wii

I finally got my Nintendo Wii this past Friday after searching for over a week. Thanks to the people discussing their purchases over at Amazon's product page, I was able to snag a bundle from Walmart.com. Fortunately, I was able to call up and have all the games in the bundle canceled, so I ended up only paying for the system and one game that was shipped before my cancellation took effect.

One thing that I have to say about the Wii is that it is the most genuinely fun system I've played in a long, long time. The interface is wonderful and everything behaves exactly how you would expect it to. Being able to point a remote at the screen and click on things is surprisingly more intuitive than I ever thought it would be. Since using it, I've been wishing I had a similar interface to move the mouse pointer on my machine here at work! The sports game that comes packaged with the game was fun and easy enough to draw my wife in, who before now has never shown even a hint of interest in my gaming hobby. I actually had to tear her away from her hour-and-a-half long session of bowling last night.

Naturally, I also picked up Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. This game is phenomenal, and in my opinion gives even Ocarina of Time a run for its money. The one thing hurting it might be that the story isn't quite as accessible as some of the previous Zelda games, but I also may be premature in making that statement, as I'm just now reaching what seems to be the halfway point of the game. Using the remote and nunchuk attachment as sword and shield is inspired, and while I had difficulty controlling them at first, after growing accustomed to the controls, I'd hate to play the game any other way.

In leaving, I'll direct your attention to this video, which had me laughing hysterically for a good ten minutes. :)

ps3

Found and interesting article a few days ago explaining some of the major risks Sony is going to be taking with the launch of the PS3. While I've always considered myself to be a pretty faithful Playstation owner, I have to admit that I'm not all that excited about the new PS3. In fact, the only reason I'd buy one when it comes out is that my old PS2 is on its last leg and isn't playing some of my games, but that's hardly worth spending $600 on a new system for. What's more, the games are slated to be priced between $60 and $90. I can't imagine what Sony's plan is. It's bad enough that the standard price for an XBox 360 game is $60, but there's no way I'm going to pay more than that. As it stands, I'm most looking forward to the Nintendo Wii. They're going to have several excellent launch titles, backwards compatibility with the Gamecube, and more reasonably priced games. It definitely looks like the most fun system of the current generation to me. Maybe after a few months I'll actually break down and buy a 360 as well, since I hear nothing but praise for it. As for the PS3, well, Sony's gonna have to do some major work to win back my gaming dollars, I'm afraid.

'rokin on windows

What is this? Could it be Amarok running under Windows?

I think so!

So how did I do it? Well, it's not actually running on Windows, I guess. I followed the instructions posted here to get Windows connecting to a virtual machine running Linux using Putty and a sweet little program called XMing. That article wasn't very explicit about how to get the ssh daemon up and going though, so after some research, I found the apt-get command to use for Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get openssh-server

Instead of using VMWare, I used VirtualPC, since I already had a VM with Ubuntu Linux and Amarok installed in it. VirtualPC's sound emulation kinda sucks though, so I may end up trying VMWare Player with a premade Linux installation as suggested in the article and see if it's any better.

The cool thing is that now, I should also be able to run any other Linux applications in addition to Amarok, which oughtta be very handy.

new blog

I've started a new blog named using System.Coffee;. Basically, the idea is to retain this blog for more personal musings and meanderings, and to post more informative, programming related posts on the new blog. Maybe then I can actually start sharing this blog with my non-techie friends who might otherwise be put off by the development related posts.

swimming lessons

Ethan had his first swimming lesson last night. He turns out to be quite the natural swimmer too. He got right in the water and started splashing me and all the other little ones. We practiced kicking and paddling. We'll still have to work on the blowing bubbles technique though. I put my face in the water and blew bubbles to show him how, which was followed by him putting his face in and taking a big gulp of chlorinated water, which he wasn't altogether fond of.

We'll keep practicing though. We've got five more days of lessons to go. I was actually a bit surprised at the pace they keep with children this young. Some of the things they're wanting us to do seem way above the skill level of most of the children in the class. They all seem to be doing fine though, which I suppose is a testament to how adaptable and eager to learn children this age are.

easter pictures

Thought I'd test out Orb's photo publishing capability to throw up a few cute Easter pictures we took of Ethan.

orb

I've been trying out a new program called Orb which I love. Install it on your home machine (or whatever machine you have that you want to serve media from), and then all you have to do is log into a the website and you'll have access to all your media from any other internet-connected computer. All your music, movies, pictures can be accessed from any computer. Heck, if you've got a TV tuner, you can even stream live TV from your home computer. Granted, the quality isn't so great if you don't have a fairly fast connection, but if I'm ever stuck here at work while my favorite show is on, I don't have to completely miss it (or BitTorrent it the next day).

ajaxy goodness

Google released the Google Web Toolkit recently, which looks like a very promising way to develop AJAX web applications. The premise is that you write standard Java code, which Google's toolkit will then take and compile/convert into Javascript. This means that you get all the benefits of Java, such as type checking and debugging instead of having to code Javascript by hand and track down lots of insidious little bugs. You also don't have to worry too much about making your app cross-browser compatible because the toolkit takes care of all of those worries for you. I'm definitely going to be looking more into this.