Robbed! Such a dive!

I'm too depressed to blog any more!

Australia 2 - Croatia 2! We're in the round of 16!

We headed out to Othellos on Oxford St, Bulimba for breakfast and the last of our group matches. Tension, dubious decisions and two equalisers but it's all we needed to get to our first ever run at the round of 16!
Go the Socceroos!!!!

Dark and Cold but in good spirits

It's 4:45 in the morning, but we're all out in support of our mighty Socceroos!

Nervously await an equaliser

Croatia have scored off a free kick in the 2nd minute and everyone's hopes are looking shakey

Moore converts the penalty Ausralia 1-1

The crowd is out of their seat!

The crowd applauds some good play by the Socceroos

We've had the bulk of the possesion and look to be in control!

Crowd spills on to the street

It's the end of the 1st half and the Socceroos are in a good position!

Everyone's trying to get a good view of the match and not even Oxford St is out of bounds

Not even the fear of buses can stop the crowd blocking Oxford St.

The Sun's out for the 2nd Half

The sun has added it's support of the Socceroo's in the 2nd half

Kewell Scores 2-2

Kewell slots one in the back of the net and the crowd goes wild! It's 2-2 and we're looking good for the round of 16!

Yay! Upgrades!

Well it's not much but got another Gig of RAM for my laptop today. It was starting to look a little tired, (possible due to the 79 and a half gigs of stuff on it, but I digress) so the extra RAM will be a welcomed aid for the development environments.

Bless you End of Financial year... Bless you I say!

I'm also eyeing off a Mini Mac we have on sale for $549.... not really sure what I need one for but it's just such a good saving!

DS Gaming Impressions (part 1)

I discovered that I've converted a few people on gaming on the DS and thought that I should post up some of the experiences I've had with the games on the platform. After starting the list of games I realised that it was way too much for one post so I'll do it in stages.
It's nothing terrible insightful, just a rough enjoyment level I had with the game. Hopefully it will give some idea as to whether you should think about picking up the game or not.

New Super Mario Bros

This is classic Mario platforming like it used to be. Reminds me of the good old Super Mario World days on the SNES. A great expansion on a classic theme, I've only played it for a few hours but it's going to be in my collection for a long time. The minigames are a great addition and with multiplayer allow you to have portable version that is something along the lines of Mario Party. Rating : Essential

Metroid Prime Hunters

This is my favourite game of the moment. It follows along the lines of the previous Metroid franchises and is basically a First Person Shooter (FPS) combined with an Adventure title. Lots of puzzles to solve along the way and the Morph Ball mode is a bit of a change for the standard FPS. The thing that has me hooked though is the multiplayer. I'm not normally a big fan of the genre but I can't stop playing it. The best description I can offer is a portable version of Counter Strike. Nintendo Wifi allows you to play online including voice chat with the built in microphone with your friends Rating: Highly recommended (Great FPS action)

Mario Kart DS

Again an improvement on a common Nintendo theme. The game essentially combines all the best elements of the previous Mario Kart Titles with some new Karts, new characters and Nintendo Wifi Compatibility. If you A highly addictive racer and with Nintendo Wifi there is endless racing opportunities. Rating : Highly recommended (Online Kart Racing Mahem)

Tetris DS

The classic gets the full Nintendo DS treatment. What more is there to say, it's old school Tetris that you can play online and compete with players around the world via Nintendo Wifi Rating: Highly recommended (Tetris with Friends Online)

Nintendogs

This is one title I could never get into. I had problems with the training and in the end become more of a frustration than fun. Many people rave about it but I never manage to keep it going for more than 10 mins. Rating: Gimmicky (Cute and Cuddly, but frustrating)

Advance Wars Dual Strike

Think of it like a turn based version of Command and Conquer. At the base level it is a Turn based strategy game but with the added complexity of combining CO characters and building up their experience and prowess. This combination makes for a very deep and lengthy playing experience. I've already played for over 50 hours and there is plenty still to be done. Rating: Highly Recommended (Deep Enjoyable Strategy)

