The Gadgets Page

So much of what we see at CES is just vaporware. It doesn’t exist and it may never exist. In fact, after a healthy dose of CES, everything that IS available starts to look incredibly lame in comparison. The Optimus Maximus keyboard is a good example. Imagine a computer keyboard in which the keys can be WHATEVER you want. Instead of stickers on your keyboard (that would be MY solution), the Optimus Maximus keyboard has a tiny LED screen on each and every screen. You can change the keys based on your language or whatever other scheme you prefer.

When we saw Optimus Maximus at CES this year, we thought it looked cool, but both Mike and I assumed that it would never see the light of day. We had seen this keyboard before and nothing had come of it. We logged it as cool and didn’t report it back then because it just wasn’t available for purchase.

Well, now it is:

• ThinkGeek :: Optimus Maximus Keyboard

Here is a video produced by ThinkGeek showing the abilities of the Optimus Maximus keyboard:

If you’re willing to plunk down over $1.5K, you can have a Optimus Maximus keyboard. Of course, the concept of “available” is a fuzzy one when even ThinkGeek doesn’t have them in stock.

Considering that sticker sheets are sold in packs of 25 for ten bucks, I think I’ll go for the sticker idea.

Via: Optimus keyboard now shipping, bring on the hacks - Boing Boing Gadgets

I’ve been a fan of tiny full sized computers for a long time, and I’ve had one of just about every generation of hand held computing device that has ever come along. I bought all those devices because I’d hoped that one of them would actually be useful. There’s always a show-stopping problem: The handwriting recognition can’t be relied upon and there is no keyboard, or the computer is too large, or the keyboard is external and a hassle to carry along and hook up. Also, battery life is never sufficient to spend a day on the road.

It only takes one of these problems to make a small form factor computer useless. Unless it reaches the reliability of a cell phone, I can’t risk not having access to my e-mail, calendar, and tasks.

PDAs have never really worked for me because they can’t carry all the information I need, and nobody has ever really truly solved the syncing problem. PDAs don’t have “lite” version of Visio to jot down a quick network diagram, for example. Furthermore, no PIM on the planet comes close to Microsoft Outlook in organizational functionality. My entire “Getting Things Done” methodology is based on customizations I’ve made to Outlook, and in my old age I insist that computers do what they’re for: Make my life, the way I want to live it, easier.

So when I needed a new PC to run my “Getting Things Done” methodology that I’ve implemented with customizations to Microsoft Outlook, I knew that neither a PDA nor Apple’s forthcoming iPhone would actually work for me—I’ve already attempted to get my system working on both Apple’s set of applications and the major open source apps because I don’t like having a PC just for Outlook. Syncing just doesn’t move all the information I use, and terminaling into a desktop PC from the road is too much hassle. I just want to run outlook on a computer that I can break out in a meeting to record my commitments on.

So I’ve had my eye on the Sony UX 390 for a while. I didn’t buy earlier because I couldn’t swallow the enormous price tag and I was worried about hard disk reliability in a unit I was all but certain to drop. But recent experiences have shown me that it costs more to be without my data than a one time $2500 price tag, so I took the plunge—warily, and at Fry’s where I knew I could return it within 15 days if it wasn’t going to do the job.

Out Of the Box Experience - OOBE

Microsoft has defined an “Out Of the Box Experience” manager for Vista that is supposed to make you feel a rush of serotonin and cause you to pair bond to the computer like a duckling to its mother. The initiative is lovingly referred to as “OOBE”. So, since it apparently matters enough to have an initiative and an acronym, I’ll talk about the OOBE for the UX 390.

Firstly, the initial boot and setup on the device takes about 30 minutes. Once completely installed, you are greeted with the Vista OOBE manager, whose job it is to help you get connected to the Internet and then present the wide array of crapware that comes pre-installed on the computer. There are about fifteen overlapping dialog boxes vying for your initial attention, and six or seven notification area cartoon dialogs.

