Another Wii Trailer

If you don't know what the Wii is, and why it is innovative, just watch the video. Although they are exaggerating, you get the idea. The video has been viewed 140,000 times already, which means it's pretty popular.

Notice how Red Steel, Zelda and Metroid are played by young guys alone in the dark? And the grandparents and families are playing Wii Sports? Well a "hardcore" gamer tried out Wii Sports and was unsatisfied with it. Seems like they are going after different markets between serious versus casual gamers. Wii sports (includes tennis, golf, boxing, baseball & bowling) will probably be only fun multiplayer. I'm hoping there will be enough depth to allow for skill differentiation.

So even though there seems to be demand for the Wii, lot's of experts are saying that Sony will still win this generation's console wars. In fact a lot is riding on this as Sony has been facing a lot of trouble recently. After reading some of the arguments, it is pretty convincing. I'll break it down for you.

First, what is the Sony Playstation 3 (PS3)? Here are 23 quick facts.

Here's Ars Technica well presented argument. It's a little lengthy though.

For a short version of reasons why the PS3 will win, check out these 5 reasons.

Even the Economist chimes in. They quote Iwata-san (Nintendo President): "[Iwata-san's] hope is that existing gamers will act as ambassadors, encouraging friends and family to give the Wii a try." Yeah, he's calling me out...that's my job.

Anyway, if you don't like reading, then you can watch some PS3 ads instead. They are fluff though, but unfortunately, fluff usually convinces the masses.

Some financial analysts wrote about the ps3 saying how it will eventually outsell both the Wii and Xbox360, but I can't find that link. Instead I'll show you Nintendo's stock price.

It's definitely going to be interesting to see how this plays out. Maybe there will be parallels to the DS. Before being released everyone thought the PSP was going to pwn the DS and that the DS would be gimmicky. Turns out the DS is pwning the PSP...on sales charts at least.

Pot-Pourri

I have a few interesting links to post today, so no specific title.

First one is the popularity frequency of baby names over time on an interactive graph. This is a cool way to present information, and it's information that everyone could find interesting - even females who probably don't pay attention to half my posts (as evidenced by the lack of comments from girls)! You can type in your name and see how it popular it is over time. For example, check out Mariah....it get popular in the 1990s, takes a dip in the early 2000's, but then rises again last year. You could almost say it mirrors her career; how she became less popular with Glitter and then made a comeback with her last album. Coincidence?
       Unfortunately, you can't visually compare the popularity of two different names, because the vertical scale is constantly changing. It appears that there is a general downward trend in all names. Since they only analyze the top 1000 frequently used names for a given year, this seems to indicate that there are more unique names being given (eg Roshanda?) or maybe there is an increase in immigrants giving their childs unique cultural names. Or maybe some other theory that you can theorize in my comments if you wish.

Anyone like ASCII art? Well this site can take any (60x50 pixel) picture and convert into an ASCII representations. I put in a cropped pic from my MSN Live/Facebook profile and here are the results:

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Might look funny in your RSS feed reader. I also had some trouble rendering it in Blogger...it looks a bit better if you submit the pictures on the actual site...

Sony has recently had a big problem with their batteries blowing up. Scientific American has a good explanation with pretty pictures of why this happens. At work, I was involved with designing a battery charger for rechargeable batteries, but ran into a lot of difficulties...so apparantly it's not so easy afterall.

Fantasy Basketball season is starting once again! It's always exciting at the start of the year with the draft and so much promise, but gets harder to keep up when your team starts sucking. I always do ok, not great, not badly and as a result I have yet to win my pool. Boo. This year we're attempting a live draft with the Martingrove crew (10 people!), which should be interesting considering that one of our members is in UK!

Enough links for now...weekend is coming up! I will not be coming in to Toronto this weekend for the first time in 2-3 months... It's because Kitty is coming up for a visit! We're going to hit up King Crab on Friday because I won a gift certificate at a work auction. Then on Saturday we're going to hit up the newly renovated Bomber! Anyone want to come down and join us???

