Goodies and Gadgets
We’re back from our trip to Vero Beach feeling both refreshed and happy to be home. We got a chance to enjoy essentially all of the activities that we’d hoped to while away — lying on the beach, the cool waters of the Atlantic, miniature golf, sleeping in, reading (and in my case, writing), watching movies, and exploring. The weather was about 50/50 thunderstorms and bright sun, which dictated our timetable for us, but allowed us to do a nice mix of indoor and outdoor stuff.
The only bad thing was the food; we didn’t have much luck with the new restaurants we tried, finding nothing to write home about. We did find a Carrabba’s on our way home, though. Next time perhaps we’ll stop there. Yes — we’re chain restaurant fans. In our defense, I’ll say that Apple provides all the home cooking we’ll need — so when we’re out, we like something consistent and predictable.
Anyway, I’m back to work this week, and in addition to my main job, I’ve got two side jobs that are ramping up. I’m doing about 60-90 minutes of work on each one during the weekday evenings, and devoting several more hours to them on the weekend. Neither one looks like a huge, overwhelming job, so this is working out perfectly. I hope there won’t be any snags.
By now, you’re probably wondering where the “goodies and gadgets” are. The first arrived on Sunday, when, after several days of discussion and debate, I decided to trade in my dust-gathering Playstation Portable (PSP) for a Nintendo DS. The DS is technologically behind the PSP by a wide margin, but the PSP’s hardware superiority actually worked against it in my eyes. The reason being that most PSP games that I’ve seen are visually dumbed-down versions of things you could play on your bigger consoles, like the PS2 or PS3. I don’t want that in a handheld. I rarely have my PSP with me, so the portability isn’t anywhere near the biggest selling point. Unique games are. And the PSP just doesn’t have any that I care about. It’s all just slimmed-down versions of console games that I could walk into the other room and play on a much bigger screen with much nicer graphics.
The Nintendo DS, on the other hand, has only the performance equivalence of an old N64. This forces DS game developers to be more creative and yields unique and eclectic games like Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Hotel Dusk: Room 215, Dementium: The Ward, and stuff like that. Interactive novels, point-and-click games, auto mechanic sims, and other stuff is all available on the DS, and there’s nothing else like it on any other system I know (barring some overlap with the Wii). Not only that, but the DS adds additional senses to the experience, with its touch-screen and voice-recognizing microphone.
And, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t encouraged by the fact that Apple herself said she’d enjoy playing the DS too, which is a pretty cool thing for a gamer husband to hear his non-gamer wife say.
