Flaight

I had done that till around when New SMB came out, but it's tedious. I don't know if there's a way around it, but you know the new games require updates or even forces it and I got really annoyed by having to fiddle with config every so often. That and horror stories about bricking. Wii is much cheaper now so I'm thinking having 2 is less of a hassle. I just need a good reason to force me make the move and this collection is making me think very hard.

I hope it will too, but soonest 2012 is what I'm guessing I'm honestly considering getting Japanese Wii alongside this. I can't put into words what these mean to me

Uhh so I reckon that means Dragon Quest Collection will turn up a year late in 2012 Keep DQX very straight like the old ones and I'll be a very happy bunny, as sleepless as a bunny could be.

A bit off topic maybe, but these were the TV ads in Japan and I would've never guessed that cool looking rig and the chick are the same person...! Apparently they are. Before and after transformation.

I'll update the story since my last rumblings on the circumstance surrounding 6 nuclear reactors at Fukushima. Some 4 days ago the spanner in the works came in the form of a nuclear fuel (so-called fuel rods) in the storage pool. The urgent one is in Unit 3 as the water has boiled off completely, then Unit 4 which still has some water left. Usually, on maintenance, the fuel rods are taken out of the reactor and placed in a pool because the fuel rods continue to build up heat after use. Water cooling is provided to counter this heat, but power for the cooling got knocked out. Both pools supposedly passed the initial test, but something caused the water to reduce thereafter, probably hydrogen explosions and fires they had earlier in the week (they don't know this for sure). These rods built up heat and added to the existing radiation, which explains the leap of radiation to 400mSv some days ago. Ironically, the earlier hydrogen explosion had ruptured the outer concrete building, and they can use that hole to feed water into the pool. Otherwise they'd have to send a man into the building to put a hose by the pool (and get fried). The first line up was the helicopters, then they gathered an army of fire trucks which can accurately shoot from far away. It worked, so they will continue to do so on Saturday. In the meantime, they managed to get power from the nearest working grid 6 km away using what is apparently the world's longest extension cable. They have now hooked it up to Unit 2, but they plan on yet another 1.5 km extension from Unit 2, going through 2 transformers, to power all 6 units. All this has been completely out of the whack, but it's working. Unit 1 and 3 have "leveled out" for now, so are Unit 5 and 6 with a mobile generator. Unit 1 had low enough pressure to even close the overflow valve (i.e. stop the deliberate release of radiation). Unit 4 would be stable enough if they could finish filling the pool with water. Unit 2 is the dodgy one. Some of its gauges don't work and they think the suppression chamber has some issues, but they have enough intermittent data to know that they are stable for now. Unit 2 is the priority - the reason why they connected the power line to it first. There are still challenges ahead. On-site radiation apparently reads around 20mSv, which means about 5 hours of work per man (in a rotation). More watering from the fire brigade might improve that, and the safety officers have raised the allowed radiation limit so technically the engineers are allowed to work for about 7 hours in that radiation. The company doesn't like that so they've so far stuck to the usual limit. Restoring power is no easy task especially after the earthquake, tsunami and explosion, so they'll be tempted to zap their 180 engineers longer in the radiation. Once that's done they need to bring the coolant system back up and stabilize all units for real, because they're still being pumped with sea water. Fail any of these steps and the reactors in Unit 1, 2 and 3 can build up pressure again, although it won't be anywhere near as bad as it was in the first few days as after this week the decay heat becomes considerably lower. So the question is whether they can start working on the reactors in timely fashion. The funny thing about all this - except for the fuel rod pool problems they've got, they're almost there. In other words, this hasn't really been about nuclear reactors, but more about the spent fuel rods and the way they're stored while off duty. If they could stabilize the reactor in Unit 1 and 3 (and maybe 2) sufficiently enough to buy this much time to deal with the fuel rods, without the fuel rod problems I can't see why they couldn't stabilize the whole plant by now. I think they would have done. Make no mistake though, these used fuel rods are dangerous because there's a big hole in the containment building, so if they don't get to grips with the pooling issues, they'll have more headaches dealing with the radionuclides. That'd be harder to deal with than the radiation. Radiation alone has been hard enough; they couldn't even come near it to hook up the power cable till recently. Incidentally, in light of detailed briefing from the government and company yesterday, the World Health Organization has made a public statement that the exclusion zone of 20km as set by the government is correct and there is at least no scientific reason why the health hazard would extend further. Interestingly some of the media has considerably toned down the "nuclear Armageddon" hyperbole and focussed more on the heroic workers and tsunami victims. Oh a coincidence To be continued.

