Just wanted to say Merry Christmas to everyone and Happy Holidays! I probably won’t be posting news for a little bit since well there's not much to post and I’ll probably be busy. On a different note I’m in dire need of authors for the blog especially since I’ll be taking a long trip soon and I won’t be able to make posts.
For those of you that are fans of the Dragonball and Dragonball Z anime shows this may interest you the first trailer for the live action movie has been released and it looks way awesome!
The long awaited Club Nintendo has come to North America you can now register games and take surveys and other things to get Free Rewards. If you’ve never heard of this before it has been offered in Europe and Japan for many years but now we can enjoy it as well.
For those of you that use WLM you can now use A-Patch to customize it to your liking including removing ads, removing timer for nudges, more then 3 transfers at once and many other things. Get it HERE.
Finally the long awaited WLE Pack has been released you can now enjoy Windows Live Messenger 9 RC1 with over 200 bug fixes as well as the other programs in the package! Get them HERE.
Edit: For those of you use that use Messenger Plus! this build is not fully compatible with the current version of it however it will load the menus and features such as tabs and Custom Statuses still seem to work.
Well after a long wait the Home brew Channel finally has a new release. There’s not really many noticeable changes other then it being a little faster and you can use different kinds of controls. Hopefully in the future we will see more drastic changes such as DVD and USB drive loading for homebrew. Also I’m hoping that they will make it easier to organize your homebrew in the order you like it in future release.
If you haven’t logged into your Gmail account lately now is the time to do it because you can now txt message to USA cell phones directly from the Gmail chat. After your enable the SMS feature in the labs settings you can type a phone number in the chat to send messages to that person. Happy Txting!
It’s getting closer to the holidays and everyone wants to get thier family and friends something awesome. Well I got great news for you. You can get them something both awesome and cheap! Everyday Woot! has a special deal only one item on the site everyday buy it before midnight or your our of luck. Anyways I bought an awesome 10mpix Kodak Camera ($39.99) and 2 Bluetooth headsets ($7.99 for both). These were awesome deals for awesome products I found the same camera at best buy for $200. Anyways get to shopping!
I’m sure you all know by now that there is a new TLP hack for the 3.4 update. If you don’t know well now you do unfortunately for you this version is deleted every time you turn off your Wii. So install the HBC and get it over with so you don’t need the TLP hack any more.
Well I told you I would find something to post about this week so I did. Anyways I thought I’d tell you guys about one of the coolest sites ever called Backloggery. It helps you keep track of all your games for everything you can think of. Once you make your account you can begin adding games to your list. After you have done so you can rate them track your progress or post comments about them to share with other people.
I just wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. I’m sorry that this post is a little late but I’ve been pretty busy with stuff lately and haven’t been able to post much hopefully I’ll have more to post this week.
I have used many Anti-Virus programs since I’ve been using computers Norton, MacAfee, AVG, and Anti-Vir. The last three I have used have all been free Anti-Vir was awesome but had a really annoying ads. AVG was awesome but one time didn’t catch a virus like it should have so I switched when my long time friend Walter suggested I use avast! I haven’t had any viruses since I’ve switched to it avast always detects threats before I even download infected files and has saved me many times. It’s very easy to turn off when you need to and when it’s on its awesome it tells you with its own voice when it updates and doesn’t have any annoying ads. You have to get a new free license every so many months but its as simple as visiting a website and clicking a button for an email to renew it. I highly recommend avast! to anyone who doesn’t already have an anti-virus program or who wants to switch to a different one.
Most people online burn discs, whether they are on a CD-R or DVD-RW, to backup their files, burn a mix CD, or watch their family movies or slideshows. I’ve been using this program for years and it has yet to fail me. It’s a free program that burns everything that you can think of. It even burns ISOs for your Ubuntu Live CDs or whatever else might be an ISO. It’s great to have freeware when it has such great quality. Anyways, check it out and I’ll be posting more of my favorite programs I use on here!
I just saw this on ThinkGeek and thought it was funny. They're little Wiimotes that you press a button and it projects an image onto stuff of Mario and other characters on their karts. I wish I had the money to buy a couple. Maybe I will later if they're still making them.
