Christmas tucker, broken machines and vroom broom

*Sigh* One more Christmas over and done with. No more presents to open, no more food to eat. Just a mountain of discarded wrapping paper and an expanding waistline to deal with as 2006 comes to a close. Loot and food were both good as usual and it was nice to see all the family together but for some reason this year felt less "Christmasy" than usual. Yet another sign of getting old I guess.



Just a little miffed writing this entry as I'm using my desktop to post for the first time in ages. Reason behind this is poor Gemini has picked a god awful time to decide to go on the blink. From what I can tell it's either a buggered LCD panel or graphics card so either way I'm going to have to send it back in to Toshiba to repair. 14 working days apparently if everything goes well. Bother.

Not exactly a laptop replacement but we managed to procure a new gadget (in the broadest sense of the word) thanks to a very generous contribution from Santa. The crappy $30 vacuum cleaner that's sputtered along our dust ridden floor has finally been replaced with a shiny, black, sucking machine (Minds out of the gutter now). Probably did end up paying more than we'd planned but we did get a good price on it and a free steam mop. We've given it a test run and that Power Head has definitely done a good job on our carpet (You filthy filthy thing).

Wii Christmas

It's that time of year yet again and we'll be driving up to Toowoomba this afternoon for another Christmas in the Liley household. My future mother-in-law has recently earned some geek cred by finally getting ADSL installed at home. Now to get her a webcam and set up video conferencing.

Tried working from home for the first time yesterday and it was just surreal. Managed to get a heap of stuff done that I probably wouldn't have if I were in the office getting interrupted but for some reason it didn't really feel like I'd been to "work". Casual attire was another plus as was the lack of driving in Brisbane traffic so I might continue to exercise my option to telecommute. At least until social isolation and declining personal hygiene force me back into the workplace.

Not a day gone by so far without some getting some Wii-age on. Zelda is certainly looking like it's going to be a longer quest than I initially expected but that's a good thing. Nintendo also surprised everyone by delivering the new Weather Forecast channel a day early so I've been having fun with that. Probably not quite as much fun as Gabe here. Now we're just eagerly awaiting the beta version of Opera that the Big N promised to send us this weekend.

We'll be packing up the console to bring up for everyone to have a go. Can't wait to see what Peter (Alison's tech savvy granddad) will have to say about it.

And on that note we wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

Wii Party

Woah, massive Wii madness on Sunday at Kath and Andrew's place (they have the bigger TV). Als and I brought our Wiimotes over for a mammoth seven hour session of Wii Sports and Super Monkey Ball. Four player Tennis is a heck of a lot more fun than two players. We also had a game of bowling which Katherine flogged us at.



No pictures of the actual day itself as we were too busy having fun but I thought I'd try embedding a youtube video for a change. Just a short UK advert showing off Wii Sports.

Monkey Ball minigames were lots of fun too but we did find that a few of them either made no sense or didn't work too well. Highlights (for me at least) were flying like birds by flapping the controllers, running the hurdles by pumping your arms and flicking the wiimote to play frisbee-golf. Good fun and I don't think we even got through all the mini-games.

Hoping that more of you people are going to start buying Wiis so that we can... err... trade Miis and stuff. Here's our Wii number anyway. Be sure to add us and post your Wii numbers too.
1251 2424 0046 0361

Wii launch and Bond

Time for yet another quick and lazy update. I've been far too pre-occupied as of late playing on my new Nintendo Wii and boy is it goooooood. Always the eager puppy I couldn't wait till after work on December 7th when the console was supposed to launch. Nope, toying with the occupational hazards of sleep deprivation we (Alison mainly for moral support) braved the crowd at Indooroopilly at midnight on the 6th just to get our grubby hands on pure gameplay joy a little sooner.



Here's Alison holding the line with Kath and Andrew. Can you feel the excitement in the crowd!? We were told that of 170 pre-orders there would be about 100 customers showing up for the midnight event. Seemed as though every Tom, Dick and Harry decided to bring three friends along so the line was unnecessarily long and messy.

Alright, so not much excitement. No riots and certainly no drive by shootings. In fact there was barely any misbehaving going on in the line up unless you considered the criminal lack of deodorant among the geek crowd.





Just one hour after the official Australian launch I managed to walk out of EB with my brand new Wii. Unwrapping and playing would not commence that night sadly but I managed to get an early start the next day and have been swinging wii-motes wildly ever since.

We needed to take a social break to go to the Michael Hill Christmas party on Friday night. It was a James Bond theme so I opted to go as Q. Alison tells me she's supposed to be "Odd Job" but being Bond-ignorant I haven't the foggiest who that is.



Of course my costume choice was really just an excuse to keep my gadgets on me. I couldn't bear to part with my wii-mote for a second. :)

We'll be heading over to Kath and Andrew's for a Wiikend of multiplayer fun tomorrow so more updates on the super games then. In the mean time I think it's safe to say that Nintendo definitely have a hit on their hands with the Wii, oh and Zelda rocks!

Printing Press

Today Al's and I lugged home our new Canon all-in-one printer and scanner from Harvey Norman. This is of course in anticipation of lots scanning and err... printing that I'm sure we'll do in preparation for the wedding. It'll also come in useful when we need to start printing money to replenish our dwindling bank account.



To test the new toy out I thought I'd print out an electronic issue of Game Developer Magazine for some free loo reading material. Quality is certainly readable though I think I'll have to fork out for some decent quality paper to prevent the ink from bleeding through.

GCAP 2006

Two short days and my first ever game conference is over. It was certainly worth while going as I got to meet a lot of interesting people and listen to great talks on the state of the industry. Unfortunately I also got a chance to really see what the companies are looking for in job applications and my portfolio is rather lacking compared to others out there. Needs improvement I'm afraid.



One of my main disappointments (other than the lack of food provided) was that Nintendo was oddly absent from displays and the booths. I was really hoping to get my hands on playing some Wii titles a week before the launch.

It was kinda hard choosing between some of the keynotes as most of them sounded pretty interesting. I had to turn down "Interactive Storytelling in Games" to attend an "Developing games for Xbox Live Arcade" which I might be interested in pursuing some day. Problem is the number of hoops that M$ make you jump through just to get approval and publish your game on XLA is pretty darn demoralising.



The number of international speakers that gave talks was pretty impressive. Tsutomo Kouno, the designer for LocoRoco (great game) talked about his inspiration for designing the title which was a fascinating insight into what goes into creating a unique hit. The Q&A session was rather awkward as everything had to go through the translator which broke up the flow a little.

Now that's over the next big bit of gaming excitement will be the Wii launch this week. If all goes to plan then Als and I will be joining Kath and Andrew to camp out at Indooroopilly for the midnight launch of the console on Wednesday night. My first console pre-ordered and my first console launch. Can't wait.