Don’t know if anyone actually uses iGoogle, but if you do, why not give this little gadget I made a try. It’s nothing spectacular, but I never heard of a jaw-dropping Memory game either.

Yes, the good old Memory game. Something I thought more people would know! If you are part of that strange group that doesn’t, well, just find two of the same hidden images by clicking on the squares. Yes it’s that simple. Just try to do it in as few clicks possible.

Oh and the great thing is, it uses Flickr. Just go to its settings, type in the tag of your choice and you can play with anything ranging from kitties to girlies.

So, go on and install Flickr Memory, or check here to put the little game on your own site :P

Any comments always welcome through Twitter.

Ha! How do you like that! Not one, not two,… but three sets of pictures (although small sets but still).

First up, a few shots of the fireworks in our little town, dating from last year though. Always very impressive what they do with our tax money. Worth checking out each time though.

Next up, Christmas 2006! It’d be called London 2006 if we’d have taken more pictures during our 2 day shopping spree, but hey, we were in a hurry!

And finally, our trip to Barcelona, where we met up with Franky, a fellow Orphan from World of Warcraft and crazy New-Zealander, together with his girlfriend Iwona!

It seems to have been quite a while since my last post… I guess you can see WoW got to us good this time…
So let’s try to sum up everything that’s happened these last months!

First, as stated before, the World of Warcraft addiction got worse! Elke’s main Aislynn is making some serious progress, getting nicely geared up with Karazahn epics and self-tailored ones. My rogue got a bit neglected, but has received a new task… leveling my priest! Yes, that means I actually bought a second account and am playing on two pcs at the same time.. as I said, we got worse…

Enough about WoW though. A few weeks ago, Kurt and myself went to the PlayStation3 midnight launch at Sint-Niklaas. After waiting for 3 hours we finally managed to get our hands on one… and man, is it a sexy machine. The launch lineup might not be amazing, but putting this machine next to the 360 makes the 360 look like a kid’s toy. It’s very silent, it’s interface is right up my ally (aka beatiful minimalistic design, not bloated with ugly colors and fonts like the 360 Dashboard) and it plays Blu-rays!

Motorstorm is a must-have. Even though not my genre of game, it’s very arcady, chaotic and great fun. fl0w is a fun interactive screensaver, perfect for a 10 minutes chill-out before heading to bed. As for blu-ray playback, up until now I only own one disc, Lady in the Water. The quality is jaw-dropping. Even the sound seems much clearer and full. Any hints on where i can find more region B (or region free) blu-rays would be very welcome.

Thanks to Kurt, I’m watching some anime again. He dropped by the entire first season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Not as pretty as the movies, but closer related to the manga, it is a very enjoyable series. Those Tachikoma robots are so cute ^^ (and even have their own mini-series on the discs).

If you were wondering about the picture on top, well, I guess you’ve heard (hell the entire world heard) of those couples that didn’t want to be married by a black man in our small town of Sint-Niklaas. As reaction to that, they held a mass marriage, with 600+ couples present, to support this man and come up against racism. It being quite a romantic idea and an event for a good cause, of course we joined in. We did run off before the group hug started,… as we aren’t THAT social either :P

I think that about covers it all. I noticed I’ve been neglecting my Flickr account as well, so I’ll be uploading lots of pictures soon. There’s a new one of Myuu already however, I suggest you check it out!

Seeing these videos shows some very nice and powerful iPhoto-like application for the Wii, but I don’t really get it. First of all, the Wii isn’t HD, so you’re pictures will look pretty crappy and low-res on a tv. And what about storage? Can I just watch pictures on SD cards?

I don’t see the point, but it looks fancy none the less ;)

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 ;)

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

/played
LocoRoco (PSP)
Animal Crossing DS (DS)
Trauma Center: Under The Knife (DS)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (DS)
New Super Mario Brothers (DS)
Brain Age (DS)

/listened to
Guns n’ Roses
Freezepop
…more podcasts

/IRL
Inline skating!
Golf!

I don’t want to know how much money I spent on games these last two weeks, but I’m all set for the summer! Wednesday I got my hands on Mario, which is just about the best tribute to the old Mario game ever. Sure brings back memories, with the first worlds being sort of a remake of the original Super Mario Bros on the NES.