The amount of crapware in the OOBE manager made me suspicious. I checked the size of the C: drive, and astonishingly, 75% (not exaggerating) of the C: drive was full. Furthermore, the C: drive was only 23GB in size, not the 32GB of precious flash memory I was sure I’d paid for. A visit to the logical disk manager confirmed my suspicion: All that pre-installed crapware required a hefty 8GB restore partition.

Normally, you’d just leave a recovery partition in place. What’s 8GB on a 200GB disk anyway, right? Oh, wait. This is a 32GB disk. And it’s a solid-state disk that I paid $600 extra for. The customer literally must take that partition off because there’s really no room for Vista, Sony’s requisite management apps, Office 2007, and anything of yours if you don’t. Leaving it in place isn’t an option irrespective of the cost or waste.

Sony placed that recovery partition there so that they wouldn’t have to spend $1 to include recovery discs. If you do the math, presuming that the Flash disk costs $600 (the price difference between this computer and its HDD based sibling), that’s $160 of your money so that Sony doesn’t have to spend $1. Thanks, Sony!

In sum, it took me 4 hours to burn my own recovery DVDs, remove the recovery partition (1.5GB of it was mandatory, and remains there still), and restore from DVD You can’t de-select any of the crapware during installation either, so you’ll waste time both re-installing it and subsequently removing it.

The initial boot and gauntlet of EULAs, web page redirections to partner sites, etc. takes an hour to slog through, then it took another 3 hours to remove all the crapware, and another 3 hours to patch it up to date an apply the Sony patches for the crap I hadn’t removed. All told, it took me a solid 12 hours before I could do anything with the device.

So on a scale of 1 to 10, the OOBE on this device is about a -5, all thanks to crapware. The only way it could have been worse would be if the device had actually been broken.

If the recovery partition were a reasonable 1.5GB in the first place, I wouldn’t have bothered with any of this. Compare that to the 30 minutes it took from first boot until my MacBook Pro had copied over all my data and applications from my old PowerBook and was up and useful. Its no wonder Apple is schooling Microsoft and Sony.

Beyond the OOBE

So the day after you buy it is when the fun begins. The first cool thing you’ll do is enroll your fingerprints in the fingerprint security manager for logging in. There’s two types of biometric fingerprint security: Actually secure, and Kid Sister secure. Actually secure fingerprint sensors do live finger detection that can’t be fooled by a Jello mold of your finger (this does) and stores your prints in the device firmware, exchanging only salted hashes with the operating system rather than storing the hash of your fingerprints on the hard disk where they can be compromised. Unfortunately, the sensor on the UX 390 doesn’t do that second part. So what this means is that it’ll keep thieves and relatives out of your data, but not the government.

Irrespective, it’s way easier than typing a password for logging on and just as secure, so it’s a big plus on a computer where you want to minimize use of the keyboard. Enrolling fingerprints is easy and smooth. It’s a slick feature, especially for a computer whose keyboard is painfully small by necessity and which won’t always be exposed to accept passwords.

The device has Bluetooth, WiFi, and Cingular EDGE network built in. EDGE is sort of “2.5G” in terms of network speed: Faster than 2G, but nowhere near the speed of the 3G Verizon or Spring EvDO networks. In my tests, the device does between 144 and 200kbps, which is basically 1/3 the speed of my EvDO card. You can call Sony tech support and get them to unlock the device for you so you can put a T-Mobile SmartCard in it to get on their much less expensive EDGE network, which I strongly recommend if you live in an area with good T-Mobile coverage because it’s much cheaper for unlimited data. EDGE seems to do much better with connections while moving than EvDO, however—at full freeway speed it kept up without disconnecting all over Metro San Diego.

