More Brain Training

Dr. Kawashima must be doing well for Nintendo: the game he inspired and gave his name to, Brain Age, was the killer app for the Nintendo DS, sold millions worldwide, and helped create a new gaming genre from the ground up.

Brain Age 2, or More Brain Training is the sequel to this title, and serves to cash in on the success of the DS and the edutainment/training game genre. It is delightfully similar to the original, making you feel instantly at home. All the controls are still there, the styling hasn't changed, and the sound is what you'd expect. And then of course you throw yourself into the training proper:

• you start off with a rock, paper, scissors game that takes quite a while to get used to. Especially if you've all been growing up to win rock, paper, scissors, it's strange to have to lose when Kawashima asks you to; it takes so much time, I was 68 when the game ended.
  
• then you can start doing some small exercises. Now after one day only three exercises are open to you: a maths exercise requiring you to fill in the missing operator, a spelling exercise where you have to form words from jumbled up letters, and a musical exercise, that asks you to tap the right chords to a song in time to the music. Another opens very soon, another maths exercise that requires you to give back correct change at a cash register, and one where you have to identify words spoken to you from the DS. I've not opened up any more exercises yet, but these are already challenging.

Compared to the original the exercises seem a little harder. It was terrible to see that I couldn't really do the jumbled letters test well, but maybe that's just a matter of recognition. The listening exercise is really, really hard, but that may be a technical limitation. The DS speakers are simply not that good.

Then again the original's exercises (the house occupants' one for example) proved to be no challenge at all after a while, were stale or boring (100 maths formulae, or the memory game) or were seriously flawed (the reading aloud one). So these are somewhat of an improvement.

Of course, we have to hold off on the final verdict until I've gone through the entire game, but for now, let's call it a 30 Euro luxury, instead of a necessity.

World Crashing Down Around You

So you're a world champion, idolized by many, regarded as the very best of your kind. You are a hero figure, a fighter, a warrior, a well-respected fan favorite.

And then one day you don't show up for work. Actually you call-in with a family emergency, and you go home. Next thing we know, you're found dead in your home, along with wife and son. The investigation is treated as double murder/suicide, which is confirmed by all the authoritative sources. And then the world comes crashing down on you...

Only you know what happened this past weekend. It doesn't stop everyone else to try to cope with your death. Speculation if rife, drawing conclusions is done plenty. How did you come this far? Some see it as an opportunity to mock pro wrestling, or to point out the character flaws, the lifestyle and the addictions that many personalities have in that industry. Others don't want to accept this harsh reality as a given, and either wallow in tears for the loss of a dear idol, or murder the person after the fact, just to make sense of it all.

Details and conclusive facts won't be available for some time. Could be days, could be months. In the meantime people will do everything mentioned above just to make sense - mainly to themselves - of what is obviously a tragic, unexpected and disastrous turn of events. People won't wait for the truth. They can't. They'd go crazy.

As a colleague of mine displayed recently: the truth is how people see themselves, not what the truth actually is.

- Chris Benoit 1967-2007

Two Months Later This Still Deserves A Mention

Geeky? Maybe. Looks like this guy has too much time on his hands? I guess so. But it is the best homage to the Matrix, John Woo, video games, feminism seen so far.

The Nintendo Generation

Slowly approaching 30 and already I'm berating younger, more junior colleagues. I could say stuff like "Kids today...", or "In my day...", and I would be right. I could ridicule them for jumping, and I would still be right.

It's not just an age thing though, the entire mentality of my generation opposed to the one coming out of school the past two years is completely wack. These guys want everything, from their cars and their pay, to their career choices, houses, sports and television to be fed to them on a silver platter. And they want it now. As if they're pushing buttons and stuff is supposed to happen to them, just like that.

Thing is, with the internet, MSN, hyves, youtube and the like people hear about the latest information and the greatest success stories faster than ever before. And people tell you exactly how to emulate it. Next, people get frustrated because the trick only worked once, and it did not work for them. And then they up and leave.

People are much too used to experiencing immediate cause and effect, with a remote controller or a gamepad, and they expect everything else in life to work the same.

Welcome to the Nintendo Generation.