Browser Wars

As most of you know (I hope), Internet Explorer 7.0 and Firefox 2.0 were recently released. Looks like the browser wars are starting up again, which means competition, which usually means that everyone loses except for the consumer. Personally, I follow this somewhat closely because I spend almost my whole day looking through a browser window. I don't have TV at my place, so unless I go back to Toronto on weekends, I watch virtually no TV. I find the internet so much more interesting, so I spend a good chunk of my free time on the web. So I installed both new browsers when they came out and I've been trying them out (slanted more towards firefox though).

First IE7.0. I don't think I'll be switching back, but I gave it an initial try. No menu bar! WTF! That threw me for a loop....especially if they are trying to push the Windows interface, it seems strange that they would get rid of it for one of their most popular products. On the plus side, they added tabbed browsing finally...hopefully people will understand how to use if they had previously been stuck on IE6.0. I'll explain it in a second.

Anway, for Firefox 2.0, it's much of the same, but there are some new interface elements...that are kinda annoying. Luckily, Kevin posted a link explaining how to tweak Firefox.

IMHO, The most annoying thing is the close button on the tabs. Let me back up and explain something for those that don't know how to use tabs. Tabs are like another browser window, but contained within the original browser window. This is really convenient, because I'll typically have multiple sites I want to have open at the same time and be able to switch to them easily. So for example, if I provide a link to an external site, say Dear Margo, you can click on the link with your middle mouse button and it'll open in a new tab. You can then browse that site after you're finish reading this one, or switch to it immediately, peruse it, close it when finished and come back here. To close it, all that is required is clicking on the tab with your middle mouse button. Try it now!

How easy is that? Use the middle mouse button to open and close tabs...but I'm assuming you have a middle mouse button :)


So you don't need that pesky close button on the tabs....the site Kevin found explains how you can get rid of it.

Now....SURF!

Losing your voice

Dilbert is a really funny comic, because it's like a documentary...I'm an engineer and so is Dilbert. Sadly enough, I can relate to almost every single comic he writes.

The creator of Dilbert lost his voice to a rare disease a while back. It's strange because he is able to sing and perform public speaking, but not talk normally to other people in smaller settings. It's a disease for which there is no known cure. Miraculously, he got his voice back today. It was the happiest day of his life, even after all the success he's had with Dilbert.

Makes you appreciate good health.

Alternatively, there's an interesting MMO that's getting biggger and bigger. It's Second Life, and it has recently reached 1 million members. This one is different because you use real money to finance your activities online. It's interesting observing how a virtual economy operates. Every day, there is about $500,000 USD transacted online!

A lot of blogs talk about it and recently someone held a concert there , so I recently joined just to see what all the fuss was about. It's ok, it's kinda like a chat room with avatars. You can fly around and teleport as well. And of course there are places for you to spend your money. Usually the things in game to buy are virtual clothing, avatars, furniture, vehicles, homes and land. I've made ~$4 so far just going around doing stuff. Anyway, I only bring it up because this would be good for people who are disabled or in poor health. But for me, I don't know if it'll be worth spending much time there....RL (real life or 1st life to second lifers) is so much more fun!

18m21s

That was the time for my CN Tower climb this year...and I'm damn proud. I'm not in great shape at the moment, and the only training I did for it was running to James Park with my sister from my house for two weekends prior to the CN Tower Climb. My goal of under 20 minutes was pretty modest, but I'm happy I succeeded. Kitty and Grace both had good times as well and I'm proud of them!

When I previously went on the climb a few years ago, I didn't do very well because I misjudged the number of flights. They advertise that it is 110 flights, but when you are actually climbing, the CN Tower staircase flights are not full flights. The number of CN Tower flights is actually 142. So from 90 to 110 I went fast and was totally spent upon reaching 110, only to find out there were 30 more flights. That sucked. I also didn't pace myself very well, sprinting for some portions and then being forced to take a breather. I ended up with 24 minutes (suxors) or so, I can't remember the exact time.

