Google Documents and Spreedsheet, meet Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time and other garbage.

Waaa Waaa!  Google have gone nuts, or has my browser?  One of the two have, maybe both.  You can’t get any closer to having Safari 2.0.4 than having Safari 2.0.4 can you?  Ah well, I loaded Firefox and tried it in there instead.  It is all stylish and pleasent on the eyes like most of Google’s services but I don’t think I’ll personally use any of it.  I was interested in using the spreadsheet because I still haven’t got a good spreadsheet app on my mac, they’re either bloated and take an age to load, like Openoffice/Neooffice or they are some unusabliy limited freeware effort.  I can’t seem to be able to figure out how to do certain things with Google’s spreadsheet though, things that are must have features for a spreadsheet.  For instance how do you complete a sequence of numbers?  Usually you can just type say “1″, then “2″ and “3″ and then drag select them and then expand a box in the direction you want it to complete the sequence.  I just can’t seem to do it in Google’s.

I’ve gotten my mitts on Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time for my DS Lite.  It’s spot on fun from Nintendo and surprisingly eventful, constantly surprising things happen.  I love it!  I’d describe it as a light-hearted cartoony final fantasy, you walk around colourful maps occasionally being pulled into step-based fights.  It’s got quite a sense of humour too, in my last playing session I came across 2 Kooper Trooper’s who had been fitted against their will by alien probes and the probes were making them speek in l33t.  Seriously, they called my characters n00bs and said things like w00t and pwned. lol nintendo aren’t trying to be hip with this, they’re taking the piss out of the culture. lol

Lastly, Arrgh I want me’s a Nano Product Red!  Actually, I want a pink nano but i’d risk being beaten up for having one.  But the Red one is defo’s the next best thing and you’d be doing your bit for charideee.  But arrgh, for some reason it isn’t appearing on the UK apple store site, it’s on the UK Apple site but not the store.  Grrr.

This is Mr Side-Saddle, double barrelled name, very posh. Oh, could be a sweet-heart and vote for my podcast at Podcast Alley. Knowing my reach that means no votes but hey ho.

Being without the iMac is difficult, I’m suffering cold sweats. I checked the repair status but alas nothing has been noted yet. I hope they are treating it well

I’ve finally managed beat that bastard with the helmet in Zelda, I must have only been lacking by about one swing of the sword all them failed attempts, the relief was massive. So cannot wait for the Phantom Hourglass on the DS.

So yeah, I bought a job load of ebay-ed GBA games to play on my DS Lite the other week and I have them all now. Just look at my collection, anyone would think I was some games nut, seriously, I’m as casual as casual gamers get. But yeah, my main reason for going mad on the the second hand GBA front was to catch up on some Zelda action. Those 2 GBA carts at the topmost of the pic are Zelda 1 “The legend of Zelda” and Zelda 2 “The adventure of Link”. These 2 games were originally on the NES… Nintendo’s first ever console (or the famicom in japan), it was an 8-bit machine, not great compared to today’s standards, and these 2 GBA games are direct ports, nothing has been tarted up. But ya know, I grew up with a ZX Spectrum, I knew crap graphics. So I knew what to expect, but I also thought that 8-bit graphics weren’t any reflection on the game-play and fun to be had. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. Both Zelda 1 and Zelda 2 are incredibly frustrating, fiendishly hard with very little payoff. Also, I kinda figured that playing the very very early zelda games would shed some extra light onto the whole Zelda saga, and maybe uncover some lesser known secrets I wouldn’t know from playing the more modern incarnations. Sadly, it also turns out that the NES was too underpowered to have much of a story-line with these games. In fact, the first zelda has sod all dialogue at all. So sod that, anyone want a couple of free zelda “NES Classics” games?