There are so many messengers out there: AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, MySpaceIM, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP, Yahoo!, Zephyr, and Facebook. I have friends on many of these different messengers, but who wants to have 7+ different messenger programs? I have 3 on my computer: Windows Live Messenger (main), Pidgin (secondary), and Google Talk (email). Pidgin is awesome for all of your messenger needs. When you just want to chat with someone, or if you're on Linux perhaps, it’s a great way to not have to use so many messengers. I will greet the day happily when all the messengers merge together like email and other things have done in the past. For now, however, I use Pidgin as my little bird messenger friend to help with my needs.
I was browsing the net and found something I thought looked interesting. Apparently the PS3 uses more power than the Wii. Apparently I’m paying $3 a year in power when my Wii isn’t on all the time, while the PS3 uses $15 of power a year when turned off. I think I can afford the $10 a year to leave my Wii on, though, but don’t leave your PS3. It’ll cost you $160 to keep that on.
I know I've got a few people that actually view this blog now, so I just thought I’d make a post about our official IRC Channel for this blog: ##WiiCoolZone on irc.freenode.net ! Anyways, come on in and talk about Wii and whatever other stuff you want with some friendly people just like yourself!
I’m on a roll this week with having posts about stuff other then homebrew, aren’t I? Anyways, I just thought of yet another awesome tool that is free and amazingly helpful. I myself film and edit my own videos in Adobe Premier Pro. When you're all done with your projects you want to be able to encode them with out loosing quality, but have them be a reasonable size. It’s hard to do this with the usual codecs that come with video editing programs. Super is a freeware program that encodes to and from almost every major media format. Not only that, but you can get video files down to a super small size with little to no quality loss to the video. It’s a great program to have if you're going to be uploading to YouTube or any other online video hosting site. So far I don’t think I’ve found a better program to use for getting videos ready to host online, but if you know of something better post in the comments and let me know. Anyways, feel free to check it out.
People online I talk to always say, "Why do you use IE? It sucks. Use Firefox, it has Ad-blocker, Spell Check, and Scripts, and all kinds of stuff, and its security is better!" Well I must admit Firefox probably is better, but for some reason I just couldn’t adjust to its interface difference. But you know what? It’s not really a problem anymore! I found this awesome Add-On that's free and spyware free. It makes IE have almost everything Firefox has, and anything I can think that you could ask for. It has flash and ad-blocker, Spell Check, Form remembering, Download Manager, Online Favorites storage, the ability to use grease monkey scripts, and many other features. Anyways, if you want to check it out, it's an awesome program.
I just logged onto my Gmail account only to find there are now a bunch of themes you can choose from! Not only that, but you can choose a theme for each location you login to. Gmail keeps getting better every time I login. It now has Instant Messaging, Video and Audio chat, Themes, Huge File sending, tons of storage for your emails and files, and it doesn’t stop there. In another week or so, every Gmail account will be getting its own email and be able to text message to any cell phone in the USA for free and they can send you texts back to your Gmail phone number! Anyways, I’d say Gmail is by far the best email service, with Windows Live Mail coming in close second. www.gmail.com.
Today I:
I use Windows XP, and it’s because I can’t use certain programs on Linux that I use in Windows. Even with programs such as WINE they just don’t work. However, I love Ubuntu. It’s awesome, and very customizable, and if you didn’t know if you are a Windows user, Ubuntu Wubi has made it even easier to get Linux running on your system by (un)installing it just like you do a program. There is no longer a need to create partitions or mess with your hard drive in unnecessary ways! Anyways, I really love Ubuntu, and if you're a Windows XP user you can customize your Ubuntu install to look almost exactly like Windows XP with THIS. You can download Ubuntu HERE!
I thought it would be cool if I put a little Windows Live Messenger Window on the side of the blog for anyone that wants to talk to me! By now you must think, “Wow, this guy’s getting paid off by Microsoft or something,” but lets think about this: if I was, would I use a blogging service owned by Google? Anyways send me an IM telling me how much you like the blog and any questions you have!
I just downloaded the Windows Live Write and used it to make this new blog post. It seems like its a lot easier to use than the in-browser interface. Writer allows me to Create and Edit content on my blog easily from outside of IE in its own Word-like interface. When you first set it up, you type in your blog’s address and your login. It then detects all the settings on your blog and configures stuff. I would say that it’s a pretty fast and easy setup. I’m loving all the new products Microsoft is making lately. I use to hate Outlook, but the 2007 version of it is so simple to get started with. I set it up for my mom, she has a Gmail account, and has a hard time with computers. I opened it and and typed in her email address and password, and it did the rest. It’s really amazing all the stuff these programs do on their own now. You use to input everything manually every time you installed the program. Anyways the Windows Live programs are way awesome, you should really try them out! So far I’m using Write, Picture Gallery and Messenger (which I use constantly and like the best out of them all). Download them here HERE!