Hasbro Games Pack

Combines Monopoly, Boggle, Battleship and Yatzee.4 classic board games that we all loved. On the DS however it is poorly implemented. Annoying controls, clunky multiplayer and poor graphics make this a very disappointing title. Rating: Dissatisfying (Poorly Implemented)

Kirby Canvas Curse

A new twist on the classic platformer genre. Rather than controlling Kirby with the direction pad and a series of buttons Kirby is guided through each level with the aid of the Stylus. Painting trails on the screen guide Kirby though a series of obstacles. A surprisingly enjoyable platformer (that's hard to play on the bus) Rating: Recommended(Fun, Addictive and invotative use of Touch Screen)

Posting because I can

Today is quite a depressing day... Although I know we need the rain but it has made it a particularly cold, wet and miserable day.

As Ness was off to work at 7am this morning I trundled along with her so I've been at the office for quite a while and caught up on a considerable amount of stuff. It's making for a long day though and I'm still recovering from being up to watch the Australia v Brazil match yesterday morning. I think I'm going to have to make an afternoon tea break in there somewhere to make it through...

I also had a bad night of gaming last night were my hands seemed to be disconnected from my brain and I just couldn't get far though anything without getting frustrated... Finished another chapter of RE4 but not without it's share of reloads!

Well enough with the procrastination... back to documentation! Yay!

Brazil 2 - Australia 0

Well it wasn't everything that we'd hoped for. It was still a good performance against the world champions and we were unlucky not to land one of the chances in the second half in the back of the net.

All in all it was a pretty entertaining game to watch. Ended up watching it at Gilhooley's in the city because the line was down the street to get into the Union Jack. Atmosphere wasn't bad but no where near the crowd I would have expected.

Unfortunately work still calls tomorrow, so it's time to go to bed (because I watched the Japan v Croatia match before hand, of course) I'm really starting to hit the wall.

Surely not

Surely I can't be the only person in the world who finds this just a bit, creepy, strange, weird, frightening and slotting somewhere into "don't you have better things to do?"

This was taken from The University of Texas:

A University of Texas scientist has grown a living "brain" that can control the video game Quake 3: Arena made by id Software, allowing scientists to study how brain cells compute and deal with sensory input.

The "brain," a group of 50,000 nerve cells taken from a dog and raised in a Petri dish,  lets scientists observe brain functions at the cellular level in real time. Scientists hope to better understand how the brain deals with sensory input which may lead to treatments for certain types of blindness and brain trauma.

....

Location awareness, collision detection, and eventually enemy location data is fed to the "brain" through the feedback system. The neurons analyze the data and send signals to the game controls. After several trials the neurons progress to the point where they can actually navigate a level and engage an enemy, usually a simple computer controlled character, called a bot, included in the game.

I am taking this with a grain of scepticism,  I think half hoping it's a hoax.

It just doesn't sit well with me. I can't help but think of Peter Chung's episode in The Animatrix, Matriculated. Also I feel a little uneasy about the fact that after 9 hours of learning the "brain" could fight a bot in Quake 3, what happens when the brain becomes more self aware and discovers it's just trapped in an artificial world?

I also can't help but think this whole thing started something like this :-

Student A: "Hey man wouldn't it be awesome if the AI in Quake 3 was better?"
Student B: "Yeah like you were playing against real players?"
Student A: "Wouldn't it be cool if we could, like, have a brain controlling players?"
Student B: "We could hook the brain straight to the computer!"
Student A: "That would be so cool!"

And here we are... Dog brain playing Quake....

Australia v Brazil

Heading out to watch the Australia v Brazil match tonight.

Fortunately I don't have an early start for work tomorrow so the 2am game isn't going to harsh tomorrow. (I do feel sorry for Ness who is going on Project Management training though)

I'm not going for the unreal hopes of a win. I'm just hoping for a goal and the dream of a draw!

