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So I purchased Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time Mario & Luigi: Bowsers Inside Story a few years ago for my Nintendo DS. I enjoyed it, played through about half of it and got distracted for one reason or another before I ever finished it. Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story Mario & Luigi: Bowsers Inside Story
was just recently released by Nintendo and this time… Nintendo absolutely nailed it. I finished Bowser’s Inside Story within a week. The artwork, gameplay and the dialogue (yeah) really kept the game fresh.

Fawful, the villian’s villain in the game, causes Bowser to inhale and swallow Princess Peach, Mario, Luigi and a whole cast of others. Working with Browser Mario & Luigi must solve puzzles and challenges behind the scenes to help Bowser overcome various obstacles and advance the plot. Fawful must be defeated to save Princess Peach, the Mushroom Kingdom as well as the whole world!
http://casualhex.com/video/mlbis_media_01.flv

I definitely give Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story for Nintendo DS and Nintendo DSi a good, solid 9.5 out of 10.

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IntenseDebate takes comments to the next level.” That’s the slogan right on the IntenseDebate front page. Since it was purchased by Automattic I figured I’d give it a good ol’ try when I posted my new theme a while ago. I love how it does threads, has user profiles, reputation scores, etc. But what it does not have is halfway decent spam detection. You’d think with it running through Automattic’s Akismet spam filters it would have fantastic spam destroying abilities… but alas, it does not. Spam control through IntenseDebate is absolutely, incredibly horrible!

So, I yanked IntenseDebate today. I’ll need to repair the style sheets for comments now that we’re back to the standard WordPress comment system. That’ll probably not happen ’til Monday. But I can handle “ugly” comments for a few days. Spam sitting in moderation reaching such great heights as 4,000+ I can’t handle. It was driving me away from spending any time on Casual Hex.

I’m gonna dig in, repair the styling for comments, rewrite Viper’s Video Quicktags to my own liking and patch a few other things and get back into blogging again. It’ll be fun. Really. For me, anyhow.

Maybe some day I’ll give IntenseDebate a try again. I know Automattic will get the spam issues fixed… I just can’t leave it running here on Casual Hex until they do.

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It’s been a while since I updated here. It’s not for a lack of things to write about. Instead, it’s keeping the plug-ins updated, keeping WordPress itself up to date and trying (with poor results) to keep the spam comments cleared out. Yeah, none of the spam is actually showing up on the live site but I’ve currently got 3,453 comments awaiting approval because all are suspected spam… accurately.

So, what do I do? I’m thinking maybe I’ll give posterous.com a chance. Or something similar. I dunno what I’ll do. I enjoy building sites, but I hate the maintenance involved in keeping a site going. I had more than enough of that when I was running my Game Boy site years ago.

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Nintendo’s Wii Sports Resort Wii Sports Resort is finally out! Of all the amazing game titles that have been released for Nintendo’s Wii gaming system the bundled Wii Sports has always been one of our family’s most enjoyed titles. Now, Wii Sports Resort comes bundled with the Wii MotionPlus Wii Sports Resort attachment for the Wii Remote. The MotionPlus tracks players’ movements in finer detail and with greater accuracy. This attachment to the Wii Remote controller builds upon the wireless function of the motion-sensing aspect of the controller when used with specially designed games. Gaming options with the new attachment will be greatly expanded. It’s obvious in Wii Sports Resort and should allow for all sorts of better gaming, including fine controls in a Star War light saber dueling game that I’m pretty sure is in the works.

Activities included with Wii Sports Resort include swordplay, wakeboarding, frisbee, archery, basketball, table tennis, bowling, power cruising, canoeing, cycling and air sports. Lots of fun, fun, fun!

Additional Wii MotionPlus Wii Sports Resort attachments sell for $19.99 at places like Amazon, GameStop, Wal-Mart, etc. I know we’ll be picking up at least one more ourselves for the multi-player games available in Wii Sports Resort as well as future Wii game titles that take advantage of the attachment.

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So I finally watched Twilight with Christina the other night. I never realized it was set in Washington and it took me a while to realize that Forks and La Push were both places I’d been to regularly while I lived in Washington. Port Angeles as well. All three were on the route I took when showing friends and family around the state. In what other US state can you find desert, year round snowcaps, rain forests, tidal pools, a clean, amazing city, wonderful, rich culture, etc, etc, etc? No other, Washington is the only state with such a diverse geography. Visiting Snoqualmie Falls, featured in Twin Peaks and the town of Roslyn, where much of Northern Exposure was filmed was always cool as well. I miss going to The Fair and seeing Mount Rainier in the distance. I miss going to the Puyallup town square on the weekends for the farmer’s market, crafts and great food. I miss the Public Market in Seattle. I miss taking the ferry over to Victoria, BC from Port Angeles. The food, the culture, the sites, nature, music, food, food, the people. Food! I miss that little used book shop I went to almost every weekend in Sumner. I can’t remember its name. I hope its still there. I hate that we left Puyallup to move back to Alabama just weeks before the train station in Puyallup opened up for travel to and from Seattle, which would have made day trips so much easier, less stressful and therefore more frequent.

Washington state is where I’d be if I had nothing else in my life to base my decisions on. I wouldn’t trade my family for Washington though. One day, some how, don’t have any idea when, I do hope to take them on the site seeing trip through Washington that I took so many other family and friends on. Maybe even once the kids are grown I could talk Christina into moving out there.

One thing: it does not rain out there like most who have never been there think. Yes, there’s often a regular drizzle and a truly clear sky is few and far between, but we get more rain here in Alabama than Seattle does. It’s drizzle vs massive, extreme thunderstorms and tornadoes. Which is worse?

And lastly, in Washington, Starbucks tends to be on the bottom of the list of best places to go for good coffee. There are soooo many more, incredibly better places. Peets for one. Ya know, when Starbucks first started out (with the naked mermaid) they bought their coffee from Peets. Yup.

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