Many of you may have asked, before clicking on this link, wot does 'Twa!' stand for? Anyone who knows how to use the internet would immediately run a search to find their answer, perhaps on a site like Wikipedia. Once there you would see results such as the Twa people of Africa, or maybe the Trans World Airlines. Well I don't know anything about either of those, so that's not wot this page is about. No, here you will find...

TINY WALRUS ARTICLES, YEAH!

That's right! The amazingly well known important news group 'Tiny Walrus Articles, yeah!' is now right here at the Humulation Nation! Never heard of them? You weirdo. Let me explain. Twa! for years has been dedicated to giving opinionated reviews on subjects in the news, everything from top-stories to new blenders! Here you will find these articles on all these subjects, but more often than not I talk about technology, movies, video games, and the current status of Pluto. Maybe there will be pictures too!

Retro Rosmarus: Donkey Kong (1983 JP, 1985 NA)

/17 Feb 2011 [@950]

Welcome to the first edition of Tiny Walrus Articles, Yeah!'s Retro Rosmarus column! Dedicated to bringing you the latest and greatest video game reviews! From 1983!

Now, I like new video games, don't get me wrong, but I like old ones more. They had a certain charm to them, not to mention higher difficulty. Most of all, they were simple (usually) and that is a big draw for me. And seeing that I was raised on the classic Nintendo Entertainment System, I will be basing my reviews on games released for that platform. In fact, you get a bonus in that I will also review games released only on the Famicom! Because let me tell you, American's missed out on a few gems. And some non-gems. In fact, I may be blinded by nostalgia, but some games outright blow (NES pun, lol) and I'm not afraid to admit that. All in all, every Famicom and NES game will get reviewed, in order of release on its' first home console.

Anyways, first up we have the game that made Shigeru Miyamoto famous for some reason, Donkey Kong. Originally released in arcades in 1981, it was a smash hit for being unlike wot most gamers had seen before. Stated by many to be the first of the Platforming genre, Donkey Kong started a revolution that would eventually oversaturate the video game market, but in a good way. In fact, platformers are wot many retro gamers consider their favorite titles, especially since the genre has in recent years become scarce in a sea of first-person shooters. After seeing the success of this new video game style, arcades all over America wanted this game in their stores, and eventually it found it's way into living rooms. The Famicom by Nintendo was created and Donkey Kong was given as a launch title. Years later, in 1986, it was ported over to the NES for us Americans to play. Which is odd, because it would have made a great addition to the rather... unfortunate launch lineup. Now, the Famicom/NES version of Donkey Kong has the misfortune that a lot of Arcade Ports have, parts are missing. Namely, the cement level was taken out to save room in the cartridge. Which is odd because later on Nintendo proved that they could fit 2-3 games on one cartridge, including one with both Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. playable. You would think they would re-release Donkey Kong with all the levels in that case, but no. Oh well, let's see how it handled as it was.

At the title screen, we are given the on of 4 options. I seriously have no idea wot the difference between an A and B game is. The manual claims one is for 'Experts', but it doesn't seem to be any harder. Maybe it is, I'm not great at the game regardless. Two player mode is your standard alternating turns affair, with control being switched after each player loses a life.

So Mr. Donkey Kong went and smashed up a construction site and now you must climb to the top while he rolls barrels at you. The barrels can be easily jumped over or smashified with a hammer, so there's not too much difficulty here. Now the hard part comes in determining which route the barrels will take, since they can go down any ladder, roll along, or be hurled down ignoring traversable areas altogether. But if you make it to the top Donkey Kong becomes frightened by your new position and runs off with Pauline to the next area.

Apparently Pauline has dropped her purse and umbrella. Well, you better get them back. Not to be nice or anything, but because they are worth points! Yay points! So Donkey Kong has discovered that barrels are no good, so instead he throws springs at you! Deadly deadly springs. Until the top floor the things are harmless though, unless you are absolutely terrible at this game. The fires are also no real threat. The real problem here is heights. If you fall too far, you die. Plain and simple. Actually this is only a problem the first time you play. Every other time it is easy to not die. The top floor does require you to run to the ladder at exactly the right time though, otherwise you get spring-ed. (Also, the springs make too much noise so you can't have music this stage. Not that the spring noises are much different from the music anyway...)

The final level of the game is a new twist. Rather than reach the top of the stage, you must remove a bunch of pieces of cheese from the girders. Once all the cheese is gone, Donkey Kong falls down and everything is good. But seriously, look at the cute fire things! After this level you start back at level 1 and your motivation is to keep going to get the highest score. The game is nice enough to give you an extra life every 20000 points, so you should be able to go on for a while.

Palm HP Palm webOS: Think Awesome. Think Okay. Think 'Why?'

/10 Feb 2011 [@176]

A while back, my favorite phone company Palm (which was bought by Hewlett-Packard last year, so I should be calling them HP, but I won't!) was promoting a little event they were having. The main idea of the event was summed up in this image sent as an invitation to certain peoples.