GO! THE SOCCEROOS!

I am going to look optimistically at the game based on this news from the World Cup Blog though...

While you are make your last minute predictions for today’s World Cup matches, you might want to take into consideration the alignment of Mars and Saturn. According to astrologers in India, this rare planetary alignment that occurs every 18 years will lead to a “surprising outcome” for the Brazil and Australia match and for the World Cup in general.

At least there is hope for us in the stars!!!

Who needs Joga Bonito? We've got Guus Hiddink and Tim Cahill!

GO! THE SOCCEROOS!!!!

I hate cheaters!

I had my first intentional disconnection from Metroid Prime: Hunters last night. Before I continue this rant any further I would like to point out I don't mind loosing, I stuck it out for 22 matches before I got a kill in MP:H let alone a win. It was a one on one battle and they person I was playing was obviously using a hack. We were both using Samus except his character could move about twice as fast as I could and could drop about twice as many bombs.

If you want to hack the game to beat it in single player mode go for it, but grow up and get off my online time!

So I sacrificed a disconnection to prevent him/her chalking up a win....

So much singing!

It's not often I talk about much singing stuff on here but I've started rehearsals for a newly formed choir that's being conducted by Tony Funk from Canada.

The groups is the RSCM Singers and it's basically taken members from choirs around Brisbane.

Apart from some fairly rigorous rehearsal hours the choir is great to be in, some fun music and with all the members being talented musicians their isn't any tidious note bashing. The rehearsal times can be forgiven as the performance is next week.

Hopefully will be a bit of fun and most of the music is starting to come together already.

Concert Info
Spiritfest
Sunday 25th June 2006
4:30pm St Stephens Cathedral Brisbane

Halo 3 Pre-order?

I was wandering through Harvey Norman today and noticed this rather odd sign...


As far as I was aware Halo 3 was still a TBA in 2007 game and here were are in June 2006 and already taking pre-orders. I think this is just getting a little ridiculous on the pre-order front. More than 6 months is just taking money from customers and hoping they forget the pre-order

No more soccer :(

Well at least at indoor anyway. Unlike Ness, who is quite happy at giving up indoor, I'm a little sadder to see our last game of indoor. This season was far and away my best season of indoor soccer ever. I even managed to consistently score goals every week this season, as opposed to last season where I was lucky to score one a month.

Hopefully we'll pick it up again after Ness's outdoor season finishes and she feels the urge to kick a ball again.

At least I have the World Cup to keep me going for the next few weeks!

Come on Ecuador!!! 1-0 to Costa Rica at half time. I would love to stay up for the England match tonight but unfortunately I have to be at work early and that's just not a combination that is destined to work out.

Looks like CRT won't be king for long.

After seeing Mandy and Tom's new Sharp Aquos hooked up to an HD LG PVR, I was very impressed. The level of detail on the TV (with HD Content) was really good. It's the first time I've watched someone elses TV setup and wondered if my Loewe was actually on par.

So with the news that those things which typically make LCDs inferior to CRT are soon to be a thing of the past means LCDs could be the new standard.

LCDs typically have trouble dealing with blacks (most sites seem to call this deep blacks? not really sure what they mean because anything lighter than black would be grey wouldn't it?) and dark colours. A new range of LCD TVs from eCinema look to have this all sewn up with a new technology supports "deep color" and the HDMI 1.3 Specification. The result is the support of up to 48-bit colour far and beyond previous LCD attempts.

Their eCinema DMC40HDR 40-inch LCD boasts these features:

• Darkest black level output of any TFT in the market
• Can be used for professional color grading -- previously done using only CRTs
• Can be used for professional critical picture evaluation -- previously done using only CRTs
• Allows accurate viewing of intra-field motion on interlaced standards
• Video displayed at true frame rates for all standards
• Rugged shock mounted components for field operations

Origin, takeaway and some spicks and specks!

