The DS, the Wii, and a Good Spanking

Recently, I needed to pick up a Nintendo DS Lite for a project I’m working on. It’s a great little machine. The PSP dominates it graphically, but the DS touch screen makes for a fun, innovative interface.

On a similar note, I embarked on a hunt for the Nintendo Wii. After a few days of searching, my pal Jason Blair tipped me off to a page on the Target website that gives in-stock information for stores near you. Using this, I found stock in Rockford, Illinois, only a half-hour drive from my house. Unfortunately, when I called to check on this, the people at the store denied they had any Wiis around.

I little more surfing found a comment that revealed that Target likes to hold on to its Wednesday stock until the evening. I called the same place on Thursday morning and discovered they had 15 units. After taking Patrick to the doctor for a previously scheduled appointment, he and I raced down and picked up one of the last three.

So far, we only have Wii Sports and Wii Play, but the kids just love it. The motion-sensing controllers are every bit as amazing as you might hope. Unfortunately, one of the controllers stopped sensing swings, which made playing baseball a bit one sided.

Fortunately, a Google search saved the day. It turns out the solution for dealing with an obstinate Wii controller is to turn it over and spank it with a sharp smack.

I wondered if this might be a gag to get people to break their remotes, but since ours was already broken, I figured I’d give it a shot. The first time I was too gentle, it seems, so I took a deep breath and whacked it good.

Viola! It worked!

IGDA and Karma

I had a great time at the IGDA meeting in Madison on Wednesday night. The speaker, James Gee, did a fantastic job, with much of his hypotheses about gaming and learning dovetailing nicely with Raph Koster‘s A Theory of Fun for Game Design and another project I’m working on. Tim Gerritsen and I sat on a panel with James at an academic seminar a couple years ago, but I left thinking he’d only scratched the surface of what his work is about. At the meeting, I got the full-bore version of it, and loved it.

I also won a new graphics card, courtesy of ATI. Now I can upgrade the old X600 I have to a shiny new Radeon X1300 PRO. To offset my good fortune, though, I got nicked for speeding on the way home.

IGDA Meeting Tonight

This evening, I’ll be at the meeting of the Madison chapter of the IGDA. Our speaker is James Gee, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. If you’re a local member, I hope to see you at the Casbah tonight.

Another Complete Idiot–For D&D!

I’ve been authorized to reveal that I’m in the middle of writing The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Creating Dungeons & Dragons Characters via IDW Publishing and Alpha Books, a division of Penguin. I hadn’t written any D&D or d20 material for a while, so this is a welcome return.

As a part of this project, I’m collecting a list of online resources and computerized aids that can help with creating D&D characters. I’m also collating a CD full of such things to go along with the book. If you’d like to share your favorites, please post them here–and send this notice far and wide too. Thanks!

The Carpal Tunnel Martyrs Brigade

One of the regular commenters around here–Brian Bird–and his friends have set up a writer’s group called the Carpal Tunnel Martyr’s Brigade. They started out as a Google group but now have set up a snazzy new website to promote themselves and their upcoming science-fiction zombies anthology, Dead Space. Stop by and check them out–or join if you’re so inclined. I’ve been checking on the Google group from time to time, and they’re a fun pack of people.

R.E.V.ing Up

Today, while staying home with three sick kids, I saw the new commercial for R.E.Vs. on Cartoon Network. Every time it came on, Marty used our ReplayTV to stop it and yell for me to come and watch. They look pretty slick and will hopefully help sell truckloads of these toys.

I’d love to help create more toys for the line and come up with more characters and stories for it. I still get a kick out of watching the animated comic that comes on the CD included with each toy, and I want to see more of that soon. In the meantime, MasterCollector.com has a page filled with photos of new Playmates toys due out this year. Scroll down to see some R.E.V.s, including Anarkist, who didn’t make it into the first batch.