1913: The last year that the sitting United States president had a mustache.

A friend of mine recently regaled me with a tale of watching a guy play Guitar Hero 3 at a competition. The contestant played Metallica’s One and ripped off 93 percent on the “Expert” setting. That is good – very good. In fact, we can engage in some hyperbole here and throw in the extra “very”, in bold.

Very, very good.

We are not here, however, to talk about “very good”. We are here to talk about “completely and unbelievably fucking awesome” which is what the performance in the following video most definitely is. Through The Fire And Flames is generally considered to be the hardest song in GH3, period, bar none, end of discussion, thank you. One is difficult to be sure, but Flames is rather more difficult in the same way that Crime And Punishment is somewhat longer than Green Eggs And Ham. And on “Expert”, it becomes something exponentially more intricate, the notes akin to an arcane language that you can hear, but simply have no hope of ever comprehending.

And while there are some things of note in this performance – the excellent two-handed technique in the long hammer-on section at the start, the switch from the strum bar to two-handed tapping and back in the really hard part at 2:24, and the crucial drying of the hand on the jeans at 4:00 – there is no real point in trying to quantify or even understand the way this plays out. Just watch the video.

You’ll know.

If you have a Nintendo Wii (funny how, after all of the joking about the name, everyone has settled in and now just goes with the flow on that one) you have probably updated your console to include the “Nintendo Channel”. For the uninitiated – those of you without a Wii or without the technical skills to perform the 1-click upgrade now and again – this is a section of your Wii interface that feeds videos and news about current and upcoming games. It is essentially advertising, but couched in enough “content” – interviews with developers, “making of” videos, gameplay tips – that it is at least semi-palatable. So you have probably looked at it, seen a couple of game examples, maybe even rated a game or two.

That said, with nothing at the top levels of the channel to really draw you in, you have probably missed the best part of the whole thing … to wit, the DS Demo Download Service. From there you can download demo versions of new games for your DS, and try them out to your hearts content. It is fast and easy and free and it not only rocks from a consumer standpoint, but could probably sell a shitload of games if Nintendo had the brains to make it a little more obvious.

If you haven’t found it yet, here is the drill:

Spark up the “Nintendo Channel” on your Wii

Ignore whatever is blaring at you from the splash screen and select “To The Video List”

Once there, hit the “Find Titles For You” button.

And way down at the bottom of that screen, pick “DS Demo Download”

Once you are there, browse the games, pick one that you want to try, and then follow the instructions. Like most of the Wi-Fi and user interface components on the Wii and the DS, the download is startlingly easy to do, seamless, and pretty much foolproof. If the local sample is any indication, it is i a powerful sales tool, since after trying CrossworDS for the DS, I immediately went out and bought the thing. Which, by the way, I recommend as an absolute must have title for your DS.

Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it. You can try the damn thing out for yourself.

CODA: I am amazed by the number of people who do not realize that their DS has a full Wi-Fi suite on-board, and will talk both 802.11 and Nintendo’s own wireless protocol right out of the box. I really think the big N needs to pimp that more – there are boundless applications to be had here, if only the user base – and, more to the point, the potential buying public – was better filled in. Get with the program, guys.

I had mentioned that this year’s WWDC would be a zoo due to iPhone software mania. Looks like that was an understatement – just got an email from a friend who went over to get in line at 7:15 PDT and it was already around the block – people at the front were there over night. The keynote doesn’t start until 10:00 their time, so that is a hell of a mob. Jeezus.

UPDATE: John thinks that he just saw Coldplay going in the VIP door. Quelle surprise.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The iPhone Dev Centre just went down, so I assume that the beta development kit will be replaced with the real deal in about 1 minute.

People getting their badges and credentials for WWDC report that the Moscone Centre is sporting banners pimping “iPhone OSX”. Told ya.