Now, I am still using the first webOS phone known as the Palm Pre on Sprint. It was released in 2009. That's one and a half years ago. Which in the phone business is a long time. Palm has also released the Palm Pre Plus on Verizon and AT&T, which was a lot like the Pre, but somewot better. More recently, as in late last year, they released another phone called the Pre 2. It was exciting, but somewot laughable as to wot it had to offer. However, I view the Pre 2 as kind of a beta for wot would happen next. Is there such a thing as beta hardware? I unno. Maybe. I'm not changing that sentence. And then you have the pixi, but wotever. That's not important right now. We are talking about yesterday, not last year. Long story short, us Palm fans have been itching for some new hardware with significant improvements to match wot I can easily say is the best mobile OS out there. So when we saw that image above, we became giddy with excitement!

So the event happened. How do I feel now. STOKED! But that's not to say everything was good. In fact, some things were not good! Thankfully those things don't matter as much to be but I will talk about them anyway. Here we go, in order of awesomeness, Palm's freshly announced gadgets!

Pre³

Yes, the 3 is in superscript. Clever. As far as I know it is pronounced Pre-Three though, not Pre-Cubed. Pretty much, this is exactly wot I wanted to see from this event. A Pre form-factor phone with better specs, better camera, and a front camera as well. I think everyone was expecting something like this, we just weren't certain we would get it. But we did! Oh frabjous day!

So like I said, I am still using a regular old Pre on Sprint, and there have been two other Pres made. Let's do some stat comparison, shall we?

As you can see, the Pre's latest iteration blows mine out of the water. I want it so bad! Seriously, this is something that Palm definitely did right. I was worried that they may not make another portrait slider so soon after the Pre 2, since a lot of people want keyboardless phones for some reason... But, the form factor many of us have fallen in love with continues to stay! One thing I noticed though is the resolution is 800x480. iPhone fans will be quick to point out that's not retina display, and it is somewot dissapointing. But then I turn on my 4.8 inch 800x480 Archos 5 and realize everything looks clean and crisp already, so sized down to 3.6 will anyone really be able to tell the difference between retina and wvga? Yes. But I won't, because I don't hold my phone 1 inch from my face very often.

Bad news is my contract with Sprint isn't up til next March. So will have to save up a little before I can afford the unsibsidized version of this phone. Oh wait, I don't know how much to save up. No price details. Oh wait, I don't know when this phone will be out, no release date (other than 'Summer') Oh wait! We don't even know which carriers will carry this phone! So that's the bad news, is that we have been shown beauty, but we don't know how to obtain it. Now, if Sprint craps out on me for a 3rd time and doesn't release the Pre³, I shall be switching providers post haste. It's too bad the three major phone companies each only do ONE thing right. And that Sprint's is the most important to me (CHEAP!!!). Oh well. I will be hastily looking forward to the announced carriers, because no matter wot, I WILL OWN THIS PHONE.

So we have the awesome taken care of. The rest of the reveals were not as great, but the next one was pretty cool I guess. Let me preface this a little bit. Tablets have been all the rage recently. Wot's a tablet? It's the exact same thing as a PDA, usually bigger. Wot's a PDA? The stuff Palm used to do. Remember those things, the rectangles you poked with sticks? Ah, the good ol days. Anyway, so a Tablet does things that today's phones do, except telephony stuff. Archos and Nokia were some of the first companies to explore this idea, with results being admitidly cool. Wait, you didn't know those companies made tablets? Don't worry, neither did anyone else unless you study gadgets (note, Archos' current tablets are very well known, but I don't care, I'm talking 2007 here). Well, one day (NOTE: Not necessarily the same day), these two companies got some interesting ideas, though implemented them in different ways. Nokia decided that it's tablet OS, Maemo, would be cool to have on a phone. Archos decided that this new Android Phone thing would be cool to have on a tablet. Thus, began an era. Wait, you thought that the iPad was the first tablet to use a phone OS? Lol, no. Archos had the 5 and 7 running that a good 6 months prior. But Apple is amazing at getting people to buy stuff, so they worked their magic, everyone wanted the iPad, and as a result, Android tablets flooded the market at a rate of 1 a week. At least. BlackBerry has shown SOME innovation, but making a tablet that uses someone elses (webOS) software, but otherwise, it's all the same. So Palm made one too. No duh.

