TecSpy.com Michael Erskine's Domain

After a week's camping and cycling in the Forest of Dean[1], the Nottingham Riverside Festival[2] and Leicester Summer Sundae festival[3] last weekend I return to work to find a pay rise waiting for me. Normally extremely broke and very conservative with purchases I figured that since I might not live until Xmas and even then I might be killed in the Xmas shopping riots so I splashed out and bought a Nintendo Wii[4] whilst buying a loaf in a large Tesco store. I consider the price to be reasonable at £179 with Wii Sports and one wireless controller and nunchuk -- I don't forsee the price dropping much in the run up to Xmas and I don't thrive on internet purchasing (waiting for ParcelForce to sneak that card through the letterbox without anyone hearing is not as fun as it used to be!). Last night when the kids were finally subdued I sat up and configured the wireless net connection to our WRT54GL[5]. I got bored of "typing" in the huge WPA2 PSK string of random data so I decided to temporarily simplify the key and after some further failed attempts I reconfigured the security on the router and put it into "Mixed-mode" rather than my previous "G-only". That got it working fine but I was a little disappointed to find that the Opera web browser, now the "Internet Channel"[6], is no longer free and costs 500 Wii Points[7]. I joined Club Nintendo and registered our console and Wii Sports purchases, then filled in a questionnaire which amassed 1500 "Stars"[8] which apparently (if you're very lucky) you can convert into Wii Points, but sadly not enough. I may have to dig deep again to get "The Internet Channel" tonight!

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_of_Dean
[2] http://www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/sitemap/services/leisure_and_culture/ar...
[3] http://www.summersundae.com/
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linksys_WRT54G_series#WRT54GL
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Channel
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_Points
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Stars_Catalogue