Crash and burn

What's with these guys lately? NBA baller J.R. Smith gets thrown out of his vehicle in a wicked car crash, that actually killed his passenger. Baseball pitcher Josh Hancock gets himself killed in a motorcycle accident. Last year Pittsburgh Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was involved in a motorcycle accident as well. And now fellow NFL player Lavar Arrington suffered the same fate.

What's with these guys? Even if you are a big superstar on the road, in traffic you are just the same as everyone else. Okay... maybe you got the bigger cars or the faster ones, but they wreck totally just the same.

Then again since when did their off-game activities become national news? Normal accidents, with just as much impact are not even a sidenote in the local newspaper, but when one of these guys gets himself wrapped around a telephone pole, they get frontpage billing.

Learning from past mistakes

When the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated, careful analysis after the fact showed that part of the shielding was damaged during takeoff. This was not picked up upon until it was too late. Now with the current mission the bright guys and girls at NASA are more alert to damage sustained during takeoff.

About a week ago there was this newsbite that basically said the shuttle was damaged. Then later on the news said the damage sustained was minor. Just a little thermal blanket. Still considering the cost of one shuttle, and the fact they won't make any more, it's better to be safe then sorry.

Do you think astronauts applaud when they land safely?

Unwanted attention

Humility is a great virtue, one that saves you a lot of trouble, and can still bring you a lot of good things if you're really, really good. (Unfortunately, if you show great humility, but aren't good at all, then you - rightfully - don't get anything.) Coupled with a well-developed skill like social awareness humility can become a strong weapon to build your career on.

Here's a real-life example. You could try to do a group picture shoot, and keep to the side and let others take the front. Suddenly Mr. Photographer might just switch the point of view around and shoot the group from the side... where you just happen to be front and center.

Of course, your positive attitude brings out the best in the picture. How's that for exposure?

Where was Don McMillan when I needed him?

Nuff said.

How Many Bad Gambles Can You Have

Dutch television agents are probably the worst gamblers in the world. These are the guys who buy television shows (usually American) to fill their programming with. You would think that they would be able to discern good shows from bad ones, but unfortunately they keep missing the mark.

It gets worse: when they start advertising shows heavily as the big hit series from the U.S.A. and then find out the show was cancelled even before the show hits the Dutch airwaves, how stupid would you feel? It happened to:

• The Nine
• Daybreak
• The Class
• Summerland
• Out Of Practice

Now apparently good shows the Dutch can't pay for. So much that they get dumb and start programming it at around 23:55 on a Thursday or Friday night. This happened to:

• The Sopranos
• The West Wing
• The Agency
• My Name Is Earl

And of course you keep rerunning the same old shows over and over again, like:

• Friends (ENOUGH ALREADY)
• The A-Team
• Will & Grace
• ER
  

If you know a series is gonna cost a lot of money, why would you spend it so unwisely? And if you wanna gamble, why do it this way? Why do you programme a television evening like a novice poker player plays a hand?

The Heart, The Head, The Gut: NBA Finals 2007

One more final to go before we head into the summer, and it's a doozy... Tim Duncan and the San Antonio Spurs versus LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The Heart says: Cavs win. Simply because the Spurs are rather bland, not really colourful (literally). Okay I give them Eva Longoria, but other than that there's nothing really fun about the Spurs. They're decent but boring, opposed to Cleveland's new found pizzazz in LeBron James. It's good to see if the NBA finally has its new superstar, after Michael Jordan, and winning the NBA title this year will definitely usher in that era. James has certainly brought the franchise back from their weak period starting in the mid-nineties, when the Cavs themselves were a boring team.

The Head says: Spurs win. On the grand stage of world basketball the Spurs have a collection of players that's simply impressive. Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker, Bruce Bowen, Michael Finley, and of course the indomitable Tim Duncan. The Spurs have experience on their side, having been to the NBA Finals three times already since 1998 and winning each trip. The Cavaliers have nothing to show, except for some regular season wins over San Antonio, and the rush of having beaten the Detroit Pistons for four straight in the Eastern Conference finals.

The Gut says: Spurs win. Two years ago I simmed a couple of NBA seasons in EA Sports NBA 06 (playing the Lakers mind you), and for the 2006/2007 season I couldn't beat the Spurs in the West playoffs. I was blown out. The Spurs would go on to reach the NBA Finals... against the Cleveland Cavaliers. That means a computer game called this match-up two years before it actually happened! Mind you the Spurs won that simulated series as well, 4-2.