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....

A Geek's Dream Come True.....

I've got a new NintendoDS. It's the lite version that the big N released in Japan a few weeks ago. It's smaller, ligther, brighter, and just damn right cooler than the original DS. Tech specs are exactly the same though.
When this baby arrived, I gave the older DS to Kelly. I also popped over to her place and installed an old wireless router of mine there (for her DS and her laptop to use). I also convinced her to buy MarioKart (well, she took my copy and loved it so much she bought me another one and kept that one :).
This evening after a few hiccups (that old router I gave her is a crappy linksys, so the wireless signal on it is shaky. I'll get her a better one soon) we managed to go online and actually race each other remotely! I gotta say, it was AWESOME!
We had a few races and she's getting quite good at it, managing to whack me with a few shells and bombs here and there. All in all it was great. Nintendo, you rule!!

So, we've now also ordered (imported from the states actually) Tetris DS for both of us. Again, this supports local and remote multiplayer with frantic Tetris battling (she loves tetris). can't wait for it to arrive! We also play some local Yoshi Touch and Go races which are also really fun, with both players trying to out-race each other while blocking the other one's path by chucking eggs at them. Great Stuff.

So, that's my geek's dream come true. I have a girl friend that's beautiful, kind, really cool, plays games, and let's me do what i want, when i want, just cos she's great like that. Here's to her, a big LOVE YOU :)

and sorry for this sloppy post everyone, I just felt like it...... I'll be back to good-delicious SoB faster than you can say Koopa Troopa :D

Sigur Ros - Takk

First of all, one word of advice from the wise: DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT buy any MAXTOR crap if your motherboard runs an nforce4 chipset. NO MATTER WHAT ANYONE ELSE MIGHT CLAIM, they just don't work properly together. Anyhow, the last 4 days of hardware hell are now behind me, and the PC is ticking again.

Back to topic. Sigur Ros, an Icelandic quartet, who in their words perform (Art Rock). If you've seen Vanilla Sky (American version) they feature in that soundtrack. I had only heard those 3 tracks from that OST, but yesterday as I had a £10 off voucher from Virgin, I bought their new album Takk...

All I can say is PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE get it. Everyone. Buy it, beg it, steal it, pirate the mp3s, I don't care. Just get it. It's a mix between soft rock, hard rock, new age, orchestral symphonies, lullaby tunes, and haunting vocals that mean nothing (they sing in Hopelandic, just vocals that make the song sound good. Just like Adiemus or Era).

An album for ambience, an album for loud listening, an album to scream with, or just an album to listen too on the way to work. Enjoy it as you want, but just get it. Now.

Oh and don't watch Inside Man. Stupidest film ever. The fact that a friend of mine thought it was better than Slevin is criminal. Watch that instead.

machine_check_exception BSOD

is what I'm getting for the last 2 days

FUCK YOU MAXTOR

i'll be back

The First 360 Hack!

Why is it I always find out about such things IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT?
In a typical late-night-useless-browsing session, I discover that a guy called The Specialist and some of his very clever friends have managed to hack the DVD firmware of the Xbox360!
Just 4 months after the console's debut, the team have managed to hack the DVD firmware and let it fool the console by telling it that backup DVD is actually an original. The hack is not a modchip or anything, it's just a firmware flash to the DVD hardware.
And again in true first-hack style, they've released a video "just for fun", showing an open 360 booting a backup of PGR3.
The hack doesn't allow running of homebrew/unsigned code nor of out of region discs, cos all it does is make the DVD send the "original dvdxbox360" flag to the processor.
The team have not released the hack publically, cos they don't want it to be used for piracy (ironic cos they were running a pirated game on it). Even if they did, flashing it isn't easy, you need to disassemble your console, un-solder the DVD firmware chip, read it with a chip reader to get your personal DVD key, patch the firmware with your key, flash the firmware onto the chip, and then solder it back!!!

