Is Nintendo going easy on us?

I'll admit I'm a bit slow to this party being a bit cycling obsessed lately but I finally got around to trading up to a 3DS. Firstly, wow it's a pretty amazing little console. I was a bit skeptical about the whole 3D thing, normal glasses tech gives me a headache almost instantly and as a result I've shied away from 3D TV or cinema. I figured I would just be using the 3DS in 3D off mode the whole time. To my surprise it A. Worked and B. I wasn't turning away with headaches at the first minute. It's not all sunshine and lollipops though, it certainly is much more fatiguing in 3D mode, but gone are the days where I have time for endless gaming sessions anyway.

Now to the games, one of my whole reasons for the upgrade was to play Mario 3D Land and feed my addiction to the franchise. Unfortunately I was a bit disappointed. Not with the game itself so much, because the gameplay and levels are just what you'd expect from a Mario game, but with their insistence on giving you an easy way to finish the level. Die a few times and you'll be given a box with an timeless invincibility power up. Fall off a few more times trying to get that elusive 3rd star coin and boom there is another block to fly you to the flag at the end of the level.

Really? As a society have we become so soft that we can't slog it out for a few more goes? Clearly gone are the days where you leave the console on for days because you made it halfway through the level and couldn't save until you finished.

Maybe Nintendo are concerned about the environmental impacts of all those paused consoles?

Do games need to be handed to us on a platter? Surely our kids could learn a bit of "if you slug it out you can succeed" rather than "if you can't do it it's ok someone will make it easier for you".

If you ignore that it's a pretty fun game. And if you're terrible at platformers. No need to worry. Nintendo has the easy ticket to the end.

New gaming headset

I finally updated my headset for my online gaming after my turtle beach set gave up the ghost. I considered getting one of the 5.1 wireless sets but couldn't justify the cost but wireless was a key requirement.

Purely based on cost ($99) I bought a plantonics set and have been pretty happy. The sound is great although not as bass heavy as the turtle beach (which actually makes long gaming sessions less fatiguing). The only real complaint is the lack of wireless range on the set. I think the saturated 2.4ghz band in our apartment building is the main culprit but still the range is not huge. Fine sitting on the couch but if you travel much further you'll loose it.

Still for $99 there are no complaints. Clear sound. Integrated chat (which reportedly is clear) USB powered and wireless!

Brain dump mid flight

It's a strange thing my blogging habits, the more and more I have on (like at the moment) the less and less time I have to blog. I'm actually using the time on my flight to Townsville this morning to blog.

There is one nice aspect of the flying at the moment, I do it so infrequently that it's turned in to a nice time for me to catch up on my huge backlog of iTunes downloads and frivolous stuff like blogging. It's now a bit of a guilty pleasure not only for the catch up time but also because I'm also leaving the littleone and Vanessa to fend for themselves.

First of all on iTunes, I'm loving the whole Genius concept. A while ago a setup a few favourites Smart Playlists so I could easily managed all my music using ratings and genres on the iPod/iPhone/AppleTV. The downside is that I've not got over 500 songs in my "top favourites" and this means that if I'm in the mood something it's always followed by something I'm really not interested in. I threw on a genius playlist the other day and it was pretty much spot on although I've discovered that it seems to "like" some songs more than others. But on the whole it's become the way I listen to the songs on the iPhone. I love the fact that you can save them and even refresh them.

The last few weeks have been pretty crazy, stressful and exciting. I'm sorry if I've been not much of a conversationalist while I've been musing about things and life in general. There were some pretty big decisions to come to in the end which was pretty tough, especially over the weekend. In the end I've taken a bit of a risk but I'm pretty confident that it's the right move and will pay off in the end. I think I might make a few people unhappy in the process but I'm hoping that they understand that's not my intention. Well that's probably enough soul searching for one post.

I've been slowly but surely doing a few upgrades to my arcade table. Nothing major but the CRT that was in it was starting to go in the corners and I was also looking for a way to solve the side by side game problem with the cocktail style cabinet. In the end it was a disaster of viewing angles that generated the solution. I had a couple of 19" LCDs around that I wasn't using any longer (with my nice new shiny 24" in the house) and I put one in to replace the 19" CRT. The issue was it was unusable at the flat angle of the table top. To solve the problem I managed to slot the monitor in the table at the right viewing angle for player 1 but it completely obscured from player 2. Then it dawned on me I could dual mount the monitors one for each player. Result : Instant dual screen cabinet that still looks like and is every bit a cocktail cabinet but Aliens Vs Predator multiplayer is a reality. It's almost complete I've just got to source the VGA splitter to run the dual monitors and it's done. The Littleone already loves the cabinet and this way I'll be able to train him up as a wing man for double dragon.

and here's the descent... Well that's the end of this blog.... until the flight home.

