WiiWare: Lost Winds Nintendo Wii Nintendo Everyone B

Nintendo has launched "WiiWare", which is essentially XBox Live Arcade for the Wii. Sure the Wii had it's Virtual Console but WiiWare is all new content designed for the Wii to be purchased and downloaded. WiiWare currently runs from $5-$15 and requires "Points" to be purchased either from the store or using cards. The first WiiWare title I have purchased, and likely the only one in the initial line-up, is LostWinds.

First of all, keep in mind that this is a $10 title, therefore the fact it only took 3 1/2 hours to play isn't so bad. The game is super cute, though missing a map of any sort even though I thought we all realized how important a map can be. You befriend a "wind spirit" and then go on a quest to discover what happened to "the evil guy", along the way you learn new tricks which are required to go more and more places. Everything is very standard to a platformer, though the controls are new, in order to jump you need the help of the wind which is controlled by the Wiimote.

I won't give away the end, but as I expect will be common in WiiWare titles the fact that a sequel is coming is pretty evident by the "To be continued...", and since WiiWare lends itself to episodic content, if I pay $40 for 4 mini games at 3 1/2 hours each, that is about on-par with what is expected out of quality games these days.

[ Fiesta Asia! ]

Don't say I didn't warn you, you have 1/2 a day to plan on going yourself...

[ Exempt Those Exams! ]

See, I told you jank is a real word. Now someone tell squankous...

Publishing and testing a Windows Communication Foundation Service in IIS7 on Windows Vista is pretty straightforward, but there are a few pitfalls to look out for along the way. This post is designed to compliment the screencast ‘Creating and consuming your first WCF Service’ which I will publish here soon. I hope sharing this with you saves you some time when deploying your first service.

[ Hosting a WCF Service using IIS7 and Windows Vista Nick Kewney’s Blog ]

Since my last .Net web service was pre-WSE and this is at least 3 iterations later, I have a bit to catch up on. They've certainly complicated things via abstraction, which is probably a great help to many, but seems like overkill for my purposes, but this post helped a lot. Since I need authentication WCF "wants" me to use transport security, ie SSL, so people can't snoop on the credentials. Nice that the framework is enforcing such standards, bad that I have to do that in my development environment. Well, WCF doing a SOAP "basic" webservice via HTTPS is set up on my machine. Now I have to figure out how to implement the authentication headers...

The new Rick Sandoval place, it opened in May of 2008. I went during the first week and thought it was clearly the best Mexican place around. Sandoval places don’t stay great for long, so now is the time to go.

[ Tyler Cowen's Ethnic Dining Guide: La Sandia ]

I don't know Rick Sandoval from a hole in the wall, but I know Mexican food that I like. I've lamented the decline in quality and service at Tia Queta for a while now, but I must say that La Sandia is better than I ever remember Tia Queta being. I got the Chicken Mole Enchiladas:

Yaty got the Shrimp Fajitas:

She wasn't so impressed, she liked it but prefers the Fajitas as Guapo's and the fresh grilled jalapeño that comes with them. Of course if this is contemporary south Mexican fare, I would expect the fajitas to be less than stellar. The guacamole and the tomatillo sauce that accompanied her fajitas were quite good though.

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (APAHM) is celebrated in May to commemorate the contributions of people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent in the United States. Congress passed a joint Congressional Resolution in 1978 to commemorate Asian American Heritage Week during the first week of May. This date was chosen because two important anniversaries occurred during this time: the arrival of the first Japanese immigrants in America on May 7, 1843 and the completion of the transcontinental railroad (by many Chinese laborers) on May 10, 1869. Congress later voted to expand it from a week long to a month long celebration.

[ Asian Pacific American Heritage Month - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ]

Try to do something quintessentially Asian or Pacific Islander this month!

Update: Local celebration for those in the DC area!

Or at least what the fire did, and it fried a bit of my hand too... 

Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters PlayStation2 Sony Computer Entertainment Everyone 10+ C

I gave it two tries. I had tried to play this earlier on the PSP but I found the controls seriously got in the way of the game play. The controls work a bit better on the PS2 version, but since they are just mapping the PSP controls, there isn't really any correction for the lack of some controls. I was playing this on my PS3 and it clearly shows that the quality suffers. It's not wide screen, it's not super hi def, it doesn't even have very good audio. Sure I should cut it some slack since it is a port of a portable game, but even after cutting it some slack I just found that I wasn't enjoying the game. I'd almost like them to make an animated movie about the game so I can just sit and watch the story, which is the best part anyway. And this isn't giving me a lot of confidence about the forthcoming "Secret Agent Clank" either...

Just got this in the mail yesterday:

THE MARYLAND HOUSE OF DELEGATES

Annapolis, Maryland 21401

April 8, 2008

Mr. David Kearns
Rockville, MD 20850

Dear Mr. Kearns:

Thank you for contacting me in support of the tech tax repeal. I am extremely pleased that we succeeded in removing what would have been an extremely harmful tax – for those in the industry, Montgomery County, and the state.

During the special session's final days, both Del. Sheila Hixson, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and I, as chairman of its Revenue Subcommittee, strongly objected to the adoption of the tech tax during conference committee deliberations. But we were outvoted because other members believed that this was a minor Montgomery County problem.

During session, IT professionals took the time to testify and meet with delegates and senators. They convinced legislators of the serious consequences that would result if the tax was allowed to stand. Once that was accomplished, members of the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees were faced with the task of crafting legislation that would allow us to replace the tax. We did this with a combination of cuts and a three-year tax surcharge on those earnings annually more than $1 million. It is not a perfect solution but is a good compromise.

Again, thank you for your support and interest. We could not have repealed this tax without your help. If you have any questions or need additional information, please feel free to call me or email me at kumar[at]kumarbarve[dot]com.

Sincerely,


Kumar P. Barve
Majority Leader

KPB/mfs

I removed my street address (and moved since that address so this was lovingly forwared by the post office), and the email formatting was mine (no need to spam Mr. Barve). I'm certainly pleased. I get paid as a consultant and this would have eaten into my earnings big time, enough that I would have had to think about moving out of the state, and having just moved back to Maryland would have made me sad. Now I can stay put for a while.

Or aren't on Kooshmoose's speed dial, or get all of your gaming news from my blog...