Nothing much to say about the game other than if you feel like kicking back and running a few laps around a circuit on a lawn mower or scooter bikes, this is the Wii game to get. I'd like to talk about using the plastic shell that came with the game.

It surprised me.

After the horrible horrible experience with Ridge Racer on the PS3 I was really worried about how terrible the control would be, but.. it really surprised me. From the get go, I started the game, selected the beginner level and I was off, no calibration, no sensitivity tweaking, nothing! And I was driving with a plastic in my hands. And I was surprised how well it worked.

Nothing beats the exact, responsiveness of an actual joystick. But so far (haven't left 50cc yet) even when racing online, I haven't had the feeling that the wheel is punishing me for using it.

Oh.. here's a video for all of you to see how well the wheel works.

For all of you wondering how I did the video recording to be synchronized? I had my video camera focusing on the wheel and the Pinnacle Video Transfer unit hooked to the TV. I started the recording on both ends then I yelled 1,2,3, MARK! and made a circuit selection at the same time, so that became the sync point for the video. Of course there's bound to be some margin of error since it's such a crude way of doing it.

As to how I overlaid the videos? The process is a bit complicated to be repeated here but the tools used were. AVISynth, FFMPEG and VirtualDub. I'm gonna need some sort of a REAL video editor if I'm gonna do complex stuff like this again. :P

On a side note, after seeing me play without the shell once. WZ now will hold remote controls horizontally between his hands occasionally. ;)

ps. Why did I use YouTube instead of Soapbox? Cause I felt this video needed public exposure. But for comparison's sake, here's the SAME video uploaded to Soapbox.

Main difference here is that each service uses different levels of compression. With the one using a higher level of compression able to deliver the video quicker but suffers with image quality with the other having the reverse trade offs.

About a little more than half a year ago, WZ was learning how to climb down safely from the bed.

And now finally at 1 year 3.5 months he is able to climb back UP the bed, note how he climbs up when I stop him from standing on the bed on the floor.

After getting my Minolta 50mm lens, the shots I have been getting just feel so different. They look more colorful and bright.

The soft focus (bokeh) effect that the lens produces gives the pictures the professional look.

One thing that I'll always remember is that my skill hasn't improved or anything. It's just the lens, so one very important thing to remember with an SLR camera is that it's very important to get a lens that suits the purpose you use the camera for.

And one more thing is that there's no such thing as a BEST lens, I can see a lot of people who keep asking in the forums for the BEST LENS to get. But remember, there is NO SUCH THING as the BEST LENS!! It really depends on what kind of picture YOU want to get.

But I can't wait till the day WZ

Is Luigi To My Mario,
Is Dom To My Marcus,
Is The Arbiter To My Master Chief,
Is The P2 To My P1.

The Internet is a great resource, when you hit a brick wall when coding you can just post a question up on the various forums and hopefully someone will answer your queries.

But one thing to remember when posting your queries!!

NEVER REVEAL PRODUCTION SERVER ADDRESSES AND PASSWORDS!!

For example, let's say you need to call a web service which is sitting on an internet accesible server. If you need help asking about how to call the service in the language and how to fit something on the SOAP headers. When posting a query in the forums, do not use the REAL IP ADDRESS, and AUTHENTICATION DETAILS!

One of the partners we were working with did such a mistake and god was there a party (a bad party!) of hurt that went to them after that!