Inert Detritus The Internet's dust bunnies

Turkey Day ’06

I’m off to Mary­land for the day to vis­it with rel­a­tives. Grand­moth­ers and inlaws are scat­tered across most of the DC area, so we usu­al­ly get togeth­er for the holidays.

Time to dri­ve on the Belt­way. Oh, DC, how I love thee.

Nintendo Wii: First Impressions

After months of wait­ing, one out­ra­geous name change, and tons of pre-orders that I inten­tion­al­ly ignored, Sat­ur­day night was the start of my jour­ney to acquire a Wii.

My broth­er and I packed up the neces­si­ties and drove to the near­by Tar­get, which, accord­ing to the Wii Find­er, would have 120 Wiis on launch day. At 10 PM, we arrived, set up chairs and blan­kets, and signed the list to be the 33rd per­son to get a Wii from Tar­get. The night came and went, and we pulled up the car and slept in it to stay warm. As 6 AM rolled around, the less hard­core began arriv­ing: the dads get­ting one for their child, the soc­cer moms with oblig­a­tory Star­bucks in hand. (Note to all: on launch day, those two indi­vid­u­als pose the most threat to your safe­ty: they will do any­thing to make sure their “lit­tle dar­lings” get one.)

8 AM came, and the man­ag­er stepped out, con­firmed that he had 120 Wiis, and began hand­ing out num­bers and the list of acces­sories they had in stock. The line moved into the elec­tron­ics sec­tion, and, quite sub­dued, wait­ed patient­ly as they took two num­bers at a time to get the con­sole and the games.

For acces­sories, I bought a sec­ond Wiimote and nunchuck, and a Clas­sic Con­troller. I bought these games: Red Steel, Zel­da: Twi­light Princess (who did­n’t?), and Super Mon­key Ball XVIII: Return of the Rot­ten Bananas (SMB: Banana Blitz, actu­al­ly, but hey.)

First up, though: Wii Sports. I had guessed that this would be fun, but I under­es­ti­mat­ed how this would kill off full-fea­ture games. The ten­nis, golf, and bowl­ing are all great. Box­ing and base­ball aren’t quite what I want­ed, but they’re still fun if you’re a fan of either sport.

The con­trols for ten­nis are spot-on: the Wii moves your char­ac­ters for you, and you sim­ply swing the Wiimote like a ten­nis rack­et for a fore­hand or back­hand. If you twist it as you swing, it puts spin on the ball, and the speed of the wrist snap deter­mines the speed and angle of the ball.

Golf­ing is a bit more art than sci­ence on the Wii. You swing the remote like a golf club to con­trol the pow­er. Aim­ing is much like Mario Golf of years before: up/down on the D‑pad to switch clubs (the club selec­tion is much more lim­it­ed in this than reg­u­lar golf games: you only have a dri­ver, an iron, prob­a­bly a 5–6 iron, a wedge, and a put­ter), and left/right to aim the ball. It’s got pow­er guides on the aim­ing line to help you decide how hard to swing. The swing­ing action is not as easy to mas­ter as ten­nis, how­ev­er. You swing like a golf club, but it seems like the wrist rota­tion at the bot­tom most­ly dic­tates how much pow­er the swing gets. I have to take a few prac­tice swings before each hit to try and dial in the exact motion.

My friend and I used to bowl a lot in high school, and you can imag­ine our hap­pi­ness when we played the Wii ver­sion. It’s as close as a vir­tu­al bowl­ing sim­u­la­tion will ever get to real life, I believe. You line up direc­tion and angle with the D‑pad. You then hold the remote point­ing towards the ceil­ing, and hold down the B but­ton (the one under the remote). You quick­ly swing your arm back, just like bowl­ing in real life, and then swing the remote for­ward and release the but­ton near the bot­tom to throw it. If you mist­ime the but­ton release, it’ll yell at you and show you throw­ing the ball into the crowd. To put spin on the ball, you give the remote a twist with your wrist as you release. With­in a cou­ple games, my friend and I were throw­ing 200 point games and pick­ing up spares with ease.

