Wii this, Wii?

But that name, eh? Awful.

Or at least, that's what I'm saying now. Presumably in six months time I'll be singing its praises, much like how I used to hate the new controller, and democracy. No doubt in six months I'll be saying "Wii love the name!", be the proud owner of a MySpace account, and will have Daz Samson as the number one song on my iTunes playlist.

Count down to the first "bodily function" joke to be made about the pronounciation of the new name... 5... 4... 3...

— PKMN.NET

In a surprise announcement this morning, Nintendo revealed the new name of its forthcoming game system: Wii. "As in 'we'," the official statement adds. For the official announcement, visit the Revolution...err...Wii Web site.

After a brief Flash introduction, the site explains Nintendo's move. "While the code-name 'Revolution' expressed our direction, Wii represents the answer. Wii will break down that wall that separates game players from everybody else. Wii will put people more in touch with their games...and each other."

The site goes on to say that Wii should be easy to remember for people around the world, no matter their language, and that it will avoid abbreviation. The "ii" spelling is intended to represent "both the unique controllers and the image of people gathering to play." It may also be worth noting that "ii" means "good" in Japanese.

Nintendo sums up the name change with the following comments. "So that's Wii. But now Nintendo needs you. Because, it's really not about you or me. It's about Wii. And together, Wii will change everything."

— Yahoo! Games

We are no longer expecting to see the name 'Revolution' when Nintendo's next-generation console is finally shipped out. Instead, we'll have to resign ourselves to a rather funny name, 'Wii'. Although by the second article they state that it reflects aesthesis, the reviews above give the name a big, fat goose egg.

Nintendo began its life in Osaka as a toy manufacturer in 1962, and in the early 1980s it picked up on the newly popular arcade game industry and started its Donkey Kong games, one of which would star Mario and set off a chain of games that would star the plumber in the Mushroom Kingdom. Donkey Kong was, to say the least, an odd name, yet the name Mario fit a fat plumber very well, as it became easy to match an Italian accent to the persona and later make a movie out of it. So far, so good.

The name targets started to be missed in 2002, when the codename for the GameCube, Dolphin, was chosen. We then had to warm up to the slightly more appropriate name for the unit that is in use today. Then we receive word that 'Revolution' will be the name for the console of theirs that would take on the Xbox 360 and possibly offset the PlayStation 3 for the better. Now, though, it is just a three-letter word, a misconception of good things, gone horribly awry. 'Wii'. It sounds like the earsplitting shrieks of holidaymakers descending a coaster.

Fortunately, though, it's offset by the new controller. It has to be held in two hands, as it consists of a remote and a small joystick, separate but working tandem. It's supposedly to facilitate better handling. But since I haven't held it yet, I can't really criticise it.

PC Rant

I'll flash back to September 2005. TPL is in tatters after the admins have decided that they were incompatible and no amount of work could keep TPL going on. My life is ruined on the outside, and I have yet a month to being unbanned from PKMN.NET. I have nowhere else to turn for solace, aside from the Avianos couple, who were persecuted for helping me. So I decided to run away once again and start over somewhere I could be loved as a person and my sins would not be shown. On 14 September 2005, I joined the Pokémon Community.

As soon as I registered there, I had a host of members coming up to greet me. This, I figured, were people that knew nothing of the TPL turmoil, and I could live safely in this dominion. It was here that I also found that all of the members, some veterans, some newbies, were all one large family with few conflicting issues. The first sign that I received of the community being so tightly knit was that several members had on their signature lists an ode or line dedicated to Mandi Lili Cormier, a member who had been killed in an automobile wreck. Even though I never knew the girl, I would cry when I saw this line anywhere. Even now, my eyes well up.

The evidence of its cohesion is also in the chit-chat threads. Although they boil down to random nonsense — essentially spam, which I usually frown upon — a lot of it enabled me to glimpse into what they were like when they didn't present themselves in a fashionable manner. They were all banterous. They had more fluency in their matter than any other place I had seen. And when the moderators came out for the job, they were very judicious in how justice was administered, although that could be inherent in that many of them are female.

Best of all, they knew nothing of my past at all. They were oblivious to TPL, but as I later learned it was also a victim of SPP's ills. It's unfortunate that it's so, it led me to believe that SPP was a centrist organisation that kept away from everyone else and thought themselves the best just because of their information end. And PKMN.NET was hardly mentioned at all on the Pokémon Community, whereas on SPP it was the butt of many jokes and hisses.

I'm glad to be part of the Community, which is about as neutral as you can get, aside from its expansive affiliation programme. This does not mean that I do not like PKMN.NET — I think it's time I gave a bit of credit to one of the sites I visit on the side.