A weekend of jobs (and arcade table upgrade)

This weekend we 'tried' to have an at home weekend and get a few jobs done around the house. It was mostly successful although I didn't get all the jobs I was allocated done, and I also created a few more for myself.

Things left to do : 

• Rehang the big mirror
  

(Some of the) New things:

• Rehang Zach's pictures
  
• Fit some rubber stoppers to the new chair to give it the same angle as the black one (someone cunningly added two rubber gromets to the back chair's swivel mount to give it a greater reclining angle... much more comfortable as a result)
  
• Ebay Sellathon
  

I did manage to change Zach's cot to the bigger size because he's been hitting his head when he kicks his legs. We also started to seriously dedust after the plastering work and we've decided we've got way too much stuff in the house and have started a massive declutter. The lounge room was the first to get a makeover and now has a lot less stuff in it. I've got to work on the Ebay Sellathon and get some of our unused clutter out.

This morning though Zach woke up early (4:30 early!) and I couldn't get back to sleep afterwards so I started on one of the jobs I'd been meaning to get done; The Arcade table upgrade. Here's the list of upgrades for today: 

• RAM upgrade to 768MB from 256 (was supposed to be 1.2 but one stick was dodgy)
• Upgrade the MAME version to 0.129b
• Update some faulty Roms
• Install external USB access
• Swap out CRT to LCD Monitor

Unfortunately I dropped the last item from the list as the exposed CRT monitor was just a bit risky as it'd been powered on this morning.

The Upgrade was very successful and a whole heap of games that I loved when I was at Uni have now made it to my high rotation list.

• Killer Instinct
• Alien vs Predator
• Dungeons and Dragons
• Street Fighter Zero 2 (my favourite SF of all time)
• Marvel Super Heroes (so much time to be wasted here)
• X-Men vs Street Fighter.

There are quite a few more that have benefited from the upgrade but there is plenty of time to be wasted on that little lot. The best upgrade was actually adding the external USB access which (after I discovered that the iMac USB keyboard gave me bios support, ie F1 Boot keys etc) means I can easily change configs and update software without having to take it to bits

I've got a few more upgrades I'd like to do to the console:

• Monitor swap out (obviously)
• Upgrade to >1Gb RAM
• Add Support for 3D Games (aka Tekken my greatest arcade weakness)
• Add network support (wireless preferably)
• Add Hinged Top (for easy access and some storage)
• Add 2 Player controls to the front panel (for Street fighter et al. battles)

Anyway, enough blogging it's time to go and enjoy the fruits of my labour.

Monday and back to the grind

We had a great weekend this weekend. After a long time coming I finally got around to watching Ironman. While it's a better than average comic hero conversion movie, the transfer to bluray is STUNNING and just looked fabulous in Studio 54 GoldClass. It was almost as cold as the real gold class as well with the new industrial strenght aircon.

The weekend was filled with a fair bit of work for me with the occasional outing (as Ness has put so beautifully) for some Chrismas Shopping. It was pretty hot out in the markets but we managed to keep Zach out of the sun despite his protests about wearing the hat.

The weekend went really quickly and I feel somewhat down on sleep, but hopefully this week will be a bit quieter and I might get some longer sleeps as Zach is staying asleep a bit longer (probably with the combination of the aircon and moving Zach to his own room)

And after a few weeks of searching I finally found my DS again, which is perfect timing as Andrew and I are going to brave the worlds longest sushi queue in the City today, We'll need something to entertain us!

A beautiful morning for a stroll

In what is becoming an early morning tradition Zachary and I went for a walk along the river. On the good side it means he's swapped his 2-4 awake time for 5-7 and as a result a lot more night time sleep for us, but not as many blog posts.

It was a beautiful morning on the river (even if it was a little hot). There are some interesting outfits on the runners in the morning... all I'm going to say is NO ONE should be wearing those short running shorts but if you're over 60 DEFINITELY NOT!