Yesterday I managed to get the only copy of LocoRoco available in our shopping mall, quite expensive (54 Euro!!) but really worth it. It’s the happiest game ever made! Every few minutes the LocoRoco surprise you with another one of their cute actions making you go “OOOoooooh” all the way ^^.

Trauma Center is damn hard, I’ll really have to fight my way through the next operation. My patient seems to prefer dying over and over again :/ Phoenix Wright however isn’t really hard, but very entertaining. It’s been a while since I took a console with me to bed, but you can’t just quit in the middle of a court session now can you?

And soon you’ll be able to visit me in my own little town, Kyoto, where little suibne is hanging out paying off his mortgage to Tom Nook. Yes, the Gamecube version of Animal Crossing got me hooked a few years ago, now the addiction is all back… in portable format! Ideal for lunch breaks at work :D

And yes, there’s the real life activities, this time… golf! No I didn’t turn into a snob just yet, this was an event with our colleagues, organized by our good friend Denis. I must say, it was pretty good. Driving 140km to go just go play golf might sound crazy, but it was worth it. I forgot how pretty the south of Belgium can be, with its incredible nature showing the most beautiful views. As for the sport itself, I prefer putting as crazy as that may sound ^^. Swinging that club and hitting far wasn’t all that. Although I reached something of a 150m, my ball never went straight, left the training area and ended up near hole 6 all the time. No one got hurt (as far as I know) … :D

Fresh air, hot sun, not so good food, … good times :P Check out the pictures here.

Last night the gang got together to max our electricity bill and game for 8 hours straight. There was some mainstream, a bit alternative, some retro and… a train simulator. Yes, it was Wim’s…

Anyway, except for the insane temperatures reached in the appartment (god damn summer), I guess we can say it was a pretty fun evening. Tnx to ya’ll for showing up and bringing all those great toys along, a big tnx to Elke for the snacks and tnx to Denis for taking some great pictures (we forgot to take one of you damn it ;)).

Go check the gallery here!

Crap. Another MMO has gotten me in its grip. Although, this time, it’s not really pointless grinding and questing, reaching useless goals and playing with 12 year olds. Nope, it really is a second life, oddly enough. Just, this life is a bit less limited ;)

The great thing about Second Life is its user-created content. Everything is created by the residents, the players in the game. You have access to a 3D modeling tool, allowing you to create anything you like. Adding your own textures and writing your own scripts, lets you build your own furniture, cars, pets,… anything really. All limited by just your imagination.

Of course, you don’t have to. You can just visit the shopping malls and buy your stuff instead of being creative yourself. What brings us to money issue. The world of SL has its own currency, the Linden Dollar, which has an exchange rate with real life money. So you can exchange it in two directions, meaning you can spend real life cash, but also make it! If you are succesful and have the skills to create great items, you might be able to get some extra pocket money out of it… or even get loaded! (google for some success stories of SL residents)

But the main activity is the networking, meeting people and going out to visit places. There are clubs of all sorts, fun parks, malls,… someone even recreated the town of the Flinstones! The live music streams add to the realism, giving that extra touch to each place you visit. Clubs even have live DJs interacting with the avatars dancing in the club. It’s a crazy new world, but one really worth a visit.

The first day I logged in I was lucky enough to run into a girl named Alyssa, who was kind enough to show me around the world of SL. Together with a guy named Quidam (or kiwi as we call him), we’re now living on this beautiful piece of country land (small island included!) owned by her. Now I got my own little Irish cottage on there. Took me 2 days to find furniture and get the interior right (it’s been a while since I saw 4am and 5am pass by two days in a row), but it’s looking sweet ^^ lol.

I suggest you check it out, as the basic account is free. Just download the 30+mb client, create an avatar and look me up, Suibne Goodnight. I even got white wine in the house ^^. And a drunk cat… walks a bit funny (whoever wrote that script is a retard lol). In the mean time, check out a few screenshots.

I ran into this fun little tool today, allowing you to show a sliding images bar of your personal pictures on your desktop and/or website. I don’t really see the point, but it is a fun little gadget nonetheless.

Uploading my pictures to Flickr and to the tool’s site Slides.com however is a waste of time and space, but it seems you can pass it any photo RSS feed. The above slide bar shows what you get using the standard RSS link on your Flickr page.

I presume you would be able to use Apple’s new photocasting too, since it provides RSS as well. Now I would just like to know if the new iPhoto can photocast to Flickr instead of .mac, by default, without using some extra plugin as I do now.