Long time, no post!

OK. I know what you're all thinking: "He still exists?" Yes, and I promise all of my eager readers(hey, that sort of rhymes!) that one of these days I'll get back to fairly regular posting. In the meantime, however, this is just a quick update, upon which I'll expand in(hopefully) the very near future.

First, I'd like to welcome any Facebook readers, who are probably wondering what I'm talking about by this point. Let me explain: this is my blog, and I've told Facebook to import any new entries as they are made. Older entries, for anyone who's interested in reading some facile political thoughts and a few other bits of randomness, can be found at lifeuniverseanddaniel.blogspot.com.

For the rest of this post, I will refrain from discussing the current political situation, as I'm sure pretty much everyone is already about as saturated with it as they can take. I'll save my thoughts for after the election, which is only 2 days from now!

But anyway, I'd like to talk for a while about food. Specifically, the uniquely American habit of eating as much of it as we can possibly hold without becoming seriously ill, and perhaps a bit more. I must confess that I am not entirely immune to this myself. Yesterday, my family and I went, as we do every year, to Red Lobster's endless shrimp promotional event. Sounds harmless enough, shrimp's a light food, you don't have to eat any more than you want, etc., right? WRONG.

There is some deeply rooted American psychological imperative which makes us feel that when we pay for an essentially unlimited amount of food, we absolutely have to eat every bite we can possibly hold, whether or not we really want it. Even your humble blogger is not immune to this effect. I ate far more than was necessary, and ended up feeling miserable for most of the visit to Barnes and Noble afterward. But I digress...

Another exciting bit of news is the release of Nintendo's new portable, the Nintendo DSi. As of about 11 hours ago(thanks to the difference in time zones), it is available in Japan. A U.S. release is expected to be delayed until after April of next year due to the continued popularity of Nintendo's current DS portable. I must admit I'm drooling over this new incarnation, which is a major upgrade from my current DS Lite system. The DSi features a pair of cameras, one facing toward the user and one facing out. It also has built-in web browsing and music playing capabilities, both of which I already have, thanks to the marvels of homebrew software, but the official versions will of course be more polished and functional. The DSi also has a Shop function similar to that of the Wii, where shoppers buy points and use them to purchase and download items directly to the DSi.

There are a lot more major upgrades, but I won't waste any more of your(or my) time detailing them. For anyone interested, there is a good feature overview video here. It's in Japanese, and thus is a bit uninformative on the actual hard data, but the video is enough to make any portable gaming people drool;-)

Did I say this would be a short post? Oh, well. I'll stop while I'm ahead. Oh, wait, I should have stopped about a paragraph and a half ago. It's a good thing I didn't get into politics as well...

OK, well, bye for now!

Daniel G.

News Flash!

Well, for anyone who doesn't know(or care), John McCain has chosen Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate in his bid for the presidency. This choice pretty much came from nowhere, and is being hailed by many as one of the most brilliant political moves in history. While I wouldn't necessarily go that far, I do agree that McCain made the best choice he could have possibly made in Sarah Palin. One reason for this is that she appeals to so many different classes of voters: women, union members, career military people, those conservative Christians still unsure of McCain, environmentalists, etc.

This choice has the potential to give John McCain the boost he needs to break the stalemate that has formed in McCain's race with Barack Obama.

As an aside, another benefit of the timing and surprise of this choice is that it goes a very long way toward canceling out Obama's boost from his landmark, if logically inconsistent, acceptance speech last night.

Well, that's all for now... just had to give a quick update there;-)

Bye!

Daniel

Politics and more...

Well, it's presidential election time again, and I must say that this is one of the most complicated and important elections I have studied or experienced. Right now, I am sitting on my couch watching the Democratic National Convention. It is, perhaps unfortunately, one of the funniest and fluffiest things I have seen in quite a while. All I am hearing is continual rehashing of a few basic talking points over and over again, often word-for-word. I don't know about my readers, but personally, I expect more from what should be a serious presentation of the candidates. To be honest, I couldn't care less about the childhoods of Barack Obama or Joe Biden. I care about how well they will be able to lead this country in the tough times ahead.

I predict that I will feel the same way about the Republican National Convention, but I'll hold my comments until I have seen it.

So which candidate is better suited to lead this country? This depends upon each voter's personal priorities. We each want our leaders to lead in our favored direction, and it is each candidate's challenge to make more people believe that they will indeed move in that direction, whether they will or not. This is the foundation of the politician's art.


Enough about politics for now. I will be starting school next week, so this week is a very hectic one as I attempt to accomplish all of the tasks I intended to do this summer but never actually completed. Tomorrow is an especially busy day as I will be having one friend over in the morning, and going in the evening to visit another.

I am more nervous about this school year than about any I have been through so far. I have been told that this will be my most difficult year. I have many, many activities outside the home, as well as a very intensive set of studies at home. This year, I am taking English Literature, and if what I have read so far(for example, Bede's Ecclesiastical History Of The English People) is any indication, it will be a fairly difficult study. I am also looking forward(or not) to Pre-Calculus.

Well, tonight's convention speech-making is over and it is time for me to go to bed. Goodbye, all!

Daniel

Finally, A New Post!

Wow. I have been busy lately. I mean very busy. The kind of busy where I don't have time to even touch the keyboard, let alone post here.

Okay, so that was a lame excuse. But still, I have been busy.