But, this definitely opens the door to all sorts of mods/hacks/cracks and maybe even just plain simple boot disks (like the good old Dreamcast). But in all honesty all of this worries me. As much as it's appealing to play free games (instead of paying £40 a pop), if the 360 were to be hacked succesfully (and with a modchip), then 2 issues arise:

1\ most likely you couldn't go online with a modded console, just like the original xbox. To go online you had to disable the mod, usually with an external switch. That in itself ruins half the enjoyment of the 360, the whole Live! business is amazingly fun and well done, so playing a pirated game offline and missing out on all the Live! options isn't worth it IMHO.

2\ Cheating! if the modded console could go on Live! then that marks the beginning of the end for fair play. All the spotty teenagers in the world would just cheat their way to high scores, and mega kills, and all that cos cheats are bound to be released for copied games, thus rendering both online games and the online leaderboards OBSOLETE.

I guess the best thing to do is sit tight and wait, oh and watch www.xboxhacker.net, www.xbox-scene.com, and www.maxconsole.net with a hawk's eye. How much longer till they release a public method of booting pirated games (be it modchip, firmware, or bootdisc)? anyone's guess but this SoB says sometime in the next 3 months. Prove me wrong Microsoft.

PS3 Release Date

Sony today has confirmed that the PS3 will launch worldwide in November 2006. Finally, they're realising that the .eu market is a significant one (last year video games made more money than movies in the uk!).
The console will also require a seperately sold 60gig hard disk that (not surprisingly) runs a linux variant o/s, and is used for retro compatibility, game saves/downloads, online functions, and as a home server (I presume for digital media).
Allegedly, Sony has told all it's developers to develop games "as if all ps3's have the hard disk installed".
So if you're thinking of grabbing the console in November, don't forget the HDD.

The PS3 will also feature an Xbox-Live! like function, that enables players to see their who's online and what they're up to, and can invite each other to games. VERY similar to Live! if you ask me, which IMHO is the best thing about the 360, it's Live! function is amazingly good.

So, excited yet? I for one am not. For some reason, I just don't like PlayStations. I know I've got a PSP, but that's a handheld, and to be honest I have yet to enjoy more than 2 games on it (Lumines, and Exit are the only good 2).
Do I get one? Do I not?
Well it all depends on May and E3 and what the big N has got to show us when it finally reveals the Revolution. I'm definitely NOT owning all 3, and last time I had the Xbox and Gamecube. So perhaps I should get the PS3, just for a change..... and to play those few classics I've missed out on from the PS2 era.

Decisions, decisions........

Sodom (whoever that is)

So Lik-Sang sent me an email the other day telling me that I had to redeem my "reward points". Turns out I was collecting some points without even knowing it, since 2001. Problem was, they were stopping the scheme and wanted me to use my points.
So what "rewards" were on offer? well silly things like mugs/mouse mats/cases/action figures etc, and some really cool things like consoles/games/mags that had already "sold out".
So I ended up getting a whole load of random shit, like the mug, a case for my nds and one for my psp, and a Sodom.
Sodom? yes. Apparently he's a character from one of the Street Fighter series. Beats me (pun intended :p). At least he looks cool guarding my PC from any potential threats (aka girlfriend).

My new Mickey Tie :)

Lucky Number Slevin

Have you seen Sin City? great. Have you seen Saw? great. And Pulp Fiction? cool. What about Leon? excellent. And finally, how about The Shawshank Redemption? very well.
So we've all seen those classics. Now go grab the proverbial blender, stick all those films in, and pour out the gooey mess. Add to that mess some big names, like The Freeman, Ben Kingsley, and Bruce Willis, and finally give them a cracking script and a very clever story.

The result? A master-piece called Lucky Number Slevin. I saw this film at the cinema today and it really is mind blowing. In trendy film noir style (becoming very popular this isn't it?), with enough violence to shame Sin City, Slevin tells the story of a man by that name that finds himself being mistaken as someone else by some very angry (and at war!) gangs. Within hours he has to not only assassinate someone, but pay off a big debt.