Another unfortunate problem is Cingular’s crappy software. While it works just fine, the “Power Manager” provided by Cingular sucks up 15% of the devices CPU power whether the radio is in use or not, keeping the fan running constantly (which I’m sure obviates any benefit derived by the process’s name). Killing the process will let the computer idle down so the fan can stop running. I used Windows Defender to prevent Sony’s garbage from running and just wrote some batch scripts I keep in the start menu to enable the WWAN radio when I need it.

The screen is beautiful, but the resolution of the screen is so high and size so small that people whose presbyopia has set in should not even consider this computer. I love the resolution, but my older friends are unable to see anything on it without reading glasses.

The touch screen is very accurate, and quite useful. Unfortunately, Microsoft hasn’t released the Vista version of Tablet PC, so you have to dig through some configuration panels to enable little niceties like tap-and-hold being used for right-click. Why this feature isn’t built into all versions of Windows is beyond me. Otherwise, the computer works just fine as a pure tablet, and the handwriting recognition is the best I’ve ever seen, interpreting my chicken scratches correctly about 90% of the time (not quite enough, but still the best ever).

Most importantly, the screen slides up to reveal the world’s first entire PC keyboard implemented as a thumb board. It works amazingly well, but you will get hand cramps trying to write the great American Novel on it. It’s for URLs and email replies, which it works perfectly well for that, and the blue backlight makes it useful at night.

The computer’s 1.5GHz Core-Mono CPU isn’t enough power to run Vista in its default configuration. You’ll notice near continuous disk access when you boot, and booting is slow. Disabling Vista’s desktop search service and file transfer compression service eliminates these problems, dramatically increasing the overall speed of the computer. I also disabled Windows Restore to improve performance and free up disk space. Properly tuned, the computer runs Vista just fine.

Docking the UX-390 turns it into a first-class desktop computer. You will want to disable the small screen so you have a bigger desktop (The Intel video adapter is weak, and won’t let you increase the resolution when driving both screens simultaneously). Additional docks are available of the shelf at the Sony store—I put one at the office and at home so I can just carry the computer between locations. The other accessory you’ll want to buy is the six-hour extended battery. With it, you can work all day without worrying about battery life. Without it, the computer will give up on you about mid-afternoon.

Once you’ve slogged through the OOBE, the Sony UX-390 is far and away the best PDA ever built. It’s small enough to wear on your belt if you don’t mind looking geeky. It’s even a reasonable desktop computer when you dock it. It’s expensive, but a worthwhile investment for people who need a real computer with them on the go.

I’ve become completely addicted to navigation systems since getting one in my car a few years ago. Sadly, I can’t find my way around without one anymore, so when I bought a motorcycle, putting a nav system on it was a forgone conclusion.

Looking at the competing units, I decided to get a TomTom Rider because it was adapted specifically for motorcycling. It comes with a mount that converts power from 12v and a cable that can be wired into your motorcycle’s electrical bus, and with mounting hardware and a Bluetooth headset designed for helmets.

The unit itself is quite servable, having all the standard navigation features and an easy to use touch screen. Just about all buttons were large enough to press with my gloves on without difficulty, and it comes with a complete set of maps for the U.S. and Canada on a 1GB SD card. The setup and configuration was easy enough that I didn’t have to crack the manual to get everything figured out. For pure navigation features, it’s pretty solid as are all TomTom products in my experience. For that reason, I’m going to focus on the motorcycle specific features of this unit.

The unit will connect to a Bluetooth-DUN enabled phone for live traffic if your phone supports it—a really nice feature. It also supports features included with the TomTom Plus service (most of which are theoretically interesting but practically useless, such as locating nearby buddies).

The system allows you to make hands-free phone calls through the navi head unit, uploading your address book and allowing you to dial through the navi while your phone sits safely in your pocket. It’s a neat feature, but one I doubt I’ll use very often since you can’t make phone calls at speed anyway.

Unfortunately, the mounting hardware was useless on my bike. As with most modern sport-bikes, the handlebars are multi-piece forged aluminum slabs, not the ¾” round handlebars of days gone by. There was literally nowhere to attach the mounting hardware on a stock Kawasaki ZX-14, so after about two hours of trying, I gave up and bought a TechMount designed specifically for my model of bike, costing an additional $80.

