Neat!

A fellow Microsoft-y came up with this: PixelWhimsy, a non-directed exploration toy for your PC.

Now THAT's a speed bump

No idea what they guy is saying, though: World's Most Effective Speed Bump.

I'm In The Wrong Line Of Work

Instead of writing messaging platform software, I should have stuck with robotics and feedback systems.

Yay! New Spanish Vocabulary!

I'm learning more and more Spanish every day, it seems. Today's phrase: "por que no te callas?"

I Need More Time

I have no idea who he is, but this does whet my appetite to read (yet another) person’s blog. He apparently did “Thing a Week” wherein he wrote and recorded an entirely new song each week for a year. I’m still very curious about the whole songwriting/composing process but I haven’t really pursued it because I’ve been concentrating on photography and the occasional super-short film (or screenplay thereof).

Anyway, Johnathan Coulton answers your questions.

Still Tastes Like Bleah

Coming up on a week in Shangri-La and so far it's working well for me. My biggest problem is trying to recalibrate my eyeballs; eating anywhere near as much food at one sitting as I did a week ago makes me feel bloated and overfull. It's obvious that I'm going to have to rethink my idea of what is a reasonable portion of food.

The amazing thing is how easily I've gotten to the point where I'm voluntarily eating less food, and eating it less often. I'm technically obese (BMI between 31 and 32, depending), but have always been unwilling to be hungry for long. The Zone diet worked well in terms of weight loss without hunger, but dag, there's a lot of measuring and other overhead there. Nowadays I just chug my olive oil and that's it.

So anyway, I'm currently working on taking less food so that I won't be wandering around an hour later holding my belly while saying "damn, I ate too much."

The Power of Miscellaneous

Information R/evolution

Note To Self

I haven't needed these directions for cleaning your camera sensor yet, but I'm sure I'm going to sooner or later, and this way I won't have to try to remember where I saw it. Yay for search engines!

Oh ... this too.

Bleah

Four tablespoons doesn't sound like much, but it's just weird drinking straight extra-light olive oil. It doesn't taste so much like bleah as like ... nothing.

Anyway, 232 lbs as of 2007-10-18.

Driving Home

I've been trying to be more diligent about taking photographs regularly, and not just pictures of my kids. I walk around campus most days for exercise, and I've been carrying my camera with me in case I see anything interesting. Most days I don't find anything amazing, so I've not been posting them.

Yesterday I was driving home and saw the light on the houses across the lake and was irked that I had forgotten my camera because it was a great shot. I scouted a few places where I thought I could get a good picture and resolved not to forget my camera today.

Most of the places didn't work out too well, but two of them did and I got three shots that were okay enough to share:

HOLY FARKING CRAP!

IED Near Miss

I'd just like to thank Dave in Texas from AOSHQ for finding this gem.

Short Course In Photography

I haven't had the time to go through all of this short course titled "Using Your Digital Camera: A Guide To Great Photographs" yet, but the parts I have been through look promising enough that I want to finish it out. Plus there are exercises I haven't tried yet.

It also reminds me that I need to get a pocket tripod.

Oooh! Shiny!

This sounds interesting: "Sapiens," a mouse-driven application launcher. Pretty pictures, too.

Cars? Seriously?

I didn't know we even had an actual auto division, but apparently we do. Today I saw a job posting where they're looking for senior developers. The posting included pointers to shipping products, too: Ford's Sync My Ride and Fiat's Blue & Me. So not only are we talking about putting our bits in cars, but we've done so a couple of times and are looking to do more of it.

Ha ha!

When you google for "IRequestChannel", the first two hits are our very own Nicholas Allen's "Dr.Nick" blog. The actual Microsoft MSDN documentation for the IRequestChannel interface is #3. Go Nick! Woo hoo!

Wow

I've been lightly skimming over Photojojo and I have to say I've never seen such a density of excellent photo ideas. I can hardly resist rushing home and trying all of their suggestions. At once.

Yes, It's Old

But it's apropos again, now that CNN is trying to ding President Bush for calling the country "Burma": "The Onomastic Cringe," by John Derbyshire.

