Playin' With My Wii

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Okay, an update of many things over the past weeks…

After being denied by the Amazon “enter this drawing to win the chance to buy a Wii” thing, [info]hensatc was kind enough to let me use his Golden Ticket to buy one. For that, I totally owe him!

I do have to say that I am quite impressed by the game system. I like how the game that comes with it (Wii Sports) can be taken seriously or casually, depending on how you play. I’m fine with just playing 10 minutes here and 10 minutes there and not trying to build up my score and ratings. I hate its baseball and golf, but like its bowling and tennis — and surprisingly, I really like its boxing game. The first night I set it up, I worked up a good sweat while boxing.

Elebits is the other game I have for it — sort of marketed toward kids, but a good game nonetheless and a good proof-of-concept for the Wiimote-plus-Nunchuck setup. You use the nunchuck in your left hand to walk. You use the motion/position-sensitive Wiimote in your right hand to turn your head and shoot at things. And the shooting? It’s not bullets. It’s this total Ghostbusters electric laser thing that captures monsters or lets you pick up objects. The controller has full yaw, pitch, and roll sensing so that you can, say, pick up a television, spin it in the air, pull it closer toward you, then drop it. Or you can do simple stuff like turn doorknobs. The control is ingenious and intuitive. There are no weird button combinations to memorize–you just move your arm.

The Nintendo-branded Opera web browser works amazingly well, but takes forever to load. Downloading things (the browser or classic games) brings up this weird Super Mario themed percentage bar that drives Ebenezer crazy. Video of this will be posted sometime soon. Similarly, when I’m standing in the middle of the room, making motions, Ebenezer thinks I’m trying to play with him and tries to chase my arms around.

My Wii friend code (or whatever it is called) is: 3567 4139 4254 6077


A couple of months ago, a relative gave us a fondue pot. I have never before had fondue. I realize that this is a shocking statement coming from me, the ultimate lover of cheese — but I really had never had fondue. The first experiment with the fondue pot did not involve cheese. It was an “Asian Hot Pot” recipe that consisted of broth in the pot with raw shrimp, scallops, onions, snow peas, and the like for dipping. (As an aside, I am getting really good at quickly shelling shrimp now.) You end up cooking the shrimp and scallops in the broth. When you’re finished, you throw in a bunch of noodles, which combined with the dropped bits of meat and veggies in the broth, makes a great soup for later.

Last week, I made my first cheese fondue. $20 worth of various types of fresh blue cheeses later. This particular recipe called for dipping lightly cooked vegetables wrapped in slices of ham. Oh my, the bleu and ham were a great combination, reminiscent of chicken cordon bleu. There was another meal’s worth of leftovers that were still quite good a few days later. I was a bit worried that the cheese would not keep well because fondue is all about using extremely fresh and high quality ingredients right away, but was pleasantly surprised.

I think I am to the point now where I am experienced enough in making this stuff that I’m ready to make it for company.


I think Kim and I are going to spend Christmas eve, or at least some portion of it, out drinking. We figure that The Basement is probably open, but is generally too smoky. I know that The B-Side is going to be open, and Kim has not yet been, so we will probably end up there. I think that most everyone is out of town, but if you’re around and want to hang out, give us a call.

Posted in: Food Gadgets Games

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