Yep, it's the "Super Mario Bros." theme - with lyrics!

OK, so this has already been reported lately by the awesome Destructoid.com but it just cracks me up so I had to post it here too.

I so need this game to come out!!!

It's coming sometime in 2007. Last I heard it was June but that seems like years away since I want it so much!

Must. Smash. Robots. With. Huge. Hammer. NOW.

Oh, and the game is "Project H.A.M.M.E.R." for those of you not familiar with it already.

The allure of Apple

I don't get it. I'm usually a pretty rational individual. I'm good friends with "logical choices" and "smart thinking". Usually, that is...

So why the hell do I always lose my mind over Apple's products? There's something about them that always gives me a serious itch for new gadgets.

I don't need a MacBook. I already own a two year old iBook (12", G4) which is still doing it's job (mostly acting as an expensive toy for surfing the net from my couch) very well. So why the hell do I want a MacBook?

I don't need a MacPro. I already own several high-end PCs that run Linux, enables me to do everything that I need to do (and a whole lot of unnecessary stuff too) and basically kick serious ass. So why the hell do I want a MacPro?

I don't need a MacMini. See above for the reasons why. So why the hell do I want a MacMini?

I don't need an iPod. I already own a very expensive top-of-the-line mobile phone that plays music and movies just fine. So why the hell do I want an iPod?

And finally...

I don't need an Apple TV. I have absolutely no use for it. Quite honestly I'm not even sure I know exactly what it does. So why the hell do I want an Apple TV?

This is a pure hardware urge too. Don't get me wrong, I love Mac OS X and all, but Linux is still my number one choice for an operating system. As a matter of fact, I'd probably install Linux on some of the above mentioned hardware rather than keep their pre-installed operating software. Or at least set up some sort of dual boot.

Luckily, I've managed to mostly keep my urges under control this far. But they're still there and I keep drifting in to Apple's website again and again, reading about the stuff and drooling over pictures.

I need help. Or just a truckload of cash.

Yes, that's my iBook in the picture. Yes, the light is blue and not the ordinary white. Yes, I know it's awesome. Worship me. And my iBook.

An urge has been awakened

I have to say that I've never felt any particular attraction to the PlayStation 2 (or the original PlayStation for that matter. But after seeing this clip from the PS2 exclusive game "God Of War", I, for the first time in my life, feel that maybe I really need a PS2 after all.

I can't put my finger on it but there is something about this game that calls out to me and urges me to play it, no matter what the cost. And I'm kicking myself that it's taken so long for me to recognize it as the masterpiece that it really appears to be. You see, I've been largely ignoring it since it is just available for the PS2, although hearing plenty of people praising it and reading plenty of rave reviews of it.

Possibly, I'll just try and borrow a PS2 and the game from somebody. But I'm not sure that'll do. You see, I like owning stuff ;-)

Oh well, just another thing to start saving up for I guess. But, damn, it itches in my gamer hands when I see clips from that game. Grrrr....

Spicing up your e-mail signature for fun and... well... fun!

Recently I got tired of my e-mail signature always looking the same. It bored me but I'm a bit too lazy to be changing it myself very often. So I figured out a way to spice it up a little and make it update itself automatically.

The tools I used for this tiny little project was the neat little application fortune and cron.

If you're using any sort of real operating system you already have cron installed. Chances are that you have fortune as well, but if you don't it shouldn't be very hard to find from some repository or other download source. If you are, like me, a Fedora Core user you will find it in the extras repository.

What fortune does is that it outputs a random quote taken from an installed database of quotes. There are plenty of funny and interesting quotes available for inclusion in this database, such as quotes taken from movies, books and TV-shows.

So I simply wrote a bash-script that takes a base signature, which in my case contains some contact information and the URL to my GnuPG public key, adds this to the output from fortune and stores it all in a simple text file. The resulting file is what I then tell my e-mail client to use for a signature.

The script looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
SIGN_DIR=/home/hayabusa/documents
rm -f $SIGN_FILE/mailsignature
cat $SIGN_DIR/basesignature > $SIGN_DIR/mailsignature
fortune >> $SIGN_DIR/mailsignature
exit 0

So as you can see, nothing fancy at all.

Then to make the signature change once every fifteen minutes I added this row to my /etc/crontab:

*/15 * * * * hayabusa /home/hayabusa/bin/mailsign_maker.sh >/dev/null

Now let's see for how long this keeps me "not bored" with my e-mail signature ;-)

Oh, and by the way, I realize I am far from the first that's done something like this. I just figured I might not be the last wanting to do it either.

One more thing

Playing Wii Sports Boxing with a high fever is not anything I'll ever recommend to anyone... Don't try this at home kids. Seriously.

So tomorrow is officially "sit-on-your-ass-and-play-like-you-did-before-you-had-a-Wii"-day. I think I'll be hitting "Kid Icarus" and "Tenchu, Return to darkness" a little extra hard. If I can muster any energy at all that is.

