Nintendo DS Lite (NDS)

Gaming is what got me into computers, I was facinated by the idea that it was possible to create your own games.  I started out with the Commodore-64 which let me play lots of games, but also gave me a chance to learn a lot of programming.  My next computer was a PC (386sx) and by this time I was more focused on programming than gaming.  Later on after university I picked up a Nintendo 64, which in its day was a ground breaking console.  This was also around the time that id Software was reinventing the PC gaming market with Doom and later Quake – this resulted in many late nights sessions at work where we’d setup a network game after hours.

Having met some seriously fanatical gamers, I can’t call myself one.  I like to play from time to time, but the constant hardware upgrades and time investment keep me from being very serious.  In late 2004 I picked up a GameBoy Advance SP – it was a great way to kill time in an airport.  Ken had purchased a few MovieAdvance carts, which let me play some homebrew and movies (poor quality, but this is a 16MHz ARM chip!).  For my birthday in 2006 Jenn got me Nintendo DS Lite, and it is so much more than just a simple game machine..

When I got a copy of Super Mario 64 for the NDS, it completely blew my socks off.  Here is a game that in 1996 was one of the coolest looking (and fun) games I’d ever played – and now 10 years later its running on a handheld.  Of course there is also the well known side scrolling New Super Mario Bros and of course The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass which are must have games on the NDS.  Moving a bit away from games, the BrainAge series are very addictive – and the web browser gets regular use by me.

In my opinion a must have is one of the many flash cartridges for the NDS.  I bought an R4DS from consolesource.com back in early 2007.  The flash cart world is a bit odd, there is a very strong homebrew scene – but an even stronger pirate community.  The flash carts themselves live in a gray area, and are illegal to sell in some countries.  Some of companies making these products tend to seem a little shady as well, often creating cheap knock-offs so there is an element of buyer beware.

The R4DS takes a microSD card, which is almost hilariously small.  Let’s take a quick look at some of the software I have loaded on mine today.

There is plenty of other stuff as well, but those are a few highlights – every one is worth the time to download and install.

I also use the NDS as a reading light – so while I don’t play games every day, I do use it almost every night.  The new DSi looks very tempting, but I suspect I’ll wait until the price comes down a bit – and we start to see more software which is unique to the DSi.  I can’t wait to see what the homebrew community cooks up for it.

Slow Cooker

With winter weather here, we tend to pull out the slow cooker much more often.  It still gets used in the summer months, but not nearly as much as the BBQ.  As an aside I did manage to keep my promise to myself and dig out the BBQ to make some tasty steak fajitas this winter.

You can make a lot more than just stew in a crock-pot. Here are a few of my non-stew favorites:

  • Spaghetti Sauce
  • Beef Vindaloo
  • Clam Chowder
  • Pulled Pork
  • Chili Con Carne

With a 6-quart pot, we can usually make enough to cover dinner plus either another whole dinner for another night or a couple of lunches.  Generally most of the recipes taste better the longer you cook them, and if I’ve been thinking far enough ahead I cook on low for 2x the time (so 4hrs becomes 8hrs).

Let me also recommend a great recipe book: Canada’s Best Slow Cooker Recipes ISBN 0-7788-0024-5.  Generally you can pretty easily convert many normal recipes for use in the slow cooker, just cut the liquid by half (or more) – a little experimenting is all it takes to have dinner ready and waiting with almost no effort.

Read on if you want the recipes for my list of favorites above.

Continue reading “Slow Cooker”

DVD vs Blu-ray

I was a fairly early adopter of the DVD format, buying my first DVD player (a Toshiba 2109) back in 1998 for a bit more than $700.  That player is still going strong and doing duty at my sister in-laws place, replacing their Sony player that stopped working reliably.   I’ve got more than 250 DVDs in my collection, and friends and family regularly borrow and watch them.

It took me a while to make the leap to Blu-ray.  Initially the format war gave me a good reason to stall.  My previous projector being a CRT didn’t have HDMI inputs and was not capable of a full 1080p display (1080i  worked fine).  Moving the Blu-ray also means fewer people are able to borrow the media and enjoy it.

Eventually my will power crumbled, I think what tipped me over the edge was the pack-rat in me.  The sheer volume of data that the Blu-ray format represents is just so cool, so many bits – in such a neat package.

The first Blu-ray movie we watched was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  The menu system and intro to the disc look really sharp, much more crisp than any DVD menu.  I did find that the special effects (groundhogs) tended to look a little unreal.  I was very pleased at the detail visible in long shots, it never felt constrained like DVD can at times.  In general terms the amount of detail helped make the picture much more engaging, things just looked “wow” all of the time.   Any time there was a limitation in detail, it seemed to be specifically the directors intention (ie: depth of field) vs. a limitation of the format.

I did have a chance to compare directly to the DVD version, switching between my PS3 (for Blu-ray) and the Oppo 980 (for DVD).  For Indian Jones, the special effects seemed to blend better into the overall image – they were more convincing on the DVD.  On the flip side, you could tell in the direct A/B comparison which was the Blu-ray and which was the DVD – there was clearly more fine detail in the image.  However, in isolation – both looked really good.   Similarly Wall E on DVD vs the Blu-ray version had similar observations – in side by side A/B comparison it was easy to see the extra details in the image, but if you switched to the DVD for a minute or two you quickly forgot and didn’t feel that you were missing anything.

It is probably important to note here that to see the difference you may need to have a fairly high end system, and a pretty big screen.  I’m using the Epson 1080UB and a 80″x45″ screen (more than 6 feet wide).  The first row of seating is about 11 feet away, so its a big sharp image that helps make the difference more obvious.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the challenges for Blu-ray.  Today the cost of the media is generally more expensive.  Large displays are certainly getting more common, but considering that DVD will look really good – without a direct A/B comparison Blu-ray may be a tough sell at the increased price point.  The Blu-ray players are also more expensive, and they are relatively slow compared to a DVD player (for menu operations and start-up).

I still intend to buy movies on DVD, but I suspect that the majority of my future purchases will be Blu-ray.  While DVD does look awesome with my setup, Blu-ray is awesomer.