Once that hurdle was crossed, wiring the unit in was easy with the provided cable. Because of capacious the internal battery, it’s not necessary to wire the power up unless you intend to leave the unit on your bike all the time. The battery lasts all day in my tests, so many users will opt to simply take the system in with them and charge it on wall power rather than wiring the mount to power on their bike. It’s nice that both options are available.

The unit comes with a motorcycle specific Bluetooth headset that can be permanently mounted inside your helmet. It’s interesting idea, but it doesn’t work well in practice. The earpiece takes up enough room inside the helmet to make it a hard to get my ear in on the side where the speaker is mounted. The disconnectable Bluetooth transceiver recharges on house power—A recharging dock on the unit would have been much more motorcycle friendly, especially for those of us who tour for multiple days at a time. Finally, the unit is all but worthless at freeway speed as it is too quiet at full volume to hear above freeway and wind noise.

Unfortunately, the unit will only provide spoken instructions via Bluetooth. I would have vastly preferred a speaker on the unit that could be turned up to hear at speed. There’s not even a headphone jack, so you basically don’t have any options—it’s Bluetooth or no spoken instructions.

A better idea for a motorcycle nav system would be to forgo spoken turn instructions entirely in favor of bright LED turn indicators similar to those used for turn signal indicators, one on each side of the unit. Flashing left would mean it’s time to take the next left, and flashing right means next right. The frequency of flashing could increase with proximity to the turn, and the number of LEDs on each side could indicate whether it’s a merge or turn. LEDs would be far more obvious and easy to interpret at speed than spoken instructions even if there was a good way to deliver them, which there is not.

Another missing feature is a speedometer calibration display. It’s pretty difficult to get raw GPS information out of the unit (you have to dig through many layers of configuration screens) and there’s no single place where you can just show your latitude, longitude, heading, and speed over ground. Accelerometer features would be a big plus as well. You can enable speed display on the main screen, but a single “info” screen with a very large speed display would be preferable for motorcyclists.

Speaking of displays, color backlit LCDs are useless in direct sun, this one included, You simply cannot see it unless there’s a shadow cast on it. The display has a small sun hood, but too small to be of any real use. A unit built specifically for motorcycles would just use a high resolution black and white LCD designed for front-lighting in the first place.

In all, it’s a serviceable unit and a good navigator, but clearly merely adapted for the motorcycle market rather than developed for it. To be honest, the motorcycle enhancements don’t make it worth the extra cost considering that none of them are actually useful. Don’t waste your money on this motorcycle-adapted unit, just purchase the correct 3rd party mount for your motorcycle and use the portable navigation unit that you like best. Perhaps someone will pick up the gauntlet and make a unit truly designed for motorcyclists.

I’ve finally found a flash drive that works for the power geek: The Corsair Memory Flash Voyager 16GB. It’s fast, low power, and extremely high capacity at 16GB—more than enough for even the very largest files you may need to transfer. It comes in a novel neoprene case with a cap that makes it waterproof when closed.

With a sustained 7MB/sec write speed, the Flash Voyager is comparable to most medium speed flash devices. It’s not as fast as high-speed camera flash memory, but it’s faster than most thumb drives. Read speed is a nice 12MB/sec.

At 16GB, I can move an ISO of an installation DVD, an entire virtual machine, the largest Photoshop RAW images, entire websites, and do backups of all of my important files onto a single stick. It’s big enough to hold my entire MP3 library as well.

Another nice feature is the low power draw. I’m able to gang four of them on a small bus-powered USB hub off a single port of my MacBook Pro (which are notorious for supplying the low end of the power specification for USB) and drive them all as RAID-0 array with no external power adapters.

Next time you’re looking for a thumb drive, choose something that works well instead of the cheapest one you can find. With low power, intense speed and high capacity, you can’t go wrong with the Corsair Flash Voyager.

