Does anyone know of a service that will send you an email when a movie opens in your area? Or, failing that, where I could find a web service or other API that returns movie listing?

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 28 December 2006 at 10:13 PM

As I do every year, I thought I'd go ahead and document the gifts my grandmother gave me after "shopping in [her] closets" this year. As an improvement over previous years, I'm offering photos. Clicking the gift's name should take you to a photo.

• Throw Pillow -- all the male cousins got throw pillows this year.
• Holiday Package of Double Mint Chewing Gum
• Tie and Desktop Organizer -- These two seemingly unrelated gifts were wrapped up together, so they're pictured together.
• Package of Six Low Rise Sport Briefs -- All the male members of my extended family got these. My grandmother claims not to have realized that they were low rise. She does admit to not remembering that she had already bought some under garments for the Christmas piles, so many of us got this item and the next one in the list.
• Christmas Boxers
• Brookstone Calculator -- It "calculates in colors." This means that the screen changes colors with each button press.
• Cardinals Hooded Sweatshirt
• Guy Laroche Cashmere Scarf -- Unfortunately with the security tag still attached, so I had to spend some time with a pair of linesmens pliers crushing the tag apart.
• Shower Radio
• Cutter & Buck Wine Carrier -- When I first opened this, I was more than a little confused, as I took it to be some kind of odd-shaped purse.

Fortunately, this wasn't my full Christmas haul, just the wacky gifts.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 25 December 2006 at 5:13 PM

Five years from now when "next generation game systems" no longer means the Wii, the 360, or the PS3, we'll look back at the current crop of systems and realize how wrong we all were back in 2006. Bloggers, pundits, and reporters have written miles of copy about the big three home systems, but the real winner of this generation won't be any of those systems. It will be the Nintendo DS.

While the rest of the world salivates over HD graphics, it will be the easy to produce games for the DS that will be the big winner. There are a couple of reasons why this is the case.

First and foremost is simple economics. While the high-res graphics so loved by fans of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 look great, they are expensive to produce. Consequently, development costs for those systems remains high. I've seen estimates that place development costs for a bespoke PS3 or 360 game in the tens of millions of dollars range. Contrast that to a DS game, whose development costs are an order of magnitude less. Pair that with a DS install base of 7 million units in the US and anothe 7 million units in Japan, compared to, for example, 5m 360s in the US and less than 1m in Japan and you have the beginnings of a business plan. What this means is increased development of games for the DS platform. And if you follow the premise that games sell systems, things look even better for the DS.

The second half of the economic argument is system price. With the lite retailing for $129, it is nearly half the price of the cheapest home system (the Wii), which is itself less than half the price of a top-end home system (the PS3). I wonder which one Mom and Dad will want to Johnny this Christmas? Anecdotally, on he bulletin board at work I've seen a number of people try (and fail) to move PS3s, but I've seen even more people searching for a DS for their son, daughter, neice or nephew. This is especially interesting because the DS isn't really even in short supply. There are a few spot shortages, apparently, but amazon has the system in stock, for example. So it seems that DS demand is particularly strong.

The third reason why the DS is going to take this race is Japan. The DS dominates the handheld market there, and it is already attracting major first-run titles. (See: Dragon Quest.) The Japanese can't kill a major platform (see: Xbox), but to take the top crown you need to at least have the support of the Japanese development community that still drives video games. And things are looking good for the DS there.

And the last reason the DS will reign supreme: Nintendo. The guys at Nintendo thought all of this up five years ago. This is their business plan. Plus, Nintendo can ride their franchises to success if they have to. Ninendo as a development house is a very important aspect that shouldn't be overlooked.

Everyone is tickled about Nintendo's innovative platforms, but the innovation is for the consumer. The attraction to developers will be the cheaper development costs. There is less risk in developing for Nintendo, because you have to spend much less, and consequently sell far fewer games, to turn a profit. And as of right now, the Nintendo platform to develop for is the DS. It has an order of magnitude more users than the Wii, and they've all been trained on the stylus.

A year from now, will I be writing something similar about the Wii? It's possible. The Wii has the same economic underpinnings as the DS, so much of what I've written here applies to the Wii as well. There are a lot of ways this could play out, but I just don't see the Wii overcoming the DS's lead time in the market advantage.

But for me, the Wii is the only dark horse in this race. MS and Sony have decided to focus on a segment of the gaming population that embraces elitism and barriers to entry. The end result of more and more complicated games and online communities that shun newbies is an ever shrinking slice of the pie. Still sizable and profitable, perhaps, but no longer the dominant players.

Perhaps this is old hat to all of you. But it seems like the untold story on the gaem blogs I read. All the news items are on the big three, but then the sales numbers are posted and the DS sells more units than anything else. I have some theories for why this is the case, but this post is already long enough.

Finally, a few disclosures so you can understand my perspctive on this. I am a Nintendo fanboy. I like what they're doing for games and wouldn't own a system but for their innovations. I own both a DS and a Wii and have no intention of ever buying a 360 or PS3. Of the last generation systems, I owned a GameCube, but was far removed from the launch window when I bought it. Prior to the GameCube, the last systems I owned were an NES and (briefly) a Sega Genesis.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 14 December 2006 at 8:08 PM

It turns out the people can get hurt playing videogames on consoles other than the Wii. The Detroit Free-Press is reporting that Tigers pitcher Joel Zumaya missed three games during the ALCS this past year because of forearm inflammation caused by playing the PS2 game "Guitar Hero." The Tigers asked Zumaya to stop playing "Guitar Hero," which he did. He then recovered enough to pitch in the World Series. Not that it mattered, since the Cardinals destroyed Detroit.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 14 December 2006 at 2:40 PM

Warning: Attempts to use a Wii within site of a lighted Christmas tree will be a frustrating experience.

