I’m downloading the new demo of the Creator Creator right now. I have to keep myself from the temptation of launching it before work. I fear that if I do, I might not end up at work on time, if at all.

I’m not much of a video game player (although increasingly moreso, recently.) I’m even less of a first-person-shooter player. But I have to say that my all time favorite FPS game is Bioshock. Actually, I think it is the only FPS game that I actually like. Anyway, it is coming to the iPhone!!!

Details are scarce. There’s no telling when it will be released and what gameplay (or story) will be like. Still… I can’t wait.

I picked up the Wii Balance Board yesterday and got to play with it a bit last night. While my first impression of it, upon hearing about it months ago, was that it was gimmicky and dumb, the reviews I have read in the past week or so have reversed that opinion. I do have to admit that it’s still gimmicky, but it’s certainly not dumb. It’s actually quite compelling. The workout you get is about the same as one might expect from a basic fitness video, only the interactivity makes it more fun. Additionally, the interactivity sometimes senses things about your posture (”I’m sensing more weight toward the back; you’re probably sticking your rear out to far and should stand up more straight”) that a workout video would blindly allow you to keep doing incorrectly. As everyone says, it’s no substitute for a gym and/or personal trainer, but it’s a pretty good replacement for sitting on your ass and doing nothing physical ever in your life.

There are a number of different categories of exercise including things like yoga, strength training, and aerobic activities. The yoga is a little bit laughable because it’s primarily stand-upright poses and Plank-style poses (similar to pushups.) I doubt you could do a good wide-stance pose like Triangle on the board.

It includes a few games–some of which are fun, and some I don’t find to be fun at all. The skiing game requires a bit more hand (foot?) eye coordination than I have. I keep overcompensating when turning.

The jogging activity is… interesting. You run in place and try not to feel silly about it. That latter bit takes some getting used to. The Wii senses the running, and you get to view the scenery and other joggers on Wii-Fit-Island (or whatever the name is.) It’s a 3D space with footpaths and stuff and the various other Miis running around. I get the impression from the documentation that later on you can (literally) run around and collect Mario-like coins and powerups. While running, I spotted Darth Vader, Dwight Schrute, and Arioch, among others! And speaking of Miis, in the hula-hoop game, I had a very gay-acting Mr. T wiggling his pelvis and throwing hoola-hoops at me. Bizarre. If this were a dream, I’d have to stop to analyze that.

So my BMI is perfectly normal, in fact, it’s smack-dab in the middle of normal on the BMI scale, so I’m primarily “playing” Wii Fit to increase my strength and perhaps balance and hand-eye coordination. While I do yoga and a lot of walking, I don’t do much of anything aerobic these days.

The Balance Board is not legal for trade. Or so I’m told. Just in case you wanted to barter or something.

I do have to admit that certain activities remind me of the old Amiga Computer lore with their version of a balance board and the associated Guru Meditation Errors. I have to wonder if anyone will make a home-brew game with that in it.

I signed up for Color Wars today as part of Go Team Pants! My first submission is part of the “make your own merit badge” challenge. I present to you my submission: the Photoshop merit badge.

I picked up Professor Layton and the Curious Village the other day for the Nintendo DS. It is a great game that I am really enjoying. I almost hate to admit it, but Penny Arcade’s comic commentary on the game is pretty darn accurate. As much as I love puzzles, a good majority of them seemed a little forced into a storyline.

While playing, I found myself constantly thinking back to Perplex City, and the puzzle-centric nature of it. In fact, entelein and I had a little online conversation about it this morning. I have to agree with her that Layton has a much more friendly, human, and whimsical feel to it. Although to me, the puzzles seem a bit forced. In PXC, the reasoning and backstory for the puzzles was well thought-out and they made great sense in context, but the human touch sometimes felt a little pushed aside, replaced by a little elitism, which was sometimes off-putting.

Regardless of the believability of the framework surrounding the puzzles in Professor Layton, I’m still getting a great deal of enjoyment out of it. That and Puzzle Quest are the only two DS games I’m playing anymore. If/when I finish Puzzle Quest, I think it will have some good replay value–especially with the “instant quest” mode. I am not sure about Professor Layton, but given the WiFi puzzle-a-week and the extra bonus materials unlocked as you play, I have high hopes.

OCEANIC AIRLINES ANNOUNCES ITS RETURN TO THE AIRWAYS
“TAKING YOU PLACES YOU NEVER IMAGINED”

Flights Begin December 31 To Nine Markets
Oceanic Airlines announced today their return to the airways. Beginning December 31, operations and flights to nine markets will resume, “Taking You Places You Never Imagined.” Destinations include:

Los Angeles, CA
Tustin, CA
Ames, IA
Miami, FL
New York, NY
Portland, OR
Knoxville, TN
Seoul, South Korea
Sydney, Australia

“We are very eager to resume flying and apologize for any inconvenience our temporary closure may have caused our loyal customers,” said Michael Orteig, President, Oceanic Airlines. “Oceanic Airlines is proud to be a top tier flight provider and looks forward to providing travelers with many more years of unparalleled service.”

About Oceanic Airlines
In business for over 25 years, Oceanic Airlines is a major airline carrier and offers the highest caliber of service for international and domestic flights. Destinations include Los Angeles, London, Sydney and South Korea.

Oceanic Airlines Contact:
Georgia Cavanagh (818) 460-5520

Calling the contact number gives you an outgoing voicemail message telling you to check out flyoceanicair.com on the 31st.

Is it a full-fledged ARG? Is it an extension-of or extra-backstory-for the TV show? I guess we’ll find out soon. More information is at the Unfiction thread.

YEAY! The SCUMM VM has been ported to the iPhone so that you can now play all your favorite LucasArts games from days long past.

BOO! The click points for the commands and objects are so tiny as to be extremely difficult to use (bordering on unusable in some places.) Similarly, the “meta” commands (right click, ESC, F5) are all weird multitouch gestures that take a long time to get used to.

Yes, the following is an actual iPhone screenshot…

I do not usually post memes, but saw this on angelsk’s LJ and liked that it’s more of a test of skill (well, technically, memorization) than a personality test or “what [object in object class] are you?”

44

Cut for analysis, which mentions lots of HTML tags you probably don’t remember, yourself. If you’re going to take the quiz, don’t click until after.

Read the rest of this entry »

According to reports (e.g. digg) Bioshock installs a DRM rootkit on your machine. The original report does indicate that Microsoft’s RootkitRevealer application flags it as such, but it actually looks to be less of a rootkit (i.e. something that installs itself at ring-0, cloaks itself, and makes it almost impossible to remove) and more of a protected service that takes some command line tomfoolery to remove. The service allows non-root users to access the copy-protection functionality (which, presumably does enough funkiness with the drive that root access is required.)

At any rate, consider yourself warned. There’s nothing that definitively states whether or not the service is automatically removed by the uninstaller. Me? I don’t care–I’ll probably just wipe the partition and reclaim the space when I’m done.

So. Bioshock. Before I can talk about that, I have to talk about BootCamp. In concept, Apple’s BootCamp is awesome. It lets you nondestructively partition the drive, burns a disc of Windows drivers, and lets you install Windows. In reality, the repartitioning is not quite up to quality. It seems that if your drive is fragmented, BootCamp is not able to set up partitions. In fact, the solution it proposes to you is: back up the drive, reformat it, then restore from backup. Hardly helpful. This was eventually solved by booting from an OS X disc, running Disk Utility (which detected and fixed issues), then booting from iPartition’s CD to defrag and partition. After that, the installs were relatively painless.

In a word, Bioshock is awesome. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s set in an improbable underwater city (”It was not impossible to build Rapture under the sea. It was impossible to build it anyplace else.”), built in the 40’s, but you’re playing in the 60’s. It’s the idealistic Atlas Shrugged utopia, only a couple of decades later, after the idealism wore off and the place turned to crap. It’s full of smart people who are physically and mentally f’ed up. I love how you can hack things–using games of logic under pressure to do so–like the little helicopter gunner things that sound like lawnmowers and look like apple-crates (they’re so cute when they’re on your side) and the gun turrets cobbled together from office chairs.

The story and atmosphere are completely engrossing. Kim and I have been playing the past few nights–and by that, I mean I’ve been controlling the action and we’ve both been taking in the scenery and saga. Since I completely suck at shooters, I’m glad they have a super-easy “I am a baby-man” difficulty setting. All-in-all, it’s a great experience and worth the pain and embarrassment of installing Windows.

It’s also worth noting that Steve pointed to the soundtrack/score, which is available for download. It’s pretty short, but if you’re into creepy period music, I’d suggest a listen.