The Nintendo Wii

Ok, I'm going to try REALLY REALLY hard not to make any funny/clever jokes about pissing.
First of all, let me say I think Nintendo have gone mad. I really respect and love the big N (anyone reading this blog knows that) but this time they've just crossed the fine line.

As you know, all consoles have a codename throughout their development cycle, and then an official release name. The GameCube for example was called Dolphin. So, today Nintendo renamed their Revolution to the Wii. Not W2, not W-eye-eye, but Wii pronounced "wee". Just like the nearly-universal word for "piss".
I kid you not. There's also an official website with a promo video here.

I don't know what to think of all this. I'm not even sure I still want one now.
I leave you with Nintendo's official explanation of the stupidest name on earth.

Introducing ... Wii.

As in "we."

While the code-name "Revolution" expressed our direction, Wii represents the answer.

Wii will break down that wall that separates video game players from everybody else.

Wii will put people more in touch with their games ... and each other. But you're probably asking: What does the name mean?

Wii sounds like "we," which emphasizes this console is for everyone.

Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. No confusion. No need to abbreviate. Just Wii.

Wii has a distinctive "ii" spelling that symbolizes both the unique controllers and the image of people gathering to play.

And Wii, as a name and a console, brings something revolutionary to the world of video games that sets it apart from the crowd.

So that's Wii. But now Nintendo needs you.

Because, it's really not about you or me.

It's about Wii.

And together, Wii will change everything.

The Simpsons Movie!

Yeap that's right, Matt Groening and co are preparing The Simpsons for their big silverscreen debut, ready for worldwide release summer 2007!
I hope this is good, I love The Simpsons, so a film can potentially be a classic, but can also potentially be a ruining movie. We just gotta wait and see.

Oh, and here's the teaser http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/thesimpsonsmovie/teaser

Enjoy.

Sky Internet?

Yesterday my Sky (Satellite) TV broke. It would only display a few random channels, and couldn't get listings and stuff like that. I rang them up and after the mandatory (try this, do that bla bla) they decided that it was a hardware fault and needed an engineer.
So he showed up today, and managed to fix it in 10 minutes (The LNB was faulty). Anyhow, he saw the geeky things in the house and starting telling me about how cool HDTV is and if I saw it I wouldn't believe it. So I showed him a selection of movies I have in HDTV, and his jaw dropped :p But that's not why I'm blogging this (bragging is cool though sometimes). He was telling me that Sky recently purchased Easynet (a UK ISP), and are going to provide internet via satellite come December.

Ofcourse, the concept is ages old, but the last time I read about it you had to go to your ISP's website and request files from them, and then they would prepare them to be downloaded via your dish. He says that this isn't the case and it'll be dish2usb2pc directly just like any other connection. Exciting thing is, it'll be 50mbyte/sec UP AND DOWN!

Now, either I'm going to be very happy come December, or that said engineer will have to go in hiding to avoid my wrath. Watch this space :)

Am Back

from Prague. Great city, everyone has to see it :o)
but more about that later, I'll blog with a few pics and all that...

My Powerbook can be fixed, but the company offered me an upgrade (I had to pay the price difference but it was alot cheaper than seeling the pB and getting a mB) to the 2.0ghz MacBook Pro, so I've agreed and I get it on Wednesday! I hope it's as awesome as I think it is. It's also 15" which is what I wanted, cos as great as the 17" was, it's a bit too big to lug around comfortably.

Full report + blog later. Now I go back to Ghana to raid a few more tombs...

And............ THEY'RE OFF!

Good bye people. Am off to Prague tomorrow with Kelly for one week. We're staying in a 4 star hotel just out of the main town (3 metro stops away allegedly), and we're just gonna explore by ourselves.
Hope it's as fun as they say. Apparantly the beer there is good AND cheap :)

Good-delicious! See ya in a week.

Broken Laptop, Animal Crossing, Prague

Chapter 1 - Broken Laptop: Has anyone here ever noticed that when things go wrong, they go wrong with style and vengeance? Take hardware for example: it runs like clockwork for ages, and then suddenly goes out with a bang. Remember my machine_check_exception BSOD post? well that was cos my spanking new Maxtor Diamondmax 11 hard drive was a bitch, one that took out the mobo on it's way out. I had to do alot of firmware flashing and other crap to sort it all out.

That's all behind me now, but what happens this morning? The Powerbook decides to take a Powerslide down the chair and fall flat on it's screen (it was open at the time), rendering the damn thing USELESS, as you see in the pic.

Luckily, the computer itself (and hard drive) is fine, so today I networked it to the PC and transfered all the data over. I connected it to the LCD TV via D-SUB and it all went fine. When it was connected I was treated to a big 27" version of my favourite screensaver, the album art saver. Have a look at it in the pic below :)



I've also arranged for it to be repaired tomorrow (thank God for personal belongings insurance from HSBC, they rule!). If they can't repair it they'll offer me a new one (I'm secretly hoping they can't cos the new ones are better :p). But I bet they will...

Chapter 2 - Animal Crossing: remember ages ago I was going on and on about throwing my life away by playing Animal Crossing on the Gamecube? The nintendo game that can literally be played for YEARS without feeling boring, just cos it's a micro village that lives and breathes each day and night?
Well the Big N in all it's wisdom have released the game cor the Nintendo DS. Essentially more of the same, except ofcourse with the great addition of Wireless + wifi play! Me and Kelly have both got a copy and today we experimented with it over the internet. I got her to visit my village where she picked some fruits, met some of my villagers and so on. I visited her village and did the same. The cool thing is that these villagers are now my penpals and they send me letters and vice versa! Some of them even migrate to me if she pisses them off, and again my people can go to her if I annoy them!
I gotta admit that sounded really boring, but trust me it's alot more fun than anyone can describe. One of those games that if you don't play you just don't understand, and one of those games that's either loved or hated, nothing in between. Get it if you dare (or if you've got an NDS :)

Chapter 3 - Prague: And finally, this Sunday I'm taking Kelly to Prague. We're staying there for a week in the city itself. We're going alone (ie not with a tour) so we're just gonna do some discovering. From what I hear the city is a beautiful historic place with loads to see. So should be fun.

On that note, hope you're all having fun and good-delicious :)

PS: forgot to mention that someone finally got a ps2 emulator running on the pc, with moderate results. Grab PCSX2 from www.maxconsole.net if you want. Apparantly it runs Tekken 4....