A brief change of codes last night for the second round of the State of Origin in Brisbane, in the midst of all the World Cup action. Normally I like my sporting events to be pretty close, a bit of a nail biter with the better team just scraping home. The exception to this is State of Origin, the bigger the margin the better. In fact I'd be happy if the whole match was Queensland scoring tries. Not sure what it is about the combination of Rugby League and the State rivalry, but the end result is wanting to see the Blues completely demoralised. So the 30-6 win was a pretty welcomed one.

Myf came through again in Spicks and Specks even with Hamish Blake on her team. All bets were off this week though so it didn't yeild a free round :(

The most surprising news of the night though was the new convert to the DS Lite fold! After playing ours for a while at a picnic on Anzac day we've converted another to way of the DS... (I just can't bring myself to put a joke in about the Lite side... I just can't!)

Coolest iPod Dock...

Ok, as you might already know I don't own an iPod. Yes, I'm still clinging to the Dying MD format for the moment. If I did have an iPod however this would be the dock I'd get

Geneva Sound System Model L 

First of all it's already in the right colour scheme, it apparently sounds awesome and it would make the loudest "look at me" statement in the middle of the room. The only real problem is that it's US$600 and I'm not sure there is anyone who stocks it in Australia.

Not that it matters, I don't have an iPod...

Now the dust has started to settle

Well now that the weekend is over, Ness is home again and it's back to reality after that magic win over Japan for the Socceroos in the World Cup Finals last night , I thought it was worth a little catch up of the weekend.

Friday
Sang at a wedding in the afternoon (some nice Mozart), Picked up Ness from the airport and dropped her down the Gold Coast.
Although it was wet on the way down and had to have the top up, it was a great drive back with the top down and the crisp night air rustling past.
Dropped in on Tom, Susan and Andrew on the way back for some Episodes of the Family Guy before heading home for the opening ceremony but didn't make it through all of the Germany v Costa Rica Match.

Saturday
Watched the end of the Germany v Costa Rica
Again it was a top up day for MinX but can't complain too much about the rain we've had such perfect weather recently.
Went and saw Andrew and Amelia's gorgeous new house in St Lucia.
Spent the night out at the Jazz Club watching Ty Noonan great music, best view from the venue across the river. Came second in the raffle so I have free tickets to go back!
Missed the last bus home so stayed in the city to watch the last 30mins of the England v Paraguay match (probably the most disappointing match so far)

Sunday
No time for a sleep in unfortunately... too much singing. After a pretty ordinary start to the day from about midday it turned into a gorgeous day. A beautiful day for taking MinX for an open top run, clear blue skies, the sun beaming down but still a cool hint to the air.
Quite night at home for the Rugby white wash with Australia 34 over England 3. All in all not a great performance by the Wallabies but a worse one by England.
Then more Cup action although I fell asleep at half time and had to watch the end of the match in the morning

Monday
Had a bit of a sleep in to catch up on the Cup madness of the weekend, spent the rest of the morning cooking and doing some house stuff.
Did a DVD audit while waiting for a load of washing and found an large number of missing DVDs. (will post them later)
Caught up with Tom, Susan and Andrew again for some more time with Family Guy.
Had some nice Indian (with Ben, Mandy and Tom) out at Morningside  although the service left a bit to be desired, before checking out Mandy and Tom's cool new place and their awesome new Aquos LCD and LG PVR! I must admit the HD feed through HDMI to the Aquos was pretty impressive, especially in supernatural!
Then the most awesome game of soccer ever! (ok so I'm still on a bit of a high after that win, and it might not be the best game ever but it was still awesome)

Gaming!