Ness and Zachary (and Suse) went to a baby shower for my Sister yesterday, leaving Tom and I to fend for ourselves. After a brief stint watching top gear we slotted straight into some 360 time with Gears of War 2. We managed to blaze through the horde for about 4 hours before we could game no more. A pretty good game to pick though if you've got some time for co-op gaming. To carry on the gaming theme we ended the night with some pizza from Hell, which is fast becoming my favourite place to get Gluten Free Pizza. You can order online, they will tell you the exact minute that you can order and they have some fantastic taste sensations. To top it off when I'm feeling really lazy they will even deliver to my house!

I'm back to work full time on Monday which I think is going to be a bit tough, having been with Zach every day since he was born. Hopefully I've got some time working from home after the start of these projects so I will be able to spend some more time with him (even if I have to be working)

The nightmare of our AC failure is starting to be rectified with the final measurements and design being completed on Friday, everything is looking on track to be in by Christmas but I'm still considering putting in some ceiling fans to get us through until then.

Lastly we've made some minor additions to Zachary's room with some cool removable wall decals. I've still got one set to put up but this is the look so far...

Wall Decals

Show your gaming love.... through cross-stitch!

	Free Gamer's Cross-Stitch Pattern from Unplugged

Personally I prefer the"Nintendo option"

More early morning browsing....

Not quite as early as usual but heres a few jems of the morning...

Roman this one's for you..."Pew, Pew!"

This is just a litle odd.

What We Learn From Living Out Of A Suitcase from Apartment Therapy Main..

Stylish Parisian Studio Tech Tour

Pyroblazer for Wii

Miyamoto Scrutinizes Mario, Zelda, Hails Portal

Again... weird
Obama, Palin coming to Mercenaries 2 DLC Pew Pew!!!

High-def audio wiring guide removes the mystery

Yes Ben, He does cry...

It's not quite 4am but there seems to be a trend in these early morning posts....

Zach has been a great baby today, but between his last 2 feeds has been upset. We think he had an upset tummy - perhaps being confirmed as his nappy gets changed now. He did manage to throw up on my side of the bed tonight while being comforted by Ness ... I think it was a conspiracy.

In other news, the new Dell monitor arrived today. It looks very schmick, and if you wanted a single monitor/tv option it would definitely be on the list. It's Full HD and comes with a HDMI port (and at the time of purchase an HDMI Cable). Of course, I will hold back from making that recommendation until I'm sure it doesn't go the way of the laptop ... At the moment all it's managed to do is make a very very pretty digital photo frame. I'll put up some unboxing photos tomorrow.

In other news, Zach is part of a news.com.au "baby boom". Are we the next baby boomers?

(sorry for all the baby post but the 3 hour feed cycles limit the amount of non baby stuff.... and he's a bit adorable, I should probably order one of these though )

A post because I haven't

I meant to post a few times over the last few days, but as my title suggests I haven't. There isn't any real reason. We had a pretty good weekend, we started a little earlier that we liked when the fire alarm when off after someone burnt their toast. It did mean we actually got out and about and pick up our new lounge chair.

From The New Chair

Even though it's orange it still works into the room really well, that and it's really comfy. It's so comfortable I've labled it the new DVD chair (or maybe it should be the Blu-ray chair). 

I also had a bit of a glut of TV on the weekend. I finished off the Forth Season of Dr Who (which was great, but I'm not sure that Catherine Tate was the best companion) and the Third of Battlestar Galactica. The fourth season is on TenHD at the moment but after watching one episode I think I'm going to wait until it comes out on DVD, the constant stream of ads and the poor timing of the show makes it pretty hard to watch (even on the PVR).

Gaming was also slotted in there somewhere with some dedicated time to CoD4 multiplayer and Smash Bros. (not quite as dedicated as some though.... :P)

Yesterday I was pretty sick so asside from work I didn't get up to much. 

That's pretty much the wrap up for the week so far (apart from our neighbours discovering their subwoofer, which is so loud at the moment that it rattles the paintings on the walls... I haven't called the 15" jamo into battle yet but I don't think it will be long now)

An Electronics Sellathon!

After a recent run of upgrades I've started to put a few of the replaced technology, I've put a whole group of stuff up on Ebay, there is a few more things to come but it's a start.