Or at least, that was my experience.

Comments: 3 Posted by david on 12 December 2006 at 10:47 AM

The most popular Wii game at the party this weekend seemed to be Wii Sports. Only the baseball sub-game seemed not to generate much interest. Most people seemed to enjoy Excite Truck as well. Rayman didn't have many of the mini-games unlocked, and most were unimpressed with the options available. (Why do party games require you to play the single player mode to unlock the games? It kills what otherwise might have been a popular game.) No one was particularly impressed with Red Steel and Zelda, being a single-player game, wasn't tried.

All things considered, these results don't exactly surprise me. Zelda remains my top Wii game. Excite Truck seems to be the dark horse game of this platform. I don't think anyone was expecting it to be as much fun as it turned out to be. Wii Sports effectively and conclusively persuades new users how much fun the Wii's interface can be. For that reason, Wii Play, a companion piece to Wii Sports, is near the top of my '07 games list.

Comments: 5 Posted by david on 11 December 2006 at 12:11 PM

I'm co-hosting a Wii party tonight. If you're interested and in the St. Louis area, email me for details.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 9 December 2006 at 3:23 PM

Exchanges like the following are why N'Gai Croal is one of the gaming reporters that you should be following. Where most reporters seem content to regurgitate what the console manufacturers are telling them, N'Gai actually does some independent analysis. Anyway, here's a snippet of his interview with Larry Probst, the CEO of EA Games. N'Gai's comments are in bold while Larry's are in regular text.

PS3 is supply constrained and will likely remain so until early 2008. 360 demand is--

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Early 2008?

You don't think so?

I don't think they'll be supply constrained that long. You think all through 2007 they'll be supply constrained?

Well, looking back to the PS2 launch, Sony shipped a million units for the Japanese debut, most of which sold in the first 48 hours. But for the Japanese launch of PS3, they only shipped around 80,000 units, more than ten times fewer machines. So they're nowhere near meeting demand in Japan. In North America, Sony shipped just under 500,000 units for the PS2 launch, but only 200,000 units for the PS3 launch. So they don't have enough supply to meet demand here. Sony launched in Asia with less than 20,000 units. And early next year, they have to start stockpiling units for the European launch in March 2007--assuming that date doesn't slip. So we're looking at four territories where supply probably won't meet demand, and by the time Sony starts to catch up, it'll be holiday 2007, where the combination of big AAA games and gift-giving will increase demand even more.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 7 December 2006 at 8:35 AM

I think you have to pay for TimesSelect to see it, but The Principles of Uncertainty, Maira Kalman's blog-like art project for the NY Times, is ridiculously cool. Check it out if you can. If you can't, you should at least take the time to page through her personal site. If you find the right page on her site, you'll discover that, along with all of her awesome paintings, she has also done design for MoMA. Among her creations are a series of Sky Umbrellas, one of which I owned until a huge rainstorm with powerful winds destroyed it. Also, her Strunk & White illustrations are great. I'm especially fond of the one labelled "His first thought on getting out of bed — if he had any thought at all — was to get back in again" on this page.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 6 December 2006 at 10:06 PM

DSC02109
Originally uploaded by hiddeninput.

I've started and inadvertently discarded a post about my recent trip to Portland, Oregon at least half a dozen times now. I have no idea why, and it certainly isn't an indication of how much I enjoyed the trip. Because I enjoyed the trip considerably and would recommend Portland as a vacation destination.

Portland is a decent vacation destination. It reminded me of San Francisco. It just seems to offer similar things to SF: urban activities, great hiking, awesome scenery. There's even nearby wine country. Of course, it's not as expensive as SF, which is a big plus. We -- I traveled to Portland with my parents -- spent time doing all those things. The highlight for me was the day we drove along the Columbia River toward Mount Hood and then followed Hood River up even closer to the mountain. You don't find scenery like that in Missouri. I also enjoyed visiting the wineries in the Willamette valley. It's fun to taste wines at a winery and then see those same wines for sale when you return home.

The photo I've included here was taken on the Oregon coast. If you'd like to see more photos, here are the best of the lot. If you want to see all the photos that I took in Oregon, follow the links in the description of that set.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 6 December 2006 at 6:34 PM

A number of people, myself included, had noticed that the new design scrolled very slowly. This was apparently related to having a fixed background image. I removed the fixed portion of the background image and beefed up the border a bit. It looks good in firefox, but less so in IE7. And I haven't seen it in IE 6 yet. I'll deal with IE later. Let me know if the page still scrolls slowly.

Comments: 1 Posted by david on 5 December 2006 at 6:50 PM

Last night was a bit chilly, but electrical service (and heat) have been restored to apartment 6. It's not quite time to shed the extra layers I've been wearing, but it is nice to have Zelda back.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 3 December 2006 at 3:02 PM

I'm pretty sure that Fake Steve Jobs has one of the funniest blogs I've read in the past year or so. Here's the link. "Meg Whitman to appear on TLC's 'What Not to Wear'" and "Come together" are two particularly good posts from the front page.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 1 December 2006 at 1:17 PM