain at any price!)
EDIT: My lips are tingling — with joy! My eyes are watering with satisfaction. The noodle-beef concoction came out wonderfully. I love taking a simple and quick “box” meal (okay, this was leftover take-out), adding some olive oil, a few spices, and a side dish, and making it into something fantastical and tasty.
“Home” vs XBox Live vs Mii community
•March 7, 2007 • 1 CommentSony’s “Home” (a just-revealed free online social community for PS3) is like Second Life, with better graphics, no user-generated-content (that I see), and no economy.
If I were getting a PS3, I’d definitely be curious, with definite reasons to explore like a “hall of achievements” and arcade meeting places. I haven’t ever used a 360, but I think about the halo online model – how much more interesting would be it be if you could meet up with people anywhere in the system, as opposed to just in one designated meeting room?
Nintendo had better get their ass in gear. In fact, they’d better make an announcement this week about their online community to come – this is their weak spot. It’s ALWAYS been their weak spot (one of a few).
C’mon, guys, don’t yield the field.
On a related note, “Games 3.0” (the concept Sony is slapping onto this community idea) is an asinine marketing term. Sorry, Web 2.0 has a kernel of conceptual validity behind the marketing*, but this smacks too much of “My amp goes to eleven!!1!one!”
*The idea of web sites that don’t require page refreshing is novel at the scale it is happening today, even if it’s occasionally as cumbersome as going “back” in a flash app. It’s not new programming, just a new perspective.