Twitter

Twitter: "What You And Your Friends Are Doing"

This seems like a cool website for sharing what you are doing with your friends and getting notified of what they are up to.

You can update your status online, over IM, or via a text message, and you can also receive updates about your friends through the same methods.

It's free, so go and sign up and add me as a friend.

High Dupenition TV

Well, I've been duped. I thought a HDTV was a wonderful device that would show higher resolution TV shows, movies, and video games in the comfort of my own home, but I was wrong. It is a device that delivers high definition commercials straight into my brain via the optic nerves. Boy can those commercials be beautiful. I think a particular green-bottled beer has the most luscious ad I've ever seen.

We only saw the last half of the Superbowl yesterday, and none of the Superbowl ads were that great, as I understand is the prevailing common expectation. I hate ads. But as brief entertaining interludes in the football game, I guess they're not so bad, as long as they fulfill their unwritten requirement to be funny.

However, here's something to think about advertisers: The funniest ad I saw was pretty good, but I don't even remember what the product was. I think it was a can of nuts. But really, if the ad made me want to eat assorted nuts at all, which at times I want to do anyway, it didn't do much to influence which particular brand or kind of nuts I would purchase. Nuts is nuts, I say, and if I'm going to pay forth $1.59 for a bunch of nuts, I'm most likely to choose the largest package of such nuts that are available for that price. I really don't care what brand they are. You guys might want to go into a business selling a distinctive product where a memorable ad might actually influence customers to pick your product over a rival's. Nuts. And nuts are cheap. I'm sure you pay millions for your 30-seconds of high definition exposure to my eyeballs, but I have got to hope there is a smarter way of spending that money. Maybe try sending me free samples of nuts. If they are good, I will probably tell some people I see on the street that they might like to purchase your nuts. And I will phrase it thusly: "Hey you guys, you see these nuts, why don't you buy some?" Simple, concise, and it gets the point across. But I would highly recommend going into some other business.

Secondly, here's the thing: Car ads. What the hell. I know what a goddamn car driving around looks like. I also know what more than one car driving around looks like. Do we need another commercial like that? Are the cars being driven by monkeys, or clowns, or aliens, or maybe even a funny-looking guy with a funky hat? No? Then don't show me the goddamn car commercial, because I am sick to death of cars driving around on my HDTV. If I want to see cars driving around up close I'll go lie in the street. Nuts. I can't believe they would spend millions of bucks to sell me a package of mixed nuts.

Ignignokt

I don't have much to say about the recent hair-pulling-parade in Boston, except that: Fucking people are retarded.

The guys who were arrested for making the lite-brite signs of Ignignokt basically had the best press conference I've ever heard: AlterNet: Blogs: Video: Update: Cartoon Marketing Ignites Bomb Scare [VIDEO]. All they talked about was hairstyles from the 70s.

Wii Virtual Console Idea

Here's an idea for the Wii that I wish that Nintendo had done, and hope that someday they may still do: allow NES and other 8- to 16-bit virtual console games bought on your Wii to be transfered to the Nintendo DS. This seems like a no-brainer to me! What better than having the original Zelda/Mario/other NES games on your portable DS system to cart around when you leave the house? When you come back you should be able to somehow "synch" your saved games back to your Wii console and resume playing on your TV. It would be great. Please, Nintendo, hear me!

So far I've downloaded Super Mario Bros and the original Legend of Zelda from the Wii Virtual Console, and it has been well worth the $10 total.

It's one thing to play those games on an emulator where you can easily cheat using save states and you can easily look up things on the web about how to beat some part of Zelda, but it's different when you treat them as they were played originally, and using a genuine controller and a TV.

I'm biding my remaining 1000 Wii points until something really attractive comes along. I've been considering getting Mario 64, another great game that of course I already paid for once on N64, but which I've never really been able to emulate satisfactorily. I hope they get Goldeneye as well. As tempting as it is I may bypass the original Metroid. That game I've played via emulation enough times that I really don't need to play it again. Super Metroid however...

If you are skitterish about the price (as I was at first), think of it like this: you can get ten NES games for the price of one new Wii game. Games as good (and classic) as Zelda, and Mario, are well worth it. If they can bulk out the lineup I'd be happy to drop $50 on good Virtual Console games.

Ok, fine here's the list of old games I really want to get on the virtual console: Super Metroid, Goldeneye, Mario 64, Zelda: A Link To The Past, Zelda: Majora's Mask, Gain Ground (SEGA), Zillion (SEGA), and probably others.

The Music

Menomena's new album "Friend and Foe" is available, and you can go to their site and stream the whole thing.

I woke up this morning with the song "First Day On a New Planet" by Yatsura going through my head. Here is that song.