Now, off to bed.

A hit but maybe not a very hard one?

If this article speaks the truth, the competition might stiffen even more for Sony and their unfortunate PS3. A "stronger" edition of the Xbox 360 is definitely a blow aimed straight at the jaw of Sony.

However, when examined a bit closer (and I don't mind 'cuz the Xbox 360 Elite looks totally sweet, and just made me sound like a surfer retard too...) it's not that much of a PS3 killer when you think about. At least not at that price.

With the PS3 you get not only a high-end gaming console but a Blu-Ray player. Sure, there's a pretty inexpensive HD-DVD player available for the 360 but it is not included in the machine out of the box. Not even in the Elite package, and this is important.

The 360 Elite has a harddrive twice the size of the PS3 Premium but everybody knows harddrives are relatively cheap hardware while a stand-alone Blu-Ray player will set you back somewhere around €700 (about $850) over here. And if I buy an Xbox 360 Elite and the HD-DVD player for it I've already spent a bit more than what a PS3 Premium would set me back.

Personally I don't understand what they're thinking at Microsoft by not including an HD-DVD player with this Elite edition or in upcoming Premium editions. That would really stick it to the competition, and would make myself seriously consider buying a 360. It really makes me wonder, just like someone commented on the article above - do they know something we don't since they don't seem to be taking HD-DVD seriously?

Nintendo, bodyslamming the competition

There really seems to be no stopping Nintendo these days. They are murdering the competition on both the handheld-market and as far as ordinary consoles go.

Microsoft is still in the race since the Xbox 360 is selling very well and let's not forget that it is a pretty sweet machine with a shitload of awesome games. But what is up with Sony? Are they even trying to compete or have they completely shot themselves in the foot, head and ass already? Sure looks like it to me. I mean, damn, even the GameBoy Advance, is outselling the PS3 in the US. Granted, there is quite a difference in price and probably very different target audiences but it's still pretty embarrassing for Sony to have their spanking new, state-of-the-art, seventh generation console be outsold by a six years old device.

It'll be really interesting to see what happens after this upcoming Friday when the PS3 is finally, however in crippled form, released in Europe. People over here have waited four months longer than in the US and Japan. Now let's see how many lost interest and bought a 360 or a Wii months ago.

In the short time that the Wii has been out it's sold an incredible 1.62 million copies in Europe and it is still almost impossible get your hands on one. There's no way the PS3 is beating that, that I am sure of. Even in the markets where the PS3 is available it is being hammered by the Wii being outsold two to one. Yay Nintendo!

And once again... Kick. Ass.

Oh please, let it be so.

And I want a job at Nintendo. Now.

How embarassing for him

Bill Gates apparently got his period towards the end of his interview with Bob Garfield. Poor Bill. I hope he had his tampons close by.

Have a sense of humor for fucks sake. What a baby...

There is such a thing as "too much"

OK, I'm all for modding your box and I love all sorts of silly gadgets with blinkenlights deluxe but this is just plain retarded.

I will however ask my boss for one for my box at work ;-)

Kick. Ass.

That's basically all I have to say on the matter.

Backwards compatibility

This article puzzled me a bit. OK, so well over a year after the release of the Xbox 360 the console's developers are "reducing the focus on backwards compatibility"?

I'm sorry, but isn't the whole point with backwards compatibility that it should already be implemented at the time of launch? Isn't the idea that people that bought the previous model should be able to play their old games on the new console once they've bought one, and not fifteen months later? That's at least what I thought backwards compatibility was all about, and this is also one of the main reasons I will not be buying a 360 anytime soon.

For a good example of what backwards compatibility really should be maybe the 360 team should take a look at what the Wii does with GameCube-games - it actually PLAYS them ALL! Imagine that, and it's done so since launch. Oh yeah, and so did the Nintendo DS with all Gameboy Advance-games.

OK, I admit it... I suck...

Yeah, I've been slacking off with the whole "Fighting the flab"-deal with my Wii. Things got a bit crazy when we moved at the beginning of February and I wasn't able to play my Wii or anything else at all for over a week. After that I basically got lost and strayed from the path.

Don't get me wrong, I've playing plenty of video games and a lot of Wii (of course) but my concentration has drifted to "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess", Virtual Console-games and "Showdown: Legends of Wrestling" on the Xbox.

So I'm a little ashamed now, and I've decided to start all over again but go at it even harder this time. Starting tomorrow I'm gonna play my Wii, and "Wii Sports" in particular, for at least 45 minutes every day, 15 minutes before breakfast and at least 30 minutes in the evening after work. I'll continue this for at least an entire month.

And that's a promise!

Chris Hecker is a piece of $#&%!

And by that I mean "a piece of shit".