As stylish as Pulp Fiction, as breath taking as Leon, and as satisfying as Shawshank, this movie will really have you on the edge of your seat till the very last second. It's bloodily and graphically violent, but if you can stomach that then you're in for a beautiful treat. A must see movie by all accounts, 5 out of 5 sobstars.

And where does Saw fit in to all of this? well remember the last minute of Saw when you finally put all the pieces together and found out who really was The Jigsaw? if you thought that was clever, wait until you see Slevin, and find out who not only Slevin is, but who another 5 people are. It's that amazing.

Go see it. Please.

Baseball Cap

I just realised something (while reading Abdullah's "Come Get Some" blog) : I never talk about politics.
Not in real life, not on the blog, no where.
I don't even think about politics. Nor discuss it. Nothing.
It doesn't interest me the least. I don't even watch the news.
And I'm not talking about the local UK politics. I'm talking about Iraq.
People here are obsessed with it all, the Kurds vs Sunnis vs Shi'ites. All they do is talk and talk about it, and about the shitty state Iraq is in now, and about the violence and the terror and hunger and fear and the general hell. All from the comfort of their houses, in one of the world's safest and richest and most advanced countries.
It's easy to observe things from outside, but what about those inside. What do they have to say about it all? from the hell of their houses without electricity nor water nor safety?

Maybe that's why I don't do politics. Maybe it's cos when I decided to leave Iraq all those years ago, I decided to leave it for good, and just take with me the memories, but most of all, keep the friends that I made there.
Or maybe I don't do politics cos it's just damn boring.
It hurts me to see what's happenning to the place I spent some great times in. It really hurts. Maybe that's why I don't do politics - I just don't want to talk about something that hurts....

Xbox Live GamerTag

As you might've noticed, my ever-faithful sidebar has got a new addition to it, my Xbox Live GamerTag. This Tag business was created with the Xbox 360, in which you had an online identity (your live username, mine being DrSbaitso - for the old enough to remember what that is ;) and an online reputation and profile thingie.

Nice thing about this tag is that it tells you the last 5 games I've played (the icons at the bottom). So at the time of writing the last thing I played was Kameo - Elements of Power. Clicking on a game's icon takes you to the "achievements" page, as each game has got certain targets you try to reach, in order to increase your gamer score.

People with higher scores tend to be matched up when looking for online matches, in order to try and balance out skills (unlike the original live, where you nearly always got matched up with a geek that played the game 100s of hours and kicked the living shit out of you before you even started).

In other news, Sony have announced a tentative September release date for the PS3 (allegedly March 07 for .eu), but even better than that, they're also releasing a PS3 exclusive of a certain crap game, God Of War :D

Guess I'm owning all 3 mofo next-gens then.....

Where did you say you live again?

This I can't believe. But it's true nontheless. Was randomly surfing wikipedia tonight (am on-call for 24 hours, sucks), and searched for "fucking", to find out that it's not just a rude (and very pleasurable) activity/word, it's also a VILLAGE IN AUSTRALIA.
Seriously.
No Joke.
Just imagine living there. The embarassment of telling someone your address.
Hi, I'm Ali. I'm from Fucking. (Aren't we all LOL?)

I better go to sleep. I stayed up late last night, and this morning I found an email from Amazon in my inbox, thanking me for ordering (Learning Unix for Mac OSX) at some unholy after midnight hour. So I go sleep now, before I find an email tomorrow from Amazon thanking me for ordering (The Dummies Guide to the Net) or something like that.

SoB out.

Where?

Those of you astute enough might remember a post here called "When?", about a picture that I found of a friend of mine looking, let's say, rough....