I spent a cou­ple hours of intro­duc­ing the rest of the fam­i­ly to these games. My mom and sis­ter both had a blast play­ing ten­nis and bowl­ing, and my broth­er and I played a fair amount of golf and base­ball. My sis­ter is some­what videogame aware: she was a big SNES junkie when we had Super Mario Bros. + All-Stars, and played Super Mario Bros. 3 until she beat it. She took to the motion-sens­ing games with no trou­ble at all. My mom was less eas­i­ly taught, but the nat­ur­al actions for ten­nis meant that after a few test swings, she did well, beat­ing me in two games.

After play­ing Wii Sports for much longer than I would have thought, I real­ized that I still had three more games to try out. First was Super Mon­key Ball, and it’s pletho­ra of minigames. Unlike pre­vi­ous SMB I/II, all the minigames are unlocked out of the box, and right­ful­ly so: if I had to earn some of these with sin­gle play­er game­play, I’d be mad. There are 50 games avail­able, includ­ing some of the clas­sic Mon­key Sports, Mon­key Flight, and the like (I’ll post a com­plete list in a bit). I had a ton of trou­ble with the sin­gle play­er lev­els. I had got­ten quite good at the joy­stick con­trol on the Game­Cube, and my Wii remote was­n’t lev­el when the game “zeroed” itself, so a lev­el at “neu­tral” had my remote tilt­ed back a bit.

I lat­er went through all the Super Mon­key Ball screens with the con­troller flat on my table. It still has flat as default­ing to a bit of for­ward roll, so it must be delib­er­ate. I’ve got­ten used to it, and I’m with Erik on this one: the game was wait­ing for this con­troller to be invented.

After my ini­tial frus­tra­tion with Super Mon­key Ball was over­come, I moved on to Red Steel. This was a game I bought on faith alone: the impres­sions online sound­ed respectable, and there weren’t enough neg­a­tive reviews or odd descrip­tions to real­ly con­vince me to avoid it. I’m quite glad I got it. First, the con­trol scheme. The nunchunk joy­stick con­trols straf­ing and run­ning of your char­ac­ter. The Wiimote is point­ed at the screen, rep­re­sent­ed by a dot, and this shows where your char­ac­ter is aim­ing. To turn, you point the remote to the far left or right edge of the screen, and the char­ac­ter turns. Aim­ing is not too dif­fi­cult, but aim­ing on the move is one thing I’m still work­ing on. The sword­play sec­tions are exact­ly what I expect­ed. A flick of the Wiimote in cer­tain direc­tions per­forms a cor­re­spond­ing sword slash, and the nunchunk con­trols a par­ry­ing action to defend your­self. The shoot­er part of the con­trol scheme takes a few min­utes to work out, and will prob­a­bly take anoth­er few hours of play­time for me to adapt to it, but I think it’ll be worth it in the end.

Final­ly, after a cou­ple hours of yakuza slaugh­ter­ing and gen­er­al vio­lence, I moved on to Zel­da: Twi­light Princess. The game looks great, and is cer­tain­ly in line with my expec­ta­tions for a cheap­er sys­tem that I bought for “the game­play, not the graph­ics”. They’re high qual­i­ty, and the Wii can do a lot of things that they nev­er tried on the Game­cube, either for lack of desire or lack of hardware.

The con­trols are dif­fer­ent. The nunchunk joy­stick con­trols Link, as you would guess, but instead of a but­ton for his sword, you sim­ply flick the Wiimote around. The spin attack is done with a back-and-forth on the nunchuck, fol­lowed by a reg­u­lar sword slash. The items all sit on the D‑pad and B but­ton of the Wiimote, and you hit the direc­tion on the D‑pad of the item to move it to the B but­ton, then hit B to use it. Slight­ly dif­fer­ent than old games. Z‑targeting works as always, but I haven’t fig­ured out how to “get info” on char­ac­ters like we used to with that fairy thing in Oca­ri­na and in Wind Wak­er. When you use the sling­shot, you aim on-screen with the Wiimote. Fish­ing is about what you’d expect: cast with a flick for­ward, let it sit, and when you think a fish is bit­ing, yank up and keep yank­ing to “reel it in”. The man­u­al says, lat­er on, you’ll use the nunchuck like a crank, reel­ing the fish in.

