No Mod Required

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

This is a fun, fascinating documentary about the quest for the world Donkey Kong record. Well crafted, creative and thoroughly enjoying, King of Kong is a perfect example of why documentary format can so rewarding. It’s a well worn phrase, but it really is true that you can’t make stuff like this up. Simplifying the real life race for the record (and some associated milestones) down to a two man battle between good (Steve Wiebe, a math and science teacher from Washington) and evil (Billy Mitchell, douche) the film presents a compelling ninety minute view into the disparate lives of the two contenders and the world of competitive, classic gaming.

I had this link to The Wii Remote API saved in my Reddit feed on Bloglines for a few days, waiting for just the right moment to crack open the link and check out the keys to some hot Wiimote magic. Clicking through- it’s all blank page and “access denied.” Oh no! Completely confused, I started poking around and caught this thread on their forums where people are all five flavors of “wha?!” about the fact that the article was pulled. Me, I’ve decided to work on the world’s greatest conspiracy theory to explain why it was pulled. It will involve crazed terrorists, a man dressed in a foam Mario suit, Wii Sports, fifteen pounds of peanuts, Satoru Iwata, and a large albino African elephant. If my conspiracy theory were to be made into a movie, I would want Angelo Badalamenti to write the soundtrack, but I would force him to rework the songs of John Philip Sousa.

Thankfully I was able to save the mirrored document. In theory I could actually have real, business use for some Wii-More scripting knowledge. How often does that happen? a real business case for using perversely bleeding edge technology? Never.

[edited to add:
*This site, since this article was written, has been completely rewritten. I'm no longer responsible for anything you see there in the way that I normally am. I tried my best, but we're working with Drupal in a big way so most of the markup, etc. is simply out of my hands. So, I don't really feel any ownership at all for the UI layer. Let's call it an Alan Smithee project.]

Behold the glory of eforallexpo.com, the official site of the Entertainment for All Expo, a gaming/ gadget/ entertainment extravaganza of the most hyperbolic proportions.

Or something*

Anyway, when checking it out, keep in mind this is really a primordial launch of the site. Things there are going to be ramping up over the next several months so it will eventually be a lot more interesting.

What’s interesting to me, right now, is that I found an even better example of Drupal’s bloated HTML than what I showed yesterday. On the front page we’re presented with this awesomeness:

<div class="content related-content body">
<div class="view view-Blog-Listing-Home">
<div class="view-content view-content-Blog-Listing-Home">
<div class="item-list">
<ul>
<li>
<div class="view-item view-item-Blog-Listing-Home">
<div class="view-field view-data-node-changed">25/5/2007</div>
<div class="view-field view-data-node-title"><a href="/node/66">Mary Dolaher appears on Bonus Round</a></div>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div class="view-item view-item-Blog-Listing-Home">
<div class="view-field view-data-node-changed">25/5/2007</div>
<div class="view-field view-data-node-title"><a href="/node/86">Podcast Episode 2 with Tommy Tallarico</a></div>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div class="view-item view-item-Blog-Listing-Home">
<div class="view-field view-data-node-changed">25/5/2007</div>
<div class="view-field view-data-node-title"><a href="/node/83">Welcome to EforAllExpo.com</a></div>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>


All I need out of that is this**:


<ul>
<li>25/5/2007<a href="/node/66">Mary Dolaher appears on Bonus Round</a>
</li>
<li>25/5/2007<a href="/node/86">Podcast Episode 2 with Tommy Tallarico</a>
</li>
<li>25/5/2007<a href="/node/83">Welcome to EforAllExpo.com</a></li>
</ul>


Drupal’s code there is just insane. It would probably be cleaner to use tables and it’d definitely be easier to debug. With all those DIVs and generic, multiple class names attached to everything it’d be a train wreck trying to debug that stuff if you were using their classes and something was going wrong. I like code I can follow in my head without relying on post it notes, a team of interns, a dozen flow charts and a Venn diagram or two. That and I’m still as stingy as I can be with bandwidth and download times.

This is just one of those cases where things are out of my control and I have to live with it…

*I’ve been too damn busy building the thing to know what the heck it’s really all about

**It’s a very specific div with an innner structure I can predict so I could hook that UL with just the containing div id. The rule would be no more complicated than #home #messaging ul li a. Even if that weren’t the case I could still just attach an id to the UL and be done with it.

Thanks to Metafilter, today I learned about Alternate reality games

My world is .043% cooler than it was before.

It’s Nintendo’s World, Wii just live in it

I’m buying a Wii the day they come out. That will be the first time I’ve ever even considered buying a new system that early in its life cycle. The Wii is just too cool to pass up and at the $250 I’ve heard it will launch at it’s a no-brainer.

Konami eyes “Metal Gear Solid” the movie

MGS is one of my favorites.

Nintendo Reveals ‘Revolution’-ary Controller in Keynote Speech

Of course, all I want to know is how it all relates to Resident Evil 5.

More for this quote than the actualy content (although I LOVED Eternal Darkness)
“I had a friend in grad school (physics) who noted from personal experience that Sonic The Hedgehog was ‘invariant under LSD transformation’

Slashdot | Nintendo Patents Insanity:

I’m not the biggest XBox fan, but my god I love the Halo series.

I seriously LOVE the Halo games. If I were suddenly to turn into the sort of person that had time to play video games, I’d buy an XBox just to be sure I could play the Halo series.

The Thomas Crown Affair: The original version. I liked it a lot. Surprisingly, I liked the new version more however. I liked the overtly caperish nature of the remake.

Resident Evil - Apocalypse (Special Edition): Jill Valentine makes an appearance! The Ashford family name is invoked! Nemesis! The scene with the tanker truck! I really dug this movie. Call it a guilty pleasure, call me a Resident Evil geek… call me whatever. I got a kick out of it.

Have I mentioned that RE2 and RE4 are amongst my top ten favorite games of all time? They are…