First, a self-pat on the back. I just reached 50,000 words about 5 minutes ago. Submitted my story in scrambled form to the official NaNoWriMo word counting page and passed! Bwahaha. At the last possible moment, I decided to do something crazy and sign up to write a novel in 30 days. Now, 27 days later, I have 50,000 words in my word processor and I'm... Not even halfway through with my storyline idea. I don't know if that's good or bad. Probably good. I have a huge world I've concocted over the last several months. Now that I'm finished, I can rest and actually play a game on my brand new TV.

Second, a pat on the back to my heroes at Nintendo. Forbes is reporting that Nintendo says they have SOLD 600,000 Wii units and they can't keep them stocked. Six hundred thousand units and they're still sold out. Let's compare this to the PlayStation 3, which was promised to be released at 400,000 units in North America, but afterwards, independent studies show that there was, in fact, only around 250,000 units sold.

To all you Sony fanboys who wanted to tout the PS3 as the fastest selling system: Eat it! Sony can't make any PS3s because of all the crap they're shoving on you, and here's Nintendo giving us everything we wanted in a gaming system. Nintendo's making them as fast as they can, and they still can't meet demand.

Sony, meet Nintendo... Your new competition you enjoyed laughing at.

I'm slowly settling into using my new TV. It runs at 1366x768, so, sadly, it's not as big as my 1920x1200 laptop monitor, but it's good enough. I needed a TV, it has a tuner, 2 component, S-Video/Composite combination, 1 DVI (pleasant surprise when I brought it home), 1 HDMI and 1 VGA.

1 component is currently being used with the Xbox and PlayStation 2. You really can't see a major difference from S-Video to Component, but Composite to Component is definitely an upgrade. The S-Video connection is being used with the SNES and GameCube. The NES and Pong will use the coaxial tuner, probably. The NES can use Composite, though, but that's tied up with S-Video. The second set of Component connectors is reserved for the Wii, which will arrive Wednesday.

One thing I've always had trouble with is crowding people around my laptop to watch a movie. My room is relatively small, so we can't all literally gather around the laptop. You can see the screen, but it's very angle sensitive (more so than a TV) and it gets difficult. Well, I finally broke down and ordered a DVI cable from Radio Shack. It was on sale for 23 bucks. 9 foot cable, dual-link. Woohoo! I just bought that today, so it should be here sometime next week. That's fine, I'm in no hurry.

While we were in town to see Casino Royale, I stopped by the Radio Shack store and picked up a cable that changes a 3mm stereo headphone jack to two RCA plugs. It was only 6 feet long, so I bought a 20 foot extension cable. (Geez, 20 feet... But that was the smallest they had and it was cheap.) So now the computer will actually use the TV as a speaker when it's using the TV as a second monitor. I tried it out today, but it didn't work... I'm not too happy about it, but I think it's not working because there's no video signal. When there's no video signal, it says there's no input and the screen is blank. So I'm thinking it just didn't activate the audio because there's no video. I'll get to check it when the DVI cable comes...

Actually... Maybe I can fake it out. I'll use Xbox video and the laptop audio! Hold on... (Aren't you excited? You're witnessing a real time development as you're reading!)

Success! My theory was correct. I have PlayStation video running on the TV with laptop audio playing through the speakers. Ahh, sweet victory. How's this for set up: I'm running laptop music through the TV, which is playing the music out loud. I have RCA audio cables running from the TV to my desktop computer, to which I have my headphones plugged in and am listening to the music there, too. This stuff is so fun. Forget computer repair, I just need to work in an audio/video department. I don't actually make the audio or video, but I set everything up so people can hear it!

Anyway... Can you tell I'm killing time for Wednesday?

So we went to see Casino Royale yesterday with some friends. It was pretty good. A bit too much of an abrupt ending for my tastes, but it was much more... shall we say... "family-friendly" than previous Bond movies. Still pretty suggestive in places, but if you're a fan of James Bond, then I definitely recommend that you go and see it.

