"You two! We're at the end of the universe! Alright? We're at the edge of knowledge itself and you're busy ....................... blogging!!"

Well, now we know what the Doctor thinks about blogs.

Well, my very first Opera post here revealed a startling discovery. WordPress rich text editor hates Opera with a passion. It's a known bug, so maybe they'll actually get around to fixing it. Seems to be some funky word-wrapping error. When you type, it usually wraps at the edge of the field, buuut... In Opera, sometimes it doesn't! And when it doesn't wrap properly, then it somehow translates the error directly to the post and you've got text spilling all over your site... And that shows up in other browsers, too.

So maybe I'll just not use the rich text editor. Somehow, I like not using it. It gives me more precise control over how my posts will look... I can see all the HTML tags being applied and all that kewl stuffz. But blarg, I say. Why can't things just work the way they're supposed to. On the bright side, I guess Opera is the one that's standards compliant, so it's just WordPress being dumb.

So I installed Opera and am going to try using it as my default browser. I've heard that it's faster... I've heard that it's slower... I've noticed that it's not very popular on Digg. (So that probably means I'll love it.) But I decided to give it a shot for a few days and see if I run into anything that's really horrible. So far, I'm enjoying it immensely!

I compared page loading times on a few sites, Firefox and Opera side by side, and there seems to be no difference between the two at all. (Except right now, I've noticed there's some screwiness with word wrapping in WordPress when I use dashes... like saying "side-by-side". Weird.) Like I said, I'll give it a shot and see how good it is.

I actually installed Safari just now, too, to see how my site looks on that thing. Seemed to show up well enough. It took its precious time installing, though, and it's got that brilliant Apple GUI design where you can only resize a window from the lower-right corner of the window, hoho. There were the usual rendering errors, though, but oh well. If you use Safari, you're probably used to seeing that all over by now. Ziiiing! Opera, though, shows my site just as perfectly as Firefox. IE7 has got a bit of header issues, though. Some of the text is far bigger than it needs to be. Probably something with my CSS that I'll have to check into sometime.

At least with Opera, I can see exactly how things will show up on the Wii! Yay! Man, this is weird, because I remember using Opera back around 6 years ago... They actually had ad banners written into their user interface, it was THAT bad.

So here's a blog post that made it to Digg (which sensationally broadened the topic into how developers, in general, might not like the Wii) about how the new Clover Studios (now called Seeds) is reportedly not producing games for the Wii. Complicated sentence... Hope you understand it!

I couldn't help but completely disregard everything the post said when I read this:

I'm still not sold on how a "traditional video game" (which Okami almost certainly is if the brush is not considered) feels using the Wii and that ninja instrument.

Okami makes a huge deal out of "the brush", Mister. Stripping out the Celestial Brush and calling it a "traditional video game" is like stripping the puzzles out of Riven and calling it a "pretty slide show". Okami has traditional elements, yes. In fact, it's very much like Zelda, much to the chagrin of hardcore Nintendo fanatics. Personally, I don't care. Okami is awesome, as is Zelda. And yes, it would be a regular ol' adventure action game without the Celestial Brush, but it DOES have the Celestial Brush so it's NOT a "traditional video game".

Then again, he does say this before the traditional bit:

While Okami would almost certainly be a great candidate for the Wii treatment (if only because the celestial brush would work great with the Wii remote)...

So it could be that he just doesn't think REAL traditional games would work very well on the Wii, as he goes on to say that he couldn't help but think that Twilight Princess would be more fun on the Gamecube with a traditional controller. Well, duh. Remember that Twilight Princess was INTENDED for the Gamecube, and then the Wii Remote controls were tacked on later in development. While I personally think that this choice was a make or break decision for me (I can't aim worth squat with joysticks... It's much easier to aim the bow by pointing where you want it to go), I've heard lots of people say they like the Gamecube version better. That's fine, but now you're going so far as to predict that all Wii games are going to have tacked-on controls based on the fact that Twilight Princess had tacked-on controls.

The bottom line is that we really haven't seen a REAL Wii game, yet, with the exception of Wii Sports. It's so cliche, but since everyone tries to defend the Playstation 3 and everything under the sun with "wait until it has some good games" or "wait until this" or "wait until that until you judge", I'm going to say: Why don't we wait until there are some REAL, ORIGINAL Wii games before we wonder if developers are going to do a good job and/or even want to develop for the Wii.

How many times do we have to tell you that everyone was afraid of the thing when it was released, but now, almost six months later, with Wiis still impossibly difficult to find, developers have been shocked out of their fear and are scrambling to release games for the fastest selling console. (With the exception of Sega, I guess... They seem to doubt the creativity of their own developers, it seems.) All the games so far have either been first-party Nintendo games, or lame ports of old games adapted to the new control system.

Then there's this little gem:

If I had to choose, I'd rather that Clover have the extra processing power offered by the PS3 and 360 than the magic wand novelty of the Wii.

Totally despite the fact that Okami was built for only the SECOND Playstation console. Not the new, upcoming third? Despite the fact that Okami was built on the weakest console of its generation? You would rather Clover harnass the stagnant uncreative, but sheer power of the PS3 and 360 rather than the entirely brand new "novelty" of the Wii Remote? That just doesn't sound like Clover to me. I have to say that I would be disappointed with Seeds if they didn't follow the footsteps of Clover Studios. Clover seemed to excel and making creative, odd, but fun games. The Wii would be a perfect platform for them to unleash their full creative potential. Power is so uncreative minds can go 'ooh' and 'aah' at the pretty high-definition graphics and sound. (I'm not saying there aren't come pretty neat games on the 360, now, but I will say that most of the games are just spectacles of light and sound and not much else.)

