Sign of The Coming Apocalypse #152

Heard late one night...

Me: 5
Her: 1
Me: 7
Her: 3
Me: 8
Her: 2
Me: ... DAMNIT!
...
Me: 53916DAMNIT2

Yes, it's Lauren and Glen playing verbal naughts and crosses without a board, followed by Glen playing against himself and still managing to lose to a surprise attack.

This was then followed by a game of battleships on 8x8 grids held only in our heads, during which time SOMEONE MAYBE NAMED LAUREN managed to fit a 3-length ship into B3-5 without getting hit by a shell landing on B4.

This is the kind of thing that happens when you leave your Nintendo at the wrong house.

Wii Second Guessing

One thing I noticed about playing Rayman Ravin' Rabbids (I got it last night) on the Wii is that I can't forget that I'm holding a bunch of accelerometers - I spend a lot of time wondering if the way the game tells you do things is actually the best way. For example, when the game tells you to move the nunchuck up and down rapidly, I wonder if moving it on two axes would result in a higher amount of measured movement (the combined delta on two axes may be greater).

Similarly, in the "throw the cow" game*, where you have to use the controller like a lasso, I wonder if they are measuring rate of change (in which case rolling the controller in your hand might produce the best result) or total force (where swinging the remote above your head on the end of the nunchuck cord might work the best).

Wii Boxing is a great example of all this - once you figure out how to actually trigger the different punches and movements, you get much better accuracy/power at the expense of any form of realistic punching motion.

* P.S. I threw the cow 129.92 meters, how'd you do?

Melbourne Photos

Lauren and I recently returned to Melbourne for a week to attend a graduation and an engagement party. I started the week thinking "this'll be great - aside from those two events, I have nothing planned - I'll call all my friends!".

Next thing I know, I'm on the plane going in the other direction, and most of my friends remained blissfully unaware that I had even been in the country. DOH.

The photos are up, anyway. Other thoughts coming soon.