Category: General

I took a little relaxation time out of my busy schedule to put this together last night. I just took components from one of my previous efforts and put together something that seems fairly reasonable. (Ah! the beauty of cut-and-paste).

Nintendo probably don’t want to change the design too much or introduce new functionality (such as an analog stick) because the platform is fairly well established. I doubt that they will drop the Gameboy Advance game slot because it may be used for add-on cartridges (such as the rumble pack).

With the success of the Gameboy Micro and competition from the (fairly large) PSP, they probably want it to be smaller, cooler looking, and somewhat customisable. A faceplate is probably a good idea so that they don’t have to keep making different colours later in the lifespan of the product. It will probably still look fairly sturdy because they don’t want it to break easily.

So here it is. The screens are the same size, but everything else is smaller.

Note: I still like the ipod style redesign better!

Jim, Heidi, and I are going to see The Producers tomorrow. If you are not sure if you want to come along, let me remind you that it is from the creater of Spaceballs! If that doesn’t sway you, I don’t know what will!

Details:

• Time/Date: Meet at 9:00pm (Movie starts 9:15pm), Tuesday 17th January
• Place: Innaloo MEGAPLEX (That’s how it’s spelt!)

Feel free to come along. I believe that there will be some Daytona action as well.

This is a follow-up to Mat’s previous post which served as a prelude to yesterday’s “Yakitate fest”. Tone, Mat, Minh, Jim, and Menghis came over to watch anime, play video games, and (most imporantly) bake bread.

We each setup on a different section of the kitchen bench and got to work mixing ingredients and kneeding dough. With his wealth of knowledge and experience, Mat guided us through the whole process. His bandana denotes his superiority. I’m sporting a head-band to stay hygenic.

The major outcome of the day were that fun was had by all, but here are a few other statistics.

• Best bread: Tone & Minh
• Heidi’s pick (after blind taste test): Mat
• Total bread making time: over 9 hours!
• Lessons learnt: You can’t get a yeast infection from undercooked bread.

I look forward to our future baking adventures! (More photos after the jump.) Continue reading “Weekend bread making efforts”

http://www.global.yamaha.com/design/tenori-on/

From the website:

Media Artist Toshio Iwai [creator of Electroplankton] and YAMAHA have collaborated to develop a new digital musical instrument for the 21st century, TENORI-ON.

There is a video on YouTube of Iwai demonstrating the device at a recent conference. The “performance” part of the video starts around halfway through and it is absolutely amazing.

One of the nice things about coming back to Perth was seeing my sister’s dogs, Silky and Tipp, again. Walking them around the park across the road is quiet and relaxing (something I don’t remember much of back in Sydney). Too bad most of the time they yap, yap, yap if they aren’t provided with constant attention!

They are both silky terrier crosses and when I left for Sydney a year ago they were rather.. silky. More recently they’ve been given short haircuts and there is a definate improvement in their appearance.

This is Silky. She’s a little older and scared of just about everything.

This is Tipp. She’s much more energetic and seems to think she is at least 500% her actual size. Minh pointed out that she looks a bit like a dog poo when curled up like this. I don’t know… I don’t see it 😛

More photos after the jump. Continue reading “Dog photos (by request)”

It was Heidi’s first day of work at the emergency department yesterday. She was working a late(ish) shift (3:30pm to 11:30pm) and missed the last bus home after work. Being the selfless person that I am, I picked her up to take her home. She hadn’t had time for dinner, so we swung by Macca’s drivethrough in East Vic Park. That’s when I saw it. Right there, on the menu. “Frozen Coke”.

This is clearly a great boon for the Frozen Coke Club (aka. Frozen Beverage Society). After years of driving around being dissapointed by almost every service station with broken slurpy machines (or even worse… snow cones!), this looks to be the closest thing to a surefire 24-hour solution.

http://www.nintendo.com/g…-Game-0000-1849

I have in my hand what promises to be the greatest four player experience (involving the Gamecube and Gameboy Advance consoles) since Crystal Chronicles. It is here; we must play!

So when is good? Saturday works for me.

http://news.independent.c…ticle337149.ece

Blurb:

The intervention by News Corp in the traditionally open-access world of the web – in particular the alteration of personal user profiles – provoked a storm of angry posts in online “blogs”.

Who couldn’t see this coming when News Corp bought (the now ironically named) MySpace? Will this sort of thing create a backlash against efforts like Gmail, livejournal, and blogger? When will people say “this is my information!” or “this is our information!”.

http://www.greaterunion.c….asp?movie=5934

I saw Chicken Little in Digital 3D at Innaloo with Heidi and Phil. The movie itself was quite amusing with a hole swag of popular culture references (which may make it fairly dated in future), but I was (initially) more interested to see how the 3D presentation worked out.

When buying the tickets we had to pay an extra $2 each and were given cheesy polarised glasses (Gosh, they look just like Chicken Little’s!). These glasses worked incredibly well. We sat in the most central seats we could find (not difficult as the cinema was nearly empty) and the 3D was very clear. Another thing that stood out was the clarity of the image (probably due to the digital projection).

Recommended viewing. The biggest shortcoming of the film (to me) was the characterisation of the father. His personality seemed inconsistent with his apparant past.

I kept the polarised glasses to play around with. I figure that I can try to polarise projected light with one pair and view it with another. Maybe if I get a couple of flashlights and print stereo images onto transparent film…

Update: uploaded photo.

http://palgn.com.au/artic…65905a7e95318d2

Aren’t a bunch of these games available for less money on other platforms (especially PC)?

I guess like petrol prices, it feels a little weird to see 3 figures. I really hope this isn’t a trend for the entire market. Videogames already seem overpriced to me (especially compared to other media such as music and video).

On the other hand, if this is a trend it might expand the smaller (cheaper) games market. Personally I’d be more inclined to put down $20 for a racing game with 4-5 good levels than $100 for a racing game with a hundred mediocre levels. I’d also prefer to spend $60 for a good handheld game than $120 for a good television console game.