Got plenty of gaming in this weekend with Ness away and with my new DS lite run in :)

New Super Mario Bros.
Picked this one up on Friday, Great platformed: Reminds me of the hours of fun playing Super Mario World. It's nothing particularly new but it's exactly what we wanted! I'm only up to the end of the Second world but I'm taking it slowly and trying to unlock/find/complete everything along the way (as a result I've got 76 lives)
Haven't done much on the mini games in single player but the multiplayer experience of the mini games is great. The best way to describe it is a portable version of the best minigames of Mario Party crossed with the stylus use of WarioWare Touched. Heaps of fun, even with only two players. The two player Mario vs. Luigi is also heaps of fun, nothing like having someone else collect almost all the stars to knock them down and steal them...

Resident Evil 4
Finished the 3rd chapter of this, and it's starting to get really hard. I've put about 4 hours into it so far but it's just a beautiful constructed game. If you like any sort of action game it's a must play! My only complaint at the moment is I can't take it with me! The controller system is great and the over the shoulder works surprisingly well for the FPS like component.

Metriod Prime: Hunters
Still my favourite thing to play online at the moment, had some tough matches on the weekend and went down a few points but I just can't help going back for more. The rounds are short enough with so much action packed in that you keep coming back for more. Still haven't played more than about 20% of the Single Player campaign with all my single player time on this game spent practicing against the bots.

Mario Kart DS
Rediscovered just how good this game is on the weekend. Andrew picked up his own DS Lite on the weekend and we spend a hour or so in racing battles pretty much until my hand cramped up. Played a few more rounds online with it as well. Anyone with a DS should own this title, just because you can always pick it up, play it and it never fails to amuse.

Nanostray
This was Andrew's first title on the DS and I was pleasantly surprised at how well it played given it's average reviews. It's a basic top down scrolling shooter in the style of Raiden, graphics are 3rdish and quite presentable and the levels are pretty challenging. Very easy to just pick up and play (then die). Multiplayer is basically one on one race to highest score without dying too much.

Great weekend, Lots of gaming, World Cup excitement, cruise runs in MinX and plenty of sleep deprivation.

The Morning After

Well it's the morning after and i'm waiting around for the bus. So far the afterglow of the awesome win is keeping of bright eyed! I think it will take a bit more than a little sleep deprivation to wipe this smile off my face. I feel sorry for those who missed the amazing emotional rollercoaster ride of this historic win! (think i might stop and get a V all the same though)

Australia 3 - Japan 1

What an amazing match! 3 goals in the last 8 minutes for our first goal and first win of the World Cup Finals!

I'm speechless!

Just Spectacular!

GOAL!!!!!!

I may be at home but I'm out of my SEAT!!!!!

Cold Toast

There isn't many things I don't like where food is concerned, one of them is cold toast!

What I need is a toast warming plate!

Engadget where are you now! Sure you have gadgets to stop me from burning my toast but you don't have something to keep it warm.

A post for Tom

It's been a strange weekend so far (and yes i'm aware it's only saturday night). Without out Ness around for the weekend it's been a strange combination of nothing to do and having too many things on. Tonight i'm heading to the Brisbane Jazz Club to see Ty Noonan perform in Palimpsest. After that it will probably be out somewhere to watch England vs Paraguay. I almost made it through (the first minute) of the world cup game between Germany and Costa Rica. I'd had a late night of mini games from the New Super Mario Bros (NSMB) against Andrew and after singing at a wedding a few hours of rehearsal, taking ness to the coast and watching the opening ceremony of the world cup I fell asleep. Luckily the PVR came to the rescue and i watched it this morning. The PVR is set vs just in case i miss any other games. Nice to see some rain in Brisbane today even though it brought an end to the spectacular run of top down driving, but i guess it wasn't going to last forever. Another thing about the rain it does make MinX a handful. I have only tailed it out once this weekend though and i'm blaming oil on the road, it did give the person behind of a hell of a scare. Well that's about enough for this stream of consciousness brought to you by brisbane transport and the V3. There you go Tom, something to read.

Looks like some news on the DS and Wii!