I rent­ed Call of Duty 3 from Block­buster to try it out. The con­trols are very sim­i­lar to Red Steel, with one impor­tant tweak. The “point­ing box” for Red Steel is large. The “point­ing box” is any­place on screen where your char­ac­ter will aim his weapon instead of turn­ing to look at. In Call of Duty, the box is 4 pix­els in the mid­dle of the screen. I liked the Call of Duty set­up bet­ter, as it made rotat­ing the char­ac­ter a much more easy thing to do. How­ev­er, the lack of any real “point­ing box” meant that your char­ac­ter is con­stant­ly turn­ing or drift­ing in some direc­tion. I’ve heard that Metroid Prime 3 will be some­where in between: a small “point­ing box”, and Samus will rotate if you point out­side that. Sounds like MP3 will have the ide­al con­trol scheme.

I have a ques­tion to all those Wii own­ers out there: how long is the light sur­round­ing the disc slot on nor­mal­ly? Mine flash­es on briefly when I turn it on. It does­n’t come on when I put a disc in, and it’s nev­er on when there’s no disc in the sys­tem. I just set up the email­ing with my Wii, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen it glow (it’s puls­ing slow­ly because I’ve got an email from myself), but as soon as I turn it on, the light goes out. I guess my ques­tion is this: is any­one’s on when the unit is on with no disc in? I get the impres­sion it’s sup­posed to be. (Side­note: I am run­ning the lat­est “update”, what­ev­er that is. Firmware update, I assume?)

All in all, the Wii is won­der­ful. Zel­da is promis­ing, Red Steel is bet­ter than I ever expect­ed, and Super Mon­key Ball is enjoy­able, although a bit easy. Wii Sports alone is enough to keep some­one occu­pied who is play­ing it casu­al­ly. I per­son­al­ly believe the con­troller capa­bil­i­ties will enable games peo­ple haven’t even dreamed of yet: there’s so many things you can do with more infor­ma­tion about motion and position.

As for a friend code: mine is 0141–4176-1669–5221. If you add me, leave a com­ment with yours so we can swap Miis.

A million dollars

A priest, a rab­bi, and a robot walk into a bar.

Only the robot walks out.

Some­one offers you a mil­lion dol­lars. There’s one stip­u­la­tion: what­ev­er you use it for, it must be to chase your dream.

What do you do?

Man is a sor­ry lot. Self­ish, eas­i­ly per­suad­ed, lit­tle motive. He is a fick­le crea­ture of Machi­avel­lian stereo­types. Work­ing only towards his own self-inter­est, the con­cerns of oth­ers are not con­cerns of his.

We nev­er grow up. We just get more expen­sive and illus­tri­ous taste. The tri­cy­cle becomes a bicy­cle becomes a motor­cy­cle. The Game Boy become a Game­Cube becomes an Alien­ware PC. The room becomes an apart­ment becomes a house. We nev­er real­ly tran­scend our desires; we upgrade them to fit our cur­rent means.

Trips and Homes

I love trav­el­ling. There’s some­thing exhil­a­rat­ing about pick­ing up the few things you’ve col­lect­ed that are impor­tant to you, and tem­porar­i­ly mov­ing some­where else. The uncer­tain­ty and unfa­mil­iar­i­ty is stress­ful for some, but I thrive on it. Going home for breaks, trav­el for jobs, day trips into DC with no plan, no map, and 20 bucks in my pock­et: those are the kinds of things I live for.

Right there…see? Sort of a swoop and a cross, Osid­ius the Emphatic.