I picked up Games ‘n Music up at Walmart for about $35. It was just inexpensive enough to try out for fun. It is a game card that allows you to play videos, music and homebrew games on your Nintendo DS. It came with a 128 MB Micro SD card loaded with 25 games. The included card was enough to hold two hours worth of video, but I bought a 2 GB card and now I can play almost 11 hours of video on Nintendo.

You can see a video demonstrating Games n’ Music here:

As you can see, the video looks really good. Their software to convert video is amazingly fast. I used the lowest quality conversion and it still looks really good on the screen. Sadly, the video player leaves something to be desired. You can’t fast forward or reverse the video. If you go out of the video you’re watching and then go back in, it will restart you at the beginning of the video instead of where you were last and there is no way to fast forward to where you were before.

The MP3 player is a little better because it allows you to scan through the song. It also allows you to skip to the next song. Unfortunately, there is no good organization for the music and it doesn’t read song title from the MP3 data.

The games that come with it are utter crap. Sorry, but there is no nice way to say it. They are not worth the small storage space that they take on your card. They don’t use any of the buttons on the DS, even if the game would be better played with the button controls than a touch screen. There is no way to get out of the games without turning off your Nintendo. You can’t reset or hold down the start button to escape them.

I have been able to run some homebrew software using this card, but honestly, I haven’t been able to find anything good out there. I don’t know if this card is making them crash or if they are just substandard and crash all the time. I guess when it comes to online software available for free, you get what you pay for.

I compared the video quality of the Nintendo DS running Games n’ Music with the Video iPod and the Samsung U-740. You can see how each of them handled this Galaticast video.

The Games n’ Music conversion “squishes” wide videos to make them fit on the DS screen instead of letterboxing them like the iPod and the Samsung U-740 did. I feel like that should bother me, but honestly it doesn’t. My standards for video go way down when I’m watching it on a tiny screen. The cool thing is I can load up my card, keep my DS in my purse and pull it out to watch a video whenever I want. I could do the same thing with my Treo, but it is SO difficult and time consuming to get video to work on my Treo. It’s as easy with Games n’ Music as it is with the iPod. I just wish they would let me download a fix for the video player.

Official Website: Datel Design & Development Ltd - Games N Music

Hey, all you people who think video games are just a bunch of people shooting each other and driving cars really fast, try Sims 2 for Nintendo DS. I know, I know… I tried The Sims back when they came out and hated them too. I had one of those zen moments when I was making my Sim wash the dishes and I could see the dirty dishes in my own sink from the computer. I never played that game again. Sims 2 for Nintendo DS is different, I promise.

Firstly, there is a lot less dish washing, showering and sleeping in this game than in the original Sims version. I don’t know if it’s because they had to simplify it for the DS system or if they realized that watching your Sim wash her dishes isn’t all that fun. Either way, the Sim maintenance is still part of the game, but it usually happens when I have to go to the bathroom, so it’s just fine with me.

Secondly, they have added a simple story line to the game. In Sims 2 for the DS, I have to run a hotel and get its score higher by building guest rooms and other attractions. I have to deal with a mobster in my Penthouse. I have to deal with invasions of aliens and robots (I’m building a Rat Cave next so I can create weapons to fight off those meanies). Strictly open game play like the original Sims was just not fun for me, but I love having a list of little tasks to achieve.

Now, Sims 2 DS is not perfect. I am particularly disturbed by the angry and loopy Sims. It’s my responsibility to calm them down. If I don’t do it right, they take a swing at me. I really don’t like that the only way to stop them from punching me is to “beg” them. It is even more disturbing to me when the Sim is male. In “real” life if a man acted like that around me, he would be evicted from my hotel and barred from ever coming back in. That’s not an option in this game, so several times a day, I have to beg Sims not to punch me. I took a video of an interaction so you could see what I mean:

The angry Sim apologizes and gives you a gift after you calm him down, but I am disturbed by the punching. I know people get angry in real life, but begging them isn’t the way to stop them from punching you. I think it bothers me because it’s my job to make people happy, calm or stop acting so drunk. In real life, I have found that I can’t really change other people’s emotions. Their emotions are strictly under their own control. I like how Animal Crossing does it instead. When my animal friends are angry or sad, they tell me to leave them alone for a little while while they work through their feelings. That seems a little more realistic to me.