I'm Saving This

Yes, I know I'm overbooked in my personal time, but I'm getting the garage cleaned out so hopefully I'll be able to use these soon(ish):

• How to build a workbench without spending an arm and a leg
• How to wire up a workbench without electrocuting myself

That Is So Much Easier

This tutorial on dodging and burning in Photoshop is so much easier than the way I've been doing it that I must admit my wife is right: I am a maroon.

In My Copious Spare Time

Hey look! Yet more things I have to find some cycles to keep up with: Photoshop TV.

So Now I've Got Another Thing To Think About

His hit rate is higher than Bob Cringely's, so he's got that going for him. I wouldn't bet against this, because it sounds to me like an obvious sort of obviousness. Joel Spolsky says Ajax : character-mode :: Gmail : 1-2-3.

Mr. Spolsky is betting on something like gwt, but I'm not sure it isn't Flash.

Teh Fred!

Avast!

Who Knew?

"The Queen's English" means a particular accent, and not just grammatically correct English? I had no idea, but Wikipedia did.

Mark Your Calendar

Tomorrow is Talk Like A Pirate Day. Don't forget your eyepatch!

It's For My Health, Sweetie!

I'll grit my teeth and somehow force myself to endure this horrible, horrible, horrible daily health regimen.

A Whole New Angle

I've read plenty of material about the war, much of which was perfectly predictable. Today, however, I read something along an entirely new angle (well, new to me anyway).
Seth Godin looks at the war as a marketing war, which is, as I said, a completely new tack to me.

Yawn

I set my TiVo to record the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards show. Kathy and I waited a while after the scheduled start, as is our habit, so we could fast-forward through the commercials. About 10-ish, we started watching.

We gave it up as a lost cause very quickly thereafter. Brittney looked like crap; she's a perfectly lovely girl, but she just looked completely embarassed to be out there on the stage. If she'd had even a smidge of self-confidence she might have pulled it off, but if she didn't think I should be wanting to look at her then she's probably right.

There was no energy in the main room there, even after Chris Brown's performance. He looked good, but if that couldn't wake up those people then there's no hope for them. All in all a complete waste of our time.

MTV => boring.

Upgrade Your Router Part 2

Oh! And how about some antenna lurv, while you're at it? I'll trade a little tinfoil for 10dB worth of antenna gain.

Upgrade Your Router

From the guys at Lifehacker comes this pointer at a process for upgrading your router. I'm looking at boosting the signal and saying "yeah, that's worth a bit of my time." At the moment, I'm looking at trying this over the weekend.

High Altitude Photo

Now that's a cool shot.

Maybe I've Been Doing This The Hard Way

How to use the Extract filter in Photoshop. I might have been working too hard.

I Nearly Peed Myself

I have rediscovered my love for the Dissident Frogman, solely because of one hilarious instructional video. I smiled from nearly the first frame, and laughed out loud (disturbing others around me, I'm sure) at several points along the way.

Two thumbs waaaay up, Dissident Frogman!

Note To Self

Don't reinstall Windows more than once. Ever again. Ever.

That Went By Quickly

Dr. Hans Rosling gave a presentation at TED 2006 concerning myths around the third world. Here's the link to his presentation. It runs about 20 minutes, and it was a very quick 20 minutes that I thoroughly enjoyed. Have a look.

Well Of Course She Was

Nicole Richie spends a whopping 82 minutes in jail. For her second DUI. Jebus farking crap, it really pays to be rich if you're otherwise worthless and a danger to those around you.

For the record, I've spent more time in jail awaiting bond hearings than did Nicole for DRIVING UNDER THE F@#@&#^ INFLUENCE. There ain't no justice.

Ooooh! Shiny!

How about a little eye-candy? Check out the demos for Flipping Book, a page-fliping UI element. Click on either products "Try Demo" link, then click-n-drag the pages to turn them in the book. Neat!

Are You Kidding Me?!?

I think I have bought my last Chinese-made item. According to MSNBC, Chinese officials knew about the dangerous toys months ago. I will now be taking my consumer dollars elsewhere, and the Chinese economy can go right back into the tank, for all I care.

It was one thing when they allowed industrial waste into their pet food products, but to endanger our children? If there's one thing that Americans are incredibly sensitive to, it's child endangerment, and the Chinese have certainly stomped over that line with abandon here. I can only hope that it rebounds to their detriment.