![[wiili.png]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLb23jDijHfdn7g90h3cf4-lof5A62Tvu8Rjd_N4intddfJERJWNVBL1D774KNW23k3qRY2_YHc45ZVUu6laJHhIVZKwH3M1Db-oSXGhwyxz7JhrBlOP8hZ8caFTM3NP2IOov9wpso4jzn/s1600/wiili.png)
I'm starting a new feature that will list everything I did as far as Wii Devving is concerned in the day. So let's get started! 
I have receive a message from Nintendo on my Wii that told me to update to 3.4. The update does not remove the HBC. Apparently, it does however cause both the Twilight Hack and PatchMii not to work. You cannot currently update to 3.4 in an unofficial way like October 23rd 3.3 update with Tona's Updater, but you can however update your Mii Channel with THIS. It has been said in the IRC that Team Twiizers has another game exploit similar to the Twilight hack, one that is working with update 3.4 and uses an unnamed 2nd party game. It has also been said that there will be a simultaneous release of HBC beta 10 and BootMii. It should be reaffirmed, however, that this is entirely speculation.
I'm getting to the last couple entries from the tehskeen competition now. USCHTRIS is a Tetris clone, and well, from what I can tell there's not anything really original or new to it. When I first started it and it went to the logo screen, I thought to my self, "Wow, this has great music, probably the best out of the entries so far, but how do I start the game? Is it stuck or something?" After a few minutes of pressing buttons I finally figured out that if you press the home button it starts the game. The game itself isn't too bad, but there are absolutely no menus and there's nothing special about it. It's just a plain old Tetris game. We already have more than one Tetris game for Wii, why would we want another? I'm sure that the person who made this worked very hard, and it looks great, but it could use some menus and something to set it apart from the other Tetris games that are already out for Wii. We will see what happens with this one in the future. You can get it HERE.
Recent reports on the IRC have said that update 3.4 from Nintendo will delete all Custom Channels. Whether this means that the Homebrew Channel will be effected by this I do not know. I do not suggest updating with anything other than Tona's Updater as it installs updates without patching exploits homebrew uses. You can download the Tona Updater HERE.
Yet another Sokoban puzzle game someone made. This is definitely better than the crude Mario Sokoban that was released awhile back. Its graphics are quite impressive for a Sokoban game, as they are rendered in 3D. You can even move the camera around by pressing the plus button. In Sokoban you have to move crates through the puzzle onto circles until they all turn red. That's how you complete a level in the game. This game, like Portii, has its own level editor, so you can create and send people levels that you created for it yourself. It's a very fun puzzle game to play when you want to take your mind off things for awhile. The game, however, lacked music or sound, which would have made it better. Definitely worth a download HERE.
Wow. When I saw the screen for this, I thought, "Man, this is going to be another waste of my time." I loaded it up to find it's actually quite an interesting little game. It's described in the game as "golf as a three year old might imagine it," and it's definitely original. You use your arrow to shoot green things and hit the ball into the hole. After you make it in the hole, you go on to the next level. The game itself has nice music and a pretty good menu. The graphics are okay, but could use improvement. I can see that this game has great potential. Download it HERE.
When I first read the title, I thought this game was going to be a memory type card game, but it turned out to be something quite different. Basically, you take turns pressing the home button on the Wiimote, and that's how you take a match (like the kind you start fire with). It's an interesting concept, but honestly this game didn't really have much point to it. If I wanted to play it I'd just get a box of matches and do it in real life.
Yet another review I have for you. Portii is a strategy type game where you're a misshaped companion cube named Portii, and your quest is to eat all the cake that you can. Portii can make portals: one blue and one orange. When he goes through one, he comes out the other. Portii is made by beardface, the same person who made WiiPhysics, and it's by far the most well made game I've played from the competition. Its potential for replay is a lot more than the other games that were in the competition. Portii includes its own level builder, with support for uploading your custom levels to the Portii website for other people to use. Portii is a great game. Get your copy at the project's site: http://www.portii.com/.
