Weekend business trip to Fukuoka. A two day support session in the customer's data centre, the security measures of which would merit a blog entry of their own, but part of them is that they cannot be disclosed.

All the regular hotels are fully booked, thanks to a Glay concert, so the three of us have to a share one room, the good news being that it is a room at the luxurious JAL Resort Sea Hawk Hotel. Ironically is located right in front of the Yahoo (sic!) Dome, where the concert takes place. If they opened the stadium roof, we could even sneak a peek-a-boo (23rd floor, view of the beach, too).

The room price includes coupons for free entry to the nearby Asian Healing Spa Puna Ola. A five minute walk is kind of inconvenient, but on the other hand the place is positively big and at 1:30 in the morning practically empty.

Turns out our Seventh Floor Neighbours also have a Wii. They came over for a few games of four-player tennis (which is great fun), and with them they brought WarioWare: Smooth Moves. Now, that game is a riot. There are more than 200 totally silly mini games of five seconds each that have you do all kinds of manoeuvres with the Wiimote, such as holding it to your nose when controlling an elephant trunk, picking it up from the floor when answering a phone (and then the Wiimote actually talks), flapping your arms like a bird, turning it like a key, shaking it like a champagne bottle (which climaxes into removing your thumb from the IR sensor to release the cork), using it as a steering wheel, rolling it around, and even dropping it. I am still in the market for the Serious Sports Game, but Wario has put the Party Game back onto the map, a genre I have not even thought about since You Don't Know Jack.

Life at Versailles. I want candy.

7 points

1. Escape from Alcatraz (7 points)
2. Hart's War (7 points)
3. Chinatown (8 points)
4. The Aviator (5 points)
5. Stand by me (8 points)
6. Once Upon A Time In Mexico (4 points)
7. Cradle will rock (9 points)
8. Iron Giant (6 points)
9. Team America: World Police (7 points)
10. Seven Year Itch (8 points)
11. The Third Man (8 points)
12. Kiki's Delivery Service (7 points)
13. Insomnia (7 points)
14. Rumor has it (7 points)
15. Porco Rosso (8 points)
16. Permanent Midnight (7 points)
17. Amadeus (9 points)
18. Mission Cleopatra (4 points)
19. Under Suspicion (5 points)
20. The Party (4 points)

I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it's been.

Steve Jobs, channelling Wayne Gretzky

Another Steve Jobs keynote at a show called Macworld completely devoid of Mac content (unless I missed something). It is all about iPhones, iPod, iTunes now, with the Mac's primary raison-d'etre being a base station for all these entertainment gadgets. After dropping the word Computer from the company name, I would not put it beyond Jobs anymore to pull out of the computer business altogether (unlikely, but only because he needs the Mac to manage the media library, at least for the moment, a future AppleTV could also do that).

For a computer scientist/software geek who does not listen to music, does not watch TV, avoids phones as much as possible, this is not a promising turn of events. I am also not completely sure that Apple can hold their own as an entertainment electronics maker. For now, they can cash in on the iPod halo effect, but they will need to have similar successes in the new areas as well. A streak of mediocre products (and the AppleTV for example seems to be such, even I would rather buy an XBox 360 or a hard disk recorder) and internal conflicts of interests could deteriorate their brand image and they'd end up like Sony, who also lost their undisputed industry leadership at the same time they lost focus. This may be unfounded pessimism, they could also experience amazing growth and make us all rich, but in either case, it is probably downhill for the Mac from now on.

As usual, instead of learning kanji, I make kanji learning programs. Here is the latest iteration of the kanji flash card drill tool, this time optimized for the Wii.

The Wii in itself is amazing, mostly because of the fantastic Wiimote, which makes for a completely unique gaming experience. I have also figured out how to set up the projector, it works perfectly now.

However, after a week of Wii Sports and Wii Play, I found myself faced with a rather long list of drawbacks and annoyances, most of them caused by Nintendo wanting complete control over what you can do with the Wii, seriously hampering interoperability with other technologies. It is like Apple times five.

• The Wii does not play back audio CD. That does not matter, as I do not have any, but why?
• It does not play back video DVD. Again, does not matter too much, and is probably just a way to avoid licensing fees, but would have been nice. It cannot be a technical problem, because the games come on (encrypted) DVD. Rumour has it that a DVD-enabled version is planned for November.
• It has USB ports, but no drivers for anything. I have lots of USB equipment that would make sense to hook up to the Wii: Keyboard, game pad, iPod shuffle, memory card reader.
• To throw in a positive remark, the Wii uses standard WiFi to connect to the Internet and Opera to browse the Web. In addition to the services Nintendo offers (most importantly the Virtual Console), Internet connectivity seems like the most promising gateway to open up the Wii to third-party content and alternative uses. There are already several sites specifically targeting Wii. Unfortunately, I do not have WiFi, and there is no built-in ethernet plug, so I may have to get the USB ethernet adaptor (or upgrade to WiFi, still balancing convenience versus health and security considerations).
• You need to buy a Gamecube controller to play Gamecube games (reasonable) and a Gamecube memory card to save them (not so reasonable, why cannot the built-in memory be used for this) ?
• Games are expensive. That is not a Wii problem, it applies to all systems. There is a healthy market for used games, but unless those are really old or unpopular, that is not much cheaper. I wonder if there is a rental service, like for DVD (which are also expensive).
• Games have region codes. This applies to Wii games, as well as Gamecube and Virtual Console games. Now this is a major hassle. For the more complex games, I would like an English-language version, but the US disks will not play here. More importantly, not all games are available in all regions. Japan is supposed to be the video game paradise, but I see that a number of titles that I would want to buy are not (yet, or maybe at all) to be had here:
  • Madden NFL 07: I need a serious sports game (Wii Sports is more of a party game). Madden 07 is a US launch title for the Wii, and has received rave reviews because of the innovative use it makes of the Wiimote. No Japanese version now, and I can see no announcements either.
  • FIFA 07 is a US-only Gamecube game. The latest instalment for the Japanese market is FIFA 03 (PlayStation2 did get releases, but not Gamecube). I tried to buy FIFA Worldcup 2002, but it is really hard to get Gamecube games in general. I know the previous console generation was basically just PS2, with Xbox and Gamecube far behind, but would not have thought it so bad. It is much easier to get twenty year old games for the original NES, than Gamecube titles.
  • Namco Museum for the Gamecube. There is nice US version with 16 games on it, but Japan only has versions for Gameboy and PSP. The Gameboy adaptor for the Gamecube is not compatible with Wii. Galaxian, Galaga, Pac-Man will probably appear on the Virtual Console some time, but why the wait?
  I cannot see the reasoning behind region codes. Making sure pirated versions and mod-chips are the only way to get to these games does not seem like a sound business strategy.

Having vented these frustrations, I feel much better now, and will probably go over to Akihabara again to resume the hunt for a good, used Gamecube game (Viewtiful Joe? Metroid Prime? FIFA 2002?) or just shell out the 6,800 yen for Zelda.

Richard Linklater's take on Philip K. Dick. A distinct visual style makes the whole movie look like a comic book, similar to Sin City, but with more colour. Seven years in the future: A fifth of the American population is addicted to Substance D. Robert Arctor is an undercover cop who infiltrates a group of addicts with possible connections further up the distribution chain. He is also taking Substance D, which messes with his head. And he is under investigation. Or maybe just imagining things. Lots of paranoia, both in a funny (Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson) and in a scary (Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder) way. Definitely the best movie I have seen this year so far.

8 points

Finally! Holiday season saved. No luck setting it up with the projector so far, but for now the computer monitor does the job.