Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Labels

As those of you who use message-style RSS/Atom readers have probably already guessed, I just finished tagging (or, in Blogger's terms, labeling) all of my posts from the past two years on this and my other blog. Please see this related post there for more details. I just made the transition to blogger's new layouts, which allow for labels, graphical layout editing, and a few other nice features like comment feeds. It was interesting going through my old posts and recognizing common and/or significant themes to which I could apply a label. There ended up being quite a few labels: I've been messing with the layout and contents of my navigation bar on the side. The labels take up quite a bit of space. I wish there were a way to collapse them like the archive links: perhaps it's possible to make them collapsible if I edit the template.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Skiing Photos

I went skiing on Saturday with Heather, Reba, and Matt. Here are some photos.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Miis

There are Miis wandering all over my Mii Plaza:
Miis are little characters that you can play as in certain games, like Wii Sports or Wii Play. Wanna beat the crap out of Jesus as Mr. T in a boxing match? Well, now you can.

Some are of my own design, others are from the Weekly Mii, or people I've messaged directly; others were found wandering in the Mii Parade. Miis can get on other peoples' Mii Parade if they are set to Travel. I'm assuming whenever two Wiis communicate, they swap traveling Miis.




Here's a funny-looking group of Miis:

JC hangin' out with Toasty, Caleb, and Casey
My renditions of Link and Mario
Storm Trooper, Chewbacca, Dennis Rodman, Kim Jong Il, Jake Tucker, Pocahontas The two in the upper right are mine...
More celebrity sightings: Michael Jackson x2, Mr. T, Bono, Seinfeld, Jack Black, Cosby

Friday, January 12, 2007

Mii

Will you be my friend?

Okay, so Nintendo doesn't want to be another place on the Internet where child molesters find kids. Any sufficiently popular Internet forum has this potential problem, but the fact that Nintendo is somewhat geared toward a younger audience means that they feel the need to be proactive. The Wii has online connectivity, and you can send e-mail, etc., so what do they do to cover their derrieres? They allow communication over the Internet, but they won't let you establish contact with anyone without BOTH of you entering the other's 16-digit numeric code into their Wii address book, essentially guaranteeing that you already have contact through some other means.

It's the most inconvenient whitelist scheme imaginable.

I'm not exactly sure how they plan on organizing multiplayer matches, but it doesn't look like anything near as slick as Xbox Live is even remotely possible, especially if they want to try to prevent people from communicating with one another.

It's possible to establish communication with an e-mail address, but you have to initiate contact by adding the e-mail address to your Wii's address book before anything happens.

Anyway, the purpose of this post, other than to complain, is so that anyone who wants to add me as a contact so we can exchange messages and Miis (and possibly play multiplayer games against each other over the Internet--not sure exactly how this is going to work) can ensure that I add them as a contact by posting a comment here with their Wii code. Thus far, the only person I have successfully communicated with is the guy who sends me the Weekly Mii.

So, without further ado, here is my Wii Friend Code: 3274-2528-9665-7133

Step 1: Add this code to your address book
Step 2: Post a comment here so that I can add you to my adderess book
Step 3: We can send each other Miis and messages.

No child molesters, please.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

I Want One

Just announced, the new convergence über-device: iPhone.

Overshare

There two half-inch in diameter blisters on the back of each of my heels. One is actually oblonged into a three-quarter-inch oval. I just pulled the loose skin off of two of them tonight so they wouldn't get any bigger, and so they would have a chance to heal up before I go dancing again.

I got new shoes before Christmas. They were perfect for dancing: rubber on the back of the heel for traction and leather everywhere else. The toe and back sections were shiny leather, while the middle, where your foot bends, was soft, which means you don't need to break them in for them to be comfortable dancing in. It took me a few times to be used to their slickness in comparison to my previous shoes, which were all rubber on the bottom, but I was getting the hang of it, and they were a lot of fun. The problem was, now that I had broken them in, they were too big. I had to tighten the laces all the way, so that the tongue was completely covered, and still they were loose. They were starting to give me blisters. So, I returned them, or rather I exchanged them for the same shoe, but a half-size smaller. These ones I hadn't bought initially because they pinched my toes a little bit, but I was convinced that that was only temporary, and that they would adapt to my feet like the bigger ones had, only these would be the right size for my feet, and actually fit once they had been broken in.

I still think I'm right about the shoes, it's just that should have broken them in a bit more gently. Gently on my feet, that is. I shouldn't have worn them for a two nights of intense dancing, the second of which was in a very crowded, very hot and sweaty ballroom. I had bought shoe goo for my previous, rubber-soled shoes. Why hadn't I worn those after being slightly blistered on Saturday night? In stead, I wore my brand spanking new shoes, the heel of which was so stiff, that every time I stepped on my toes, it would push the skin on the back sides of my heel down, and every time I stepped on my heel, it would push the skin up.

Eventually, I gave in and switched to my Sketchers, which felt like pillows compared to what I had just put myself through. I have a pretty high tolerance for nagging pain. I can pretty much tell it to go away, like hunger. It's a skill I honed running for soccer, track, and cross country, but sometimes when your body is yelling at you that you're abusing it, you should listen and stop doing the stupid thing that you're doing to it.

Anyway, tonight, I peeled off the soggy skin that was covering the gaping holes in my flesh, and sprayed on some liquid bandage. That was also intensely painful, but it was short, and hopefully this time the suffering will be worth while.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Conference 2006 Pictures and Audio

Here you go: I particularly liked the Bible studies in Philippians 2. That's all for now.