Chan's Personal Blog

This weekend was the first time I had ever played on a Nintendo Wii, and I have to say that I was quite impressed by it. I was over at Jordan's place on the weekend, and one of his friends brought over a Wii, and it's a lot of fun when you have a group of people playing. It had that wow factor to it because it's so different from other gaming systems.

A lot of people have dismissed the Wii because its graphics technology isn't nearly as sophisticated as an XBox 360 or a PS3, but I don't believe this was Nintendo's focus. Their focus was to create new gaming experiences that focus on being fun. I believe that they have accomplished this.

I was playing a boxing against Jordan on the Wii, and even though the graphics weren't stunning, it was very fun. Controlling the Wii was extremely intuitive because if you want to punch someone, you punch with the controller. If you want to block, hold the controller up near your face to block. Needless to say, it was really fun throwing punch combos against your friends. How many video games makes you break out in sweat (other than Dance Dance Revolution)? In either case, I was thoroughly impressed, and I think the Wii has ushered in a new era in gaming. It's really fun to physically interact with the game.

I think one of the greatest strengths of the system is its focus on the casual gamer. I mean, have you seen the latest Nintendo commercial? It shows grandmas playing video games with their grandchildren. These games are really easy to learn and fun, and they're perfect to play when you have a group of friends over. It's a great party gaming system. The biggest tell of this is that even girls were playing games on the Wii. From my experience, games that require a huge tutorial and many hours of time invested are generally huge turn off for parties and female gamers. The Wii does a very good job of engaging non-gamers. (The stereotypical view of the gamer is that it is largely dominated by males.) Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that gamer girls don't exist, but they are more rare. Consequently, single gamer girls, please inquire within

Today, I saw this provocatively titled article from Reuters, "Firstborn Sons Have Higher IQs, Norway Study Finds."

During this break from academia, I've finally had a chance to work on a few interesting projects that I've never had time to do. My latest project involved pimping out a Ford Aspire by adding underglow to the vehicle.

You'll understand the humour in all this because this is what a Ford Aspire looks like:



This is what the car looked like after we were done:


Check out the full photo album here.

The whole project started when my friend Chad bought a Ford Aspire, and he wanted to modify the vehicle. One of his rich asian friends had added glowing lights to his car for a ridiculous amount of money. The goal was to one-up his friend with a homebrew solution. So, Chad asked if I knew anything about LEDs and designing electrical circuits. Fortunately, I am a man of many random skills, and I did know a few things about electrical circuits, so I joined the project.

Sadly, it has been officially announced that next season of Battlestar Galactica will be the last season. Yahoo News carried the story:


I wish this wasn't the end because the series still feels very new; we've only had three seasons so far. In this short time, it has become my all-time favourite science fiction show.

On the other hand, I have to applaud the producers for having the balls to end the show on their own terms. A lot of times, science fiction shows get dragged on aimlessly and the show becomes mediocre at best. So, I'd rather see Galactica finish with a bang than a whimper.

Its a shame that the show never got the respect that it deserved though. They say each episode cost about $1 million while other shows with similar viewership bases would cost $200,000 per episode.

All good things must come to an end though.