Nintendo Wii

Nintendo's Wii is looking good. The design is innovative. The price is right. Perhaps I finally have reason to acquire a television.

The main thing I like about this console and about Nintendo in general is that they realise that super-fantastic graphics do not equate to fun. The competitors seem to be overly conservative in terms of rehashing the same old formulas over and over again with better graphics, expecting people to basically buy the "same" games year after year.

Not that Nintendo isn't guilty of this at times: The whole Mario Bros. saga and the Mario Kart games come to mind. But with innovations like the DS, and the various brain-training games, rhythm games, puzzle games and more, I continue to lean more toward Nintendo than to Sony or Microsoft.

I think the bottom line is that Nintendo has a better idea about why most people play games than the competition. It's because they want to have fun ways of interacting with other people. The gaming experience facilitates a social interaction. That's part of why games like Donkey Konga are insane riots even though they're relatively simple and not high on the shiny graphics.

Yes, I think the Wii is for me.

I Voted Today

Municipal elections. Early vote. As usual.

Since 2003 I've been religiously voting early for every applicable election. I do it because line-ups are next to nothing and I don't have to skip out on any work or fight for a parking space in a rush to get in line to hurry up and wait. Oh, and there's a big work deadline about two days after the official voting date, so I don't want to find myself rushing for the deadline and trying to find time to vote.

I'm actually quite impressed with this voting submission system they were using: The actual voting sheet is legal sized; You make your mark and then put it into this letter sized "privacy folder" with the ambiguous top of the voting sheet sticking out. The election official then feeds the top of the paper into this electronic machine and the vote is submitted. Privately. Without any touchscreen machines. (Yes, I am enormously glad we don't use any touchscreen voting units around here, but that's an entirely different story altogether.)

This submission system was totally new to me. Back in Guelph / Puslinch, it was always about folding the ballot and slipping it into the box.

My one gripe about this election is that was too difficult to find information about the candidates! None of the people vying for Councillor in my ward even had websites! I received literature from a couple of them in the mail, but that is not replacement for a website with detailed information about their beliefs, history, platform, etc. I wish they would make this information more readily accessible so that people could look them up and make more informed decisions.

Now, as to who will win the vote for Mayor... I'm sure there will be no surprises. The question is about whether or not she will live to see the end of her term. In my opinion, that's the most interesting question on the table.