So how did I do it this time? I had motivation...wanna know what it was?

I went with Kitty, who had convinced some of her friends to go as well. One of them, Justina, a short unassuming chinese girl went on the climb with us. She started at the same time as me, but I got out to a quick start. Eventually, by 50 flights or so, she had caught up with me. I didn't want to get beat by her, so I kept going. So my motivation was "don't get beat by a girl".

Anyway, she passed me. Therefore, I modified my goal to "don't get dusted by a girl". I managed to keep up right behind her for the rest of the way. She set the pace, and it really motivated me to keep up. She later told me that she thought it was only 110 flights and was surprised that she had to do 30 more flights. Even so, we never took a break during the ascent, which was good. She ended up beating me by 3 seconds.

So, yes I got beat by a girl, but at least I didn't get dusted by her. Whew...I think...

Video Games can be an addiction

This guy had an interesting blog post about his addiction to World of Warcraft. It's well written and a decent read even though it's quite lengthy. It generated >700 comments and counting, so it's definitely a spike in the guy's blog. Here's a choice quote: "From my vantage point as a guild decision maker, I've seen it destroy more families and friendships and take a huge toll on individuals than any drug on the market today, and that means a lot coming from an ex-club DJ."

He even did a follow up post with the highlights of the comments thread. Also, there was a post today on the same blog from a different viewpoint, that was pro Warcraft. I bet he wished he had enabled Ad Sense!

Which brings up a point about blogs and commenting. I wonder what the ratio of blog views to commenting is. I take a wild guess that my blog has been recently about 10%...ie about 10% of the readers leave comments (see all those posts with no comments?). And what does it say about the readership if they left more comments than average or less? This would probably be an easy statistic to calculate if one were so inclined. Unfortunatly, I can't figure out how to track views through the rss feed...can someone help me?

Madden on Wii for Tim!

Did you like that video Tim? I considered getting Madden, but I wasn't so sure about getting it....the good thing about sports games in the almost unlimited play value and it's great with friends. The video makes we want to get it a little more, but not completely convinced...so convince me further Tim!

IE7 [update 1]

Internet Explorer 7 is out! I'm really curious to see what Microsoft has come up with in response to Firefox. I didn't bother signing up for Beta and reading all the Beta reports...I just wanted to install it and try it. I hope they've taken note of what users want...and hopefully fixed all the rendering problems that web developers had with IE6!

[Update] Ugh, the vulnerabilities start emerging already, less than 24 hours after IE7 has been released. Let the patching begin!

Watching TV == Autism?

There has been recent news that they have linked Autism to watching TV for the very young. At first when I read this, I thought it was completely unreasonable, but after reading some media reports about it, it seemed slightly more plausible.

The thing with reading these scientific studies is that when it first comes out and makes a big splash, there's a lot of media coverage about it and then it fades away. Theoretically, others should independently verify your results, but you never really hear about that part of science. Well, this time, the Freakonomics guys take a crack at it.

BTW, that's a good book...I especially liked the part where they refute Malcolm Gladwell's theory (whom I also enjoy reading) about the reduction of crime in NYC (tipping point/reducing small crimes) and propose their own reason - legalization of abortion!.

Wii Preorder Madness

Wii preorders were made available in Canada today at all EB Games. They had gone on preorder in the US on friday and most reports came back saying that they sold out within minutes of store openings. So I figured I didn't have a good chance of getting one, especially since I was going to be at work at 10AM, when most stores opened.

I forgot that most EB Games opened early when there are lineups. On my way to work, around 9:15AM, I decided to stop by Conestoga's EB and check out the situation. They normally open at 9:30, and when I got there, just before 9:30, there were ropes to organize lines, but there were no people. I went in and the person that walked in just before me asked them if they had any Wii preorders. The guy behind the counter said they were all out at 8AM. In fact, EB Canada was doing preorders for ps3 as well as the Wii. He said they were allocated 15 Wii's and 8 ps3. I was SOL.

