Wii week one

"Sinterklaas" brought us the Wii with 2 controllers, Wii Play, Wii
Sports and Mario Kart Wii (with wheels).
 
Very short impression:
- Mario Kart is cool, kids love it, we love it.
- Wii Play gets boring after the first run
- Wii Sports, and especially tennis is fun. Baseball is like the real
game, a boring sport to play and watch. Golf is ok, Bowling is nice for
one or two games, Boxing is nice too. - the Wii interface is friendly and easy to navigate.
- Miis are funny, and mine actually looks freaky close to my real me
- graphics.. my Dreamcast beats the shit out of the Wii graphics wise. I
have watched a few trailers on the nintendo channels and there's no game
which makes me go "wow"! OTOH, I haven't seen enough yet to really form
an opinion.

- game experience.. This is where the Wii shines. Especially with the
sports games, you are really "into" the game. Controlling Kart is pretty
traditional, although using the wheel makes the experience a lot more
fun. And using the wii-motes' movement sensitivity offers a nice plus to
the game as well.
 
Not going into it any further, for most people, Wii is old news. But for
me, it's the first game console after the DC. I love 'em both..

Tools for (non)productivity

I never got the "Getting Things Done" hype. Bought the book, read it, thought "okay, that's kind of logical" and never truly adapted the GTD way of working. I'm more of a "Getting Things the Fuck Done" person. Henry Rollins Style. Mike Atherton aka Sizemore knows all about it (the image is his design), and just like me he's fat and wears glasses (sorry Mike ;-)). Just get your shit done. That's it.

But the GTD hype does spin off some nice tools to make life a bit easier. Here's a top 3 of tools I dig:

Remember The Milk. Yes, rule nr1 of the GTD is to write shit down. Clear your mind for useful stuff. True, but this attitude is what ruined our educational system and now kids can no longer calculate. Because they used a calculator.. since then you could use your brains for something else. No, try to keep your brain active is more important, I think. Nonetheless, there is only so much you can remember and sometimes there are things you need to do but are not urgent enough to keep in your RAM. This is where RtM is good at. Keep your tasks available. It's online, and gadget freaks like me love the iPhone or mobile interface. Keep it with you all the time, everywhere.

Evernote, another online tool. Not so much to help with organizing your tasks, but you can dump everything in it. Scraps, snapshots etc. I mainly use it to store my registration codes of software and business card snapshots (taken with my iPhone and Griffin iClarifi case, of course). You can share your evernotes too. nice interface, slick use, although the iPhone app could use a speed bump. Evernote has replaced Yojimbo for me.

drop.io, like evernote, you can store everything (almost literally everything). But it goes further than this. People can add anything to your drop as well (if you allow them to). Better yet: drop.io announced that they'll open up a managed drop tool soon, which will make collaboration a breeze. I signed up for their alpha test period and hope to be able to start using drop.io in class or with co-workers and use another drop for photography, etc. It's private, secure, non-searchable by google. Great stuff.

This is my top 3. Do you have any other tools?

Of course this post should not go without mention to posterous.com. The easiest and best blogging system available.

DPRK aka North Korea

Ever since I visited Pyong-yang in 2001 I am following the news about this intruiging country. I've bought books, bookmarked websites and keep taps on everything north korea.

"The aquariums of Pyongyang" is a book by Chol-Hwan Kan and Pierre Rigoulot and tells the story of living inside a north korea prison camp. It's a terrifying view on subjects you never read about in the mainstream news.

Today I came across and article in the washington post about another escapee "Shin Dong-hyuk" who is currently living in South Korea. He also wrote a book "Escape to the Outside World" which I'm certainly going to buy. His mother was killed before his own eyes because she tried to plan an escape from Camp No. 14. Before the execution he was tortured with fire to make him confess that he was in that conspiracy to escape as well.

However, he finally escaped and got into china and finally was able to tell his story.

That is something I never understand about these stories. The escapes always seem so easy, so simple, it makes me wonder why there aren't much more escapees and maybe even if the stories told are even true. For instance:
"When they were collecting wood in a mountainous corner of the camp on Jan. 2, 2005, the two ran to an electrified barbed-wire fence. His friend got hung up and died in the fence; Shin stepped on his body and managed to get through."

Ok, so his friend got fried on the wire.. But he should still be under high voltage power.. Except if the wires shorted out and power was lost. How else could he walk over him without being electrocuted himself?

Anyway, I see no reason to not believe Shin's story, he has enough scars to show his history. But maybe, _maybe_ there's a force within DPRK that secretly works against the leadership and helps people escape to tell stories and thus bringing more discredit to the North Korean government, hoping that eventually it will collapse or be forced to step down.. The escapes just seem to stupid to not be directed somehow... Or maybe it's just plain luck and that's why there are just a few..