Well the big Nintendo news is all about the Wii and the Nintendo DS. The announcement comes from Satoru Iwata:-

"Let's say your Wii is connected to the Internet in a mode that allows activation on a 24-hour basis. This would allow Nintendo to send monthly promotional demos for the DS, during the night, to the Wii consoles in each household. Users would wake up each morning, find the LED lamp on their Wii flashing, and know that Nintendo has sent them something."

So looks like it's good news for us with DS already! Hopefully we'll also get some more news along these lines.

Another member of the blogging community

Suse, Tom's wife has started a blog... http://sn-s.blogspot.com/

At this rate, I'll never run out of things to read.

Camera still MIA.

Day two and still no sign of the camera. Turns out I had the wrong cab company. Unfortunately it took them until this morning to discover this. Now it's a ring around race to all the cab companies to try and find it. Still not a lost cause although the odds of finding it just got higher.

Not a good start

Well the trip to Sydney got off to a great start this morning. The cab driver that took us from the airport decided to drop us at a bus stop and in the haste to get us our of the cab so he didn't get a ticket my camera bag got left behind. Also because he wanted us out so quick didn't fill in the receipt. Luckily Mandy say the name of the company. However after several calls still no news on it's where abouts. Looks like it was a short life for the Fuji (all my media cards and rechargable batteries) hope it gets better from here!

Brisbane on a Friday Night

The CBD in brisbane is a strange place on a Friday night. It's around 11pm and it's pretty much the designated change over time. The combination of the afterwork suits heading home in a "shouldn't be walking on my own" as they mingle past the kids who are obviously not old enough to get into clubs but are hanging out in the city anyway and those just setting out for their weekend.

The main reason for this post is to say hi to Caitlin who I bumped into on her first night at 7-Eleven.

All I can say is you don't get too many of the Afterwork crowd... they don't strike me as the "happy drunk" sort.

DS Lite gets some showing in Australian press

It's rare for Nintendo to hit the main stream media in Australia. Not really sure of the reasons, most likely they aren't a big territory for Nintendo and as a result don't get much in the way of marketing budget. For the release of the PSP for example the ads were thick and fast on Australian TV but the DS has mostly been represented by a sprinkling of ads during Saturday morning kids shows and most of those were centred around the Nintendogs release. It's good, however, that on the back of the release of the DS Lite (for which there has been precious little advertising) there has been an article make it's way into the Australian.

Nintendo aids brain

From:

By Simon Hayes

June 01, 2006

 

COMPUTER games in the hands of the elderly are shaping up as the latest weapons in the war against Alzheimer's.

Nintendo's Dr Kawashima's Brain Training game will hit the shelves in Australia on June 15 and has already created a stir among experts, who say cognitive stimulation could reduce the risk of Alzheimer's.

In Japan, retirees have flocked to shops to buy the game. It is the sort of publicity Nintendo - better known as the creator of Pokemon and Super Mario Bros - craves, given its attempts to reach an adult audience.

Brain Training includes word games, arithmetic tests and sudoku puzzles. A similar Sony game is also proving popular in Japan, but the company has not decided whether to sell it here.

Neurosurgeons - who have long recommended patients knit, do crosswords, play chess or even learn a foreign language - are enthusiastic about the game.

"I had a patient on Saturday and I said 'Look out for this game'," said Michael Woodward, director of aged and residential care for Melbourne private hospital group Austin Health. "I'd be happy to lend my copy out."

Professor Woodward, a leading authority on Alzheimer's, said three major studies over the past five years had shown an association between social, intellectual and physical health and a reduced risk of the disease.

"The program does indeed seem to link in with the areas of brain that can be affected by cognitive decline," he said.

"There is a sound scientific basis for this ... There is increasing evidence that keeping your mind active does seem to be a prevention for progressing towards Alzheimer's."

Professor Woodward said even those not showing signs of dementia should perform some "mental aerobics" every day.

