Now that I have made my mam­moth 5000 word Greece holi­day post, which has been wai­ting around for a month or so to type up, I can move onward to new blog posts in this new and impro­ved MrFofR​.com blog, hap­pily within Wordpress.

Impor­ting 5 years worth of posts from Blog­ger and then cate­go­ri­zing them was not a pretty task. Though I did notice a gra­dual des­cent into imma­tu­rity as I wor­ked back­wards. In cele­bra­tion of this achie­ve­ment, and brin­ging this blog inline with my other pro­jects, the site has chan­ged hosts and lives on its own domain as a sepa­rate out­let for unpro­fes­sio­nal blurbs, rants and what­not; www​.mrfofr​.com. The Mr. bit is new, I’d be pretty lucky to bag a four let­ter domain name.

After 5 years, my AMD Ath­lon 2700 XP with 1.5gb of RAM and LG 17″ screen was gro­wing weary. Time for an upgrade, and the new 24″ iMac model took my fancy — I grab­bed one from John Lewis in July and its now sit­ting pretty as the focus of my front room, coin­ci­ding with a big rea­rran­ge­ment of furniture.

Good timing really, con­si­de­ring that I had mul­ti­ple and simul­ta­neous hard drive fai­lu­res on my PC shortly the­reaf­ter as I tried to trans­fer 40gb or so to the mac.

Having been through the old posts, I noted that, in hind­sight, screenshots of my pro­jects are very help­ful for when the ori­gi­nal source mate­rial has since vapo­ri­zed into the mists of some inter­net pur­ga­tory. And on that note:

Here it is. My spangly new flat, com­plete with com­pu­ter desk and leather sofa… 

… TV, Wii and plant … 

… a table and another sofa thing …

… door and drawers …

… bedroom and dou­ble bed … 

… a spangly tiled bathroom …

… and chec­ke­red floor for chess …

… kitchen with mic­ro­wave, toas­ter and washing machine … 

… fridge, free­zer, cooker …

… and acres of work­top space …

… and finally my well cons­truc­ted desk!

Hoo­rah!

Oh the nos­tal­gia. Looks like Sonic is dri­ving today.

On Sep­tem­ber 15th Nin­tendo announ­ced the Euro­pean launch date and price, a short while after the Ame­ri­can and Japa­nese launch infor­ma­tion was unvei­led. And so, come Decem­ber 8th the Great Bri­tish Wii launch occu­rred amongst qui­vers of redu­ced stocks and pre-orders not being satis­fied. The big­gest pro­blems see­med to occur at Play​.com where their 10,000 orders were met with a paltry 700 units. Many peo­ple, friends inc­lu­ded, are now not recei­ving theirs until after Christ­mas. I also orde­red from Play but I was lucky enough to place my order within an hour of the price announ­ce­ment afo­re­men­tio­ned and Play​.com put­ting up the pro­duct for pre-order. Indeed, my Wii arri­ved by post on launch day, although I could not pick it up until Satur­day. This also coin­ci­ded with a Chi­nese exam and the last day of term, suf­fice to say my brain didn’t know what to do — torn bet­ween the trials of revi­sion and ner­ves and tri­bu­la­tions of a child’s Christ­mas eve syn­drome. I have now had the Wii for four days and feel I am ver­sed enough to give out my ove­rall impres­sions thus far. 

First impres­sions: this thing is tiny. Even the Wii-mote and nunchuck are decep­ti­vely small. They also feel sur­pri­singly sturdy and there is a defi­nite air of qua­lity about their pro­duc­tion. Hol­ding the device is com­for­ta­ble and enjo­ya­ble, poin­ting is inc­re­dibly easy and as pre­cise as I had expec­ted, even after rea­ding some reports that this was not the case. The inner spea­ker is also exce­llent, des­pite qua­rrels about its qua­lity, I just love hea­ring the sound of hit­ting a ten­nis ball or the thwack as I hit the ball out of the park. Tur­ning on, the Wii-mote was sync’d correctly and it wor­ked right out of the box, as did the auto­ma­tic CD feed. The blue light only comes on when input­ting a disc or tur­ning the Wii on; I’m not sure if this is meant to be the case, I’m not bothered. 

I could be a hand model

Con­nec­ting the Wii online pro­ved a sig­ni­fi­cant hassle. No Ether­net port lead me to the setup of my old wire­less rou­ter which I am not currently using in my halls of resi­dence. This itself came with hass­les which I wont go into, but suf­fice to say it took more than an hour to get this PC back up and run­ning. In attempts the­reaf­ter to con­nect the Wii it con­nec­ted smoothly and down­loa­ded the Wii upda­tes. Howe­ver when it came to down­loa­ding the license agree­ment for the Shop chan­nel, etc. I recei­ved the Wii error code: 220602, asso­cia­ted with DNS pro­pa­ga­tion issues. Rea­ding dis­cus­sions online sug­ges­ted a cou­ple of solu­tions, my Wii is already next to the rou­ter, on chan­nel 11 and had of course been pre­viously con­nec­ted. Firstly I tried remo­ving encryp­tion from my con­nec­tion, this did not resolve the pro­blem. Even­tually the pro­blem was fixed by some quirky DNS switching solu­tion: ope­ning the manual con­fi­gu­ra­tion of DNS addres­ses for my net con­nec­tion I swap­ped the first DNS around with my second (find these out via run CMD > ipconfig/all). This wor­ked and once again I was a happy bunny.

With my order I of course recei­ved Wii Sports and I also purcha­sed Zelda: Twi­light Prin­cess. To be honest, I haven’t pla­yed Zelda too much — I have pic­ked up the dog, and fired the eagle at the mon­key before catching two fish for the cat to steal but I am still rela­ti­vely young to the game. My 7 hours cloc­ked up thus far (total play time is shown on the Wii mes­sage board along side daily achie­ve­ments which are inte­res­ting to look back on) have mainly been spent pla­ying Wii Sports. I took first to the Ten­nis, Golf and Bow­ling which became ins­tant favou­ri­tes, now I have prac­ti­ced a little more with Boxing and Base­ball I am also enjo­ying these. My ten­nis rating is currently sit­ting pretty at 940, sub-pro whilst my top bow­ling score is 181. My Fit­ness age is 28 and I have yet to get that sec­ret 91 pin ins­tant strike. 

My expec­ta­tions for the pro­duct were excep­tio­nally high due to hype and all the videos on You­Tube, etc. I was posi­tive nothing could live up to them, yet having pla­yed for more than 7 hours it most defi­ni­tely has. Now all I need is a second con­tro­ller, some Wii shop cre­dit and another mul­ti­pla­yer game or two; it’s going to be hard wai­ting for Mario, Metroid, Trauma Cen­tre and Smash Brothers. Oh how it all costs money and we Bri­tish are scre­wed by our 17.5% VAT.

To end this, here’s a pic­ture of Sonic enjo­ying this new toy: