Jastef

So Stef saw a commercial for Brain Age 2 (for the Nintendo DS) on TV , and since I'm always one to encourage a gaming habit in her, we quickly picked up a copy on Amazon fairly cheap.  It's an interesting concept -- basically it allows you to hold a daily regimen of "brain exercise" to keep your brain young and sharp.  I don't generally like school tests that masquerade as games, but this game has a nice spin on some fun little tests to keep one's brain sharp.  So far, the biggest complaints we have are with getting the microphone and touch screen to understand our voices and handwriting, but we're getting it down reasonably well.  The game does a good job of making use of the unique interaction features that the DS has.

Oh, and so far it says my brain age is 43.  Apparently 20 is optimal, so I've got a ways to go...  Oh, and I showed it to Scott at work today -- he completely embarrassed me on the serial subtraction puzzle.  Looks like I need to go back and revisit 2nd grade math again!

Today I stumbled on sheet music for Nintendo games and went looking for video of someone playing this sort of thing. Lookie lookie.

Yesterday evening I brought home LEGO Star Wars II! I received a Best Buy gift certificate as an early birthday present, and having heard good things about the game went and picked it up. It's fun; the game isn't difficult (it's almost impossible to lose), and the trick is to look good while beating it. And, to pick up all of the extra side goodies that unlock the bonus content, which is additional characters, vehicles, and levels. Ethan came downstairs last night (couldn't sleep) while I was playing and sat next to me. The game is a bit more... simplistic than what I normally play, and he apparently was able to follow what was going on really well. Anytime I swung Obi-Wan's lightsaber or fired a blaster and blew something up, he said, "Oh no!". This afternoon at lunchtime I went out with a buddy from work to go throw a frisbee for a while. We found a park in Chinatown, but it was crawling with old people just milling around, and we were worried we would hit someone. So then we walked over to the Bank of America building and tossed the disc out in the plaza there, but a security guard shooed us away, apparently worried that we were going to hit someone :) Finally, we gave up and walked over to Moscone to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, which has a very large grassy park area. We got about 5 throws in there before the guard at the park explained to us that "games are not allowed" in the park. Apparently they're worried we're going to hit the people sleeping on the ground? Thoroughly annoying that we can't play frisbee at a park. We finally gave up for the time being and headed back to the office. We'll have to do some more research before we try that again.