After that, we stopped by Radio Shack and Best Buy. We hung around Best Buy, looking for Wii stuff and DVI cables and random things. I noticed the PS3 kiosk wasn't being used, so I decided to pick it up and see exactly what this thing felt like. Moto Cross or... whatever... was up and whoever was playing it decided to leave it. I went up and took his place... and at first I thought it was frozen (haha, no surprise there) but it was apparently just taking a long time to load. We're talking Xbox Morrowind load times here... With no progress bar. Not so great. When it finally loaded up the map, the graphics were... Eh. It was definitely high definition, but it wasn't at all pretty or breathtaking like Zelda seems. It was just... there. I guess it was some sort of Arizona grand canyon type of map, and everything was rocky and brown and bright and generally not so special.

Then came the actual race. I was driving a dune buggy and the physics were incredibly weird. It took me a long time to figure out how the car reacted and it was really sensitive to bumps and turns. Realistic, maybe, but also very frustrating. Then I figured out the turbo boost button and tried that. I came up to a bridge, hit Boost and... My car drove itself through the ramp and got itself pinned inside. Obviously not supposed to happen, since the only way I could get out was to over power my boost and blow myself up. That's something that would happen in a PC game, Sony. Not a console, online updates be darned.

Then I was about to quit and hit Pause, and I saw an option to enable tilt functions. Oh yeah! Sony ripped off Nintendo's motion sensitive idea, didn't they? Well, let's check that out. You know during the E3 2006 conference where they showed off the technology for the first time with Warhawk? And the guy was turning the controller all over the place to the extreme? That's not an exaggeration. Not only was there no sense of a neutral position (like... how letting off a joystick snaps to the center and makes you drive straight), but I had to nearly flip the controller upside down before it would register a turn, and then I couldn't boost or brake or anything advanced. It, quite frankly, was a horrible experience. It might have been the game, but demos are supposed to make you want to buy the thing... and this wasn't selling me anything.

I hope that the Wii's controller is easier to manage since it's a rectangle controller. It might register tilting a bit quicker than the... Whatever Sony's calling their controller. Sixaxis, I guess. Sixaxis had no precision, and the controller didn't seem designed to be friendly to tilting. Of course it's not... Sony whipped up a crazy add-on to replace rumble technology and stuck motion sensing in as a last minute, and it DOES feel last minute.

There were some graphics anomalies, too. Things were overly sharp, overly shiny, and the shadows were weird. It was nice seeing such hi-res graphics coming off a TV, but, frankly, it reminds me of racing games I've seen on the PC already. It may be hi-res, but it's nothing special. It was somewhat fun trying to figure out how the thing works, but there's no way that I'm ever going to spend $700 to do it.

I saw someone else play the basketball game. Absolutely no control innovation from other basketball games. It was purely an eye candy game that fell dramatically short. The characters were sweating, yes, but contrary to what my neighbor would have me believe, you could NOT see the beads of sweat. The characters just had their Shine slider dragged up to 100 to make them reflect every light source in the room. There were also texture problems where it seemed that the textures didn't quite come together in places and there were black lines.

In short, now that I've seen the PS3 in action, it's horrible. It's far too expensive without providing enough new gaming options. I don't care if it has Blu-Ray. That doesn't at all directly affect gameplay. I have actually played a PS3, so now people can't tell me to try it before I judge it. I played a demo unit designed for people to try it and get them hooked and I was laughing it up the entire time.

BRING ON THE WII! It's coming Wednesday, woohoo! We visited Walmart last night, too, and discovered that they had controllers left! So we snagged an extra remote/nunchuk set and two classic controllers, one of which I opened because I know I want one, and the other to remain sealed until we find out exactly how Virtual Console multiplayer works out. I also need to write 5000 words before Wednesday, then I've hit 50,000 words and I'll be done! Yay!

So here I was, all this time, thinking that I needed to buy a special adapter for the Wii to get online. I knew it had wireless out of the box. If you have a wireless access point, you just turn the Wii on and it gets online! (Encryption not withstanding.) I don't have a wireless access point. Frankly, I don't exactly want it and I definitely don't need it. Why? I use my network a lot. I have nearly 1000 gigabytes of hard drive space spread across three computers. I need my high speed wired network! Wireless just can't offer the same speed at a reasonable cost.