Home for breaks. That’s a bit of a mis­state­ment. Where is home when you’re a junior in col­lege? I’ve spent 14 of the last 15 months liv­ing in Blacks­burg near­ly con­tin­u­ous­ly, because of my sum­mer job in the area. Is home here, in Blacks­burg? This is my sec­ond apart­ment in a year; I’ve got paint­ings, posters, draw­ings, and my pho­tos hung on the walls. I’ve got a stove­top with my apron hung next to it. I know the neigh­bors, and can nav­i­gate my way through the liv­ing room in the dark with­out stub­bing any toes or injur­ing any shins.

Sure, I’ve got­ten to know this place well, but does that make it home?

What decides where home is? Friends? Fam­i­ly? Wall dec­o­ra­tions and plants to water? For stu­dents, would you say home is where you spend the hol­i­days with your fam­i­ly? Is home where you spend the most time sleeping?

I’d say, right now, home is here at Tech. This sum­mer, it’ll be in NoVA (sor­ry guys, I’ve been away for a year and a half, it’s short­er to pro­nounce than “North­ern Vir­ginia”). Next fall and spring, it’ll be back to Tech, and from there, it’s wher­ev­er a post-grad­u­a­tion job takes me.

Where’s your home? What makes it home for you?

Future Wishes

At some point in time, I’ll do this to an entire room. Out­line every edge in black paint. It’s such a pow­er­ful visu­al effect in 2D; I only hope it looks as amaz­ing in three.

The rest of the week promis­es to fly by. Class­es, work, tests, and then a dri­ve home. Sun­day morn­ing brings the Nin­ten­do Wii launch, and I’ll be in Lees­burg around 4 AM at Tar­get lined up for mine.

A Dreamless State

Alarms are for the weak. Real, hard­core sleep addicts can turn off two alarms and still be dream­ing. They can nap on cue, and they think that caf­feine is sim­ply a mech­a­nism attempt­ing to keep them in their wak­ing states.

I turned off my alarm clock and my phone this morn­ing, and have no rec­ol­lec­tion of it. I woke up with my phone next to my head. I think I need a new plan for wak­ing up.

A long evening

Last night began with the best of inten­tions. Friends were to meet up, and a good time was to be had by all.

But a door was opened, an ani­mal ran, and so began a 45 minute jour­ney through porch­es and cars, trees and bush­es, to recap­ture a cat.

Lov­ing words were spo­ken to glow­ing, dis­tant eyes. Brush rat­tled as she jaunt­ed through it, dash­ing from shrub to tree, chas­ing birds, smelling for oth­er ani­mals. The own­er dove through wind­ing vines and over­grown trees, clothes cut to pieces from brances reach­ing out to slow him down.

But the ebb and flow of chase and run was inter­rupt­ed sud­den­ly. A des­per­ate dive broke the silence of the night, through inter­wo­ven thorns to reach a tree trunk, where the cat clung, hur­ried­ly try­ing to get away. Claws out, she fought and hissed and bit, but a firm grip meant that her jour­ney into the night had come to an end.

A sentence for the day

Tomor­row, take some­thing away from your day that you would nev­er have appreciated.

The Master List: Airline Security Failure at its Finest

From my favorite author, Bruce Schneier:

Famous­ly bad peo­ple are or aren’t on it, for no appar­ent rea­son. Peo­ple that ought to be on it, like the ter­ror sus­pects in Britain’s “air­lin­er plot”, aren’t on it.

Why does­n’t this list work?

• Because it’s easy to cor­rupt with bad data, and it’s impos­si­ble to purge bad data.
• Name over­lap is com­mon in this coun­try, and every­where else around the globe. My name is shared with at least four peo­ple in the US alone.
• Peo­ple get on the list for no dis­cern­able rea­son, such as US Sen­a­tors, but they have no suc­cess at remov­ing their name from the list, even when it’s some ver­i­fi­able, like a Sen­a­tor.

