Inert Detritus The Internet's dust bunnies

The First Wii Update: The Weather Channel

My Wii was flash­ing when I woke up, like oth­er peo­ple’s. Nin­ten­do sent us an email about a sys­tem update to install the “Fore­cast Chan­nel”. After run­ning a short update over the wire­less net­work here, I was up and running.

I have one gripe, for their data provider: Your list of Vir­ginia cities is as fol­lows: Rich­mond (why is this first?), Alexan­dria, Arling­ton, Blacks­burg (excel­lent!), Char­lottesville (boo Hoos), Danville, Roanoke, and Vir­ginia Beach.

I’d like you to read that list again. Eight cities (and arguably, one is not a city, but a rather small town) com­pris­es their list for the great Com­mon­wealth. Eight. There’s more than eight notable cities between west­ern Loudoun Coun­ty and Wash­ing­ton, D.C., and they have eight for the state!

Aside from the com­plete lack of cities in most of the Unit­ed States and around the world, it’s neat. I can view my weath­er fore­cast for what­ev­er city I like. Much like Google Earth or NASA’s World Wind, I can zoom out to a globe, which is grab­bable with the Remote. You can even spin it with damped rota­tion­al momen­tum (it spins after you let go, but even­tu­al­ly slows down).