I was also bothered by the fact that the first thing you need to do to revitalize your hotel is to build a casino, but I haven’t seen the entire story arc. I have purposely stayed away from walkthroughs and spoilers as much as I can because I want the game to surprise me. I don’t want to know everything about the game before I even get to play it.

On the whole, this is a great game for adults. If you kept hearing about how The Sims is a wonderful game, but couldn’t understand what everyone was so excited about, try Sims 2 for the Nintendo DS. It’s almost good enough to draw my attention away from Animal Crossing.

Back in September, I wrote about buying a silicon case for my Nintendo DS Lite:

• The Gadgets Page » The Nintendo DS Lite in Black and Pink

It has been a couple of months now and I’ve been playing with my DS a lot because of Animal Crossing, so I thought I’d give a more detailed review. I actually LOVE this case. Here’s why:

• The cover is sticky: I like that the cover makes my DS a little more “grippy” so it won’t slip off the table. I was worried that the cover would attract dirt because it’s kind of sticky, but it looks as good today as when I bought it back in September.

• The smell goes away: The silicon had a strange smell when I first got it, but it went away in a couple of days.

• I can tell my DS apart from Mike’s: I like that it differentiates my DS from my husband’s. It makes it really easy to tell which one is mine. This is especially important now that I’m playing Animal Crossing on both. I have two Animal Crossing towns, so now I can tell which one is which by just looking at the machine.

• It cushions my hands: I can really tell when I’m playing with my DS with the silicon skin and when I’m playing with Mike’s without one. Mine has more of a cushion and doesn’t hurt my hands when I’m playing for a long time.

• One minor problem: There is a little bit of a problem with the design of the cover. When you have the charger plugged in and open the case, the silicon cover bunches up kind of funny. Sometimes it actually pushes the top part off a bit, covering part of the screen. This ONLY happens when the charger is plugged in, otherwise, the skin folds nicely and stays in place. I don’t play with the charger plugged in that often, so it’s not much of an issue for me.

When they came out with the Pink and Black Nintendo DS Lite, I felt kind of sad that I hadn’t waited. Since I’ve had this cover, which makes my DS green, I haven’t cared one bit about the pink one.

I wrote a review of the Nike Imara Heart Rate Monitor on Starling Fitness. You can see it here:

• Starling Fitness » Review: The Nike Imara Heart Rate Monitor

Finding a watch that I am happy with is a difficult task for me. I got my Imara for Christmas last year.

“I haven’t done a review for it. Want to know why?”

“I don’t like to give bad reviews.”

Just last month, I realized that I actually DO like my watch:

“I love how it tracks my calories and how much time I exercise in the low, medium and high ranges. I love that it’s water resistant up to 50M, so if I’m lazy, I don’t even have to take it off when I shower. In fact, I’ve been wearing my Nike Imara almost constantly ever since I got it. That is unheard of for me, since I used to change watches like jewelry.”

“That’s when I realized that I love my Nike Imara.”

“It still doesn’t work whenever I run on my treadmill, but it has been a watch that’s a good friend for almost a year now. It’s so rare for me to find a watch that I enjoy that when I finally found one, it took me 10 months to realize that I actually loved it.”

I’ve talked in the past about why I hate the watch designers of this world. The Nike Imara doesn’t fulfill all of my desires in a watch, namely, it’s not pretty enough to wear with a dress. Also, it’s a little on the big side, even though it’s a women’s watch. Despite that, I have enjoyed this watch for the last 10 months without even realizing I was content. This little guy slipped in under my radar and I didn’t even notice.

