I recently found myself sitting in the waiting room of my car dealer of choice, waiting for a mid-life tune-up for my sister’s car. (My schedule is more flexible than hers, so I get all sorts of lovely errands.) I shared the room with a plethora of elderly women, and a developmentally disabled gal who was a daughter of one of the ladies. Let’s call the mother Fran, for convenience.

I had been sitting there for a good while, and the only thing that kept me sane was my DS Lite and a copy of Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. The game (thankfully) has an optional Pokemon-ish element, where your character can collect the souls of the monsters he encounters; whereas before I had been plowing straight through the game, the knowledge of the epic wait before me forced me into a gotta catch ’em all strategy. I had headphones, so nobody but I had to suffer the repetition of killing a monster repeatedly until I collected its soul.

So, two hours into my wait. People who arrived after I arrived had already left, and had been replaced by Fran and crew. I’m quietly getting my kill on.

“What’s he got, Mom?” Fran’s daughter asks, gesturing towards me. Fran says she doesn’t have the foggiest. I stop playing and show Fran’s daughter that it’s a Nintendo DS, and then return to my time-killing collector’s quest.

Somehow my little display of technological bling (?) causes something to snap in Fran’s head. The infection quickly spreads to the other ladies in the room. I’m then subject to a gaggle of elderly women dissing me and my generation while I’m sitting five feet away. Yes, I had my headphones on—but that hadn’t stopped me from hearing Fran’s daughter’s question. Apparently I, as a member of my generation, automatically tune the world out when I have headphones on.

You see, my generation is comprised of nothing but spoiled brats who grew up with silver spoons in their mouths. We never had to work for anything, and consequently have no character or moral fiber. These ladies were glad to not have money growing up, because they (as a result) do have this character and moral fiber. My generation has no attention span because of television—these women watched TV, but were limited to fifteen minutes a day! and Praise the Lord for that. My generation would rather play inside than ever step outside, whereas they were blessed to not have computers… on and on and on.

The general gist: they (their older generation) are much better people than I (this younger generation) am. Because I play a DS to pass the time while waiting for a car to get some maintenance.

I kept my mouth shut, but I was pretty taken aback. Those women had some gall.

A lot of what they said easily applies to me: I have been very fortunate in life, and I am a technophile that doesn’t spend a lot of time outside. But wait just a goddamn second before you impugn my integrity, my character, my morality. Having some money when growing up doesn’t doom you to a life of character deficiency (though it might make it easier to head that way); not having money doesn’t guarantee you a surfeit of character. Say what you will about me, but I’m not morally bankrupt. (Not yet, at least.)

…

I have doubts about my generation, don’t get me wrong. Some of those doubts (e.g. a general seeming lack of direction in life) are ostensibly personal doubts I’ve ascribed to my generation writ large; others are the result of The Media’s influence on my perception. When I think about the individuals my age that I know, though, the overwhelming majority are solid people. My sample is certainly biased (I hang out in college and college-educated circles, mostly), but I seem to know more decent twenty-somethings than these ladies seem to believe exist.

But, yes. I’ve never felt offended on behalf of a generation before running across these women. It’s a rather odd feeling.

It wasn’t that long ago that I would drive on Highway 20 at night at full speed (55 MPH), headed home after catching a movie with Lee, John, and Jeremy. (Well, OK, it’s been nine years. Nine years isn’t as long as it used to be, though.)

Either my night vision has gotten significantly worse in the intervening years, or else I was a frickin’ idiot when I was younger my sense of my own mortality has grown much greater. I find myself settling closer to 35 MPH as a top speed at night these days (higher if I can use my high beams), just because I’ve grown keenly aware that I have no chance to avoid anything at a higher speed.

Painfully aware.

This is what they meant by “don’t overdrive your headlights”-aware. I haven’t hit anything, but this knowledge has killed all the fun of driving in the dark.

From what my folks tell me, it’s only going to go downhill from here.

Reason #3 why Brent wasn’t posting: I was involved in a bit of a romantic triangle (!). [A very PG romantic triangle, thankyouverymuch.] It was kind of like an inverted Kimagure Orange Road, only without the “endless summer” feel and that rockin’ ’80s soundtrack. (Seriously, KOR’s music rocks. In an ’80s way. I’m not being pejorative here.)

