New Phone!

Yay, after suffering 2 years with the Audiovox CDM-8600 that Radio Shack sold us, we finally upgraded to new phones. I wanted something that was durable and would work well in our limited reception area. I ended up choosing the Motorola V325i. Everything I’ve read online so far has been positive. I am very impressed with this phone so far.

Feb 15, 2007 Read More »

Linux vs. Everything Else

For the first time since I moved this past August, I powered up my Linux machine at home. It turns out that I needed some files on it, so I spent about an hour bringing it back up to a working condition. Spec wise, the machine isn’t bad – Athlon XP 2400+, 1.25GB RAM, etc, etc, etc. It works well for the most part, and doesn’t give me much trouble at all. In fact, I would say it’s been one of my better machines that I’ve owned. But, I just don’t use it. In fact, the big reason I stopped using it was the Mac mini that I purchased 2 years ago – a 1.42GHz G4 with a slow system bus, less memory, and a slower hard drive. But really, it was OS X that did my Linux box in.

Feb 10, 2007 Read More »

Guitar Hero

So, the rumor mill says that Guitar Hero is coming to the Wii and the DS… is this a good thing or not, it’s too early to tell. I can tell you, though, that the Wii controller by itself is not a suitable replacement for the SG Controller. Red Octane is going to have to do some 3rd party controller magic with the Wii if the game is going to have any success. Maybe they can have a guitar that you slide the remote into, connecting through the port on the bottom? They wouldn’t have to provide the accelerometer, since the remote all ready has 3 of them.

Feb 09, 2007 Read More »

It's That Time Of The Week...

Time for another DS game, that is. This time it’s Diddy Kong Racing DS, a re-make of the classic N64 game. I don’t want to sound all doom and gloom on this one, but it certainly has a few problems that the original didn’t have.

Feb 07, 2007 Read More »

DS Ramblings

So, yesterday was my birthday, and as a gift, my DS decides to freak me out. For those who haven’t experienced turning on your DS on your birthday, let me assure you that your speakers are not broken. As cute as it was, couldn’t they just put up a picture of a birthday cake instead? :)

Jan 31, 2007 Read More »

Portable Accelerometer Goodness

After spending the better part of the day looking at how the accelerometers work in one of the new console’s controllers (I’ll let you guess which one), I had made a comment to one of my co-workers that I expected the next generation of portable game systems to have accelerometers built in. Well, thanks to the folks over at ndsmotion.com, the current generation can have accelerometers too. They packed a 3 axis accelerometer and a single axis gyroscope into a standard DS size cart. Of course, this can only be used with homebrew games, but if you look at their site, you will see a nice selection of games that are already available. As a plus, the design and the manufacture of the product are very professional looking. This cart would look right at home with the official DS carts that I already have. The only way to make this better, IMO, would be to add No-Pass functionality as well, allowing people who can’t/won’t modify their DS to use this as well.

Jan 25, 2007 Read More »

Warcraft III is Universal!

I can now officially start moving over to the Intel Macs fully – with the 1.21 patch, Warcraft III is finally a Universal binary. On a dual core Mac mini, I see frame rates in the mid 50s. I plan to test on a the older PowerPC mini as well, just to see what kind of improvement.

But, the bigger improvement is that it’s finally playable on GMA 950 Macs – under Rosetta, you couldn’t play the game (IMO). But, as a native app, it’s fully playable. Way to go Blizzard!

Jan 24, 2007 Read More »

Shiny Happy Toys

I finally found a DS Lite at Best Buy. It took a lot of random calling to the stores in the area, but it paid off and the Salem, NH store finally got a shipment in on Friday. I also picked up Metroid Prime Pinball and Sprung (hey, it was $2…) as well. I have to say that I am very impressed with this system. By far, it is the best handheld system I’ve ever owned, and I’ve owned pretty much everything back to the original GameBoy in the Nintendo line and the Sega GameGear. My only complaint, and it’s a pretty minor one at that, is that you can’t play original GameBoy and GameBoy Color games on either DS. So, I still have to keep my GameBoy Advance SP (with brighter screen!) for those older games that I still happen to play occasionally.

Jan 09, 2007 Read More »

Where is the DS Lite?

I’ve been spending the past week on and off trying to locate a Nintendo DS Lite. If you haven’t noticed, they are sold out everywhere. And I mean everywhere – Amazon, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Circuit City, and CompUSA are all sold out.

If you take a look on craigslist, you’ll likely find people selling DS Lites for $200. This is the same price that they were selling before Christmas. What is up with the demand for this system?

Jan 03, 2007 Read More »

Best Buy... Why Do You Torture Me?

So, now that Christmas has come and gone, I’ve started my search for a Onyx DS Lite of my own (see the previous post for why I don’t have one). And being that I have a gift card for Best Buy, I figured that I would check with them first. And what better place to check something than on their website?

Dec 26, 2006 Read More »