• Pioneer DV-S969AVi-G Audiophile DVD-A/SACD player
  
• Yamaha RX-V1200 Surround Receiver
  
• Sony PlayStation 2 Slimline Console
  
• Microsoft Xbox Console with Advanced AV & 2 Controllers
  

Green Fail!

This week I caught a post on Apartment Therapy about simple ways to go green, specifically Go veggie for one day a week. Not being a person with the smallest carbon footprint around I thought I'd try and start a Green Day each week. The plan was to A. Go Veggie and B. Limit Tech Use.
Yesterday was the first run at it and it was a partial success. While the Veggie option went pretty well and I managed to avoid meat all day the tech fell down a little. Mandy and Tom dropped in unexpectedly and the chance at a few rounds of Smash Bros with real opponents was too good to pass up.

All is not lost though, we're transferring the anti tech aspect onto today and although it's not a lot it's at least a start.

Chalk up another Premium Upgrade

I’m flying back to Sydney today and I’ve been lucky enough to get another upgrade to Premium which will be nice to get a bit of shut eye and miss all the school holiday kids on their way home... The big thing with the Red Seats is not so much the leg room but the extra arm room which makes using the laptop an option without having to dig my elbows into my next door neighbour.

It’s been a fairly quiet week, but it’s been great to be home (for what seems like an eternity but really only a bit over a week). I’ve caught up with a bit of gaming and some recorded TV. The big gaming addition for the week was Super Smash Brothers Brawl, which is just like the Game Cube version but better. It’s definitely not everyone’s cup of tea (even if you are a fan of the fighting genre). It’s currently up there alternating with Mario Kart as my no1 Wii game (although I am trying to put in some Wii fit time every day, except today). Mandy and I put in a few tracks online last night with mostly favourable results... My online rating is slowly climbing towards 7000. It’s a brilliant concept having dual screen play online, human players are always more fun to take on than the AI and it’s often you’ve only got one other player around...

We’re slowly moving towards being ready for the new arrival. We’ve order a few more bits of furniture and started clearing out a lot of the stuff we don’t use. It’s getting close to serious with the stereo wiring with hopefully a few quotes rolling in next week. I think we’ve decided on colours for painting so hopefully that won’t be too far away either.

The Tivoli setup has got a surprising amount of use. I’ve found myself just flicking it on in the mornings when I get up or at night when I get home rather than firing up the projector. Tom lent me a phono stage to do some testing with the Project turntable and it’s the best sound I’ve got out of it since I’ve had it. The DAFT PUNK LP kicked out really well and even when the bass kicked in it still held its own, it’s never going to shake the room (well not before I add the sub at least) but the low frequency don’t cause the unit to sweat too much. Most of its work, though, has been on the radio and I must admit a fair amount of that has been a classical channel. I think because the system just shines on classical music.

On less exciting topics though my laptop is starting to cause me a bit of grief, Vista is crashing on all too regular intervals. Its favourite trick at the moment is to crash and reboot every time it goes to standby. It failed completely earlier in the week and ran an automatic system restore which removed most of the applications that I’d installed since I got it, apparently this was the last “Stable” restore point... Of course it’s only after this that it won’t go to standby anymore.... *sigh*. I’m seriously considering the “upgrade to a more familiar experience” at the moment.

I’m off to Melbourne next week but it’s not actually for work. I’ve cashed in one of the public holidays that I’ve had to work; Ness and I are going to fly down Thursday night for a long weekend away.

That’s about it for this flight to Sydney, it’s time for me to try and claw back a few minutes of sleep...

It was nice having a wife while it lasted....

Well we all new it would happen eventually..... Blizzard has announced Diablo 3. Tie that in with the fact that Ness has a shiny new Macbook on the way and it's pretty safe to say that Ness will be "dedicated" to it for quite some time. Let's face it Paris will be lucky if Ness isn't playing Diablo 3 while she's in labour.

Something to blog

I'm in the Adelaide Virgin Blue Lounge and I feel compelled to blog but can't really think of something to blog...

That's not going to stop me though. It's been a busy week which wasn't helped by the end of Financial Year. I've still got a few bits and pieces to tidy up over the weekend making sure everything is settled.