Zelda 3 “Link to the Past” was originally release on the SNES (Super NES, or Super Famicom, or that one that had a shitty looking bolbus case in america but had a nice slimmer and more colourful case everywhere else for some reason, as if they figured american’s would only buy it if it also had a fat arse) and the difference between that and the 2 NES games is incredibly stark. I now can’t believe what a jump in technology it was. It must be particularly stark with this Zelda game because the artistic design was a triumph. It looks beautiful because the use of colours and the bitmaps are faultless. And so is the gameplay, I had forgotten what games are like when they get your adrenaline pumping, because I haven’t played a game that manages it in so freaking long. When you reach a boss at the end of a dungeon in Zelda 3 you perspire and shake with desire to throat the bastard, and when you finally manage it you can hardly walk straight with a buzz. I haven’t played Animal Crossing for 2 days, Gabi is going to be so mad at me.

Just so that you hate NeoOffice more than you already do it sometimes, upon loading it opens a browser window with their homepage. Thanks, I’m sure all your users really appreciate that. Well, the jokes on them, because when it opened last, you’ll see from this screenshot that one of the Google Adsense Adverts had quite an unpleasant word to say about your mother.

Hey Ruffian, I forgot I had a blog! How awesome. That’s Gabi in the pic, my girlfriend in Animal Crossing. She calls me Super T because I’m Super. Geddit? She’s feeling a lot better now, did I tell you that?
Me hyperbolic
Them: whats that mean
Me: its a kind of kitchen that tilts sideways
Them: surley not, what would the point be
Me: so you don’t have to bend over so much

I think that might be why people don’t IM me very often. Ah, sod it, I’m too tired to write.

Today I went a bit lustful for retro nintendo action. The DS & DS Lite can play GBA (Game Boy Advance) games as well as their own. Well I completely missed out on the whole GBA period and it turns out some nice old nintendo games were released for it.

I’ve fancied playing through the early zelda games for a while and heres a perfect chance. On the GBA they released/ported the 1st one (Legend of Zelda… originally on the NES) the 2nd (Adventures of Link… NES) and the 3rd (Link to the Past… SNES), plus also one specifically for the GBA called the Minish Cap which was something like the 11th so there’s a bit of a jump there.

These games don’t seem to be available on either play.com nor amazon.co.uk nor any of the usual suspects dot com so I hit ebay and there seems to be enough copies going around for everyone to own them so yay! I bought them 4, along with Yoshi Island which is one of the Mario platformers I never played.

Unfortunately, unlike a bonefide GBA you cannot play Game Boy/Game Boy Color games on the DS, and nintendo haven’t (as far as I can tell) released the game boy zelda titles in a manor that can be played on a DS. If they released a game boy adaptor I could play all the way up to zelda 4…. and even more, if they released a port of Ocarina of Time to the DS (please please please please please) I could play all zelda’s up to … 9!

That surely would be enough zelda to understand the whole history of hyrule.

Apparently, the DS has become the fasting selling console of any kind in Japan and rightly so! I’ve become a total Nintendo whore since getting it, it’s the sort of thing you fall maddly in love with and end up carrying around with you all over just in case you can steel a few minutes to play. Even though I’m not a massive games fanatic… I can happily go months without any joystick action of any kind.. I’ve always had a soft spot for nintendo. The N.E.S passed me by, as it did most of us in the U.K for unfathomable reasons (sega did better here in them days… blechgh). Anypoop, ever since the SNES, with maro world, pilot wings, zelda (the one about time) and mart kart, all classic games nintendo have been my one and only, game console wise.

After the SNES they had the N64. Now, did anyone understand why and how that thing was 64-bit, did it need to address TBytes of memory? Did it have to calculate from extremely precise floating-points? Unless that thing had a double life as a data-centre I’ve no idea. Mario 64 was totally crush-worthy on that console, and zelda. But they were the only 2, so that was a little disappointing. And things got even worse with the Game Cube, which had a mario game I really didn’t take to at all, it seemed to have missing all the mario charm. Squirting water everywhere, what was that about?

I’m so happy then that Nintendo are back! Totally. Not only is the DS a tremendous success with the most enjoyable line of games I can remember, but also everyone is salivating over the prospect of the Wii. And Sony have a turkey on their hands! How awesome is that?

I got Mario Kart DS the other day and OMG. Can’t put that bastard thing down, I’ve already completed all the grand prix’s except the mirror one. I’m not terribly good against people on wi-fi though, but I’m getting there! Oh, my Mario Kart DS Friend Code is 1289-2449-0177. Shame no one reads this or I might get some racing offers.

