On Nov. 23, 2005 I moved to The Hague from Washington, DC. This is my new Dutch life.

12.05.2006

Holiday Spirit

Well, it's that time of year again. Time to indulge in a bit of olie bollen and drink mass quantities of mulled wine.

You'll remember from my account last year that the holiday season in the Netherlands officially kicks off in November with the arrival of Sinterklaas. For a particularly entertaining take on Dutch Santa, check out the David Sedaris bit, "Six to Eight Black Men," set to scenes of a Sinterklaas parade, courtesy of YouTube.

Today, in fact, is Sinterklaas Day, when many Dutch people exchange holiday gifts. I know what I won't be getting, a Nintendo Wii. It's sad, I know, but the Wii has rekindled my enthusiasm for Christmas. I want one really, really bad. Like I wanted a Cabbage Patch Kid really, really bad. Like I wanted the first Nintendo system really, really bad. And the really, really sad thing is that there's no chance I'll get one before January. Waaah! It's 1986 all over again.

I know that many of you trip over my blog by way of unusual Google searches, but most of you know me. Because you know me, you also know that I LOVE video games. So, you know that sitting on my hands until January is nothing short of cruel and unusual punishment.

Perhaps not as cruel as this:

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6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wii trumps Cabbage Patch any day. Now that the goods are out on how to haxor the "sensor bar," I want one too!

6:00 PM GMT+1

 
Blogger akaijen said...

Ooh hacking? Links please!

11:05 PM GMT+1

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bide your time by playing old NES games on an emulator (they got 'em for Mac/PC/Linux). They kick the crap out of 98% of the sludge out these days. I wasted days replaying Super Metroid....worth every minute.

11:57 PM GMT+1

 
Blogger akaijen said...

Hmm that could be a good idea. Or I could play the Game Boy that sits in the closet collecting dust. I'd have to find it first. You know that the Wii will also play the old NES games and Super NES games as well as Sega games?? Awesome. I actually missed out on the joys of Super NES and Sega while I was a po' college student.

Speaking of Metroid... that really has to be the best game ever. It was particularly excellent on the GameCube.

9:42 AM GMT+1

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The sensor bar is just an array of blinking IR LEDs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTGSkYRDpWY

With ~10 bucks of parts you can generate your own IR signal at arbitrary width and brightness to get the Wiimote to work properly for, er, largish displays in largish rooms. The blink isn't even sending any proper IRDA code as far as I know, just a timed flash, so all you need is a timer chip.

8:40 PM GMT+1

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh yeah, Metroid was f-ing brilliant. I didn't get the new one for the Gamecube, cause it was first person. Didn't seem the same.

3:54 PM GMT+1

 

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