Greg Stephens is gonna be pretty pissed off when he reads this.

Hope you got your GTAIV from somewhere other than your usual Nottingham branch of GAME, Greg.

_{Why yes, this is a sneaky attempt to get jbury’s post to show up in a Google search for Greg Stephens..}

Hey howdy hey, it’s a post!

I figure I may as well use my blog again. I’ve looked at it several times a day for the past two years (it’s still my homepage because I’m incredibly lazy) and while I’m now active on other blogs (such as Gaming with Children) there are still times I’d like to jot down my thoughts about my personal projects.

One of which is Puzl, my first homebrew game for the Nintendo DS. The first version has been entered into the NeoFlash Spring Coding Compo, and I’m crossing my fingers to at least get a top 10 place and snag a sweet motion controller for either the DS or PSP. There’ll be a lot more Puzl posts in the future.

Speaking of the DS, one of the new toys I’ve gotten since the blog was last active is a DS Lite. Technically it was Amy’s, but she never uses it, so now this incredibly sexy piece of hardware is mine, ALL MINE! Other new toys? Oh, a Wii and a PS3. And my primary development platform is now OSX. Yeah, lots to talk about now.

I never did finish the game in a week, though

As I’ve been busy for the last couple of days, I’ve decided to give myself an extension on the game. Here’s an updated pic.

Yesterday, I had the crazy idea of making a game in a week that would run on 4 different platforms - Windows, PSP, Xbox, and OS X. Could this be something I actually finish?

Here’s a pic. Exciting, huh?

..and we’re done. FWIW, I have to change two files in wp-includes, links.php and templates-functions-general.php, to get rid of the list items in the link list over there on the right, and to format the archive link dates over there on the left.

Yes, I wrote that mainly to remind myself in the future.

A few things will look a little goofy while I upgrade to WordPress 2.0.  It’s a smooth upgrade for most people, but I have some jiggery-pokery to do with some of the files to get it to display exactly as I need.

Wow, I think something is actually going right on this crappy day - coolpowers.com is about to expire, and I didn’t fancy paying NetSol’s $35 registration fee, so I initiated a registrar transfer to Dreamhost, who will only charge $9.95 a year. I’ve heard several tales of woe from people trying to transfer away from NetSol and was expecting the worst, but it looks like this is actually going to go through.

I guess you’ll know if it doesn’t, because the domain will expire and coolpowers.com will redirect you to some sleazy site trying to sell you the domain and/or boobs.

I’m currently wheeling and dealing in order to buy a Nintendo DS with little to no monetary outlay. This is mildly annoying to Amy, because she thinks that ruins any chance of an awesome Christmas surprise. I think this is crazy. There are plenty of awesome Christmas surprise gifts, some of which I will now ruin by mentioning:

- Getting a US copy of Rez on the PS2 for a reasonable price (e.g. it goes on eBay for almost 100 bucks, which is not reasonable), or getting a Japanese copy from Play Asia or the like for much cheaper

- Ditto for another PS2 title, Gitaroo Man

- Ditto again for an old PS1 game, Intelligent Qube

- Noticing I have an incomplete collection of Azumanga Daioh DVDs and completing the set

- Whatever volumes of Beck manga are out that I don’t have (hint: I only have the first volume)

- Any of the more current games I’d like, such as Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence which should be out next month, Taiko Drum Master, Shadow of the Colossus, or older things like Ico etc.

- A Gamecube to replace the one I stupidly sold. They have a bundle deal with Super Smash Bros. Melee, you know

- A cute model from Hobbyfan

- Pocky is great

- I’ve been buying Mai Hime figures. I only have #4 and #6. The others would be swell. Although really, I could take or leave #5

- There are Metal Gear comics that I never bought

- I had an Amiga A500. I miss it. I always lusted after an Amiga A1200. I always wanted a Commodore 64. The Intellivision was cool. I’m just sayin’

The funny thing is about all this mobile talk - we may well have to get new phones sometime in the future because our provider, Midwest Wireless, is selling up. Alltel and Verizon are the front-runners, dunno how I feel about that. Alltel does offer quite a few phones, and they’re cheaper than Midwest..

Finally. It works, and I can go on with my life.