Last Friday I took my old camera, the Sony Cybershot P7, out for final round of pictures, before I’d be parting with it, replacing it wih a new friend. Nothing beats the pond at Elke’s parents’ place for some nice nature shots, so I crawled around the water for an hour, trying to take some pictures of the 4-5 frogs swimming around. This little guy was shot from a very short distance, 30cm max. 3X zoom isn’t all that ;)

3500+ pictures were taken, in a timespan of 4 years, which isn’t a lot but seeing as lots of them are xmas pictures.. it kinda is :D It’s sad to see you go,… the places we’ve seen, the memories we’ve shared… but luckily your memory is stored in my iPhoto library, so it’ll be okay ;)

A week off, lots of time to play videogames… if it weren’t for that crazy heat. So, you’ll see, not much to blog about…

/played
Phoenix Wright (ds)
Still addictive, new plots twisting and turning while you try to solve the murder case.

/irl
Inline skating
After 9pm, it gets safe to come out. Kurt joined us, showing his elite suicidal moves!

Swimming
Saved the day Wednesday, when max temperatures were reached. Elke’s aunt ftw ^^ Thanks for the invite.

Back to work I guess,… fridge-like cold ftl :P

Let’s try a new format:

/played
Psychonauts (ps2)
After hearing the 1UP crew pick this classic up again and finding out it’s by the creator of Day of the Tentacle, I had to get my hands on it. It’s actually quite funny, something lacking in games 99% of the time. The character and level design is really screwed up and the voice acting, my god the voice acting is perfect. Dott perfect ^^

dotstream (gba)
The good ol’ forgotten GBA… bit Generations, a new GBA series, aimed at a specific collecting/designer/retro crowd, consists of 7 games, $20 a piece. E3 (or was it something else) showed us some screenshots last year, with the launch of the Micro, but went unnoticed until now. The first 3 games are out now in Japan. dotstream is a line racer, tron style, very stylish, backed up by an electronic soundtrack, with very simplistic retro graphics but a very interesting gameplay. Much harder than it looks. A must for the crowd mentioned above. Check the site here.

boundish (gba)
Another game of the bit Generations series, this pong clone allows you to connect two GBAs and battle eachother in some original game modes. At $20 it’s a tad expensive, but if the price ever goes down, buy it coz this simple game can give you hours of multiplayer fun. More here.

LocoRoco (psp)
More of the same. Still loving it. Work has banned the PSP from the office, so I’ll be forced to play it outside in the sunshine instead of our sad little offices during lunch breaks. I might learn to love the game even more ^^

Animal Crossing DS (ds)
Online at its best! Invite me to create you a cool town tune ^^.

Prey Demo (360)
Finished this with Kurt yesterday, can’t really say it’s bad but I can’t make myself spend that much money on it.

Shadow of the Colossus (ps2)
Finally finished this game. It’s THE game of the .. years? Beautiful, impressive, sad,… it brings up all emotions possible. Playing it to the end was really rewarding. ‘A religious experience…’ as someone once put it.

Top Spin 2 Demo (360)
Who the %#$@% downloaded this demo to my 360? Tennis is bad, but this game is worse than the real thing.

Siren (ps2)
Thank god Wim was playing, coz I nearly crapped my ;). Who makes these fucked up games?! … Although I love ‘m, when I’m not playing them ^^

/listened to
Freezepop
…more podcasts

/irl
Inline skating

Now, a wonderful week off… time to skate and game till I drop.

First time this year!! Oh yeah. A well deserved time off from work for sure. Elke had some insane months after changing work, we had crazy deadlines for our software,… but we’ve made it. ONE WEEK OFF! :D

I feel like dancing.. someone tell me where the party’s at ^^

/played
LocoRoco (psp)
Animal Crossing DS (ds)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (ds
New Super Mario Brothers (ds)
Prey Demo (360)
Shadow of the Colossus (ps2)
Ridge Racer 6 (360)

/listened to
Freezepop
…more podcasts

/watched
The Island

/IRL
Inline skating!

Yes more skating! This time, we joined the Rollerparade in Sint-Niklaas for a nice little tour of 20km. Seeing as I can’t brake (I’m getting better though :P) and have only been rollerblading for a few weeks, it was quite an achievement ^^.

And even watched a movie, The Island with Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson. Very nice! Can’t say much about it without spoiling so, just go rent!

An amazing amount of handheld gaming took place though, with Animal Crossing for DS being played till both DS’ batteries died. The online feature got abused, having Wim visit our town and vice versa, importing and exporting fruits. Silly game, but oooh so cute.

LocoRoco still keeps amazing me. Clocking at 6 hours of gameplay already, new enemies and original level design keeps popping up. PSP is back from the dead I say!

I also threw Shadow of the Colossus back in my PS2, starting where I left off months ago, now 7 colossi to go! The Prey demo was quite impressive, single and multiplayer, but it got boring very quickly. We ended up quiting and playing some online Ridge Racer!

In real life, work was a pain, deadlines demanding a lot of our dev team. But… last week of work before we got a week off! And one of these days we’re heading to Sweden to say hello to Donw (good ol’ WoW friend)… aah finally things are looking up! :D Good times! ^^

When I first saw the image, my first reaction was “Ha! Awesome, but I see the US going loco on this one again”… Sadly enough, I was right.

What is it with people being so easily shocked and insulted? Or is that not the problem? Are we just afraid for the consequences? What if some extreme group takes this the wrong way and reacts?

The same thing happened with the Mohammed cartoon, causing insane reactions, making us wonder… is there really still such a thing as freedom of speech? Do I have to think twice with every single word I say, thing I do, that someone somewhere won’t feel insulted? And are we so scared we will sacrifice one of our fundamental rights?

The problems lies with the people who react, not Sony. Sony never saw anything racist in this, nor did their PR people. If you think it is racist however, you took it out of its context and twisted it around until you saw what you wanted to see.

Also, the other ads of the white PSP show the inverse. So you’d think, that’ll change their minds and they’ll see they meant no harm. But no, suddenly they see a black person aggressing/robbing/whatever the white person… hence Sony is using stereotypes and racism.. again!

The most silly thing of this entire situation is the fact that those who are complaining, shouldn’t even bother since it’ll never be shown in their country. It’s made for the Dutch audience, a multicultural country that isn’t shocked because there is nothing to be shocked about. What you are doing, is making a fuss about nothing and making some great publicity for the PSP yourself!

In conclusion, this world lacks tolerance. Tolerance towards others’ ideas, ways, thoughts. Even if they collide with yours, you should accept their existance. I’m not saying you should accept straight insults to your face, but try to stop focussing on the bad and see the good in things. Even in big evil corporations like Sony ^^.

I dare Nintendo to bring out an ad with Mohammed playing Wii Sports though :P

Those were my two cents,… I can’t help being happy I live in Europe though, where titties and violence on tv are still allowed… and LocoRoco isn’t a racist game :D