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I don’t see how you could call Halo 3’s arrival anything better than disappointing after this news.
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Yet another horrible uninformed opinion on video games and their effect on people. I find this attitude by the media to be downright offensive and ignorant at best.
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Another in the series of media misunderstandings related to video games, and Mass Effect in particular. The treatment by the host of Geoff Keighley is shameful.
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OSX 10.5.2 turns on (or off, you could say) a new things in the Mac OS that never should have been on in the first place.
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Amazingly in-depth editorial on 1up.com’s Sam Kennedy regarding Gerstmann-gate and its effects on the video game press.
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Halo 3 statistics displays for your iPhone. Clever web app.
Tag Archives: Off-Topic
links for 2008-01-21
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The only criticism I had of ecto appears to have been mitigated. This is awesome and about time.
links for 2008-01-19
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The Keynote files (in PDF format) from Chris Breen’s iPhone Supersession, held at MWSF 2008. Very informative. If you have an iPod touch or an iPhone, you should flip through them to find out what you don’t know.
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A set of completely awesome Automator workflows for Mac OS X that allow you to command your Mac to do certain things when you send mails from your iPhone or iPod touch.
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A third-party directory of iPhone web applications. Looks to me more complete than the official Apple listing.
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Maybe the final word on the iPhone webclip icons: they should be 60×60 at 72dpi for best results.
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The Web site design portion of Apple’s ADC iPhone Dev Center. Good tips on how to design web sites to look better for the iPhone version of Safari, as well as some new tags that can help reformat existing sites on the fly.
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Because when I go, clearly what should happen is that I should become a piece of jewelry for my loved ones.
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You just have to.
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I can’t believe this kind of ignorance mixed with idiocy still exists.
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Good to see that Intuit isn’t, as I had feared, leaving Mac customers out in the cold, it’s just that we’re going to have to wait the better part of a year to get a new version of Quicken.
I’m Super; Thanks for Asking
Since its introduction into our home courtesy of my wife and her awesome bargain-finding skills, the Wii has been a central focus point for my leisure time. It’s odd to see how my gaming habits have changed with the arrival of the end of the year 2007. I rarely fire up my Xbox 360 anymore, and it’s almost guaranteed that whenever I do, I’m playing Rock Band and nothing else.
The rest of the time, I’m playing the Wii.
I think what makes the Wii so compelling for me is that it really is something I can share with my family. It is of course my “Nintendo machine,” by which I mean that the vast majority of the games I play on the thing are first-party and are franchises that I’ve been experiencing for the better part of my life. But it’s also very accessible in a way that other contemporary games aren’t. It’s less complicated, for one. The games skew a bit younger and a bit more appropriate, for two (don’t get me wrong, I like my shooters as much as the next guy, but with four kids in the house, they don’t get a lot of play).
And lastly, there’s a certain appeal to sharing what were formative media experiences of my childhood and adolescence with my kids and with my wife (who wasn’t necessarily a gamer when she was younger). Working with my kids to progress in Super Mario Galaxy has been one of the more enjoyable things I’ve done in a while (I’ll talk more about Galaxy at length in a future post).
What appeals to me the most is the Virtual Console, which for me is like a window into the past and a sweet reminder of how far the medium has come in recent years.
Look at what happened tonight. I got home from a really long day, spent my evening time chatting with my wife and catching up on a few things (and one episode of I Love Lucy), and then after she went to bed, I came downstairs to wind down a bit before turning in for the night.
In nights past, I would have flipped on the Xbox and played something like Call of Duty 4 or Halo 3. But what happened tonight? The Wii came on, and I took a rip through Punch-Out!! (making it to Soda Popinski before being crushed mercilessly by a few well-placed uppercuts). Then, I decided to see how far I could progress in Super Mario Bros. on a single play.
(For the record, I made it to World 5-2 before an ornery Hammer Brother did me in.)
Playing Super Mario Bros., I was reminded of some of those early game experiences and the sheer wonder that accompanied them: the first time finding a Warp Zone, the Bowser castles that are mini-puzzles of their own, the timer – which usually goes unnoticed until the music speeds up to “frantic” tempo and makes you nervous, realizing that if you’re super, you can kamikaze Bowser and grab the axe—it’s not often that a game makes me feel like that anymore as I’ve become increasingly jaded and cynical about the evolution of the medium. (Galaxy scratches those itches, in case you are wondering.)
I find it amazing, powerful, and exciting that something so technically underpowered yet lovingly-designed is winning the hearts of people who may not even have played video games in the past. Hearing about the wide demographic appeal of the Wii makes me happy, if only because I find so much joy in playing with the thing and I hope that other people feel the same way. Before the Wii entered my home, I never would have considered hosting a Tecmo Bowl tournament at my house on Super Bowl Sunday. Now, it’s one of the highlights of the day that I can’t stop talking (and joking) about.
Simplicity is back.
links for 2008-01-18
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Pr. William Weedon blogs on Lutheran Service Builder and how it is useful for those who normally would not print liturgical orders for regular services.
Ryan Markel 