Unfortunately, due to outstanding demand from said friend (well one text message, 2 emails, and a few lines on msn), I have removed the post. That said, I'll still sneak his picture somewhere online, most probably a gay dating service for frustrated Arabs. Or Something :)

Oh and kudos to Wolf who caught the post before it disappeared, and actually saw the funny side of it all. Here's some Smirnoff on me.

Space of Freedom Photobook

After alot of postal errors, delays, ex-girlfriend mistakes, and so on, I've FINALLY managed to get my hands on a copy of the offical Jarre Gdansk photobook! The damn thing was released in Poland only, and I asked my ex to get a copy for me.
She did, but sent it to the wrong address. It then returned to her parent's address, and she then sent it to the right one! Anyhow, it's great to see the offical photos of the event, shame i have no clue what they're saying. I might get her to translate it one day :p

In other news, I've discovered that Dead or Alive 4 for the XBOX360 is a great game! fluid, beautiful, fast, and easy to get in to, hard to master (cliche!!), it really is a unique title. Best of all, you can fight online against others, and when you join a session you hang around a virtual lobby, watching the other plays duke it out on a big screen, just like in the old arcade days when you were waiting for a machine to be free.... bless tecmo :)

Where are you baby....

.....we used to have so much fun

Hello. Best way to start this long overdue update is by the universally known word, HELLO. Hope everyone's been ok and kicking.
I for one have been fine. My friend Ziad (who came here in September from Dubai if you remember) decided to visit Britain again on a 2 week holiday. We had a great time, went clubbing, pubbing (:p), saw Cirque Du Soleil at the Royal Albert Hall (friggin' awesome! best circus ever!), and did loads of other things too. He's gone back to UAE now.

When he was here, my mum decided to give me a heart attack and actually buy me an XBOX360 as a gift for passing MRCP 2!! I was shocked! She gave me the cash and I had to hunt all over the place to find the damn thing (they're in shortage worldwide). I managed to get the last remaining "CORE" version from Virgin. I bought 2 games with it (condemned, perfect dark) and two wireless controllers. I had to order a hard disk from ebay (necessary to save games, download stuff and connect to xbox live), and a vga HDTV cable from lik-sang (yeap! hong kong!).

Anyway, all that arrived, and before hand I had treated myself to a 27" widescreen LCD HDTV television (DiBoss from amazon, dead cheap). I connected the xbox to it via analogue VGA and set the xbox to widescreen HDTV. DAMN THE PICTURE IS AMAZING! HDTV rules! it really has to be seen to be believed!

Next, I got the Sky people to install a Sky+ receiver in my room, and now i can watch tv here and rewind/pause/record live tv (it has a built in hdd that records the stream all the time). They will start broadcasting in HDTV mid this year, so that's another use for the tv.

The TV also has a DVI input which I connected to the PC as second output. The monitor is cloned onto it, and it's used as the fullscreen overlay device for videos. I watched HDTV Shrek 2 and Kill Bill on it the other day, and believe me, once you've seen it you REALLY can't go back to crappy "DVDS". Seriously. It's that amazing. Once HD-DVD or BluRay come to the market, we're gonna start watching films the way they're meant to be :)

Another use of this TV is that now kelly (and other friends that come over) can watch me do stuff on the pc, for example the poor girl would have to endure some quake 4 deathmatching online, watching it on the tv :p



As a side effect of the above things, I had to drag Ziad to HomeBase and get some cheap shelves and a TV unit to house all this crap. We spent a whole evening DIYing and sorting things out, but now after wobbling about for a bit, everything appears to be stable (I hope.....)

So as you can see I'm happy, and still wasting a ton of cash on crap. But this crap is awesome and last for quite a while. Also, playing X3 in the middle of the night with my 5.1 headphones on, the Cyborg Evo, and on the wide screen telly is a heavenly experience.... One day i'm going to lock myself in the room for 24 hours and do a marathon X3 universe session. Someone, get me a life (and convince my girlfriend not to dump me once she's read this :p).

SoB over and out for now, and back online for a long time to come...........