But then there's the Wii. Should I get a wireless access point for it? I think not. I'm not spending an extra 200 bucks on it. (Before someone goes shooting off some cheapo wireless router, nope, I'm not interested. If I'm buying a wireless router, it's going to be a professional grade access point. My network isn't built for a router. It needs to be an access point.) All this time, I thought there was some sort of device you can plug into the back of the Wii so you can plug in a network wire and put it on your wired network. I mean, they kept calling it a USB adapter, and the Wii has USB ports. Makes sense right?

So here I was, watching my Wii move slowly across the state of Texas, when, suddenly, I thought "oh no! I didn't buy an adapter! I won't be able to get online!" Bad news. Bad, bad news. So I scramble to the Nintendo online shop and scroll through the Wii accessory page and... No special adapter. What? There has to be one! I keep reading about it!

Then, suddenly, everything clicked. You see, Nintendo sells a little attachment for your computer that broadcasts a super-secure wireless connection for the DS. I wanted my DS to get online, and I didn't want to buy that $200 access point for it, so I got the little $30 white square to plug into my computer. THAT is the adapter for the Wii that I've been reading about... The Wii will use the wireless device I bought from them to get my DS online.

This is a major "duh" moment for me, but I'm so impressed by Nintendo, so I decided to tell you all about it! My Wii will be able to get online out of the box after all, because I bought something I thought would only work for my DS. I love Nintendo.

This is the device in question, if you're interested: Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector

So there's been an immense amount of chaos swirling around who the heck is going to make The Hobbit movie. Is New Line Cinema making it? Is Peter Jackson directing it? Who currently owns the rights? Why can't the two companies settle and just make the thing the way everyone knows it'll be best made?

I haven't been following the developments because, frankly, it depresses me. We got three amazing movies by Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema, but what you may not know is that New Line was an incredibly greedy mammoth corporation that enjoyed pushing everyone around. I haven't been able to find an official article, but I read that Peter Jackson and Tolkien Enterprises (the organization who actually owns LotR today) had to sue New Line because they weren't getting their promised royalties.

Now, New Line is trying to clinch on to the rights to make a Hobbit movie and they either kicked Jackson off or Jackson kicked himself off... But the fact remains that Jackson isn't going to direct Hobbit if New Line makes it. I believe Jackson was fighting with another company for the rights, but New Line kept saying 'no'

But all this may come to an end. The owner of Tolkien Enterprises said in an interview that The Hobbit movie would definitely be made by Peter Jackson since the rights that New Line has to make The Hobbit are expiring and Tolkien Enterprises will be able to give those rights to anyone they want. They may even keep the movie rights themselves and work directly with Jackson to make the Hobbit movie we all know will be perfect.

JRR Tolkien is turning over in his grave because of all this fighting over who makes money off of HIS works. It makes me sick at all these stupid money-pinching publishers who are clambering to do the prequel to the movies of the best books of all time. Can't they treat the case with a little dignity, instead of 'no! Our rights! OURS OURS OURS!' Stupid publishers... Sacrificing quality and originality to churn out a fast money maker.

Aw, bummer. They shipped it from Texas and it will be here on the 29th.

Oh well. I can handle it now that I know there's a box on the way.

Now to secure another controller set and Red Steel...

Ahh, finally. I called Sam's Club this afternoon to make sure that my order went through properly. They said that the bundle was flagged as "ready to ship" and will go out today or Friday. Now, just a couple hours later, the order page updates with a UPS tracking number! Bwahaha... So I was able to secure a Wii after all.

Right now, I don't know when it will be here. If it ships today from Indiana, then it will most likely be here Friday, or Monday at the latest. Unless they deliver on Saturday, but I'm not sure. Thanksgiving is out, since it's... Thanksgiving.

Still haven't been able to secure a second controller set and Red Steel.