Maunderlust

I got Warioware: Smooth Moves for the Wii yesterday.

It’s a great example of how creative developers can get with the Wii remote. The game employs a number of unique stances, known as “forms”, that instruct you to hold the remote a particular way. Often these forms require you to move your entire body to complete a microgame. Sure, you can easily fake out the Wii’s robotic brain by doing tiny movements with the remote. But in so doing, you idnetify yourself a douche bag worthy of derision and beneath pity.

Speaking of which, I suspect that this is game is a dish best served multiplayer. The single player is fun. But, after awhile you might feel somewhat douchey holding the remote up to your nose like an elephant trunk. So I guess you’re a douche if you do, and a douche if you don’t. It’s a tough position to be in, but a sanitary one.

The single player game looks like it’s shorter than Warioware Twisted, which had a truly obscene amount of content. I’m okay with what Smooth Moves has to offer, but I’d have liked a few more unlockable toys and mini-games like there were on the handhelds.

What I find most exciting about Smooth Moves are all the nuggests of potential Wii gameplay that the package suggests. Yes, there are duds in the bunch. But, surprisingly few. I could see entire Wii games being built around some of the mechanics that Smooth Moves has introduced.

As a game to introduce people to the Wii remote, Smooth Moves isn’t quite as accessible as Wii Sports. In Wii Sports, the metaphors are extremely clear — The remote might be a tennis racket, a baseball bat, a golf club, and so on. Smooth Moves asks you to make some leaps — Hold the remote like a Mohawk, a Samurai, a Waiter, etc. But if you’re willing to meet the game half way, its humor and fast pace carry the day and deliver a great experience.

With the help of some flattering lighting and a dark and mysterious pubus area, the producers of Equus have managed to make Daniel Radcliffe crazy hot.

You can see the sexy horse mutilator in all his well-lit glory on the Broadway World site.

It looks like all the writers of Harry Potter slash fiction toiling away with their capes, pointy hats, and hand lotions have been vindicated.

[tags]Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Potter, Equus, Naked, Hot[/tags]

Last night I dreamed a dream.

In this dream FrankenBerry, Count Chocula, and Michael Clark Duncan came over to my house. My house was a cave, but it was decorated like a palace.

They wanted refreshments, so I made them the following cocktail:

• 1 cup frankenberries, ground in a blender
• 1/2 cup chocolate covered espresso beans, ground in a blender
• 1 part strawberry schnapps
• 1 part banana liqueur
• 1 part vodka
• A splash of vanilla extract
• 2 cups of iced milk
• Whipped cream aplenty

I called it the Lanky Franky, and served it to my guests from a pitcher resembling the Kool-Aid man. It was impossibly delicious, and it saved me from a beating at the hands of Michael Clark Duncan.

I do not have all of the ingredients to create my dream beverage. But, perhaps you do. If so, please, go forth and live my dream. And tell me how it tastes.

[tags]Cocktail, Dream, Frankenberry, Recipe[/tags]

I just went through the relatively painless process of upgrading to WordPress 2.1.

For the most part, everything went fine. But one of my plugins, SimpleTags, stopped working. That left me with unsightly code embedded in some of the entries.

A cursory search of the interent didn’t provide an easy solution, so I found two other plugins that do pretty much the same thing, Ultimate Tag Warrior and SimpleTagsPlus. I hoped that one of them would do the trick.

Ultimate Tag Warrior imported all of my embedded tags, which is nice. But, it didn’t clean up any of the code. Alas. It seems like a good plugin. Though it might be overkill for the simple tagging that I do.

SimpleTagsPlus came to the rescue and by reactivating the embedded tags and hiding the embedded code. Hooray. In addition, it lets me tag to del.icio.us or Flickr, in the unlikely event that I feel like doing so. To celebrate, I’m going to tag some stuff right now!

[tags]Wordpress 2.1, SimpleTags, SimpleTagsPlus, Ultimate Tag Warrior, Embedded Tags[/tags]

Video Game Vs. has an interesting argument about how First Person Shooter games should play on the Wii: Wii FPS’s – How to do it right

So far I haven’t been too impressed with any of the FPS games on offer. Red Steel and Call of Duty both felt clumsy. I haven’t played Far Cry: Vengence, but from what I understand it doesn’t really improve the situation.

Back when I first heard about the Wii controller, It seemed like a perfect fit for FPS gaming. The Nunchuk and remote sounded like great surrogates for a mouse and keyboard interface. Even better, it seemed like gameplay would be more intuitive, since you can literally can point and shoot at things on the screen.

But in practice, navigating the world and aiming with the wiimote can prove to be very frustrating. And since FPS is such an established genre, the Wii gestures that have been incorporated into the current batch of games feel like afterthoughts.

