Saturday, February 17, 2007

500

So, somehow this is post 500. And to celebrate I'm going to do absolutely nothing. But possibly waste some words. I should be out of town right now, possibly shooting some clay pigeons and other assorted acts of random and possibly not so violence.

Alas, the office had other plans. Gotta love deadlines and high priority projects.

Anyway. I would be more bitter, but that would take a little too much effort. So I shall instead look for a silver lining and enjoy the fact that at the moment the house is terribly quiet. Well except for the sounds of me fumbling around on the keyboard. So yes. Quiet. It's a rather nice quiet at the moment. An all too rare quiet. But it will morph later into that depressing, hey where is everybody quiet. Why no, I don't miss the wife and kids at all. Why do you ask? But they left the dog. Meanies.

At any rate, I can catch up on some reading, play through some more Prince of Persia and create some Mii friends. Or something. If luck is with me I may still end up out of town, but at the moment I'm not holding my breath.

So happy 500.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Everybody Votes

I've decided that Nintendo's online strategy has nothing to do with games. And you know what? I think they might be on to something. Every couple times that I turn the Wii on it has nothing to do with playing games. It has to do with checking the weather channel (OK, it's a couple hours old usually and more specific to SLC, but it's a guideline) or checking the headlines. I've kept up with the news more since the News Channel showed up than pretty much ever else in my life. And now we have the Everybody Votes channel. Sure it's quirky, but that's the point. It's fun. And people will vote. And vote on how they think the voting will go. And so on. Nintendo is building a sense of online community. And despite the friend code hurdles, it works.

I can send my sister photos. Especially photos that have been drawn on. I can trade trash talk with my friend over Zelda times. And I do. And that's not even getting into the whole Mii concept...

At any rate, the more time I spend with the Wii, the more impressed I become. Nintendo really does have a plan for this system and it's more than just games. And that's cool.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Alton Brown

So we got DirecTV about a month ago. Since then AMC is my new friend and the Food Network has pretty much taken up permanent residence as the channel du jour. And the main reason for that is Alton Brown. I find his shows (particularly Good Eats) to be fascinating and funny and several other words that feature fs. I suspect I'm going to have to hunt down a few of his books. If they're anything like his shows, then they'll be interesting to read in addition to full of yummy things. He's joined my list of people that I'd love to have dinner with some time.

Daughter number one has become enamored of Iron Chef America. Partially due to the aforementioned Alton, but mostly because of the concept of the show - making foods featuring some ingredient. I remember iteration one of the show (featuring William Shatner). Glad to see it's back in a rather improved manner.

I've been reading through Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman. Always fun to read things by him. This collection (so far) doesn't disappoint. I really need a poster of the piece Instructions (which I thought I had bookmarked somewhere, but I can't seem to locate, so you'll have to track it down on your own (actually it's probably lost in the archives of this blog somewhere - poor thing)).

So many movies that I want to see, so few that I'll probably get around to seeing. I am terribly saddened that Norbit was number one at the box office this weekend. Words really fail to describe. For shame America. Seriously.

And you've probably seen it (it's made its way around the internet and back a few times by now) but I've finally become enamored of xkcd. I won't pretend to understand it all the time - math and I rarely get along - but I have enough nerd cred (geek cred will only get you so far with this comic) that the rest of the time it's hilarious. So check it out. And make sure you pay attention to the image rollover text, otherwise you're missing half the fun.

At any rate, the kids are now in bed and my wife is inexplicably watching a dog show. This situation must not remain unchecked...

Friday, February 02, 2007

Pranking through the internet

Pay no attention, not a real post. Mostly an attempt to help Neil Gaiman prank Penn Jillette.