Gather around, little boys and girls, and let me tell you the story of an astoundingly useful, but troubled website. wifimaps.com is a lovely resource for warchalkers everywhere, fuelled by the generous contributions of wardrivers and access point hosts throughout… everywhere.

I take that back. They appear to have no data for Kyoto or Tokyo, in lovely Japan, but I’ll forgive them that because they’re the only resource that’s been able to locate hotspots in Seal Beach, CA for my next trip to visit the twins. With any luck I’ll find an analogous resource before my trip to Japan this winter. Otherwise my Dell’s wifi card is going to get one heck of a workout in a couple months, as I wander around Gion searching for an open node.

But back to the story at hand. These kind folks put together an amazing database of wireless access points from wherever folks have chosen to submit the pertinent MAC Address, address, and/or GPS information. This enables people on the road to quickly determine the location of a place they can get online with a wireless devices such as a laptop or palmtop computer. Such access points include people’s homes, offices, and chic coffee shops all over the place that have (either intentionally or by neglect) created a free access-point. Alas, the usage and database outgrew the software and hardware that ran it. For months, we were without wifimaps.com loving. There was much tearing of clothes, gnashing of teeth, and the women lamented.

Last week they made their triumphant return. Rising up from the ashes, wifimaps.com stands proudly before the masses, doling out valuable information at absolutely no charge. I understand that my employer is interested in contributing colocation and bandwidth services to this project, which may go some ways towards keeping wifimaps.com available for years to come, much to the joy of WiFi mooches everywhere! Don’t you love happy endings?

This weekend the Mrs. and I picked up Jak II for our gaming pleasure. She really got a kick out of Jak & Daxter, playing it all the way through several times, and I rather dug it as well. Like Jak & Daxter, much of the gameplay is classic platform-adventure in 3d. However, the main hub of the game is a city that you cruise around in, ‘jacking zoomers and wrecking havoc as you go around, a la Grand Theft Auto 3 (but without the Cop-B-Gone tokens).

Once again we see very smooth gameplay, this time with a slew of new gameplay features (including the “Dark Jak” alter-ego mode, the introduction of weapons, and the more free-form hub system) all nicely wrapped around an unusually good plotline, complete with character motivations (shock!). As a sequel to a very much child-oriented Jak & Daxter, Jak II has a much more mature plotline.

By mature I don’t mean tits & ass (that’s a plotline aimed at thirteen-year-olds): I mean that the storyline isn’t aimed at eight-year-olds. Jak’s quests are motivated by vengance, and his missions come from rebel strategists, mobsters, and mission objectives reflect the motivations of the folks doling out the work. Jak’s incentive for fulfilling these missions? Information that’ll lead him to vengence against the evil Baron that performed scientific experiments on him for two years.

So far I’m 26% through with the missions in the game, and I give it an unmitigated A+ for style, depth of content, and implementation. Good work, folks.