Gabi, on my animal crossing game has given me a nickname, she’s now calling me “Super T”, I think we’re in love, and she’s still reminding me a lot of Monica, well except, Gabi keeps running around catching butterflies and I suspect Moni would frown upon that. I’ve also had my house extended but I have to wait until tomorrow to find out what it’s going to be like, I asked for a pink roof.

I finished New Mario this morning, easiest end of game boss ever lol! Weird thing is, you can complete it whilst not having found 2 out of the 8 of the worlds. But I’ve now managed to unlock them both, which was probably harder than completing it. Shit, I have so been playing that thing way too much haven’t I? My DS lite is so awesome

There’s still the bizarre talk from many directions of a possible Apple + Nintendo tie up. It’s so wishful thinking! Company wise I expect they would clash massively, they both are too much the jealously guarding secret types. Nintendo have always been extremely closed and very much like to be the loners, sitting in a corner playing with themselves, um. Some podcast suggested what could happen though is maybe Apple license some early nintendo games for inclusion in a future iPod. I dunno how early we’re talking, maybe as far back as NES. But that would still be super duper.

New Mario is sooo gooood. I feel like a child during the golden age of gaming again.

I would have been able to play it all day if it wasn’t for some stupidness. The game and the console arrived separately, they probably came from different warehouses or sompt. For most of the day I’ve had the ds lite but nothing to play on it. Turns out I had had the game all along, but nobody had bothered to check the post box! Silly huh? We all had presumed each other had checked and that there wasn’t any mail. As usual. Its pure laziness.

Oh but the game is just perfect, it plays exactly like the snes one that I had hoped for, the biggest change is more subtle animation on the characters, theres some really funny and cute movement from them. My favourite so far has been a fish, which does such an hilarious dash for you where it looks like it barely has enough strength to hulk along its giant jaw.

A scatterbrain entry just for kicks

At Five! I’m trying to avoid tomato based dishes but it’s tricky, it more or less halves what you can eat, especially from Italian cuisine. So occasionally I’ll allow myself just a bit as a treat. I’ve just had spaghetti and meat-balls. Already I can feel the tomato meanies rushing through my veins. Ugh.

At Four! I’ve ordered a Nintendo DS Lite. Oops. Ha ha. Buyers remorse and i haven’t even received it yet. Just ordered New Mario with it for now but it’ll be enough I’m sure! I absolutely adore the old 2D style mario games. I’ve probably mentioned before how mad I am about SNES Mario world. It’s pure charm.

At Three! I finally got around to packaging up my busted hard drive on wednesday. We cleared the loft out because sheffield is had a collect your unwanted stuff day, you could dump just about anything, like old bikes and chairs and shit outside the house and they came to collect it. Nice of them huh? Anyway, I found amongst the stuff in the loft a box and some polystyrene that was just perfect for packaging the hard drive exactly as hitachi demanded. Quite incredible though, the post office only dispatched it wednesday, to reach hitachi on thursday and yesterday (friday) I received an email that they have dispatched a new hard drive to me. I was damn impressed. Almost makes up for the cufuffle with the packaging.

At Two! I forgot to mention that a week or 2 ago I tried out Neooffice 2 for intel. I’m sure the people at Neooffice are nice chaps ‘n’ gals but I’m going to find this very difficult to word without sounding cruel and hateful. It’s just, I can’t help wondering if the Neooffice can possibly be proud of their product? The intention of Neooffice is to improve Openoffice and make it more mac-like. But, they’ve managed, once again to actually make it worse! It’s slower and more clumsy even than running Openoffice via X11. You can actually see it redrawing the window. Oh yeah, and the only thing as far as I can figure out that they’ve improved for mac-likeness is the menubar. The rest is the same! Even the open/save dialog is as it is in openoffice. If I worked for Neooffice I would demand that they bin the whole thing and attack the project from another angle. Something fundamental is wrong.

And straight in at number One! I’ve nothing else to say today really.