Man, I Need More Hours In The Day

Holy crap! I'm going to be busy, it appears. That's a whole lot of drawing turorials, and I definitely need to upgrade from my current "stick people" level of ability.

More PS Trickery

I don't spend nearly enough time with Photoshop. I looked through this set of movie effect tutorials and only knew about the Cars one. I'll have to put down the Pokemon for a while, I guess.

Sweet Jebus

Is this for real? Jebus fargin christ, I'd like to shoot someone.

Online Backup

Looking for an online backup service? Me too. So far, I've gotten recommendations for http://mozy.com/. I'll give it a shot and post my findings soon(ish).

Learn Something New Every Day

I had never heard of the Orton effect until today, when a post showed up on the MS Photo alias. I recognized the results, but didn't realize it had a name. Luckily for my education, my colleagues included a tutorial. Yay us!

Look for examples soon.

I Want My Damned Glowball Worming!

So Kathy and I were watching the news last night, and the big story is about the "heat wave" that (apparently) some people are enjoying. It's all part of this "glowball worming" we keep hearing about, I guess.

It was 56 freakin' degrees when I left the house this morning. Kathy and I are seriously discussing if we ought to turn the heater on; we don't really want to because it seems ridiculous to have the heater running in August, but on the other hand it's cold. Al Gore promised me some global warming, and damn it if a little wouldn't be welcome right about now. Seriously ... how are my tomatoes supposed to ripen if it doesn't get above 70?

Ooooh! Shiny!

I have no shame ... I will cheerfully admit to mad lurv for the cheesy text effect. I will be diligently working my way through all of these 80 Photoshop text effects tutorials in my spare time.

Now I Need To Buy A Drive Enclosure

One of the things that I've wanted to accomplish for a while now is to rip all of my childrens' DVDs to disk, and then let the girls watch them over the house network instead of losing (or scratching) the media. Well, I'm going to have to go buy an external drive enclosure now because Flip4Mac has what looks to be exactly what I've been looking for with their Drive-in product. I might even spring for them to have their own Apple TV.

Not The Best Plan

"Apologize" by OneRepublic

This song was featured on "So You Think You Can Dance" earlier this season, and tonight OneRepublic performed it live on the result show. It's a super song, and Kathy and I both liked it the first time we heard it. So after watching the results (why oh why is Sara going home when it should have been Lauren?!?), I ran off to iTunes to buy the song.

Unfortunately, somebody failed to release the single on iTunes, so I couldn't buy it. I bought a remix of it from Timbaland, but I don't know if I'll remember to buy it again later this fall when their album comes out. Oh well. OneRepublic should find their promotions guy or A&R guy or whomever handles those things and punch him in the eyeball for letting this opportunity drop on the floor.

Not For Me, Thank You

Stuart Stevens is an amateur bicyclist. After reading and hearing so much about "performance enhancing drugs," he decided to perform a little experiment on himself and see what's the dilly, yo. I read it and got wigged out a smidge: I can barely stand to let Kathy inject me with the Enbrel I need to keep my back from freezing up. I can't imagine taking injections several times a week just to ride my bike better.

Tastes Great! Less Filling!

It isn't the answer to everything, but I have to say that System.Transactions has to be one of Microsoft's best things ever. It continues to surprise me how often making something be a volatile resource manager (or more usually, making a whole bunch of things volatile resource managers) solves a thorny sequencing problem.

Yay for the Tx guys!

Maybe I'll have to scribble something down as far as making VRMs and how they acutally solve some otherwise interesting problems.

Why Isn't This On iTunes?

I love the Umbrella (Jody den Broeder Destructive Mix) that you can listen to on that page. What irks me, though, is that even though it's an official remix version, I can't buy it from iTunes. That sucks.

Come on, Steve ... take my $1.30 and sell me the track.

Internet Caucus on Youth Victimization Online

The Congressional Internet Caucus held a forum to discuss online youth victimization. The presentation included a panel of four social scientists who are studying online youth victimization followed by a Q&A session.

Here’s what danah boyd wrote about it. danah boyd is the panel presenter who gave the qualitative analysis portion of the presentation.

