The coolest desktop picture....Ever!

I don't know if you know, but I'm a big Mac guy. Yup. So, I was reading TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) and they posted about this desktop app called OSXplanet. It's sorta like a geochron (wikipedia it if you don't know what it is). I takes the world and slap on your computer. It shows where the sun is currently shining and where its not, it was that cool night light thing around the cities. It can also show clouds, satellites, storms, earthquakes, and volcanoes. In short, it's frickin sweet. It doesn't stop at planet Earth either. It can also display the Moon, Sun, and all the other planets, including the now dwarf-planet Pluto. If your running the marvelous OS X, then head over to the OSXplanet site and have a looksy.

Also, if your into astronomy and planets and stuff, check out Stellarium, a badass app for all platforms, that puts the cosmos on you're computer, and Celestia another cross-platform planetarium app.

New Line Rider Version!

You must have lived under a rock for the past few months not to have heard about a little flash game called Line Rider This game is basically binary crack. This game is HIGHLY ADDICTIVE. Today i surfed over to Linerider.com for my daily fix and low and behold, it's been updated. Now you can access a ton of new features. Head over to the site but be warned, this game is addictive.

Wii-Top

After a three week hiatus (see laziness) I'm finally back, but it's not like anybody reads this blog anyway ;). This time, I bring news from the famous/infamous videogame modder, Benjamin Heckendorn. BenHeck's at it again with his console hacking ways, this time taking his soldering iron to the unsuspecting Wii. His site, Benheck.com, shows how we crammed a Wii inside of a tiny case with a screen using sorcery and magic. If you have a couple of hours to waste, head over to his site, listen to the podcast, all that good stuff. Its worth the trip to chek out all the other craaaaaazy stuff this dude's put together.

Happy New Year!

As the first day in oh seven draws to a close, let me say, "Happy New Year!" As if you haven't heard it at least 2007 times already... Hears to writing the wrong date on all of your papers in work and school for the next month and a half!

Sweet Pics From Nintendo World, NYC

I was in New York for the holidays and while I was strolling arounf Manhattan, I found the Nintendo World Store. I think this is the place where Reggie Fils-Aime launched the Wii but I'm not sure. Anway, as I walked around and watched five-year-olds suck at playing Wii I found a mini museum of all of this sweet Nintendo stuff. It had prototypes for the NES a crap load of custom game boys, and lots of other cool stuff. I whipped out my camera and snapped away. I'm putting the pictures in the post. Sorry if the quality sucks, I had to take these on the fly. Click on the picture for a closer look.






This was a Game Boy that was in the first Gulf Wars. It was hit while during a bombing at a barracks and still works. Its still playing Tetris.



More fried Game Boy.



Mmmmmm, toasty.



The evolution of the Game Boy. Game and Watch (far left) -> Game Boy (the gray brick) -> Game Boy Pocket (black to the right of the Game Boy) -> Game Boy Light (clear above Pocket) -> Game Boy Color (yellow to the right of Pocket) -> Game Boy Advance (above Color) -> Game Boy Advance SP -> (Silver to the right of Color) No Game Boy Micro though...



A golden Game Boy Advance SP signed by Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Zelda and Mario (to name a few).



Bling Bling.



Prototypes of the NES. Theres what looks like a Commodore-esque version with a QWERTY keyboard, something that looks like a cassette player called the Advanced Video System (AVS but not the Atari!), and I have no idea what the thing on the far right is but above there is a sweet joysitck-looking thing. Also check out the sweet metallic buttons on the concept controllers.



A close up of the AVS.



The NES with its Japanese counterpart, the Famicom.



Game Boys, lots and lots of Game Boys. Theres Pokémon, NES/Famicom, Mario, Donkey Kong, Kingdom Hearts, Camo, Naruto, and the colors of the rainbow.



A close up of the Pokémon ones. Theres Pikachu, Groundon, and Kyogre.

I Heart Pixel Art

Sadly, because I have nothing better to do on a Friday night, I started reading Make: . Its a really old ass issue but it has some cool stuff on BEAM bots and how to give you're old GBA a frontlit screen. Anyway, on one of the pages is a some cool pixel artwork. This gets my gears moving because I really like that kind of art style, especially in video games like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (which by the way is a fantastic game and they just announced a sequel). I think to myself, "I'd really love to try my hand at a new art form," so I set off. Being a Mac user, I unfortunately don't have a basic image editor needed to create pixel art. I browse around Source Forge but I couldn't find anything promising. I turned to the almighty Google search engine, and out popped my answer. Open Sword has an absolutely top notch open source image editor specifically designed for pixel artists called Pixen. I mean this thing is just perfect. It has layer support, can export to multiple file formats, and much more. Now that I had my image editor, I needed something to draw. I looked around my room and my eyes fell upon my beloved Nintendo Entertainment System. I got to it and after 15 minutes or so of work I had this:





Not bad for a first try eh? I liked the experience soo much I might draw (or redraw some comx) into pixely creations. Drop a comment on whether you love it or hate it (or not, this blog has exactly one comment) and don't forget to check out the guys at Open Sword.

Is The Wiimote Hurting Wii?

While I was cruising around the internet, or surfing, as some people say, I came across a video of somebody playing Half Life 2 using a Wiimote through its Bluetooth functionality. This made me think, if people want immersive gameplay with a pointer and motion sensitivity and all that jazz, why spend money on a Wii when you can just buy the controller, run some scripts and have a jolly old time. Also, by the looks of things, the graphics on your PC (or Mac) would be better than the Wii. I'm not saying that the Wii sales are going to nose dive, if anything, good old Nintendo is going to snag some extra cash selling Wiimotes to folks on an Alienware playing Quake 4 instead of Redsteel.