CosmoRacketti is a flying spaceship game it's graphics are pretty decent 3d and it has the ability to do multiplayer right out of box on the first screen. I like that it's level based and you can have your score and progress through the game but if you mess up it resets your score to what you had on the previous level and lets you try again. The controls are pretty good although they take a while to get use to because they completely rely on the accelerometer from what I can tell with the exception of the A and B buttons which are used for weapon fire to shoot enemies and obstacles. As you progress through the game there are more obstacles added and it of course gets harder. I really like this game but I feel that maybe it could use a better menu and a few other game play modes. The music is good but it lacks variety what I played of it there was the same music for all of it not a new song or variety of songs on the different levels. look forward to seeing what more this game will offer in the future if it is expanded upon maybe we can expect to see an online mode for it.
Well this is the first game I've tried from the competition and I must say it's quite impressive and very well done. Smashing is a 3d target shooting game. You can do eather single player or multiplayer. It has 2 levels so far that you can choose from one shooting targets another shooting bottles. I would say that it's a great start and I would love to see it progress more have more features and levels this game looks almost like its strait off the Wii Shop Channel. I unfortunately found a few bugs that I think will be bad for the coder in the competition. First of all when your in the menus once you hit one theres no way to go back so if you go into the settings theres no save settings if you accidentally click multi player and just want single player then you have to beat it to go back. Second thing I found was there is no way to exit back to the HBC this is a key feature that needs to be in all homebrew applications. Last thing that I found was the game doesn't completely fit the screen my score is at the top and it's cut off so I can't see it when I'm playing also at the bottom of the screen some of the buttons are also cut off and you can't reach them. Don't let what I said deter you from downloading this awesome game! Once these minor things are fixed this game will surely be one of the most popular homebrew games on available. 
I just found this video of Wii Speak in Animal Crossing and it's quite a bit different then my Wii Speak Concept I came up with in 2007 before it was even announced. It's more like your in the same room with the person not having to wear something which is kinda nice for games like Animal Crossing but not so nice for FPS games where you want to have the conversation private between your team or keep it down so other people can't hear it. It looks simple and easy to setup but the video just showed the actual conversation and not really any installation I'm sure in the near future we will see how it fully works. Here's a link to my concept that I came up with in 2007 for a voice chat system for the Wii interestingly enough it has the same name maybe its because they couldn't think of anything better like me or they just liked me name and nabbed it.
Click Here.
I've been hoping for this for a long time because I hate switching out my WADS (not to be confused with Wii WAD files) and PWADS so much when playing doom on Wii and it's finally happened its getting a menu so you can easily select from your library of doom mods and not switch out files. Anyways heres a picture of the new menu that the developer has released.
It has been reported on a number sites that you won't be able to buy the Wii Speak accessory used because to download the software you are required to input a one time use code called the "Wii Download Ticket Number" you apparently can't download it directly from the shop channel and customer support won't help you even if you lose or have your code stolen. Also for Wii owners in Australia according to an IRC Channel user the newly released Wii Music contains the 3.3b update that causes the IOSes to have the signing exploit patched so it's not usable this can be avoided by using Gecko OS or Starfall. Please note I have never used Starfall so I don't know what adverse effects it might have although people that do use it say it works good.
I've been granted access!
Does anyone read this?
EDIT: Matthew_8 (aka link_of_hyrule) told me to put details of what I have done and what I am doing, etc, in chronological order, so here they are
txt-read: A text reader for the Wii. Taking a break, a pretty functional version can be grabbed from wiibrew
wiishophaxx: A replacement for the Wii Shop Channel (working title). Cancelled: Nintendo stopped the ability of viewing the wii shop channel on the PC. Never got functional.
IOS51 and Wii Shop Installer: Lets you download and install the newest IOS51 and the Wii shop channel without removing homebrew. What made my name really, even though it literally just involved modifying 4 lines of code and commenting out a load of crap. Just because nobody else could be bothered to do it, I did it, and got praise :D (obviously no longer being worked on)
Miight: A distro of Linux with Xorg and many many other things. Again, like IOS51 and Shop Installer, none of it is my work, but I'm the person who has enough free time to sit there and spend ages putting all the bits together, making them work, etc. Still being worked on, was leaked, the leak was easily dealt with (and hopefully that's the last we'll see of it).
WiiTrivia: Trivial Pursuit for the Wii, can download custom databases n shit from the internets. Currently just starting, making pretty good progress but stuck on returning a struct array to main, can anyone help me here (nobody will ever read this probably, heh)
So that's all my projects. Pretty boring? Pretty much. Anything you want to help with? Just ask me.
I'll stick this on my wiibrew user page actually.