I'm back to Sydney on Monday and will hopefully catch up with a few people for a beverage or two. I've managed to get a relatively free day on Friday next week (Not really sure how... I thought I was booked somewhere but it seems I was mistaken) so I'm hoping to catch up with some Brisbane stuff.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl came out on Thursday (months after it's out everywhere else). I was hopelessly addicted to the GameCube version of the game so I've been looking forward to it. Apparently the online play is just as seamless and lag free as Mario Kart Wii which will probably mean a lot of online battles from my end.

That's managed to fill in a bit of time, at least enough for me to get to boarding...

Wii (not so ) Fit

Since I've been home this week I've been slack on the blogging so here's a bit of an update.

As everyone is painfully aware (from all the complaining about flying in the last few months of posts) I've been flying back and forth for months now. During this I've done very little in the way of exercise (except for the work down to the hotel restaurant each day). So using that as an excuse to get back into some sort of exercise I picked up a Wii Fit in on of the stock take sales yesterday. The initial body test wasn't so great with a WiiFit age of 40 (feels like Wii Sports and Brain Training all over again).
I figure my need to get better stats (Xbox Live points I'm looking at you) will drive me enough to use it every day so I'll see how it goes. It's set me a goal to reach a BMI (the worlds most completely useless statistic) of 22 so we'll see how my progress with that goes.

Stuck at the airport

Turns out it's been a few days since I blogged... I could have sworn I blogged another day this week but it turns out I was mistaken.

So..... I don't really have a lot news to talk about... I've had a bit of training this week which has been quite good.

Other than that it's been a quiet-ish week... I've been training another consultant after hours so it's pretty much been work and sleep this week so not a lot of anything else.

I did pick up a copy of Boom Blox today so that should be a good interlude on the weekend.

I'm currently stuck in Sydney airport waiting for the airport to reopen after a lightning storm. I'm off to Adelaide tonight and for the rest of the week. At least I have my DS with me this week so the plane trip won't be a complete loss.

Blogging 'cause Ness is...

So I really have nothing to blog about... I've been really busy so far this week (12 hour days is cutting into my personal time) so I haven't got a lot of news (not even vicarious news from google reader), but I know Ness is blogging so I can't be left out.

In a very "OMG I'm going to be a Dad" moment I did feel Paris wiggle for the first time on the weekend which was very exciting, no kicking yet but it can't be far away now. (which is really only exciting news for me)

I'm still waiting for my stuff from thinkgeek to arrive, it's been a bit of a struggle with DHL and getting them to deliver but hopefully it will arrive some time this week though and I can be safe and warm in my /dev/blanket when I get home.

There are some good Blu Ray deals and some new titles on Amazon this week so I might be putting in a new order... there are a couple of DVDs that might slip into the mix as well.

Finally... (as this blog is as a result of Ness blogging)

This is not an appropriate use of the arcade table!!!

Early Morning Flights

My favourite thing about morning flights, after being delayed of course, is a cancelled flight. You get up at stupid o'clock, cab it out to the airport, check in, try to scoff some breakfast to then be told you're flight was cancelled. I could have slept in to stupid o'clock +30 mins.

Anyway, as you can tell (from the previous post), there was some Mario Kart Wii action at my house last night. Mandy and Tom kindly bought over their copy and we played for a few hours over dinner. I still think it's fantastic (even though it's not my best karting effort ever). There is something about the new mario kart that I can't seem to master... I'm sure it will come in time.

I'm back to Sydney for the rest of the week. I'm meeting my folks there for a bit either side of the weekend (Mum is flying to Sydney for Mother's Day). I've got a double day today (on top of an early start) and I'm feeling tired just typing that. It's a half day requirements session, then a full day project hell, then a few hours on other project that's just starting.

Small update on the new cabinet, I was a little worried about how it would hold up heat wise being fully enclosed. Yesterday was a pretty good test with a full day of music (all be it not very loud) and then about 5 hours of Mario Kart (both the Wii and the Amp are in the same compartment) and while the cabinet was warm it wasn't at overheating levels. The big concern is when the fan forced heater (aka Xbox360) comes back into the cabinet. I have a place for it in a compartment of it's own so at least it won't be sharing it's heat around too much. Speaking of the 360 I started off it's repair process, which turns out isn't going to be a short process. I'm still waiting for a response from MS Support with a case number so I can send it in.

Wii Fit

I haven't picked up any new Wii games for a while, WiiFit and Mario Kart are on the list... but having Rabbids for WiiFit is almost enough grounds to own it.