It bears mentioning that not only is this post about the Opera web browser on the DS, but I am also writing it from within the browser as well. Honestly, I’m not sure whether that second point is more a testament to the application, to WordPress’s ability to gracefully degrade so the tools are still useful using the limited interface, or my sheer patience/stupidity to stand the hunt-and-peck required to write this.

Overall, the browser is fairly painless to use. The resolution on the DS is the biggest limitation, especially in terms of content width. But even such fairly intensive web apps such as gmail are usable from the browser, even if they do become slightly more complex to navigate.

I am half tempted to try and use the browser without the RAM Expansion afforded to me by the 3-in-1 (see my previous post about that), but I just don’t see it running very well. As it is, a little bit of sluggishness can be found on some sites, and I’m sure removng the expansion certainly wouldn’t HELP screen render times.

Using a browser like this and not having much experience with portable web browsing before now, I do wonder about the future of web standards and how long it may be until MOST sites either have WAP-friendly versions or simply all become coded to a proper standard that the content is displayed in a format specifically tailored for these types of web clients. In some ways I’m pretty late to the “mobile web” game, but really it’s still such a novelty that most developers that I know aren’t really thinking about it when they program a web site/application.

I guess we’ll see in time how long it takes before this type of surfing goes beyond something only the technophiles and the Blackberry/iPhone owners are doing.

OK, results from T54… I can sum everything up by simply telling you right now that I finished one stroke out of cash. Sigh. Now, I wouldn’t mind that fact if I had played well and “oh man, one more stroke was all I needed” – but this weekend I felt like I played mediocre-to-sub-par golf and then find out I was a stroke out of cash.

T54 has the players complete three rounds of golf in a single day – no small feat in the winter, and especially tougher when we had a snowstorm dump a lot of fresh powder over New England overnight. In fact, it was almost a miracle I made it to the tournament at all since I left my house at 5:15 AM and didn’t make it to the park’n'ride (about 40 minutes from my house normally) to meet up with other carpoolers until just after 6:30. The highways were a disaster, with nothing being plowed for the first 20 miles of my drive and everyone was just single file trying not to spin out or slide off the road; in hindsight I probably should have just stayed home and not risked it, but I kept moving on and eventually made it to the first course with 5 minutes to spare before being sent out to play. Phew.

Every round played very similarly, with a whole lot of “what the…” on both sides of the spectrum. Round 1 was a great example, where I took a 4 on the monster ~800′ hole that finishes uphill, with O.B. lining the full right side of the hole and trouble on the left both close to the tee and again once you get near the pin. A 4 is a good score in good conditions, let alone when there is fresh snow everywhere, the discs are having a tough time staying dry, and the teepads were in rough shape. (The volunteers did dig up the tees, but that course only has natural tees so they could only be made so good – mostly you had to be careful that you didn’t slide on the snow-pack.) I follow that hole with a 4 on a short, ~225′ downhill ace run. Sigh. And so it was all day.

Overall, I think the only part of my game that didn’t abandon me was my midrange game. My upshots have always saved me from having much worse rounds, and when I could play my shots to the base of the pole and know that I didn’t have to worry about skip-aways or weird pick-up-and-roll events it definitely helped. Unfortunately the flip side of that coin meant I got very nervous standing over almost any putt over 8′, and I even blew about three putts during the day from inside 15′. The drives were not terrible, but often times I ended up playing a game of inches were the difference of an inch left or right was the difference between making a gap and having a perfect drive, or hitting something and being stopped very early on the fairway. Even some holes, like Hole 12 at Pyramids, I took a perfect drive off the tee and as the disc started to fade back to the ideal spot at the top of the hill, I got a little kiss back to the right off of a tree. Fading out naturally would have been a beautiful long anhyzer upshot to the basket, and instead I got a jacked angle from off the fairway, blew my “out” and ended up carding a 5 for the hole.

It was a frustrating day as far as my performance went, but I had good guys in my group all day and I definitely had a good time. Playing in the winter definitely has me jonesing even more for the spring/summer months though.

Not to be confused with any of the other nouveau-chic medical conditions on the market today (*cough*), DS Leg Syndrome (or DSLS) is a condition that I am sure many of my gaming brethren have fallen victim to. There you are, minding your own business while trying to do your business. The DS has made the trip into the bathroom with you because… well, why not? You’re chugging along playing the latest game you can’t get enough of, and that’s when you suddenly realize “Hey, wait a minute. I’ve been done trying to go to the bathroom for 45 freaking minutes. Why am I still in here?” Close the lid of the DS, take your elbows off your knees and owwwwwwww.

Congratulations my friend, you’ve just succumbed to another episode of DSLS; the symptom of spending such an extraordinary amount of time pressing your elbows into your thighs that you have successfully reduced your circulation to practically nothing. As the blood begins to flow through your legs again, your legs slowly feel numb and as if they are not your own. How do you cope? Do you ride it out, knowing that you will only be able to walk again once enduring the excruciating pain of your nerve receptors coming back online? Do you hit yourself in the thigh, sending shockwaves of feeling rippling down your leg as you force the blood to move swifter through your veins? God only knows that if you stood up right now you would do only one of two things – immediately fall over as you realize that you have no control of your legs, nor can they hold you upright by themselves at this moment in time; or be forced to support yourself on the sink, trying not to put too much weight on either leg and wishing dearly that feeling would just come back so that you could continue your life as normal.

Damn you, Professor Layton. Damn you Advance Wars, Picross, Mario & Luigi, Tetris, Puzzle Quest, damn all of you games past present and future that inflict this wretched condition upon me.

credit to ShortAttentionGamer (RIP) for the image