A Tale of Space, Espionage, and Cold War Antics

I stumbled across this article on Reddit today, and thought it was worth mentioning. It tells the tale of two young Italian brothers who had front seats for the glorious display of the early space race. The article's interesting, in that it gives a viewpoint on the whole thing that you might not have otherwise heard about. I found it quite interesting, and I hope you will, too.

I'm Kind Of In Love With Zooey Deschanel

And the duet she formed with M. Ward turned out to be one of my favorite new artists.

Nintendo's New Wii "MotionPlus" Sensor

Before the Wii's release, I was psyched to experience its capabilities. Nintendo claimed that we would finally be immersed in our games, using real-life movements to accomplish in-game tasks. It's a sort of "Holy Grail" of gaming, leading to a deeper level of involvement, rather than simple button pushing.

Yet I was skeptical from the start. Being slightly more technically inclined than the general population, I realized what kind of technology it would take for Nintendo to accomplish this task, and at the price point they were selling the Wii for, I knew the experience wasn't going to be everything Nintendo was hyping it up to be.

Once I tried the Wii, I realized that this skepticism was well-founded. Sure, the little "Mii" swung his arm back to take a swing in Wii Bowling in some sort of approximation of what I was doing with my actual arm, but it was never the true "be the character" experience that everyone was hoping for.

Nintendo realized this, and I suppose this is what they've been working on for the past two years while their system was enjoying its continued popularity, despite its shortcomings. The MotionPlus sensor claims to provide the true 1:1 movement experience that Nintendo was shooting for from the start. I haven't tried the new add-on piece yet, but there was a hands on article over at Gizmodo today that made me think about all of this.

To me, this is kind of a band-aid solution from Nintendo, and a bit of an admission that the original Wii-Mote wasn't the be-all, end-all game controller that they claimed it to be. I'm anxious to try this new add-on, but in reality, shouldn't this have been included in the original hardware? Perhaps the Wii would've been a better overall product if they had delayed its launch a couple more years to improve the hardware.

Budweiser Becoming a Belgian Brew?

Well, not really, but they are now owned by InBev, the same company that owns Stella Artois and a host of other beer brands. A sad day for American beer history, or a sad day for Belgian beer history? You be the judge.

New Job, New Home, New Posts

It's been a while since my last post (16 days by my count!), so I thought I'd fill in those who might read this but not talk to me on a regular basis.

My company has relocated me to Pennsylvania to work on a project out here. I'll be working in Danville, and living in Bloomsburg. The assistant engineer on the project prior to me submitted her resignation, so I was asked to take over. Fortunately, I was also given her apartment, which I'll add is mighty sweet.

I'll add more details about the new home and new job in a future post when I have more time and some worthwhile photos. Until then, I'm going to try to resume my usual couple posts a day now that I'm a little more settled into my position out here.