Memorial

On a walk to the observatory at the northern end of town, I scrambled upstairs to practice for a dissolution of a pact between two friends of mine, but as soon as I came up the flight of stairs I quickly noticed that there were black marks on the floor. I at first dismissed them as dry rot, but when I bent down closer I saw that it was fresh felt-tip ink. The entire schematic turned out to be a memorial to 'Toni Nikki Yoder', supposedly a friend of mine that had been murder.* Scrawled around the box within which her name was written were a verse from some song (evidently a rap) as well as a banzai cry: 'Senseless murder is wrong! 14 years old and gone!'

Combined with the news that one of my classmates had to leave school for excuse of maternity, this made for a nasty shock. I was not new to death; my grandmother passed away in 1999 from cancer of the pancreas. I also was not new to widespread funerals, either; on the Pokémon Community they are honouring a member, Mandi Lili Cormier, who died in a car crash over a year ago, and even after that period of time you will see those words in many signatures on that forum. It seems that ever since I registered on PKMN.NET, tragedy has started to come forward. Not only was I banned for seven months, but now a pregnancy in my school, the death of a nearby student from leukaemia and now the resonance of the murder of someone I knew, have established my stay here as truly calamitous, across the board.

* One of the comments has resulted in a correction here; I had originally thought it to be domestic violence after a sketchy thought of newspaper articles on the subject, but it's really a murder case.

The kid

Yesterday I went to Friendship Park in a hamlet north of Paoli, Pennsylvania, to walk off the air until sundown. Whilst the rest of the family went off for a few rounds of tennis, I resigned to the benches and started playing with my Game Boy Advance. A few minutes in, however, I heard very awkward cries coming down from the swingset and decided to take a look. As I expected, it was a teenager of rather high stature walking along the rim of the mulch and wailing without impetus. With his head down and kicking scraps of mulch back into the hub within, he walked about as other students (presumably) flanked him. Some of the other students would pace back and forth in the area until they gathered to leave.

At first I thought that the kid had been bullying schoolchildren, since the park was small and composed mainly of the tennis court, swingset and a concrete roundabout on a hill. When I finally came closer and was able to study the movement, however, my heart sank. I had been known to pace back and forth in places like this — and I was pulled over by police officers a few times for this — but had forcibly torn the image of my mental illness out of my head. But upon looking at that teenager, I was faced with a harsh reality. That was me. That was the face and meander of the autistic spectrum.

I have a half-brother living with my mother (I live with my father), and his autism has meant financial hardship across the board. Between lawsuits that failed to sway the public school system to arrange for special services for him as well as the cost of hiring babysitters that charged more than median and often left after two weeks, the rest of the family provides very little for the cause at all. They may provide money, but none of them have ever shown enough compassion or have demonstrated sufficient experience with their own children to look after him. And it will be a heartbreaker to see him evolve into something resembling the kid that I saw at the park, just because the family is in its current disarray.

Thankfully, my condition is not as severe as that of him. By the time he reaches seventeen he most likely will not have the capacity to write on a blog or assimilate with teenagers that comprise today's society. And looking at customers that I have seen carry around grown autistic men, some around the age of fifty, he may not be able to produce anything in life. I feel sorry for the kid, seeing as he's in a constricted family environment and I've been afforded enough time with people that are enough well off.

Whoever it was that was walking in the park like that, thank you. I hope someday you'll bring yourself to see me say so.

SPP Letterbomb

Below is the text of the letterbomb I sent to a super moderator on Serebii.net regarding the events in which a friend of mine that I will not name went on a spam rampage there on my order.

Hello.

I have looked at the topics by ________ that you have closed, and in response I want to tell you a few things that you failed to realise about them.

Firstly, ________ is NOT the owner of Pokébeach. She is the owner of ________ (which can be found via her profile), which has aided me in a crusade that I carried out ages ago against PKMN.NET. This crusade resulted in the creation of the PokéLab, in which SPP member FlygonXS was part, having been banned from PKMN.NET for claiming content he posted on the forums were his works rather than copy-pastes from the PKMN.NET archives. She was also the one who helped me recover from this, helped destroy the PokéLab, and eventually helped me to become a valued member not just on PKMN.NET, but also on the Pokémon Community.

I myself was the one who sent her to create those topics, as well as spam up the IRC on the subject, although she had the idea first. I had become appalled by your acceptance of the pornography fan fiction on Shipping Fics and had heard before that this site had an ongoing rivalry against PKMN.NET (which was why I came here in April of last year, shortly after I was banned from PKMN.NET) and was determined to put an end to it. However, I was worried about my position on the matter and had to send a proxy to carry out my deed as well as resign myself to blogging my dislike for this site.

