Hmm. A backlog, again. Ah well, plodding on..

The PS3 was uncovered. I actually forgot to watch Sony’s press conference, because I was too busy playing my new PSP games, but I soon found all the info online. It’s all shiny. It’s more powerful than anything in the world. It can do everything, and the controller looks like a boomerang.

Only.. this is Sony, so we can pretty much discount most of what they say. Even the design isn’t final. None of the game demos they showed were real-time, they were all pre-rendered movies “built to the PS3’s specs”. It’s also not a games machine, in Sony’s words. The PS2 wasn’t, either. I don’t think the PS1 was. Which is funny, because I’ve played more games on these systems than anything else.

Maybe there’ll be something to get excited about in the future - it’s supposed to be launched next spring. Right now though, I have nothing to go on other than Sony’s hype.

Nintendo didn’t have much to show either, but what they did looks cool - nicer than the other two, anyway. As far as features, Nintendo are being modest about specs, but the interesting thing is the part about playing Nintendo’s back catalog. Now, we have an N64, a SNES, and two NES systems in the house (plus emulators on everything that will run them), but being able to download games direct to a Nintendo system and play them is pretty awesome. No more hunting for carts on eBay, no more alcohol + q-tip to get them working. I think they could only screw this up if the “revolutionary” controller they unveil is just stupid.

As far as games go.. I’m just going to link to the Gamerdad post I made about them.

That MTV Xbox360 unveiling sure was bad. It was also exactly what I expected, of course. It didn’t provide anything that hadn’t already leaked out, other than seeing the thing from all angles and a few seconds of game clips. Some looked impressive, others looked like current-gen games. To be expected, really.

This other video is a lot better, if only because it’s not so MTV. And it has developers being dorks, which is always a plus.

Having the HD included is rather cool. It did seem odd that they’d be taking away one of the things that makes the Xbox so neat. Still no news on backwards-compatibility. It would be nice if it were there - I could play my Live games again! - but then again, the games I most enjoyed online will almost definitely have new versions for the new console. Well, the existence of new versions is true - here’s “DOA4″ for example - we just don’t know if they’ll be on Live yet.

I still think the console itself looks kinda dumb, and the name is stupid. But I still want one next to my TV come November. While we’re at it, let’s get a new HDTV, too.

Check how awesome my trash folder is.

Yeah, I’m that cool.

We know what the Xbox 360 looks like, we know what the controller looks like, we know what its media player remote looks like, and now we know the tech specs and Live details.

The transferring over of Live accounts is good news, as I’m already paying for one I can’t use because my Xbox is banned (oops). The fact that there is now a free Live version is also great news - as long as demand is met. I could imagine weekends being unplayable because everyone is getting their free gaming in on the silver level.

I’m actually less interested in the specs this time around. It’s powerful sure, more powerful than my PC this time around, but I’m already used to Xbox games looking terrific, now they’re just going to look MORE terrific.

I mentioned in a previous post that I had obtained a PSP. It’s as gorgeous as you’d think. Hatsumi certainly agrees.

I try not to think about how much money I spent on it. It’s ludicrous, really. My only defense is that it was practically $0 out of pocket, because I sold off a bunch of stuff - GBAs, Gamecube - to pay for it. I miss them of course, so I know I’ll probably be buying them again, but perhaps not, seeing as the DS plays GBA games and the Revolution is supposed to play Gamecube games when that comes out. We’ll see.

I just had to buy it though. I get these.. urges. I convince myself that I absolutely need to buy something or my life will be over, so I rearrange things to make it possible. That’s why I bought a PS2, and that’s why I bought a Dreamcast, and that’s why I sold that Dreamcast to buy a Gamecube, and that’s why I bought a GBA, and that’s why I bought an Xbox, and that’s why I bought another Dreamcast, and that’s why I bought a PSP, and that’s why I’ll likely end up buying another Gamecube. This is not to mention the systems that are coming, and the other handheld system, the DS - which we had two of, and sold.

Thing is though, I’ve actually spent more hours watching movies (anime episodes, actually) on the PSP than playing games, even though I have two excellent titles in Wipeout Pure and Lumines. I also now have a wireless router, which SHOULD let me get up to no good with the Wipeout browser, but I seem to be getting really crappy speeds. I’ll have to see if I can fix that somehow.

Especially interesting is the news that Paradox has managed to rip UMDs and that someone has managed to get homebrew code executing, albeit on Japanese 1.00 firmware, not the 1.50 release of US PSPs.

We’ve had the little lump in the house for nine days now, and we’re settling into somewhat of a routine.

Oh, the lump? Charlotte Marjorie Windmill was born on 4/28/05, 7lbs 10.8 oz, 20.5″ tall. She’s beautiful. She’s perfect. And she’s preventing us from getting anything else done. She sleeps through the night more or less - which is amazing. The downside is that she does NOT like to be put down in a bassinet or crib, so right now one of us always has to be holding her. This isn’t bad, it’s just inconvenient at times. Like when I need to pee.

Because of Charlotte, Ocean’s Twelve will always be memorable to me. See, half-way through watching that movie, Amy started labor. Ordinarily that might mean a trip to the hospital, but you see, we were going to have a home birth. An unassisted childbirth. I didn’t want to - I was always upfront about that - but our decision when we learned Amy was pregnant was that we would have a homebirth, with a midwife / doula. The problem was, we had a hard time finding one nearby. It wasn’t until quite late in the game that we finally realised why - midwives are illegal in Iowa. In other words, you can’t have a home birth with a midwife in Iowa. You can, however, have an unassisted childbirth - isn’t this a stupid state of affairs? Of course, just because I didn’t want to do it doesn’t mean I wasn’t supportive - my concern for Amy’s welfare was just as high as for the baby, and surely she’d be more relaxed being able to give birth in familar surroundings, with people who loved her and weren’t just doing their jobs? But still, I was terrified. While part of me was thinking that babies have been born outside of hospitals for forever, the rest of me was looking at how we always freak out when under the slightest bit of duress - like washing the dog in the bathtub. However, Amy is such a strong person, and her enthusiasm and confidence pulled me through it.

So labor started. And I didn’t freak out. I can’t say it’s because I was cool and confident, it’s pretty much because I just switched to auto-pilot. I tried to help Amy through the contractions, I setup the big inflatable pool we’d bought (not as a birthing pool, but so Amy could sit in to help labor pains), I kept the water flowing. I boiled water. I read through the Emergency Childbirth Handbook. I’ll let Amy give the labor details if she wants, but the summary is that at some point, she decided that labor should be finished in the hospital, so my sister-in-law drove us over there, something I’ll be eternally grateful for, because I STILL don’t have a driver’s license. Because I’m an idiot.

And so, just 40 minutes after arriving at the hospital, Charlotte was born. Not quite the childbirth experience we planned, but mom and baby are both doing fine, which is the important part, eh?