Turns out I was cast in the role of Hikaru. (-_-); Good news is that the Kyosuke-equivalent didn’t have to break me off something harsh, so I’m still good friends with the other two. Other good news is that I wasn’t (and am not) much like Hikaru at all.

Why wasn’t I informed of this, people?

(It’s only my favorite N64 title… most likely because it was one of the few I could play without getting motion sick.)

Reason #2 why Brent hasn’t been posting: I have a Miglia TVMini HD dongle that lets my Mac record QAM TV signals, and I have a PS3 attached to my TV that has a hard drive and should be able to play a video file. Match made in heaven? Not yet!

For starters, the PS3 is quite particular about the video formats it will play. My TV recordings appear to be MPEG-2 video paired with A52 (the modern version of AC-3, or so I read) audio; the PS3 will only play MPEG-2 video paired with MP2 audio. I could convert my shows into a different format, but converting an hour-long HDTV show isn’t exactly my idea of a good time—it takes for-bloody-ever.

So, after playing around—and failing—with all the GUI tools at my disposal, I rolled up my sleeves and downloaded the source code for ffmpeg, a command-line video/audio converter. After compiling (a process I’m virtually clueless about, save that it involves me typing “./configure”, “make”, and “sudo make install” in that order), I managed to convert the audio of a standard-definition TV show into a format that plays on the PS3. Turns out that converting audio is nowhere near as painful as converting video. Woo.

You know I’m in a bad spot when I resort to command-line tools to try and get things done. I can, and I will… but I use a Mac for a reason.

HDTV remains a thorn in my side, however. After trying and failing to watch an episode of House I recorded, I discovered that the PS3 currently has a 4GB file size limit on video files it is willing to play. My HDTV recordings are more along the lines of 6 GB. Suck.

…

And in case this sounds like something that took me a couple days, let me disabuse you of that notion now. I’ve been hitting my head against this for a month, frequently staying up into the wee hours of the morning hoping that something would give.

My favorite memory is of staying up until 4:00 am reading about various flags I could pass to ffmpeg. It’s a nifty, complicated program.

Something did eventually give—me. I’m now holding out for the fabled March firmware, ETA sometime next week, which is supposed to do everything from making Final Fantasy XII look purty* (examples one, two, and three) to making downloading not so painful (via a marvel known as background downloading).

*In case you’re wondering what the big deal is: Final Fantasy XII on HDTV looks completely ass-tastic. These pictures look absolutely gorgeous in comparison.

Maybe it’ll ease that file size restriction, too. A man can hope, right?

…

The easy part of this whole process was getting my files copied to the PS3. Turn on my computer’s built-in web server, craft a little HTML file that links to the files I want downloaded, and then point the PS3’s browser to that page. Easy! The download time isn’t mind-blowing, but it’s still infinitely better than watching my computer choke on converting video.

Reason #1 why Brent hasn’t been posting: an illness that featured all the walking around completely drained of energy of mono, with none of the fun kissing girls beforehand. (boo!) Today—er, yesterday—was the first day I’ve woken up in the last two weeks and didn’t have to physically drag my corpse out of bed.

[Yes, there are many more reasons where this came from… interesting ones, even!]

I have neglected to mention here, except via sly inference (specifically, mentioning Ridge Racer 7), that I have a PS3. I also have a Wii.

I’m most proud of the fact that I was able to acquire both, at launch, without waiting in line for more than half an hour each. The internet is a powerful information distributor, if you know where to look—and when you combine that with stores (like, say, EB Games and Toys R Us) that sometimes decide to do last-minute pre-orders, you can get lucky.

…

I’ll jump to the punchline: I think the PS3 will best the Wii. It seems like I’m going against almost everyone online by holding that opinion—but, then again, you don’t get the chance to look like a genius if you vote with the crowd. (ha)

The Wii is, almost as literally as you can get, a DS made for your TV. By far the most fun game I’ve played on the Wii is Trauma Center: Second Opinion—second opinion because it’s a remake of the DS game of the same name. Yes, the Wii is a DS that can tell how you’re moving your stylus even without touching the touchscreen—but it’s not as good at that as you would hope. Wii Boxing is an exercise in frustration: to get your character to do something other than a regular face punch, you have to make wild, unnatural motions. An uppercut takes a swift flick of your wrist up—not an uppercut motion. The latter will—at least, for me—result in a face punch. Good luck landing a body blow without dropping your hands well below your waist.