It is due to the fact that no action has been taken to control the anger against PKMN.NET, especially that funnelled by Imperial Dragon due to him being banned and then ruining his reprieve, that I have concluded that it was my mission to either neutralise the rivalry between the two sites or ruin one. I value my membership at both sites for different reasons, and the reasons for remaining here are, by your standards, heavily punishable. I do not hate this site; I hate the standard of moderation, which is the reason why Random resigned and fled to the Pokémon Community and the reason why I have to do something about this all. I also think it is appropriate, however, to give a full account of my actions here and clear up any misconceptions held against my friends, which is why I have been compelled to send this to you.

We do not ask for forgiveness; if this warrants a ban, so be it. We only want to be heard and considered, listened to and debated in a civil manner. You have not allotted us that opportunity before, so we ask that you kindly read this statement and forward this in discussion of the matter.

Yours respectfully,
William Gresham
closed810@hotmail.com

The Family

A few days ago I had to stand witness to a moderator of the Pokémon Community being rather upset that her pair had pulled out, and after testing to see if she wanted to pair once more, it turned out that she was holding off on it on a permanent basis. There are also another moderator and a petty administrator that have decided to treat their pair declaration as a bona-fide relationship and, judging by records of events in which they actually met, are seemingly on the road to bliss with things headed in their current direction. However, there are also people that have claimed actors, singers, animé characters, and Pokémon as 'bishies', or virtual dates, on Serebii.net; there is a member on the forum named Yori Ryu that even creates vector-image dolls that are popular as medallions of bishie claims.

Going beyond relationships, I have recently been pulled into a 'family' headed by Egyptian Sphinx of the Pokémon Community. The objective of a 'family' is to group together people that have considered themselves to be in very close ties and wish to identlfy themselves under the guise of nuclear families on the Pokémon Community. One other family designates the young petty admin Kylie-chan as a grandmother, a sign that age is disregarded. And often some people will create 'evil twins' to designate people that think parallel to them.

Oddly enough, it reminds me a lot of the MySpace dilemma. This is for everyone reading that still has a profile there: Go back through your friend lists and try to identify each and every one as best you can. The site mimics a youth summit, so not many will readily make information available, which means that you will not get the full benefit from having a true friend. In fact, a detective went* under the guise of a college student named Matt and 'befriended' three girls from Middletown, Connecticut, USA — and later leaked their profile habits to their parents. (One of the girls had previously been ordered to destroy her profile.) After that, the owner of the profile himself encountered the three girls in the Dateline interview.

The interview tells you what can happen if you don't play your cards with online contacts right. Fortunately, PC families are based on sound judgement of the members involved, which is why many of the families happen to comprise staff members. Because of this, 'families' and 'pairing' are rendered marginally safer than friend lists, yet the very natures are so similar that they need similar judgement in consideration. Pairing and bishies don't afford you anything more than status. Why do I see, then, people declaring marriage on the forum? There is no bonder or rabbi. And what are pairs? People that have a relationship, emulating the dating scene at school. It rarely works out; aside from the mod and petty admin aforementioned, Articuno and Lugia have defeated this rule. And some have, of course, been taken so seriously that we hape people weeping when a pairing is annulled. And some are wise enough to debate this.

Both are inherently outlets for predators, although the latter pronounces it significantly more and constitutes cliques. So if you still have the urge to be part of the group on the Pokémon Community, just form a 'family' and, if possible, review anyone inducted carefully.

* Requires Internet Explorer 6.

Happy Birthday Articuno!

http://pkmn.net/forums/index.php?topic=43826.0

Today we do what we haven't done in quite some time: We honour the nineteenth switch in age for the co-owner of the Sky Temple of Lugia and Articuno. Setting aside the length of existence of the actual Articuno, is it just yesterday that I came across her and Lugia, who were the first to submit positive reviews of the fan fiction segments that I had posted long ago? It also seems like yesterday that I first registered at her forum. I can't believe I have managed to see her turn age twice as I lived....

A specialist in Photoshop vector drawing (yet a novice in Fireworks) and the webmaster also of Lugia's father's corporate website, Articuno is renowned across PKMN.NET for her kindness and steadfastness. She also was the one who, alongside Lugia, helped me recover from my TPL stint and took my fall.

Enough chit-chat; that's not the point. Happy birthday to the great blue birdy!

Troll in the dungeon

http://forums.supercheats.com/topic.php?topic=26632

Some member named 'Concerned' thought it would be funny to barge into the site and wave some invisible documentation at us claiming that he had the copyright to 'Super Cheats'. He failed miserably. One, he would have just slapped Rich with a class-action suit. Two, he'd make available the documentation to anyone visiting the forum as per applicable laws.

This is one of the unfortunate trends going on at forums. We know that there are rules to which people must adhere if they want to stay. However, there are some people that deliberately break them for kicks, owing to their serious lack of judgement or grudge against some people. The method shown here was to cause hysteria, much as the Pokémon Community attempted. A person will barge right into a forum and start spreading a rumour that there was a hacking in progress or material had been stolen, or there could be an impression that an April Fools' joke would make (although it's not exactly valid due to the fact that the administrators are doing it). Then there are people who intend to start a war. Imperial Dragon did that by pinpointing Jeroen as the source of the SPP hatred as I had done long ago.