If you didn't quite get that, read this and you'll soon find out who Chris Hecker is and what lovely things he had to say about Nintendo's latest console at GDC 2007.

Mr. Hecker's outburst is some of the most juvenile bullshit I've read in quite a while. He actually claims that because the Wii uses hardware inferior to that of the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 Nintendo doesn't "give a shit about games as an art from". Please... Get off your high horse and shut the fuck up. How old are you? Twelve?

Since when does "more" automatically mean "better"? Is a painting or other piece of art automatically superior simply because it uses more expensive paints for example? Isn't the artistic parts something that lies within the craftsmanship itself? The game's story? How much fun people have while playing it? I'm sorry Chris, but you're a complete retard.

Nintendo has managed to produce games in the past that myself and millions of others still enjoy over twenty years later. I think they know just a little bit more about "games as an art form" than you do, you pompous little shit.

I sincerely hope Mr. Hecker, who in case you missed it works for Maxis, the studio developing "Spore" for the Wii and plenty of other games for said console, gets fired for his moronic outburst at GDC 2007. The video gaming industry simply doesn't need all these stupid fucks that are more interested in dick-measuring contests than in fun games.

Hecker has apologized for his rant but personally I think that his second rate lame ass apology doesn't quite cut it. It's too little too late and I don't think he's being sincere at all. More likely he's performing some damage control because he's been ordered to do so by his bosses.

I'm really sad to see the industry producing and nurturing people with this elitist attitude towards what is considered a good video game. It's supposed to be about having fun. Get it Chris? F-U-N, FUN!

Killer does NOT equal video gamer!

OK, this article just plainly pisses me off, or not the article itself really but the quote contained in it. It's like Chris Burbank, apparently the Salt Lake City Police Chief, in his day to day work goes about assuming that all murderers are also video gamers. Like video gaming is some sort of prerequisite skill needed in order to become a murderer. And when he then stumbles upon a murder case where the crime was NOT fueled by violent video games he's all surprised. What a moron.

It's a really sad state of affairs when someone in his position makes these kinds of assumptions. Does he then perhaps also believe that Colombia has the most video gamers per capita in the world? I mean, they do have the world's highest rating of murders per capita after all. Fuckhead. Somebody should fire his narrow minded ass right now.

To mod or not to mod, that is the question

The first modchips for the Nintendo Wii are now available for purchase and offers of "professional" modding have started to appear. In connection with this I had a discussion with a friend and fellow Wii-owner about wether it is a good idea to have a modchip installed this early in the game.

My friend can't wait to mod his Wii but personally I've chosen to wait, and I'll probably wait for quite a while too. Being the owner of a severely modded and highly treasured Xbox this might seem like odd behavior, but let me explain.

I firmly believe that it should be the right of every consumer to do what ever he/she likes with any piece of hardware that he/she buys. Unfortunately most hardware manufacturers, especially those making video game consoles, don't share this view of consumer rights. This is understandable in a way, since (and I'm being realistic here) the primary reasons for installing modchips is wanting to be able to run "backups of your games" (most likely pirated copies downloaded from the internet) and imported games, and this is exactly the kind of behavior that Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony want to thwart.

Since modchips are considered the enemy by the console manufacturers and the game makers they will naturally try and fight this. With both the Xbox 360 and the Wii receiving software updates
via internet connectivity they now also have a good channel for distributing their counterattack. So what's to say that Nintendo doesn't find a way to make life difficult for anyone that goes ahead and installs a modchip in their Wii by bundling software for this purpose in the next channel update for example? Sure, several of the modchips boast a "stealth mode" but do we know exactly how this "stealth mode" works or if it works at all? What's to say that Nintendo doesn't find a way to trick the "stealth mode" once they've gotten to know a little more about the modchips? Oh yes, you can be damn sure that the people at Nintendo will have ordered and dissected every kind of modchip available already and they will continue to do so with any new or updated chips that appear.

Imagine that you install a modchip and are all happy going about with your "backup games", homebrew antics and whatever else, and then one day an update locks you out of the Shopping Channel or disables some other feature in your Wii. Not fun, not fun at all, but not an unlikely scenario none the less.

So what I'm saying is that I choose to wait and let other people find out how good these modchips are. In a year or so when we know more, especially about Nintendo's attitude towards it all and how hard they will fight it, I might spend the money and get my Wii modded. The sole reason being, of course, that I wanna be able to play backups of my store-bought games ;-)

I am the hitechnoid and I'm here to rant

Yeah, that's basically it.

I'm a digicrazed hitechnoid man in my early thirties and this blog is where I will vent my thoughts and rant about hardware, software and all other things binary, digital and high-technological.

My appetite for all things high-technological is insatiable and my ability to rant is endless. That is why I've started this blog and that is the only reason. I'm here to fulfill my own exhibitionistic needs, not anybody else's, but if anybody finds my babbling entertaining - all the better.