Nintendo will give $1 from each copy of Brain Training sold to Alzheimer's Australia.

---

This sort of news is also starting to get a foot hold in the Today Tonights and A Current Affairs as well. Hopefully with the awards won by the Wii at E3 and the Alzheimer's Australia donations the profile of Nintendo in Australia will begin to lift...

(end fanboy ramblings)

How do business operate like this?

This does feel a little like one of those why does it always happen to me moments. After all the hassles with support on Ozemail and the troubles getting my service back to a decent level, I decided to make the switch to then new Optus DSL Direct Plans. It dawned on me this morning that I order the service 2 weeks ago and apart from an "Order Confirmation" email the day I'd order the service I'd heard nothing. Monday was to be the supposed change over date so I thought it best to do a bit of calling and find out what is happening with my new service.

The first thing that should have started the alarm bells was after calling the number on the confirmation email and waiding through the forty thousand menu prompts I made it to an operator who informed me that the number I'd called couldn't access the DSL Direct system only the one for DSL and I'd have to call another number.

So now onto the second number, where the real fun starts. After a few, identification questions I was placed on hold (no biggy, pretty much expected), Back off hold, confirmed name and address details again (again no biggy, I have a sometimes database unfriendly name and my address could be a number of possibilities, as I discovered with electricity and rates) and back to hold, few minutes pass, back off hold, confirm details again, I add I have a confimation number that may help, back on hold, few minutes pass and finally I get this response.
"Apparently" they've had a big bug with their new billing system and "lost" most of the new DSL orders and "unfortunately" mine is one of them. As a result... no new DSL AND no chance of an eta! Once the problem is rectified I'll be notified and the process will start again...

Looks like I'll be cancelling this one and starting over, the whole reason for the change in the first place was bad service and the service from Optus is worse than iiNet!

Old games a DeLite (more than first impressions)

The trouble with a new gadget like the DS Lite is that it's such an improvement of the Original DS that all my old titles are new again.

The screen is the biggest improvement and as such all the games take on a completely new look. The differentiation in colour is so much stronger that scenes have greater depth and are more vibrant. The courses in Mario Kart DS are like new again!

Now I have to find time to play all the old games over again!

My only problem with the DS Lite over the original is in some of the fast paced action of Metroid Prime Hunters there is a tendency for your (well at least my finger anyway) to slip onto the edge of the touch screen causing a random and erratic turn of your player. It's probably something that will disappear after a little more time playing and is probably a bad habit I picked up playing on the original, but never the less it is my only annoyance.

For now it's a new gadget that I'm itching to pick up and play...

First Impressions!

Well it took what seemed like an eternity for lunch to come around... Honestly work shouldn't have to keep me away from new gadgets.
First impressions of the Lite are better than I could have hoped, most of which are all centred around the screen. It's hard to guage from my dodgy cameraphone photo but the colour and brightness are so much better than the original and it wasn't bad by any stretch of the imagination. It's like the difference in the screens between the GBA SP and the Gameboy Micro. The colours are so much brighter and more vivid and that's even on the lowest setting.
Basically Nintendo have taken some the Great and made it Excellent.

Let there be Lite!

And there was Lite!
In a stroke of luck (for getting a DS not necessarily for work, but you've got to take what you can get) my customer called to cancel just as I was walking past EB Games. Last night (and this morning) I had a bit of a mammoth session with the orginal DS that had given me so much joy as a bit of a good bye. But not being one to linger, out with the old and in with the new! Admittedly I haven't had the DS long enough to have any real attachment to it so upgrading to the Lite isn't like I've giving up my 64 to go the the GameCube. Having preordered my DS lite yesterday I thought it best to get in early. Turns out I was the first to come in and pick it up... (I guess it was about 9:05am). Transfered my Wireless settings and ID so I'm good to go (as soon as it's charged of course...) stay tuned for some impressions once I actually get to play it!