Haha, good one Tokyo based, currently in the UK. I've been moving around a lot in recent years. I have mixed feelings about looking on on all this from outside. Instinctively I wish I was there on the ground, but then I guess I'll just add to the burden given the scale of the problem. No casualties so far at personal level so far. They've been having a rotation of planned black outs even in Tokyo to ration power, and some radiation has been detected around Tokyo as well, but really, the level is still low outside the exclusion zone to worry. It's a sensitive subject though so I think the psychological burden of radiation exposure is more burdening than the actual physical problem. We generally freak out just by hearing "radiation". We don't then ask "How much radiation?". It keeps changing so quick, I don't know what to think. EDIT: And yes, that's one hell of a groovy penguin!

Ahh damn, somebody remembered me :wink: I'm not around enough to keep up with the flow of conversation so I don't use forums in general. I tried to at one point, but I came to the conclusion that I may be more proficient with a rotary dial telephone.

I wouldn't, based on 2 points. One, you wouldn't be swing trading from here. Two, from the way you asked the question, I get the feeling you may not be aware of different sectors' behaviour in Japan. Targeted investment over short period would work, but I wouldn't recommend it outside Japan unless you have domestic source of info. The construction has already gone up, so the market is moving. The automobile will be down for a while, I reckon. It's happening fast so you can easily get caught out by the market. If you meant a long term investment into the likes of Toyota and Sony, again, provided that you're an outside trader I would wait till we know where we're headed. I bet most of them are figuring out what on earth is going on on the ground as we speak, it's 10 in Japan. At the moment most production is down while they try to figure out exactly what capacity they can operate at. If you intend to ride a short term movement at this point you'd have to be more savvy than Japanese traders on the ground. Anyway. About reactors. Daini reactor is having trouble this time and they reported over 8000 microsieverts. That's like 3 times the average annual intake. They say it's dropped now to 2000, but I have to wonder why the initial reading was so high. Maybe because of the control rods decay (which was reported about 5 hours ago) or, as I feared, maybe the containment vessel may have a minor fracture. We'll see.

lol thanks for the video. But are you guys SURE this isn't just a wind up merchant who's been doing it for years? Those do exist, you know. I wouldn't be surprised at all if she was giggling at all those comments she's been getting at 5 messages per second.

Yeah the media is business driven so they are always exuberant. So long as we're aware of that they are helpful. It's when we take them at face value that they begin to engineer our views and opinions, all the while we THINK it's our own opinion. As likable as BBC is to me (normally), I have seen enough over the years to know that BBC is a social-engineering machine. They definitely skew your view, for better or worse. Anyway. In events like this, you see both the best and worst of people. In a way, it is a good self-diagnosis; you take a step back and take a good look at how you're reacting, to understand what sort of person you've become. You don't have to tell anybody, you just do-it-yourself. Individually as well as nationally you get to see our true colours in these times. Travelling around the world I think the "hate" is often the biggest problem. Our human nature is such that we spot other people's flaws and preach them all sorts of things - we see it day in day out commenting on human rights abuse of some countries, even treatment of animals, child abuse, corruption of politics and bankers, etc. Yet in events like this, if you have that "hate" against those who are suffering, we often let that take over us and all of a sudden we start to become the very thing we were critical of. The bottom line is that there is a very thin line between us and those we criticize. The problem is that we often don't realize we're doing it. Nevertheless, I think it's hard for an average Joe to wrap his head around an event like this because on TV it's just another event alongside all sorts of misery being broadcast. So externally, I would hesitate to be too judgemental of those who are supposedly misbehaving. Rather, I'd prefer to focus on the aforementioned self-diagnosis. If each and every one of us looked into ourselves to saw how we honestly feel, we can find flaws in ourselves and become self-aware of our own flaw. It leads to self-betterment and prepare ourselves for when we or our nation are in trouble of this scale. In that sense, it's more about what's happening to us, not what's happening to others. Talking of betterment, as ironic as it is every accident of this sort makes nuclear power plant much safer as a viable solution to the national power issue. I just hope the engineers at Fukuoka is ok. The worst case scenario is actually not that bad in perspective, but the implication for those right next to the reactor is serious.