Here’s a YouTube playlist of video of the forum

And finally, here’s a PDF transcript of the forum

I haven’t watched the videos, and I only read the panel part of the transcript, but even in that sample there’s one part I found quite interesting:

Our research, actually looking at what puts kids at risk for receiving the most serious kinds of sexual solicitation online, suggests that it’s not giving out personal information that puts kid at risk. It’s not having a blog or a personal website that does that either. What puts kids in danger is being willing to talk about sex online with strangers or having a pattern of multiple risky activities on the web like going to sex sites and chat rooms, meeting lots of people there, kind of behaving in what we call like an internet daredevil.

Which, of course, I wouldn’t have thought to talk to the girls about (technically that should be "thought to talk to Kathy about HER talking to the girls about it"). So, now I’m marginally less ignorant. Yay me!

Is That Supposed To Be There?

This anti-piracy element is the subject of much emailing today.

As an employee of Microsoft, I'd just like to say "no comment" what with me not being a spokesperson or a lawyer or really anything other than a cog in the machine.

What Slippery Slope?

POUND (a short film by Evan Bernard)

Not that I fell out of my chair or anything, but it was pretty funny.

MUST! HAVE!

Oh dear, I'm going to have to buy a larger desk just so that I can display the flatbed scanner I'm going to have to buy/build.

I Cried, A Little

Paul Potts sings Nessun dorma

Now I know jack about opera. My expectations had been raised by reading what Seth Godin wrote about him, but the guy started off by saying he had confidence problems. When I heard that, I lowered my expectations because I figured the dude's got to know his own limitations.

But then he opened his mouth to sing. Once again, I know jack about opera but I got chills and my eyes got a bit moist. I'm a big pansy after all, I guess.

Blasphemously Good Fun

Bible Fight: It's like Mortal Kombat without the fatalities!

File Under Freaky-Slash-Cool

I don't know if it's art, but it's certainly cool.

I Has A Weakness

Apparently I have a weakness for steampunk-y things. The latest gewgaw to catch my attention? The Steampunk LCD monitor. I'm going to have to buy more power tools so that I can craft up things like this.

We're made of AWSOME!

Why, even our warfare is artistic.

Cluefulness Dead Ahead, Sir

The National Space Society is publishing an open letter response to Gregg Easterbrook. That's easily the open-est open letter I've ever seen, in that not only can everybody read it, but interested parties can easily take part in the drafting of it. Plus I agree with it. Yay!

It's a pity that this is from the NSS and not NASA; it'd be nice if NASA was this on top of events.

Nonrepresentational Art Is Lame

500 Years Of Female Portraits In Western Art

The good parts are the four hundred some odd years of representational art, and the bad parts are the non-representational bits at the end. But that's just my opinion.

It's Memetastic!

Everybody's doing it now: lolbots.com.

WE RULE!!!

Yay for us! Presenting Microsoft Surface. I want one. Popular Mechanics checks out the Surface as well.

Brilliant!

Amateur, by Lasse Gjertsen

I thought his first video, Hyperactive, was inventive and interesting. His new work is clearly a follow-up, showing a bit more reach to his technique than I initially gave him credit for. Good job, dude.

Ooooh! Shiny!

Weta, a special effects house in New Zealand, has been working on some very impressive movie titles, including "Lord of the Rings". They also sell collectible items, many of which are based on work done for those movies. Today, thanks to John Scalzi, I found out they sell amazing steampunk-y ray guns.

Sigh. I'd buy a whole set, if I could.

Not A Joiner

I've been reading Bill Whittle's essays for a while now. (There's a link to his page over in the sidebar). Like many other people, I would click over to his page every day, see that he hadn't written anything new, and then be on my way.

Then, not that long ago, there was something new on his page! Yay!

A bit of a tease, I'll admit, but I read it all and got ready for whatever his new thing was going to be.

It turned out to be YOU ARE NOT ALONE (Part 1). Yes, he is every bit as talented in the "what do I name this post" department as me. I started reading and felt "yes, an excellent analogy" and "good point" and "I see what you did there."

Then I get to the Remnant part, and wasn't quite so cheery anymore. He even wrote

Now you may be thinking that I am positioning this for you to consider yourself the Remnant and Your Humble Author the latest incarnation of their Prophet. I can assure you I mean no such thing. Because the maddening and magnificent thing about this quality of character is that it cannot be hustled, preached to, manipulated or organized

but I disbelieve ("disbelieved" also) his assurance.