When I’m not playing my DS alone with Animal Crossing, all my group Nintendo DS time is spent with Mario Kart. I look back at myself from before a time when I owned anything by Nintendo. Would that girl understand the draw of Mario Kart? Could I explain to her how intensely fun it is? What would a conversation with her be like?

Laura of the Present: Oh man! You have GOT to get yourself a Nintendo DS!

Laura of the Past: Yeah, I know! I can’t wait to play that Brain Age game!

Laura of the Present: No, forget about that, seriously. You’ll play it religiously for a month and then quit. In fact, you’ll probably like Big Brain Academy better, but that’s another story.

Laura of the Past: Why do I need a DS then, smartie pants?

Laura of the Present: There’s this game called Mario Kart! It will totally…

Laura of the Past: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. It’s a racing game. We were going to buy it for Kristen on the Gamecube. It’s just a racing game. It can’t compare to Project Gotham or Colin McRae.

Laura of the Present: No, seriously. Mario Kart is WAY funner than either one of those.

Laura of the Past: Why?

I can tell she doesn’t believe me.

Laura of the Present: Because you can play against Stacey and Dan and Mike all at the same time. I think you can play eight people total. It totally rocks!

Laura of the Past: Everyone plays on my DS? How can you split a screen EIGHT ways?

Laura of the Present: No, listen to me. Mario Kart is THE reason that Mike, Stacey AND Dan are all going to buy DSes of their own. All four of you are going to play race after race against each other until your right thumb hurts so bad you can’t hold a pencil. Seriously, it’s THAT fun. They don’t split the screen, each of you can only see the race from your point of view on your screen. Remember how confused you get with the split screen because you realize halfway through the race that you’ve been looking at Mike’s car instead of your own. You won’t even remember that problem with Mario Kart. It’s that easy.

Laura of the Past: Umm…

I’m not convincing her. What can I tell her that will convince her that this game is MORE than awesome?!

Laura of the Present: You get to choose your character and your kart. The more you play, the more karts you open up.

Laura of the Past: Yeah, so what. I can do that with Project Gotham.

Laura of the Present: No, this is totally better. You get to be Toad!

Laura of the Past: I get to be a toad? What, like a frog?

Oh, man! How do I describe Toad to her? How do I describe that level of cuteness? He’s more than a mushroom. He’s Toad! I can’t do it!

Laura of the Present: Nevermind that!

What is the killer app? Oh yeah, the turtle shells!

Laura of the Present: You get to shoot Stacey with turtle shells…

Laura of the Past: I get to shoot Stacey?

She’s interested, now reel her in…

Laura of the Present: Yeah, Stacey, Dan and Mike. You get to trip them with banana peels, shoot them with shells, turn them into itsy-bitsy tiny karts that can fall through the mesh into the lava.

Laura of the Past: I get to push them into lava?

I’ve got her!

Laura of the Present: Yep! Plus, you can push them into water and outer space!

Laura of the Past: Outer space?

Oops! I went too far. She’s not buying the outer space thing. How could I describe Rainbow Ridge in a way that makes sense?! Oh man, there’s no way! Just drop it!

Laura of the Present: Yeah, but only on one race. That’s not important. The important thing is that you need to get yourself a DS.

Laura of the Past: Okay, I’ll buy one right now.

Laura of the Present: Nope. You gotta wait until they come out with the DS Lite because the screen is brighter. Don’t wait too long, though, ’cause then you’ll be tempted to buy the pink one. You don’t want to buy the pink one.

Laura of the Past: I hate pink.

Laura of the Present: You won’t hate this pink, trust me.

Laura of the Past: Now I KNOW you’re lying to me.