While we're on that subject. Just to add a few notes to the situation regarding the power plants. The main problem is in cooling the core unit. The backup cooling unit has failed, probably due to the tsunami if you look at the timing of the events (they coincide). Most reactors have a functioning backup, but they run out of power after a while so you need to direct power to it, but a lot of their power is down at once due to exceptional set of events (as if you need to be told). So far most of them are stable, but they've had more problems with daiichi and daisan reactors at Fukushima. There is a lot of information coming out on the Japan side. I noticed that the BBC in the UK was rather misleading yesterday. They got better since, but they're still not informative enough on this, even scaremongering as a result. These are the key points: (1) Radiation levels (so called 'contamination') has been so low like CAT scans. Nevertheless, the term 'contamination' is technically correct - probably the reason why the BBC loves to repeat it so many times without providing the context. Small amount of radiation can travel with the wind. The removal of the residents is more of a precautionary measure and to cut out the fuss of having to give them counter-measures. The exclusion radius officially given is not supposed to indicate the max distance the radiation can travel. Any minor radiation can theoretically fly to Russia. Makes no difference to the danger level. (2) Explosions, which our media likes to focus on, have taken the shield off, but they don't affect the cooling so it isn't directly related to the actual problem they have. What matters is the reactor remains intact which they have. If not the core would literally be shining out and radiation would be detectable from far, far away. On the contrary, International Atomic Energy Agency (acting as the international observer) reports that the radiation levels have dropped following each event. (3) The authorities and government officials seem to have been going straight to the residents who need to get out or be informed, and carrying on with their work, and if they still have time left, they then go to the media, so the delay in information is quite natural given the workload. BBC seems to portray this delay as a proof of a cover up ("it's worse than they claim"), but there is no reason to suspect that given the information on the radiation, which shows quite the opposite. (4) On a side note, I also noticed that they like to repeatedly playback clips of some line up of campaigners who are critical of the situation, while smudging out the qualified source like one from the Imperial College who say the danger level is very low. Anyway, I thought I'd share that with you lot. I would've gotten a completely different picture had I gotten all my information from BBC News. The danger still exists, no doubt. The cooling is crucial to de-pressurize the reactor. For every reactor which stops receiving enough cooling for a period, they would have to release the valve to relieve pressure (a minor emission), let the consequential hydrogen explosion take place while keeping their staff safe from debris (a very hard part), then use anything around (they chose sea water for daiichi reactor) to continue the cooling. This will repeat as long as they need to depress the reactor to a dud, so I would not rule out another similar incident happening, but this is becoming almost like a routine by the looks of it. One that I'm worrying about is a direct damage to the reactor. The walls around the reactor is usually designed to fall outward to avoid hitting the reactor, but those hydrogen blasts can go wrong if they get unlucky. Also the staff at the reactor must be terrified... I worry for them and their health as they're permanently close to it. I'm not sure about this, but generally does the BBC tend to lean more towards anti nuclear energy side of the debate, by any chance? I wouldn't be surprised if they do given the way they're covering it. It's almost as though they're exploiting this event in Japan to propagate a certain sentiment.

I tend to agree with that. It was one of those nice "welcome to Wii!" games for me, like Luigi's Mansion on GameCube. At the moment with my mates we're really into Boom Blox. It felt a bit short lived at first, but it became really deep once we got used to it. We keep coming up with clever/ugly tactics to force an error on others :awesome: Although... we're gradually shifting more towards Wii Music now. Infectious stuff.

It IS fun for me, so mission accomplished for the makers really. This really challenges the concept of having fun through gaming. Traditionally game's fun came from a challenge in dexterity and object-driven goals. For me, Wii Music once again proves to me, personally, that there are other ways to induce this "fun" in my head while gaming. I wish there were more options and modes, though. But I'm sure they will build on this and make Wii Music 2. To an extent this is a birth of a new genre, possibly a dawn of a new era. How romantic I don't understand why those who don't like it complain so much really... just let it be. Every game has its demography just like food. Nothing wrong with that.

But if I go through PayPal with credit card, wouldn't that count as "Paying into PayPal" as far as the credit company goes? As much as I understand, if you are a PayPal account holder, you are "funding" the PayPal account by taking money out of whatever source (in this case, a credit card). Then from that fund in PayPal, you pay the ebayer?

So, what if I pay by credit card via PayPal system? Will I still be covered? Or would I have to pay directly by credit card and not through PayPal system to get the cover? BTW I've had PayPal for years and I'm verified. The only time I've had a prob was when this idiot sent me a pirated copy (it was so obvious as well, with generic blank CDs) of a game and I started a dispute. After much proving and faxing documents etc, PayPal agreed that it was a fraud. I got about £14 or so back, and 4 years on I'm still waiting for the rest. Yeah I know, I won't get the rest back. probably... That payment was made through PayPal, by bank account funding. Had I funded it thru credit card (within PayPal), would I have got my money back?