May is gone, June is here, and that means that it is time for another edition of WWDC. Somewhat vexingly, I will not be there this year – only somewhat vexingly, because this year is a missable year for sure, with the place no doubt being packed with iPhone wannabe bozos – but as always, some rampant predictions are in order. I think that this year will be more about “growth” than “gee, wow!” and you will see a lot of expansion on current ideas, and not so much on the “boom” front. With that in mind, here are this year’s thoughts:

All MacBook models now have Penryn chips: This is a given. The advances in power management and performance on the Penryn-based MacBook Pro line (as predicted last year) will not be in place for all of the MacBooks, even the basest of base models. I love this chip – Intel may have a lot of flaws as a company *cough cough extortion cough cough antitrust cough* but they did just fine with this one.

3GHz and and better on the iMac: Another given – the chips were ordered months ago, which means that these should be on sale as soon as the keynote starts. Watch for all of the Apple Stores to go dark during the keynote so they can have this available as soon as it is announced.

Tablet Mac / Touchscreen Mac / Some sort of Newton: Same as last year … forget it. Next.

End of the line for PowerPC support in Leopard: I think not. A lot of people are going on about this, but I dont think it will happen. Apple has always been proud of the fact that their stuff has a much longer working life than anything on the Windoze side. The last PPC machines are only a couple of years old, so I think that the new update to Leopard will still have all of the hooks for those chips. Ditto with support for Carbon applications – they are not going away yet. Maybe in 2010, but not now.

Leopard update: This is a no-brainer, since OSX 10.6 was seeded to some important developers yesterday. This will be “growth” version, with nothing new to speak of but lots of tweaks and fixes, especially in the biz-friendly parts like iCal server and Mail integration.

iPhone Applications: This will be the main attraction, and probably the centre of Steve’s keynote. Apple knows that iPhone users have been unlocking otherwise legit phones just to get at the applications available in Installer, and they want to knock these people’s socks off and get them looking to the iTunes store for software instead of shady under-the-table locales. Watch for at least three killer applications, and at least one of them to be free – perhaps the MS Office editing package.

iPhone 2.0: We all know this is coming, along with the attendant Exchange integration and enterprise tools (VPN, remote security, etc.), but some new details should be Adobe Flash and AIR in Safari Mobile, Windoze Media and QT in Safari Mobile, a full iChat client, and some new gesture-based editing tools.

iPhone 3G/4G: Yep. Unless you are a loser and live in Canada.

Reinforcement of the idea that the iPhone is an OSX machine: Now that people know that it is an awesome phone, Apple wants them to know that it is a cool little OSX computer, too.

iPhones around the world: Look for some staggering sales figures and at least 4 more countries getting the iPhone.

That should probably be it – no surprises, just lots of goodness. And here is a super bonus prediction: At least once someone will make a passing but pointed reference to the fact that all of your mail on a Blackberry goes through the hands of “some server in Canada”. Tune in to the keynote on Monday and watch for it!

In a word: Perfect.

The world is good. Eat your heart out, Maggie.

Earlier I mentioned that only an idiot would refer to the “final series” of a championship as “the finals” – after all, there is only one final series, and any one who referred to it in the plural is obviously a complete fuckwit. And, while there are legions of so-called journalists south of the border who can’t seem to understand that basic bit of grammatical goodness, it is heartening to see that the people who run the NHL – despite the failings they have in every other facet of their business – had the basic brainpower to get this right on all of their visual and print material for the Stanley Cup final.

Sadly, it appears our friends over at the NBA don’t share this ability to handle grade 4 grammar, as evidenced by the official artwork over on their web site:

Idiots.

Everyone knows – even the most ardent Microsoft fanboys, although they are still loathe to come out and admit it – that Vista is an epic pile of vomit. Worse, it is an epic pile of vomit that was 2 years late and cost twice as much as originally promised. But, after all of that water has gone under the bridge, it is comforting to know that the vast litany of problems with Vista are not Microsoft’s fault. The gang in Redmond had taken a long hard look at this mountain of puke and has come to a conclusion:

It’s the users’ fault.