My nephew came over for a visit. I told him to bring all his DS and GBA games so I could try them out. I wanted to see if there was anything fun out there and his selection is completely different than mine. I played with about eight or nine games before I put his Animal Crossing into my DS Lite. I didn’t expect to like it anymore than the previous mind-numbing games. I was expecting Sims for kids. I hated the Sims, so I had zero hope for Animal Crossing.

How could I have been so wrong?!

My nephew hadn’t played in a long time and his town had fallen into disrepair with garbage all over the ground. Additionally, there were cool things to pick up (so many that my pockets were full very quickly). I played with his game Saturday evening for about four hours while he and Mike endlessly played the mini-games on Super Monkey Ball.

Sunday morning, I was on the phone with the local game store trying to find out how soon they opened. I had to wait until noon to buy my own copy of the game.

That’s when the really interesting thing happened…

I bought a used game at the store.

“Do you guys clear out these cards when you get them or am I going to have to delete the previous owner’s stuff?”

“We don’t do anything with them. If it doesn’t work, bring it back, but yes, you’ll probably have to delete the old stuff.”

“Does this come with the book?”

“Nope, just the card.”

I saved five dollars, but ended up not getting the book. Oh well, Mike assured me that if I get stuck, I can figure out things online.

When I put the used Animal Crossing game into my DS, I was confronted with a very different world than my nephew’s. It was a barren desert. “I guess you can choose the climate when you build your world, Mike. Look at this one it’s a desert.” There were few trees and lots of sand. It looked hot, barren and desolate; kind of like Northern Nevada.

I deleted the previous owner’s town, Las Habras, and waded through all the warnings about killing everyone in the town and never being able to get them back. I felt guilty for massacring the citizens of Las Habras, but I wanted to start a town of my own. One that wasn’t a desert and didn’t have litter and garbage all over.

When I set up my town, Merriton, I realized the truth. Las Habras wasn’t a desert because you get to choose the climate. Las Habras was a desert because the previous owner had killed all the insects, fish and plants. After playing with Las Habras and my nephew’s towns, I never even knew that there were insects that you could catch. I couldn’t find any because they had all been caught to extinction. Las Habras was a desert because some of the resources are limited. My nephew had garbage everywhere because his town was neglected. The only way to keep my town beautiful and garden-like was to limit how many fish and insects I caught. I would have to spend my money on plants and saplings instead of furniture, wall coverings, carpeting and clothing.

Saddest of all, when I visited my town’s museum, all I could find were empty exhibit halls. I walked past the empty aquariums and galleries with a sad sense of guilt. My job would be to fill the museum with all that my town had to offer.

I played for eight hours on Sunday just earning money to pay off my humble house (with no plans on upgrades) and catching fish and insects for the museum. When I catch a fish or insect that the museum already has, I release it. I haven’t figured out how to fill the museum with paintings yet and I haven’t bought a shovel yet, so I haven’t found any dinosaur fossils. My whole goal is to create a museum that makes me happy to visit and keep the town beautiful. I love to walk around and hear the crickets. I love to see the butterflies. I want them to stay in my town.

Most importantly, I don’t want Merriton to become a desert.

Whenever the other characters in the game tell me that my house is small or plain, I don’t care because I don’t want a cool house. In fact, when they give me things to put in my house, I either regift them or sell them. I’d rather sell wallpaper than fish. Once they are sold to Tom Nook, they are gone forever.

It seems like the fruit on the trees and the seashells are renewable resources, so that is how I have been paying off my house. I use the cherries and seashells to pay off my debt and the fish and insects go to the museum.

Why is it that I’m obsessed with Merriton, but I couldn’t have cared less about whether my Sims did their dishes or practiced for their acting career? Is it a world just different enough from my own world that I am completely lost? Is it the cute characters and how funny they are?

I don’t know. All I know is that I’m withholding Animal Crossing privileges until I get my real world chores done. It’s that motivating and enjoyable.

Update 10-16-06: After weeks of obsessing over this game, I have written a follow-up. You can read it here:

• The Gadgets Page » Nintendo DS: Animal Crossing Update