Did people already forget this 1UP interview with Inaba, Clover's president? He says that they didn't know about the Wii at all until after they began making Okami. He doesn't actually say that they would have, beyond a doubt, that they would have made a Wii version of Okami, but he does say they would have definitely thought about it. Remember, this was before the Wii was actually released, so he brings up some doubts about people wanting to hold the controller for that long, and how Okami was incredibly finely tuned to the PS2. (The Wii, however, is easily more powerful than the PS2, especially since the Gamecube was even a smidgen more powerful than the PS2.) But now, it's become abundantly clear that people can use the Wii Remote just as easily and as long as any other controller. I'm happy with the way Okami turned out, but I still think that Inaba's fears of the Wii controller are just the sad paranoia that the industry has to new things.

Finally, the blost post ends with this:

Its slowly becoming my view that the Wii will only excel at novelty products and 1st party Nintendo games. Not too terribly different from the GameCube when you think about it.

Then your view is clouded, just like everyone at Digg. There have been NO good third party games for the Wii because the developers were TOO AFRAID to make release games. Now that the Wii has just about as many units out there as the Xbox 360, with a sell-out spree with no signs of ending, the greedy publishers are jumping on the bandwagon and have finally begun to make REAL Wii games. Not ported games. Now that the Wii is super successful, developers and publishers aren't afraid to take a chance. You can't make a game in 2 months, people. You'll start seeing new Wii-specific games at the end of this year, and many more coming in the following years.

Give it time, and stop writing off the Wii so quickly. It hasn't had a chance, just like your precious PS3. It's inevitable, especially with the third-party failure of the Gamecube. Everyone was scared to make Wii games because Nintendo's last console was so poor for them. Everyone was all geared up for the next whopper console from Sony, but look what happened there? They misplaced their predictions of what was going to be successful and it's taking them a long time to shift focus. The Wii will get games!

BE PATIENT.

Some comment on Slashdot is upset about an article asking if Apple can find a European iPhone carrier:

Also, I have another idea: how about people stop predicting the doom of the iPhone before it's even out yet?

You don't want articles that show Apple is a less-than-awesome limelight? Aww, but... but... what about when everyone did it to Windows Vista?! What about when everyone did it to the Nintendo Wii?! What about when everyone did it to the Nintendo DS?!

As we say in World of Warcraft, cry more, you whiny noob.

So Apple released Safari for Windows is a really funny effort to... I'm not sure what, exactly. The general consensus is that since the iPhone uses Safari as a sort of driver for applications, that releasing Safari to the largest market share operating system would be the only smart thing. "The World's Best Browser", as good ol' Steve Jobs referred it to, had a horrible launch with bugs to rival Internet Explorer. Betas aren't supposed to be this terrible, and Digg, one of the most rabid cesspools of Apple fanatics there are, was thoroughly humbled.

But oh, boy! A million downloads in 48 hours! That means people are using Safari all over the place right?! Yeah! A million downloads! It has to be! Well, you know... This is like Sony saying "we shipped 800 bajillion PSPs this week! We've got a great user base!" We all know Sony likes to twist "ship numbers" with actual "sale numbers". When independent sources do the research, it's only a tiny fraction of actual people buying/using the thing.

Saying Safari has a million downloads? I'm sure that's accurate. (I mean, that's probably all the Apple users there are, right?) But honestly, that's equivalent to shipping PSPs to Walmart. They're out there and they have exposure, but are people actually using it? I've personally been hearing lots of reports of people installing and then uninstalling because of bugs, rendering errors and the fact that Firefox (and even Internet Explorer 7) have more useful addons than Safari does. I saw a joke comment that said "Only 1,000,000 downloads in 48 hours and only 990,000 uninstalls in the same amount of time!"

I'm not really bashing Apple here. (No, seriously, I'm not.) I have to be honest, though, I think Safari is quite possibly the worst browser to ever grace this planet. I wouldn't even use it if I was a Mac fan. I would use Firefox or Opera, sorry. What I AM bashing, more or less, are the people who are taking this the extra mile and saying "there are a million users for Safari on Windows!!" No, I'm afraid there isn't. I'm willing to bet at least half of the downloads are people who are curious what makes Safari different than anything else, and then uninstalling/not using it after the first few minutes.

Personally, I will be downloading it sometime (after they get a little grasp on security) to use in testing my web sites for Safari compatibility. (Like IE, it's nice to have other browsers to see how they screw things up!)

If you're an open-minded Apple user, I suggest reading some of the comments on that Digg article I posted. A lot of it is just random "haha, sweet justice" comments that can be skipped over, but some of it is pretty interesting like how Apple uses their operating system to cover up some security holes in their other applications. While not necessarily bad, Apple really doesn't seem to be very prepared to release stuff like this to the Windows world. You can't blame Windows... Not at all. Just, cut the crap there for a minute. You have to admit that Windows is pretty darn secure with 95% of the computer market share thrashing it around for security holes. Apple just simply doesn't have that kind of exposure yet. I guarentee you that any program with a user base the size of Windows will have just as many bugs.

Oh well... The point is: A million downloads does not equal a million users. Remember that, okaaaaay? I think my friends realize that, and I'm glad they're not batty enough to buy into the general hype and junk about anything, Apple or otherwise. (Except maybe Pixar! They're pretty much the most awesome CG studio on the face of the planet and have done nothing but equally awesome movies for the entire lifetime of the company, and they can pretty much just do no wrong right now.)