I then proceeded to work, but it was still lurking in the back of my mind. I proceeded to call around to different EBs around town. Apparantly there are 4 EB games in Kitchener (all really close together) and only 1 in Waterloo, but anyway. One of them nicely told me that the one at Fairview mall had some preorders still available and if I hurried I might reach there in time. All other stores had sold out by this time.

Well I thought about for about 20 seconds and thought screw it, I'm going to go try for it. So I snuck out of work (I only ended up missing about 20 minutes of work, plus work is pretty flexible) and drove to the EB. I arrived and it was empty of people. I asked for a Wii preorder and I got #12 out of 15. Some guy came in right after me and claimed #13. I called back later and they were all sold out. So it seems the Wii is popular, but the ps3 is as well as it soldout everywhere. All allocations in the KW region were 15 Wii and 8 PS3 it seems.

Nintendo has slated about 2 million Wii consoles for North America, so preordering may not even be necessary! But I figure I may as well just to be safe. The PS3 has only 400,000 for North America, so it's definitely going to run out faster.

Anyway, I'm really happy :) Here is the receipt:


Damn preorder cost me $200! Ah well, still think it's worth it...I don't even want to know how much the preorder for the PS3 was! That console costs $600USD!

Wii Dilemma

So the Wii is going on preorder tomorrow at EB. Unfortunately, I also work, so I probably won't be able to go to the store and lineup to get one. I could step out of work for a bit and see if I can score one without lining up, but I'm thinking that is unlikely. So is there anyone out there that wants to reserve one for me?

Also, I'd prefer to get it in Toronto so that I can bring it back to my TO home and play it there right away with some friends. But if I get it in Waterloo, I'll be stuck there. So it looks like unless someone wants to go lineup for me, I won't be getting a preorder.

The most likely scenario will be that I am stuck waiting in line the day it is released at Futureshop/Best Buy, possibly even camping out in line overnight, which may suck. It'll be cold on November 19th too, so that won't be much fun. Besides all the negative stuff, who wants to go with me to lineup on the 19th? Volunteer in the comments or shoot me an email!

Wii-mote Programming

Yo that looks so simple. Now I wish I had his job...he's obviously some sort of engineer...look how dorky he is...I could be that dorky if I tried. I'm jealous. The video gives me confidence in the Wii-mote's functionality though, which is encouring. Good job Nintendo!

Marketing speak: "Instead of complicated programming, developers need only take a few minutes to train the Wii Remote by examples. LiveMove lets developers ... all » focus directly on creative work without the burden of onerous coding requirements, helping them quickly unleash the potential of WiiTM. The only limitation is the game creator's imagination."

For more info hit up the link
PS you may need to open it in google video to read the text in the video....

WTF SNOW!!!

It's October 12th, and it has already snowed!!! And I just don't mean frost or light flurries, but snow that has stayed on the ground! WTF!! I hate winter.

I looked out the window at work today and I saw a snowstorm...I just couldn't believe it. It's very abnormal to have snow the week after thanksgiving...I think the first snowfall is usually in december, which is still two months away. I hate winter.

I wonder if it snowed in Toronto, or if it was just a Waterloo thing. I read somewhere that this winter is going to be much colder than average, which is discouraging. I hate winter.

Anyway, I hate winter.

How high can you hear?

What frequency can you hear up to? Or it's like asking how old are you?

I can only hear up to 17.7 kHz, which means I'm soon not to be a teenager anymore.

Post your result in the comments below...I wonder if my hearing is worse or better than the rest of you!

CN Tower Climb

So I'm doing the CN tower climb again this year. I'm so out of shape, so maybe this will help me. Surprisingly, the one that convinced me to go is Kitty! It's always pretty fun and it's for a good cause. You have to raise $50 for the cause though, but remember it's for charity.

Anyway, if you wanna join, hit up this site. I've joined as an individual for the public climb and my donations are going to, uh, SNC Lavalin, Kitty's workplace, for lack of a better alternative.

So anyway if you don't want to particpate, and would like to sponsor me for the climb, then please hit up the link and donate to United Way.