I press on to YOU ARE NOT ALONE (Part 2) and was completely enervated on the spot. "Western Civilization is going to the stars" and so now we can all sign up to make a new Utopia, founded in our own Heinlein-educated images, out there among the stars.

Dang! I was so hoping for something useful. Instead I got a large pile of warm runny mush.

The first part of the first part of the essay (up to the Remnant bits) was super, and I'll be internalizing that for use elsewhere immediately. Thanks for that, Bill. The rest, though, I'll be setting aside. I'll be setting it aside because I don't buy into the notion that founding Ejectia! will actually improve our society here. And "here" is where my wife and children live, and "here" is where I live, and "here" is where we're all going to be for a while until space homesteading is a possibility instead of a dream.

I don't think that people are filled with evil. I think that people are almost always capable of running their own lives to suit their own ends. I think that people are not children. I think that other people, even Democrats, even religious fundamentalists, mean well in spite of the fact that they're often wrong about many things. I think that giving up and running away to found Utopia is wrong (but in a "sadly dismissing with a shake of the head" way more than a "pounding the table in angry denunciation" way).

Second, and I don't know that this isn't a sideline, although the sainted Robert Heinlein said that specialization is for insects, specialization is what has made and is making Western Civilization possible. If you're going to grow your own food and be your own doctor and smelt your own iron and forge your own tools and sew your own clothes, then you and your family are going to be really busy and really dirt poor. Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage is not going to be repealed any more than the Laws of Thermodynamics are.

I applaud the idea of self-improvement. I fully applaud and support the idea of making a change in yourself to engender change in the world. What I don't support is the idea that you can globally flip the bit from "betray" to "conspire" by convincing the people who see themselves as part of the "Remnant" to hold a quilting bee while talking about the best way to churn butter.

I'll turn in my membership card now, I think. But I wish you all well in your enclave.

"Urgent," You Say?

Yes, I can see how you'd have a sense of urgency in that regard.

Look Who's Back

Rachel Lucas. Welcome back.

I Don't Know What To Do With This Information

If you don't want to be hit by a car, take off your helmet while riding your bicycle. Seriously ... I don't let my kids ride their bikes without helmets because I don't want them getting concussed (or worse) from taking a fall off the bike. It's not an issue for them, I suppose, since they don't ride where cars are around, but still.

Things That Go "Pop"

How To Make A Tiny Potato Gun. Whee!

Holy crap!

I am completely boggled. Both of those guys (including the pilot) are clearly insane.

OMGWTFBBQ

I guess if you stand in the right place and squint your eyes just right, it kind of sort of looks like something that could resemble a strategy: some loser company making crappy copy-protection software is sending cease-and-desist letters to Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and Real Systems. "What did these companies do to run afoul of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act?" I'll pretend you asked. Why, they didn't buy some low-rent techie's copy-protection software, which some lawyer is going to claim is circumventing an access control mechanism.

Once again, Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick.

Well played, sir

I'm glad to see that the Governator's office is treating the petition with all the seriousness it deserves.

So now both of you have come right out and said that?

11 House Republicans told President Bush that the war is bad for the GOP. Let me repeat that, in case the stupidity wasn't clear enough

They said the WAR is bad for the GOP.

Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick.

Who's making this crap?

So I'm watching American Idol last night, and was once again completely apoplectic at the obvious incompetence of the sound engineer(s) on this show. How are they not getting fired? They don't seem to be getting any better, so clearly their on-the-job training isn't working out so well. I've lost count of the number of times I've complained to Kathy that the background singers or the band is too hot for the lead vocal mike. Does the sound engineer not listen to the mix during the show? Seriously?

The director and/or D.P. sucks too, but at least he's/they're sucking less than he/they did at the first part of the season. Yes, dude, we know you have a crane; that doesn't mean you need to make Every! Single! Cut! a crane shot. I understand that the contestants don't necessarily know how to be visually interesting while singing just yet, and so you have to help them out, but howzabout you learn another couple of techniques? Plzkthxbai!

I'm also pretty much over the "SteadiCam-enabled circular dolly around the vocalist" trick. There's a reason why three-camera setups are so common, and it's because they don't make the audience motion sick. Also they provide plenty of visual interest without drawing attention to the fact that a camera is involved.

