Check out this picture from the upcoming Final Fantasy game on the PS3.  If this doesn’t rock your face off, I don’t know what will.  I have to say, I’m pretty impressed with how it looks.  I don’t know if that’s pre-rendered, or if the engine is capable of creating those kinds of graphics on the fly, but it looks great either way. If it is rendered on the fly though, I’d be interested in seeing how it moved and such. It’s interesting how it looks fake only because it’s too perfect, heh.

Cameron saw last night that Cingular now has 3G coverage in the Raleigh area.  I’ve been wanting 3G coverage for a long time and now they’ve got it here!  Unfortunately my phone isn’t 3G, so now I really really wanna upgrade to the Cingular 8525.  The 3G network can go up to 700Kbps, which is crazy awesome.  Video streamed from my house at 500Kbps looks great (especially on that size screen).  And using the internet at that speed will be much nicer than the not-as-fast-as-I-need-it-to-be EDGE network.  So I suppose I’ll be looking around for a new phone now.  If anyone wants to buy my Cingular 2125 or give me an 8525 for cheap or free please let me know.

I joined a jazz band almost a year ago now (the Route 55 Jazz Orchestra) and we finally had our first public show last week on Valentine's Day. For those of you who may not know, I'm a trumpet player, and you can hear my solo stylings on Adios Muchachos. Our director recorded some mp3's of the show and I've posted them here so you can listen if you'd like to hear us play. They're kind of quiet so you'll have to turn it up a scoatch or two. We'll be having more gigs coming up pretty soon, so you should come out and hear us play.

I downloaded the Everyboy Votes channel yesterday and I’m not so sure I really understand the point.

The basic idea is that you can register up to six Mii’s that can participate in voting in these polls. Nintendo selects questions that people have suggested and you can vote on those polls. An example question is something like “Where would you rather have a house? The Mountains or the beach?” You pick up your Mii and drop it on the choice you would rather have, and then you have an opportunity to predict which choice will get more votes. The system will keep track of how many poll predictions you have “won” when the voting ends for that particular poll. There is also an area where you can suggest a new poll to submit (I’m not sure if you’re notified at all if your poll is selected).

That all being said, I’m not really sure of the point of this channel. Nintendo says things like, “have you ever wanted to know who shares your same opinions?” in their copy for Everybody Votes, but that can’t be the only point to the channel. It does serve to start interesting conversations with people you’re there voting with. I know it did when we were trying it out for the first time.

The lasting value is lost on me though. My guess is that it’s a test platform for a future release or a test bed for this type of group interaction functionality in some bigger project. I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see; but for now, I’m just not seeing the real point of the Everybody Votes Channel.

Anyone have any other ideas what it’s real purpose might be?

We were going through some pictures the other week and I found this one I thought was pretty freakin’ sweet. It’s a genuine 1992 Nintendo Calendar that I got for Christmas in 1991. I didn’t look all that excited about it there in the picture. Not as excited as I am now, heh. But you get to see what I looked like as a kid. Cute huh?

I’d love to know what happened to that calendar though. Too bad I didn’t have the foresight at nine years old to keep that around. Maybe it’d be worth something now or in a few more years?

So like a week after I spent the time to get the Digg counter automatically added to my posts, Digg decides to one-up me and just do it for you. *sigh* That basically means that the code I wrote is no longer useful. It was at least a decent learning process. So here's the updated tutorial on how to get the Digg counters on your posts: http://digg.com/tools/integrate.  It doesn't animate like the other one, which isn't as fun, but it's a lot easier and more reliable…I'd just go with that over my previous tutorial