Varrqnuht.net

Our local newspaper is pretty pathetic. We only have one, for a start, and they’re very much a "local" newspaper.

I sent this letter to the editor earlier today:

I’m writing regarding the story "Forestry puts out spot fire over ashes" by Jane Lovibond in Wednesdays Mercury (17/04/2002).

The following sentence appears in the story; "She said her washing was covered in fine grey ash and her curtains and bed linen wreaked of smoke from the fire she estimated to be 5km away."

The word "wreaked" is used incorrectly in this sentence - the correct word in this context is "reeked".

This looks like an example of over-reliance on a spelling checker, rather than a human editor.

Yours,

John Dalton

I think it’s pretty poor that someone like myself, with very little formal education in grammar (our schools suck) is spotting blindingly obvious errors that should have been picked up by the professional writers and editors responsible for them.

When I got my Gameboy Advance as a farewell present from my last job, I expected

that I’d use it a lot more than I have. But for various reasons, I haven’t used it as

much as I’d like.

Two recent developments should get me using it a lot more though. The first will

(eventually) solve the problem I have with the screen, in that it’s really hard to view

in anything but optimal lighting conditions, and about the only time those occur are

when you’re sitting on the loo.

You can buy external lights designed to solve this problem, but they themselves are

plagued with problems of their own. The screen on the GBA is quite reflective, and an

external light doesn’t help this. Plus there’s the problem of lighting the screen

evenly.

A couple of guys had the same problem, and decided to try to modify their gameboys to

add an internal light for the screen. They were very successful, and have started a

company called Portable Monopoly to sell

their modification as a DIY kit. The results look pretty impressive, and as soon as

it’s available in Australia I plan to grab one.

Once I can see the screen clearly outside of the bathroom, all I need to do is get

some more games. The games have turned out to be more expensive than I thought though,

so I don’t really want to spend money on games I won’t play. On a PC you can just

download demos of the latest games, and get an idea from that of whether or not the

game is worth buying. If there’s no demo, you can always borrow a copy from a friend,

or just get them to copy it for you.

Of course, copying the games is software piracy. For as long as I’ve been playing

computer games, this has been going on. For just as long there’s been a circular

debate along the lines of "if games were cheaper they wouldn’t be pirated"

and "if games weren’t pirated they’d be cheaper".

I don’t think piracy will ever stop, but I think it would be reduced if the price of

games came down. When I was a kid I copied as many games as I could, because I didn’t

think it was fair that I should be deprived of them just because I couldn’t afford

them. Now that I can afford them, I try to make a point of buying the games I

play. I’ve now reached the point where the vast majority of games I play are games

I’ve bought.

The other day I stumbled across an emulator for the Gameboy Advance called VisualBoy Advance. This lets you play games made for

any version of the gameboy on your PC. There’s nowhere on your PC to plug in gameboy

cartridges, so you have to have copy of the cartridge (called a ROM) dumped into a file

on your PC. VisualBoy Advance does have legitimate uses, for games developers wanting

to test their games before putting them in a cartridge. But it also allows people

(with the right equipment) to copy GBA games and distribute them on the Internet.

It didn’t take me long to track down one of the sites that distributes ROMS of GBA

games from all over the world. I grabbed a few ROMS for games that I’ve been thinking

of buying, so that I could try them out first. I know that’s piracy, but I intend to

buy the games I like. As it is I’ve found one game that I’d heard about, that after

trying I know I will definitely buy.

This game is called Advance Wars. It’s a little turn-based strategy game, and I’ve

always been a sucker for those. There are also a bunch of old games being released for

the GBA, games that I used to play years ago. I’ve already paid $80 to get a

compilation of old arcade games just because it included one of my favourites -

Galaga.

Another old favourite was Final Fight, which has also been ported to the GBA. After

trying it on my PC and seeing that it’s just as much fun as it was in the arcade, I’ll

buy that too.

I understand that making the games cartridges costs much more than making a CD, so

demo cartridges are pretty unlikely. But maybe Nintendo could release ‘official’ ROMS

with demo versions of their games, and distribute these (along with an emulator) from

their website. Then I could legitimately try out the games first, and everyone would

be happy.