I may as well leave you with that as this idiot keeps saying 'lawsuit filed...' on the forums....

Update 12 April: Some person has now initiated an anti-Aeshma forum on ForumsVibe. It's evidently related to yesterday's copyright trolling.

Microsoft on a Mac

Last March two hackers managed to get the Windows XP operating system running on a Macintosh computer with chips manufactured by Intel, thus winning $13,854 for the trouble and spurring Apple to think, 'What can we do to capitalise on this?' What they decided to do was use the feat to create a new feature for their upcoming Leopard operating system, which is to be called Boot Camp and will allow the hard drive to be partitioned to run both Windows XP and the Macintosh operating system.

As this feat promises compatibility with more programmes for Mac without having to wait for the company to release a modification of the programme that they released for the Windows computer, it's a sign that Apple is trying to roll right back at Windows for trying to buy them out and thus establish a monopoly more than six years ago. Having composed virtually everything on a Windows computer but having used a Macintosh as my first computer, you would probably visualise me as a sceptic that's afraid of the overwhelming possibilities that the hacking now affords Apple; compatibility means more acceptance in the corporate environment, which in turn will mean the evening out of costs, which, despite the frail popularity of Macs in the corporate world, are priced based on their visual material.

In other words, it's time to get a little more colour and variety into our lives, even if it does mean that extra penny.

As things turned out....

Regarding the post I made on the April Fools joke, it seems everything has gone back to normal once more in the worlds of Pokémon Palace and Pokémon UK. After talking to some officials from PPN, I learned that there was more to the hysteria than creating a black skin and spooking with spam — as it turned out, all of the bannings and the frustration by the moderators were feigned!

• Jedi_Amara has revealed that the 'March Mod Lounge' — an odd attribute for a forum — was set up prior to April Fools and posts from the actual moderators' area were moved there to make it look like it was the active spot for people in administrative positions.
  


• Lily admitted to doubling as Todoroki — which explains her mysterious assertions that Kylie, Saniigo, and Kazuhito were up to be banned. This meant that: a) CP access was not restricted after all; b) the moderators knew that the bans were part of the plan and decided to feign frustration over having to cope with Todoroki.

And as for the PKMN.NET joke that I promised to reveal, it was a false method to obtain Celebi. I myself was involved in the making of that trick, whose objective was to fool people over on Serebii.net. Judging by the anger on Ed Elric's face and the gullibilty of the person that started the topic heralding the method (which was at least funny compared to the mere change of banner on the main SPP site as well as disability of avatars and sigs), I think we've made quite some progress in being the fun-loving people we are. And to think that over a year ago I spoke out against everything when the name 'Vennblomster' was filtered and made myself look like an idiot.

Very funny

1 April. The day on which people were insulted for not changing to the Gregorian calendar back in the old days. Now that it's turned into timed fiascos over the past years, some Pokémon sites have decided to capitalise on the ability of members to get scared.

At 10.30pm, when I signed onto the Pokémon Community, I noticed that the lights had gone out. Every CSS colour, save for mod and admin labels, text fields, and dropdown menus, had been set to #000000. Only icons could be seen, which helped me navigate to the scene of the crime — word had broken out that PPN was brokering a merger with Serebii.net, and a spammer named Todokiri had apparently opened the Mod Lunge to the public (although we could not reply) and was busy tantalising everyone on the Questions and Feedback board.

As soon as we had resigned ourselves to typing in bright text, the lights went on. The theme was changed to the PokéLink Blue Variant, but the header had been scratched out to say 'Todokiri's Community'. At that point the chaos was reaching its peak, and minutes later the moderator Lily was expelled. A minute later Kylie-chan was also expelled, followed by Saniigo. At that point the hacker calmed down, and the chaos came to a standstill even as Other Chat, Questions and Feedback, and the Daily ChitChat flickered in and out of view. When the smoke cleared the following morning, the Rules page was gone (it was restored today) and everyone was mad. And when PPNSteve came out and locked one of the threads that was in hysterics, it exacerbated everything. I was right in believing that Steve had opened the Mod Lounge to Todokiri and toyed with him whilst keeping in Invisible mode on another computer so that he could toy with the forum settings. The moral of the story: Steve was a git, and I won't be surprised if Kylie and the others have lost faith in him for this stunt.

On a lighter note, PKMN.NET is currently at work on their forums, filtering 'Pokémon' to be 'Digimon' and working with other words as well. (One member, who is Iza on the Sky Temple, was even led to believe that a hacker was loose and so deleted her account.) It's also rumoured that they've got something else on the site going on, and only I, apart from the administrators, know what it is. What it is, I shall tell once it's exposed by the admins themselves.