[And, actually, looking at my DS game collection… only Kirby Canvas Curse and Elite Beat Agents use the touch-screen in a way that would be impossible with a traditional controller. The rest are traditional games, that use the touch screen mostly because it’s there. Take Contact, an RPG, that allows you to move your character by touching where you want him to head—is that really a revolution over the D-pad? Even my beloved Phoenix Wright games were originally found on the Gameboy Advance in Japan.]

Where the Wii succeeds is in the same area that the GameCube succeeded: party games. To leave it at that, though, is akin to arguing that the sun is hotter than an ice cube: the Wii completely obliterates the GameCube when it comes to party games. As I’m sure you all are aware, people love the Wii. Not just gamers—people who have never touched a controller in their life love the Wii.

But. The Wii accomplishes this feat by shedding the shackles of most traditional game genres. I happen to like action, adventure, RPG, and shoot-’em-up games. The Wiimote absolutely sucks as a traditional game controller. (I’ve tried, with Gunstar Heroes.)

Yes, you can attach a Classic Controller for your traditional games. Stripped of its controller, though, the Wii isn’t a compelling next-gen* game machine—its graphics are decidedly inferior to the other consoles, and it’s not like Nintendo owns the idea of fun games.

[*When do we start calling them current-generation systems?]

…

On the other side, the PS3 isn’t the end-all-be-all of consoles. It costs a hell of a lot, and has a woefully mediocre lineup of games at the moment. Since I get motion sick with FPS games, the only PS3 game I own is Ridge Racer 7. I love the game—Brian and I play it darn near every Thursday, after our traditional visit to the Beanery—but, then again, I’ve never played a Ridge Racer game before. Until recently the PS3 managed to make most PS2 games look like garbage; the PS3 still refuses to upscale its picture for older HDTVs that don’t support a resolution of 720p.

I’m not bit by that last issue, though, and Ridge Racer 7 is by far the prettiest game I’ve ever played—the scenery is actually reflected, in real time, in the sheen of your car. Coming from my console-gaming roots, it’s mind-boggling. It’s totally useless, but it’s a level of realism that was totally unheard-of with the PS2 or GameCube. (I don’t play games on my PC, nor have I ever used an XBox or a 360; I understand this sort of thing isn’t so mind-blowing from those perspectives.)

…

So why do I think the PS3 will eventually triumph over the Wii, when the market says the PS3 is weak and the Wii is strong? A gut feeling, mostly: I sense untapped potential in the PS3, and I can’t shake the feeling that the Wiimote is, at the end of the day, a gimmick. The PS3 still has some cards up its sleeve; the Wii has played its best cards out of the gate.

Could I be wrong? Certainly.

Nintendo’s hope is that the PS3 fails to deliver fun games, while the Wii actually does. It’s happened before, between the DS and the PSP, and it could happen again. But the PS3, unlike the PSP, doesn’t live under the shadow of being “a portable PS2”; the Wii, unlike the DS, doesn’t have a set of traditional controls out of the box to back up the new control scheme.

…

Lastly: why did I buy a PS3, and not a 360? A major reason is because the 360 mostly features FPS games… and first-person shooters, as I mentioned above, make me physically ill. My primary reason, though, is a bet: the games I tend to be the most interested in—mostly RPGs—come from Japan… and Japan, historically, has strongly favored Sony over Microsoft.

The closest thing to a tradition my blog has is linking Donna’s VD and Unicrons page. I can think of no better day than today to do so once again. (This is the first year that I’ve been able to get to the unicorn art page, which is just as hilarious as the rest of the site. Note, as Brian did, how Parisian the Paris photo is.)

I’ve never cared for Valentine’s Day (say what it will of my dating life), but I’ve never had the outright hostility towards it that I do towards, say, Halloween. My coworkers—for the second year in a row, dangit—have decided to emulate elementary school and have Valentine card receptacles pinned up on their inboxes.

Unlike elementary school, I can opt-out this time. :whew:

Making the holiday that much more enjoyable for me this year (aside from Donna’s page, of course) is VGCats’ video-game-themed cards. By far my favorite is the Phoenix Wright one; I could see myself actually using it, if it weren’t for the fact that I’d be the only one who would get it.