I’m eager to see how Metroid plays. But as it stands, my gut feeling is that the FPS genre needs to be completely rethought for the Wii, or thrown out altogether. The argument on Video Game Vs. sounds like a good place to start the rethink.

[tags]Wii, FPS, First Person Shooter, Video Game Vs., Video Games[/tags]

Check out the Urban Princess before she moves on to another castle: Urban Princess Boutique

She has a number of cool handmade Video Game inspired designs. I love the pacman scarf and hat combination. And the princess herself is too cute.

The Urban Princess certainly gives Miss Ivy and her Odd Couture a run for its money.

Continue reading ‘Urban Princess Boutique’

After a long hiatus, Maunderlust returns to: Oprah’s Debt Diet (slurp)

Step 5: Create a Monthly Spending Plan

In this lesson, Oprah, the richest woman in the universe, recommends coming up with a sensible monthly spending plan. It should be laid out about 15 days ahead of time so that you can make adjustments if you’re going to have more or less income than you expected.

Oprah recommends the following distribution of wealth:

Fortunately, I’m ahead of the game in regards to housing and transportation costs. And I have some degree of control over other living expenses. (though I’m not very good at exercising it.)

Oprah also advises assigning paychecks to specific expenses. I’d never really thought of budgeting in those terms. The gist is, you subdivide each paycheck to cover your monthly expenses. It makes perfect sense. But, I’ve always thought in terms of big bucket of money that fills up and empties out at the end of each month.

To keep an eye on the bucket, I’ve been updating the Google Spreadsheet. The daily spending tab I try to update throughout the day. The debt summary gets updated once a week.

[tags]Oprah, Debt Diet, Debt Reduction, Google Spreadsheet[/tags]

Today I just stumbled across a pretty remarkable bit of animation called The Thief and the Cobbler. Apparently it was released in some form or another in 1993, but the cut wasn’t very good.

It feels like a Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin movie set against works of art like Gustav Klimt’s the Kiss, or an Escher drawing. The movie includes some great sequences that hearken back to Popeye cartoons like Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp, and Ali Baba’s 40 Thieves. You’ll probably recognize some of the character designs and plot points from Disney’s Aladdin, which this film inspired.

Vincent Price delivers a wonderfully playful performance as an evil Vizier. And though the Thief and the Cobbler are silent, both convey a great deal of character and emotion through their body language and great facial expressions.

The movie is delightfully anachronistic. It recalls a time when animation captured the joy of movement, and payed off on fantastically choreographed physical comedy. If you’re a fan of the very early stuff from Disney, Warner Brothers, and Max Fleischer, you’ll definitely get a kick out of it.

I don’t know if we’ll ever see a completed version of this cut. But thanks to Garrett Gilchrist’s fan restoration, we can all enjoy this remarkable piece of animation history.

Links you might like:

• Max Fleischer Cartoons – Freely downloadable from Archive.org
• Vintage Toon Cast – A video podcast featuring classic cartoons.
• ReFrederator – More classic cartoons via Channel Frederator

[tags]The Thief and the Cobbler, Richard Williams, YouTube, Animation, Restoration[/tags]

Now that Twilgiht Princess has been out for awhile and thoroughly enjoyed, the time has come to take a step back and compare it to its misunderstood predecessor, The Wind Waker.

Side by side, who is the victor? Is it manly man Link astride his noble steed, bow in hand, and Wiimote flashing? Or Chibi-Link firing on pirates from his courageous boat-king, swinging around like Errol Flynn, and parrying moblins like nobody’s business. Whose cuisine reigns supreme? Read on to find out.

Continue reading ‘Wind Waker vs. Twilight Princess’

We fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 have been adrift in a sea of doubt and confusion for lo these 10 years. Fret no more me hearties, there be a port in the storm! It’s called RiffTrax, and it’s a pretty cool way of continuing the great humor of MST3k via the magic of the intertubes.

Last night I had the good fortune of seeing Mike, Kevin, and Bill perform RiffTrax live to Ben Affleck’s masterpiece, Daredevil. Was it as funny as MST3k? You bet. I’d say it rivaled some of the best experiments of yesteryear. Daredevil will soon be available for your downloading pleasure.

Here’s how RiffTrax works: First, you download Mike & the gang’s audio commentary from the internets. Next, you get ahold of a DVD of the movie (Netflix would be pretty convenient). Finally, you sync the movie to the audio file and, viola, DIY MST3K.

You could use an iPod or other portable MP3 player to sync. Or, since most computers have an MP3 and a DVD software installed, you can probably just do it on your desktop. I bet it would be great to have on your laptop during a trip.

Whether you’re a stalwart fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, or just an afficiando of bad movies, RiffTrax is well worth checking out.

Continue reading ‘MST3k -> RiffTrax: ROFLMAO’