TouchPad

Yep. It's webOS on a big ol' display. Wot more do you want me to say about it? I am neither impressed nor unimpressed, it is just there. It is nothing unexpected and I am not sure if I want one. You see, I view tablets as a repalcement for laptops. As such, a tablet needs to do laptop things for me. So far Archos is the closest manufacturer to meet those needs. The Touchpad doesn't, but hey, I'd be lying if I said I didn't want one just because it's running webOS. The problem with Android and iOS is that neither one offers an effective multitasking experience. Wot's multitasking you ask? Well, have a look at your taskbar. See all those programs you have open right now? That's multitasking. And you know how you can click on any of them to bring them up? That's effective multitasking. And you know how you can just hit Alt-Tab to switch programs (on Windows and Ubuntu at least)? That's awesome multitasking. webOS offers the closest thing I've seen to that (well, BlackBerry offers it too, but the PlayBook is just webOS with the BlackBerry name and apps) and this makes it really appeal to me. Now, the new version of Google Android, Honeycomb, seems to be offering an improved multitasking experience as well, so I may go with that, I will see. It is hard to say right now.

One weird thing about me is this: I don't like using the same OS twice. I have Windows 7 running on my desktop so that I have access to a plethora of programs for doing everything, since software for windows is very easy to find. My laptop though, runs Ubuntu (specifically Lubuntu) because I like the flexibility of Linux. My phone is webOS, my current tablet is Android. Different platforms offer different advantages, and I want every advantage I can get! Heck, I am a noted Apple-hater, but I have considered an iPod touch every now and again just because of the app support. So will I break the trend with webOS? Again, I'm not sure. But, I would say this tablet is a great choice in the tablet market. It just doesn't impress me too much.

Now, Palm has always been releasing things in more than one style. They made the Treo, and then the Centro. Why? I have no freaking clue, they were almost the exact same phone. BlackBerry does it all the time with their Bolds and Curves and wotnot and I will never understand. Anyways, when they made the Pre, the alternative webOS phone made a lot more sense. It was called the Pixi, and was the spiritual successor to the Centro. Check it out!

Brilliant! Not everyone wants a slider phone, so make something to appeal to those people too! It makes perfect sense. I have converted 3 members of my family to webOS so far, and two of them use the Pixi. My little sister just likes it better, and my Grandma would have a hard time with the sliding mechanism on any phone. My Dad and I both use the Pre. Different tastes. Now, when Palm made the Pre Plus, the Pixi Plus was created as well, bringing with it many significant improvements. The Pre 2 happened though, and there was no Pixi 2 though... very sad... But now we have the official new little brother/sister to the Pre series, introducing the Pixi²!!!

Veer

YEAH-wait. Hold on. Let's look back at that picture. Is that... a squished Pre? I guess the Pixi announcement comes later. Wait, no, this is it. The Veer? Um, okay then. Well, let's see. It's tiny. Like, uber tiny.That's cool I guess. And it has a camera with...no flash... well at least it has a cool dock connector! Oh wait, that's how you charge it? Not through the microUSB standard? Hold on, and I have to plug in an adapter to that dock to plug headphones in? AN ADAPTER FOR HEADPHONES!?! I can understand the lack of front facing camera at least, but this phone just screams Fail at me! I mean, to make the tiniest smartphone is one thing, but to sacrifice usefulness is completely ridiculous! Not only that but wot is the market for this device? People with an obsession for tiny things? It is the same form factor as the Pre³ but powered down and with features taken away! I'm sorry, but this is just an awful idea! One friend of mine has been using the Pixi for a while now. She loves it, and was so excited when I told her about Palm's event. I told her new phones would happen, and she was hopeful for a new Pixi. Why? Because not everyone likes sliders! I love them, don't get me wrong, but I have never met anyone struggle with a phone decision based on how long it is. (well except for those gigantic powerhouse Android phones) Now, there is still some hope, since the Pixi was not announced alongside the original Pre, so maybe Pixi users will get some love too, I'm remaining optimistic. But as for the Veer, I have nothing good to say about it. Some people will point to it's size as a good thing, but does anyone really care? And is anyone really planning on getting one? When I told the bad news to my friend she grdugingly decided that she would just get the Pre³ then, since it had the new feature. Users shouldn't have to settle for something. Us Pre users don't have to, neither should the Pixi users.

Now, wot of other news? Some people on the interwebs have been complaining about no keyboardless phones being announced. Really? Shut up. That's dumb, you're dumb. I'm not even going into how ridiculous that is.

Though honestly, even though I see no use for a keyboardless phone, others obviously do, so maybe show some love their way too Palm? So they will shut up. Seriously, they sicken me.

So overall, I am giddy with excitement from announcements made. The Veer doesn't apply to me at all, so I guess that's not a negative for me. I am neutral on the Touchpad, and while it doesn't give me things like full USB, SAMBA sharing, and support for MKV and other codecs, it does still provde wot can be considered the cleanest multitasking experience avaialable. And the Pre³ is exactly wot I wanted. EXACTLY. Thank you Palm, I still love you.

If you would like some more information on Palm's recent announcements, including things I didn't care enough to mention, go to your local library, I mean PreCentral.net. They pretty much have everything that we know about that new devices, and display the information much better. I'm just here to give my opinion on the matter, so go yell at a tree if you don't like it.

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