ronny.haryan.to

Two more days to Opera on Wii.

Think of the possibilites: Flash-based games + Wiimote, YouTube, movie trailers (hmm, quicktime?).

When I got home last night, I noticed that my Wii disc slot was blinking blue light, apparently there’s a message from Nintendo letting me know that the weather channel is now available, so I let it update itself from the Internet and 5 minutes later I was browsing the weather channel. The globe interface is really slick.

Finally got my Wii. It’s really a load of fun! Just see my friends boxing away… (please excuse the poor quality of the photos, they’re taken from my crappy mobile phone.)

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Insanely creative. Wouldn’t mind getting one of these.

Now everyone can be a digital dalang at home and direct a digital wayang kulit show. A researcher from the Korea National University of Arts created a digital version of the wayang kulit show by allowing the dalang (the puppeteer) to easily control silhouette characters on the screen using their hands without the actual wayang kulit itself. The dalang wears prepared color chips and move their hands inside a small box with curtains just like the stage.

It’s an interesting achievement, but watching a digital show is probably not as good as watching the real thing, in my opinion. I remember having had to wait until way past midnight to watch a wayang show on TV when I was a kid. I may not be the biggest fan of wayang, but I think wayang shows should be shown on TV more often and in better timeslots, replacing all the reality TV shows and all those other crap on Indonesian TV these days.

(via we make money not art)

Oh my God! This thing has been around for years in Indonesia (and most Asian countries I assume), and they just caught up with it now?! These electric mosquito rackets are really a lifesaver, by the way, speaking from the perspective of someone who has experienced living in a tropical country where the number of mosquitos seems uncountable and keeps growing every day, no matter what time of the year it is. The species that lives and breeds in Indonesia is equipped with bionic eyes and supermosquito speed, unlike their cousins in Canada which are bigger but much dumber and slower. The mosquitos in Indonesia are especially cunning and well trained to maneuver human attacks, normally in the form of hand grab swoosh, hand clappings which makes a loud noise but no kill, or using any kind of large but usually thin and round or square object like a book, sapu lidi, or body pillow. All these usual kinds of attack are no good, unless you’re Flash. I can hear the mosquitos laughing while avoiding these attacks with great ease.

I love these electric rackets! Not a lot of effort is needed to use this racket. Just swing the racket while pressing the button. I always zap them 99% of the time. It gave me a certain satisfaction each time because these mosquitos are unbelieveably annoying. These rackets are relatively inexpensive and easy to get in Indonesia. I haven’t tried them with flies yet. I might get one of these electric rackets here in Sydney if I can find them in Chinatown because apparently it’s illegal to just bring them in to Australia without special permission from the government. The flies here in the summer are crazy, you wouldn’t believe it.

Update: OK, here’s something new that BoingBoing informed us, research showed that when the bugs exploded after being zapped, the bacterias and what not inside their guts are spread into the air and causing potentially more harm than the bugs themselves. It’s probably not such a good idea to use these rackets or other bug-electrocution devices that cause the bugs to explode after all.