You're right, you have obviously been following me on Twitter and have learned that I now have a Nintendo Wii hooked up to my TV. What I haven't said in Twitterland is that I actually have had the Wii since last summer and had it sitting in the closet for the entire school year, an easy way to ensure that it wasn't a topic of debate with the kids when they needed to focus on other things.

Now, however, it's hooked up, looks gorgeous on the HDTV and is great fun. But, like you, I also sometimes want to play a Nintendo Wii game or two late at night (boring though it may sound, so far bowling in Wii Sports is one of my favorites) and while I can easily turn down the volume of the TV set itself, it's rather more complicated to adjust the Wii Remote.

Here's what I dug up on the Nintendo site that explains how to both turn down the volume on the remote speaker and turn on or off the "rumble" effect on the remote too:

First step is to click on the little "home" button on the Wii Remote. Now, on the home screen, choose "Wii Remote Settings".

You'll see this:

Once you're there it is a nice easy screen that shows you the configuration options:

I'm pretty sure you can figure things out from here! Note that you only need to change each remote - by "remote number" - so if you have a basket of Wii Remote devices and just randomly pick one up each time to be "remote #1", then once you adjust it once, you're good and the other physical remotes will be muted or softer too.