Probably the biggest change since my last post is that i finally ordered and received a flash cart for my Nintendo DS. Since then, I have been spending every waking hour(sell, not really, but close) finding and tinkering with more cool homebrew software. There is some amazing stuff out there, from web browsers to IRC clients to games to email clients to eBook readers to emulators to iPod simulators to video players to AIM clients to just about anything else. The sheer amount of stuff out there is just amazing. And the best part is that the DS is still a current-generation system, so the development scene is incredibly active.

Just because I feel like it, I will reveal my favorite piece of DS homebrew software: DSOrganize. Billed as an application that should have come stock with a DS, this handy-dandy organizer program has loads of useful features, such as a file browser, calendar, to do list and other convenient stuff. The best parts of DSOrganize are its online components. Most noticeably, there is a web browser, complete with support for images, form fields, downloads and much more(although it doesn't have Java support, which limits it greatly). DSOrganize also features an IRC(Internet Relay Chat) client, which works perfectly and supports all standard IRC features, including file transfers. Another, less noticeable, online app is DSOrganize's Homebrew Database function. Basically, this program links to an online database of DS homebrew and allows the user to download any of around a hundred applications, games, and commercial demos at the touch of a button. While somewhat unusual, this feature is extremely useful, allowing for an easy look at some of the latest software.

I have recently discovered another web browser more to my liking, called Bunjalloo, but I still use DSOrganize almost every day.

Alright, enough about my DS. I'm sure any readers I may concievably have are growing somewhat bored with this train of thought, so I'll give a nice little shock: I am having my wisdom teeth taken out the day after tomorrow. Wish me luck! Farewell!

Back By Popular Demand!

Well, since many rather, ah, persistent fans have been asking me to write another fun-filled, entertaining entry, I have decided to bow to their wishes.

In my last entry, I failed to address the issue of my major, life-altering decision(or not) of whether or not I should buy a flash cart for my Nintendo DS Lite. Well, at last, after careful soul-searching and cost-benefit analysis, I have decided..................

Well, actually, I thought I had decided not to purchase a flash cart. But, over the past few days, I have been reevaluating, and right now I am leaning more toward actually spending the 50 or 60 bucks to buy one. This is partially due to the fact that I have just obtained a rather lucrative summer job, and have the extra resources to accommodate this otherwise unnecessary wish.

Anyway... after that long and drawn-out paragraph, which included many words, the meanings of some of which even I am not entirely sure about(well, actually, I am, but still...), let's move to a lighter topic: I am currently working on an online multiplayer sci-fi RPG with a friend, which will hopefully be at its first release stage within a few weeks. I will probably give more details about it in a future post, but for now, it will suffice to say it is the most enjoyable project on which I have ever worked.

Oh, yes, almost forgot to include a promotional piece: My Website now features a slicker interface and even more promises of features to come in the near future;-)

Bye!

Yet again I take keyboard in hand...

What with school ending, I haven't had much of a chance to update this, but here I am with a (possibly) brief entry. I only have 1 more day of school, and it will only be about an hour long, as I have completed the vast majority of my various subjects.

I have finally updated my website to look much more colorful and nice in general, and although it is in its most basic form right now, I hope to have a nice, fully-featured site within a month or so. (in case anyone is too lazy to look in my profile info, here is a link to my site)

I have recently been doing some experimentation with magnets. One of the stranger things I have discovered is that when I hold a ridiculously strong neodymium-iron-boron magnet close to (or touching) my digital alarm clock, the magnet begins to vibrate noticeably. The electronics in the alarm clock must be creating a weak electromagnetic field, which is causing the strong magnet to vibrate. I will be doing some more experimentation to find out more about this, because I have a lot of time on my hands and don't have anything better to do;-)

Goodbye 'til next time!

Veritable Gobs Of Media!!!

Well, a lot has happened since my last (and first) post. I recently celebrated my birthday and recieved a grand total of 3 DVDs and 4 CDs, among them the 2-disc special edition of the original National Treasure. In addition to this, I went to see The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. But wait, the media saturation my brain has recieved doesn't stop there! National Treasure: Book of Secrets came out on DVD on Tuesday, so of course I recieved the 2-disc special edition of that as well. I haven't gone into great detail, but I'm sure all of my adoring fans can get a pretty good idea of how things have been.

Also, I have been wrestling with a somewhat difficult decision which will greatly impact my life (or not). I am speaking, of course, of whether or not I should purchase a flash cart for my Nintendo DS Lite, and if so, which flash cart. I have been examining the many homebrew DS sites, and I have essentially decided to get a SLOT-2 flash cart. Now my only difficulty lies in finding a reliable retailer. Amazon.com sells SLOT-1 cards, and if I have to I will just buy one of these, but I was hoping for a Supercard CF because of its built-in 32MB RAM expansion. Some of the more powerful homebrew games and applications use this, such as the amazing QuakeIIDS, as well as DSLinux.

Well, my download of the National Treasure 2 soundtrack (from AmazonMP3) just finished, so I had better go. Farewell until next time!

Hello world!

Well, this is the first of what I hope will be a long line of posts detailing my own random thoughts, happenings, and other parts of my life. I don't have much time right now, so this first post will be relatively short. Essentially, I am simply saying hello. Hopefully, I will have a chance to write more soon. Please visit my website here for more about me, although there currently isn't much going on there(a situation I hope to change in the very near future). Goodbye!