When Gwen Stefani was performing a few weeks ago, her natural visual-intensive performance was completely ruined by the director's insistence on trying to gin up visual interest via pull-zoom and crane shots. Ms. Stefani just needed close-up, medium, and establishing shots. The rest of it was irritating and distracting.

Ooooh! Shiny!

I need one of these, don't you think?

Maybe I don't miss shopping at "Best Buy" after all

I swear "Best Buy" didn't used to suck, but that was before they "merged" with "Media Play". Now, they suck.

more plzkthxbai

An essay on lolcatz etymology? "Not pedantic enough," he says.

We were warned!

Brave prescient activists warned us that if George W. Bush was re-elected, we'd see professors fired over trumped-up charges of ideological nonconformity. THEY WERE RIGHT!!!!!

Thank you to Professor Reynolds for this incredibly timely find.

Take that, AACS

Heh heh ... "redacted," it says. I'll have to order one of these, I think.

David Brin was right

The NSA has been watching all (or a significant portion of) Internet traffic sans warrant for years, according to a former AT&T network technician.

How the mouse works

Takes a moment to load up, but it's worth it.

It's like mechanical steroids

Not that I exercise or anything, but still ... this might convince me to start.

Wow. Just ... wow

An actual essay on the origins of locatz, from one of the geniuses at I Can Has Cheezburger. I'm floored.

And another thing

The Tennessean ignited a small storm when they published an online database of concealed carry permit holders. The implication was that gun owners need to be tracked like sex offenders. KnoxNews.com points out the absurdity of that comparison including reference to studies showing the lawfulness of CCW holders as compared to the general population.

Lovely essay, that

Fred Thompson, writing about George Tenet's appearance on Meet The Press.

Something's wrong with the world

Something is seriously up when I find myself expressing admiration for a French politician, which I did just yesterday to my buddy Krish. I'll pretend you asked why, and point to this quick hit from Jules Crittendon in response.

Want to edit a film?

Want to edit a film? I'll just quote from their page:

OpenSourceCinema is a collaborative documentary project to create a feature film about copyright in the digital age. We want you to create parts of the film.

Sound like fun? I think so, too.

Melancholy Elephants

Spider Robinson has posted a short story, Melancholy Elephants, on his web site. This story explores what it means to continue extending copyright on artistic works for longer and longer periods. It's short, as I mentioned, and well worth your time to read.

Pluto Tells All

Never mind the Geico cavemen; recently-demoted dwarf planet Pluto airs it all out.

Sure, we printed a retraction

The NYT has now admitted that President Bush did not call himself "the Commander Guy". Roughly 1.2M other websites now have to be similarly retracted. I'm holding my breath.

And thank you to Neptunus Lex for finding this and writing the joke.

Wait ... what?

Seriously ... WTF?

World's Bravest Cat

World's Bravest Cat

So now I have to budget how much?

I might have to spring for the new Photoshop CS3 (I've been putting it off and sticking with my old copy of Photoshop) since Photoshop lets you do this. Very nice.

What he said

I sent a copy of the now-famous "09 F9" number in various forms to a handful of people. The whole AACS thing irked me, but I couldn't easily explain why. Now I don't have to, thanks to Ed Felten.

Do people still say that?

I was listening to the Adam Carolla show while driving in this morning. Today's in-studio guest was Ted Nugent, well-known bowhunting advocate. They took a phone call from a listener who had a question for Ted. The caller, J. Random Listener, started out claiming to be a fellow sportsman and hunter, presumably to establish his Man Club bona fides or something, but rapidly escalated into calling Ted a punk and ... a "chickenhawk."

I was astounded. Here, live, in person (sort of), an actual human being (henceforth "Person A") called another human being (henceforth "Person B") a "chickenhawk" because Person B didn't join the military. What year is it again? Is it possible to have been online-aware enough to get the "call Republicans 'chickenhawks'" memo but not actually clued in sufficiently to realize that the whole "chickenhawk" argument has been laid to rest rather forcefully? Even the normally anti-Republican Wikipedia has an entry for "chickenhawk" that lists a whole slew of reasons why "chickenhawk" is passe.

Or is it still alive elsewhere, and I'm not looking in the correct fever swamps?

It's just bizarre.

Get Some Nuts!

Quit yo' jibber-jabber, foo!

I don't think that means what you think it means

I'm driving in to work today listening to the radio when I heard a commercial from the State of Washington trying to get people not to speed. First, I'm not sure why they bother since everybody in this place drives like old women; if you transport anybody from here to Atlanta, they'd be a road hazard akin to a rock slowly rolling down the middle of the highway. Anyway ... the commercial makes a big point of saying that 1 in 3 fatal accidents involve speed, so slow down.

Wouldn't that mean that you'd rather be speeding than not? If only 1 in 3 people killed in accidents are speeding, then 2 in 3 are not speeding, so not speeding appears to be less safe. Way to go, State of Washington!

Numbers sure are hard, aren't they?

Unpacking the Wii

So I got a Wii, finally. Let me start by saying that scoring one was made much easier with the services of iTrackr. iTrackr, as you might guess from the name, tracks the availability of various consumer goods and tells you when it looks like you can find one. In my case, I just configured it to tell me when any of ten local retailers (I picked them from a list) had Wii consoles in stock, and that I wanted to be notified by getting a text message to my phone. It cost me all of two (2) U.S. dollars for this service.

The first message I got from iTrackr sadly arrived while I was at the airport on the way back East to visit family. Before I got back to Seattle, I got a message that the Wii was out of stock again. This past Saturday night, I got a message that the Target in Redmond had consoles. I phoned them mid-morning on Sunday, confirmed they had them in-stock, and drove over and picked one up. Almost as simple as having a personal assistant. iTrackr is now highly recommended.

So snyway, I got home with the Wii and started unpacking everything.

Step 1: Admire the box
Ooh ... shiny.


Step 2: Open the box
See the boxes inside the outside box. Notice how they're labeled so you don't turn the outside box upside down and drop stuff. Thanks, Nintendo.


Step 3: Remove the inner boxes
Gaze in wonder at the amount of plastic bags and twist ties holding things.


Step 4: Gawk at the actual pieces-parts
Here's the sensor bar that you have to attach to your television, plus the two controller bits that came with the console.


Step 5: Open the other game
Target didn't have any (?!?) extra controllers, so I had to buy this second "game" to get a second controller.


Step 5b: Look at Zelda
Haven't even put the disk in yet, but I've got it ready to go.


Step 6: It's smaller than it looks
Here's the console itself. The console is tiny; barely larger than a CD. You can see the slot, which is where the CD is inserted. From that you can judge that any randomly-selected technical book is way bigger than this electronic marvel.


I installed the console in landscape mode, so it sits flat on its tiny little feet (you can barely see them in the photo as a darker shadow on the broad side of the console) underneath the television. Sadly, I didn't take a picture of the completed installation, so you'll just have to use your imagination for that part.

Step 7: Have super fun
As soon as I got it all hooked up, the girls were clamoring to make their own Miis. To be honest, Kathy and I were excited too. We spent quite a while making our little avatars, and tweaking their clothes, and grabbing them by their heads out of the Mii parade so we could watch them shaking their tiny limbs. Seriously. I'll have to tape that so you can all see how stupidly amusing it is.

We then chose "bowling" as our first game. Selected our Miis in order, distributed the controllers, and off we went. It took a few tries for Kyra to get the whole "swing your arm like you're actually bowling" motion, but she's only five so it's okay. She picked it up, though, and we all had great fun.

Everybody and their mother has written about how approachable this gaming system is, but I'm going to pile in anyway. It was surprising to me how much like "real" bowling this turned out; while sitting on the couch watching the bowler we were all cheering and clapping, just like we tend to do at the bowling alley. While the ball's on its way down the alley, I was completely unable to resist gesturing madly and almost-dancing in my efforts to impart some "body english" to the ball. When I missed picking up the spare, I was just as quick to childishly turn away so as not to see my failure. It was weird.

So, I'll just go along with everybody else and say "go get one." It's $400 well spent.

I'm also going to repeat my appreciation for iTrackr and tell you that that was $2 well spent.

I got a Wii

I scored a Wii! Woo hoo!

Pictures of the unpacking will follow shortly. Stay tuned.