I've been taking a break from my many projects, lately. I just feel a little burned out and want to spend more of my energy on my job (hah!) So I bought a Nintendo DS a few weeks back and started playing some games.

I tell you, Nintendo is gonna win the video game war. They have an amazing plan: make games that are actually fun. I bought Mario Kart DS and got totally addicted. I played through all the grand prix races in 50cc and 100cc, and fought through some of 150cc. I played the mission modes and beat them. Finally I started playing the time trial mode and discovered the most incredible thing: after you do 5 time trial attempts on a track you unlock a Staff Ghost which is a ghostly shadow of a previous time trial that you can race against... except these ghosts are from the top scores of the play testers. Those guys who spend months play testing the game to make sure it doesn't crash got their ultimate best records put into the game. Of course it is nigh impossible to beat these. After days of trying I managed to get 0.166 seconds off from the staff ghost of the first track, though I still haven't beat it... only 31 more tracks to go! And for some reason I find this amazingly entertaining.

Yesterday I picked up Trama Center: Under the Knife. It's wicked! A surgery simulator! At least the surgery of the year 2018 which is a lot easier thanks to the magic green protein gel that cures everything, and mystical Healing Touch bullet-time abilities. It's like anime General Hospital meets that old-school Operation board game. Crazy fun.

The Boss is Away Today

Can you tell? And I don't mean freaking Springsteen.

Macbook

Overall: awesome. I noticed some heat issues once, but that was probably before I installed the upgrades because I haven't had any problems since. Even after doing such no-no's as using it on a bed or on my lap.

Unfortunately my beloved Reaktor is not Universal yet so my handcrafted Atari 800-esque POKEY softsynth is out of commision for a while. The universal is scheduled for Q3 2006, so anytime now... anytime...

I'm lending the iBook to my parents so's they can be tainted with the Apple love. My dad was asking me yesterday what this "WGA" thing was and why his copy of Windows XP claimed it wasn't registered and was gonna be shut down. Er, yeah...

I tried to get them to go down the Linux route but my dad was hesitant. "What would I do with it?" he asked. I dunno... what you always do: web, email. Plus he's buiding a LAMP web app which would be so much easier on a real OS. One that lets you arrow up to retype your last command. Oh well.

Why are there no good bands coming to Calgary in the near future?

Riddal me that.