Thanks,

Nelson Hu

Yet another article on Korean gaming in "mainstream" media

This article is about (south) korean gaming and how popular it is over there. I think I've already posted about this, but the media keeps on writing articles on this "new phenomenon" that has been going on for years.

Some choice quotes:

Of course we come to PC bangs (ed. note: internet cafe), like everyone else,” Mr. Kim said, barely looking up. “Here we can play together and with friends. Why would I want to play alone at home?

And his date (yes, they were on a date at an internet cafe, sitting "side by side on a love seat by the soda machines, each tapping away at a personal computer") for the evening had this quote:

Ms. Nam glanced up from her screen. “In Korea, going and playing games at the PC bang together is like going to a bar or going to the movies,” she said.

Korean attitude toward gaming:

For us, playing with and against other people is much more interesting than just playing alone against a computer.

Most people think it’s good for your mental health and it’s a good way to get rid of stress. If you exercise your brain and your mind in addition to your body, that’s healthy.

Western attitude:

In the West gaming is now often considered antisocial.

Anyway, I find it entertaining that they keep on writing the same articles over and over again.

Make Love, Not Warcraft

If you like South Park and World of Warcraft, watch this hilarious episode.

I don't even play WoW, and I find it funny. Matt Stone and Trey Parker are still able to keep it fresh and funny after all these years...impressive.

How do you kill that which has, no life?
Gentleman, this could very well lead to the end of the world.....of warcraft

The Departed

How can you not be excited about this movie???

This movie is based on the original HK film "Infernal Affairs", which was a big hit in Asia. The basic premise is that the cops have an undercover agent in the mob, and the mob has mole working for the police. Let the drama and over-the-top acting ensue!

I never got around to watching the Asian film (good, b/c I now want to watch the Hollywood one first), but when I heard that they were thinking about remaking it into an Hollywood picture I was excited. And most exciting part about it were the names attached to the project.

Martin Scorsese (Old school Legend, also one of Tim's favourtie directors)
Jack Nicholson
Leonardo Dicaprio
Matt Damon
Mark Wahlberg
Martin Sheen
Alec Baldwin
Anthony Anderson, hahaha

All-star cast, all-start director (even Brad Pitt is listed as a producer), Rated R (important for a movie like this), 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, all indicate a great movie, but the only puzzling thing is the release date in October. I guess it's not setting itself up for Academy Awards, because those are usually released in December...but should be entertaining nonetheless.

Now, the time is upon us and it is being released this Friday. Who wants to go?

Opera

No, I'm not talking about the web browser, I'm talking about the singing/stage type.

After going through music history/piano, I kinda wanted to go see at least one Opera and see what it was like. Even more importantly, I learned that they subtitle the Operas and therefore the singing/talking/libretto wouldn't just be jibberish to me.

And after hearing about a few of them, one that really sounded interesting was Wagner's masterpiece, The Ring Cycle. Sorta a fantasy/dramatic story that takes four days to experience the whole story.

Anyway, as most know, they are playing Wagner's Ring Cycle in Toronto. I thought that it might be interesting to go watch it, but by the time I looked up the performance schedule (middle of september), I found out that they are playing the cycle only 3 times! I thought that was strange, because since it costs so much money to prepare it, why only play it 3 times? It must have something to do with the cost of running the show and the perhaps (low) demand? Anyway, it'll cost at minimum $300, which is quite pricey. I won't be seeing this yet, but maybe I'll go to one in the (far) future.

Kevin mentioned that they have free shows on weekdays every so often, which might be interesting if I was in TO.

Kitty's take

This is Kitty's take on me. She is a much better artist than myself....i'm a talentless hack. Mine looks so cartoony in comparison...

Mii

So the Nintendo Wii has a feature that allows you to create your own avatar. You can actually use this avatar in some games. Well someone created a flash based version of the Mii avatar creation process based solely on screenshot and video footage.

So I couldn't resist, I tried to recreate myself. Something is not quite right, but it was fun making it :)