Poor grammar.
Adult themes.
Strange opinions.
Obscure references.
Foul language.
Utter madness.

Okay, that's it, you have been warned!

200612.27

X-MAS, Wii and the Ghost of Christmas yet to come.

Well that was a holiday! Over the course of the holiday weekend we saw all the kids, and the grand kids, and exchanged gifts and everyone generally had a terrific time. We barely got any sleep at all. (Pictures below.)
 
The news however, is that after years of eschewing our ever expanding video game culture, I have at last been converted by the unfortunately named, but very cool, Wii system. This, my friends, is the FUTURE. No longer bound to sitting on our ever expanding rumps working only on the carpal tunnel in our thumbs. We are now free to move all over the place as we practice our Boxing, Bowling, Tennis, Baseball, Samurai Sword fighting and so on, all of this in the comfort of our own living rooms.

To start with, once I connected the unit into my primary Television and sound system which only took a few minutes, Nicholas helped me get it all set up. The kid is an expert on this kind of thing having done it for almost every game and gaming console you’ve ever heard of. We were up and running right away and we’ve hardly stopped since.

Gina and I spent a very pleasant time just last night playing the various games. Her bowling in particular is great; by the way, which brings me to my next point, the realism of the experience is stunning. In many respects the system is quite exact and I found myself very impressed with the interface. Clearly the designers really put a lot of thought and solid work into this product. While I could Box fairly well, I found my baseball lacking and I was stunned to find the tennis games I played matched my performance on the real court perfectly. The mistakes I make are captured by the interface and replicated with almost frightening precision. Having said that, I feel constrained to point out that the interface does not require you to perform all the actions in your living room as you would on the court. There is an ease of use to the system. The wand, called the Wii remote and its expansion unit, the Nunchuk, are very light. This is what allows Gina to Bowl all night without hurting her already injured back. What the Wii remote does have however, that adds to the experience, is a built in speaker and vibrator. No laughing back there in the peanut gallery, this is serious stuff. When you hit a ball (or load a gun) for instance the sound comes, not only from your surround sound system, but from right there in your hand where it should be. The vibrator unit also kicks in at the appropriate times to help mimic the real experience.

As with anything you get out of it what you put into it and I go all out. I do everything I can to make the activity as real as possible. By which I mean that I don’t allow the optional buttons on the Wii remote to do the work for me, I go through all the motions.  

The experience is already closer to a Holodeck than I ever expected to get in my lifetime and as a technologist myself I have a solid understanding of the fact that this is only the first commercially available generation of this type of entertainment. It really makes my head spin.

In addition to all of this the unit has a fun little feature that allows you to make virtual versions of yourself and your friends or anyone else you care to. I spent some time making little Mii versions of everyone. I made versions of my friends, the kids, Star Trek characters and even a little Albert Einstein guy. One of the cool things about the Mii’s (That's what they're called!) is that as you create them, when your at the bowling alley for instance, they start showing up in the background.
It may sound ridiculous but it’s fun.

When I got the Wii from Gina I also got two games. One was ‘Red Steel’ and the other was ‘Marvel Ultimate Alliance’.  Now the Red Steel thing is a kind of first person shooter game but the twist is that you also occasionally get to use a Samurai sword. This needless to say is just unbelievably cool. I don’t care about the plot or the game at all really I just like fighting with the sword and I’m pretty good. Here again the interface needs a little getting used to but if you use the correct stances and actions the game mostly respects it and you do better. In 'Marvel Ultimate Alliance' you really have to learn the interface to take advantage of the various characters powers, like flight or using weapons, but it’s still pretty cool. The game itself is a little limited in where it let’s you go and what it let’s you do but it’s still fun. I let Trystan play this one and right away he started smashing containers. I asked him why and he said “It’s a video game; you’re supposed to do that. How could you not know that?” Turns out that that’s how you can gain health points and stuff.

So it seems I have a lot of catching up to do, but the kids are eager to help out the old man, and as I say - it’s fun.

Anyway that's enough about Wii here are some quick shots that may give you a glimpse into our XMAS this year.

We were so glad that Nick, Talia and the kids could make it up for the Holiday.
A fun shot of Matthew, Holly and Nick.
Making a gingerbread xmas tree.	The completed tree
Joefer!	Buster the X-mas dog.
Matthew and Trystan got along famously.	Aunt Jess and Joefer
A vision from the Ghost of Christmas yet to come?

Jessica bakes up a storm of XMas Cookies.

Jess cleaned up and organized our disused kitchen and went to work baking up some cookies.
I came home and the whole house smelled like a cookie factory.
As an aside I will tell you that this holiday season is really wrecking my diet! I've had to swear off egg-nog altogether!
In any case partly to share the love, and partly to keep myself from eating them all, I took a plate full to work. I get in around 8:45 in the morning and by 10:00 there was nothing but a spinning plate left in the company lunch room. I did however get a lot of compliments from everyone. Here are some shots of us decorating the cookies.

Despite being a wretched outcast and having no right to say so, I will say anyway, I love this time of year. I love the whole Christmas holiday. Don't trouble me by pointing out that I'm not a believer, we all know that. I don't believe in Santa either but I still like giving and getting gifts.
I think Scrooge's nephew Fred put it best when he said:

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say, Christmas among the rest.  But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.  And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

200612.19

Nasa and Google form cosmic union


From the above linked article: "This agreement between Nasa and Google will soon allow every American to experience a virtual flight over the surface of the moon or through the canyons of Mars," said Nasa administrator Michael Griffin.

Oh yes! This is cool! More, more, more!

Just for fun, and to keep things interesting, I created some banner links to replace the plain old text for some of my friends. I await their collective outrage with smiling aplomb. Meanwhile the month is slipping past and closing on Christmas with all the quiet reserve of a freight train. This has been a busy time for me but also a good time. Things are moving apace on all fronts both for me and my friends. Happy Holidays to all!

200612.07

Water on MARS . . . Right Now!

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/061206_mars_gullies.html

Just incredible.

200612.05

A couple of quick pictures from Jofer's first Birthday, which we hosted here, while they were up for Thanksgiving. Compared to last year this year's Thanksgiving was easy.

Jofer at One.

Matthew at his brother's Birthday.

BANG! It's December!

Just like that, where does the time go? The latest news is that things are very much the same. I have updates but I don't have any time to post them right now so just a quick note here. Happy Holidays to everyone. More later . . . REALLY!

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