In the case of name overlap:

Gary Smith, John Williams and Robert John­son are some of those names. Kroft talked to 12 peo­ple with the name Robert John­son, all of whom are detained almost every time they fly. The deten­tions can include strip search­es and long delays in their travels

Glad anoth­er Christo­pher Bowns has­n’t decid­ed to do any­thing sus­pi­cious yet, oth­er­wise I’d be put through all that every time I travelled.

Sup­port­ers of the no-fly lists and “secu­ri­ty the­ater” we expe­ri­ence at the air­ports will say, “But you’ve just crit­i­cized our approach with­out giv­ing any real suggestions!”

The sug­ges­tions remain the following:

• Screen all lug­gage for known explo­sives, not just carry-ons.
• Tie lug­gage to pas­sen­gers. If some­one dis­em­barks before take-off, their bags should not be left on the plane.
• Invest mon­ey in “hinky-ness detec­tors”: peo­ple. More screen­ers with behav­iour­al analy­sis train­ing, and less screen­ers with “poke peo­ple with met­al detec­tor” train­ing. A well-trained screen­er can pick up on behav­iour­al “tells” that no machine will ever flag.

Election-Year Politics and Half Truths

Both the Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans are guilty of it. They pass cer­tain bills so they have a gift to give home dis­tricts while cam­paign­ing. They pass mean­ing­less amend­ments, in hopes that they can por­tray those who oppose it as being in the wrong on the issue.

I’m tired of it. The Democ­rats dog-piled when the recent­ly leaked Nation­al Intel­li­gence Esti­mate (NIE) said that Iraq has made ter­ror­ism worse, and the Unit­ed States less safe. The Repub­li­cans respond­ed by selec­tive­ly declas­si­fy­ing the best por­tion, and appar­ent­ly the best they could do was a sec­tion that said, “If ter­ror­ists ‘lose’ in Iraq, they may become demoralized.”

I was hop­ing that Bush would actu­al­ly declas­si­fy the entire doc­u­ment, but I should have known bet­ter. It’s elec­tion year pol­i­tics at its worst. Selec­tive dis­clo­sure and half-truths are always the worst in an elec­tion year, espe­cial­ly one where the Repub­li­cans face the prospect of los­ing seats in the House and Sen­ate. It makes me sick.

And what about the NIE?

From The Wash­ing­ton Post, I’ve gath­ered two things:

1. It’s what we had long sus­pect­ed. We put our col­lec­tive nose into a bee’s nest. We weren’t pre­pared for it, we did­n’t think it through, and we’re pay­ing dear­ly for it. Iraq will get worse before it gets better.

2. The blind accep­tance by either side of their dog­ma as truth is cost­ing the Unit­ed States sol­diers, mon­ey, and world favor.

Ter­ror­ists have new recruit­ing mate­r­i­al. We’ve made no real head­way against al-Qae­da in five years. 2,700 men have been killed, and thou­sands more wound­ed. The war has cost, mon­e­tar­i­ly, a huge amount to the Amer­i­can econ­o­my, in the form of mis­matched employ­ees, high bud­get deficits, and falling trust in the government.

The Democ­rats are too spine­less to pick a side, and too stu­pid to cre­ate a plat­form which lets them deci­sive­ly expose the Repub­li­cans for what they have become: tax and spend, war-mon­ger­ing, big gov­ern­ment advo­cates, and moral­i­ty police. They’ll lose in November.

The Repub­li­cans are too blind­ed by the thought of a “glob­al strug­gle” to even con­sid­er that they mis­stepped in Iraq. Mean­while, hawks are push­ing us towards a Syr­i­an and Iran­ian strug­gle in the near future. They’ll win in Novem­ber, and the nation will con­tin­ue its down­ward spiral.

How in the world did we end up with politi­cians, long known to be the stu­pid­est and most use­less of men, in charge of the dear­est process­es and prin­ci­ples we hold in this coun­try? And how can we get it back?