litheon

litheon! Where've you been?!

2008-06-30T05:53:00Z

So if you're reading this that probably means my feed is in your RSS reader somewhere, since it's been almost two months since my last post I doubt anybody has been holding the F5 key over here waiting for an update on something. So here's two months worth of blog posts in one.

NOFX

I went to a NOFX show on May 9th. It was an amazing show, and to my surprise the opening bands American Steel and No Use For A Name were pretty good. As usual, I managed to get up to the front row and snap a few photos from the camera. It's worth mentioning that the crowd was freakin insane, and managed to mob so hard towards the front that I actually have a scar from where part of the riot rail at the front of the venue wore a cut into my left side. Other than that the show was amazing. Here are some of those photos from Flickr:

Skool

I've also finished (sort of) my first year of university (woot!) and am now officially a sophomore. Nothing really that interesting to report regarding that, although it is worth mentioning that I used that LiveAnywhere app I wrote for the project I was assigned as part of my Computer Science class; which earned me an alright 100%. Unfortunately, I'm taking an online class during the summer semester to make up for the fact I didn't really take that many credits during the course of the year.

Werk

I'm currently working at home by telecommuting. There's not much interesting regarding my work other than I'm working on deploying a SharePoint intranet site for my department, and doing a myriad of other tasks from setting up Ffmpeg on a server to re-encode videos for one of my work's Drupal sites, to writing a tool that dynamically generates HTML based on some pre-specified parameters given by the user.

Xbox

As far as Xbox land goes I don't really have much to report, other than I've been playing quite a bit of Halo 3, and Gears of War lately and I also just recently bought Rock Band and am in the process of playing through the guitar career on expert and the drum career on medium. I also used the new DRM tool to transfer some of the offline play licenses to my Xbox 360 Elite so I can play all of my arcade games even while offline. As a personal opinion in regard to that tool, I think the web-based aspect is great. It's light-weight, simple, and easy to use and takes nowhere near the 30 minutes given to go through the process; however, I think it's kind of lame that you have to go through each and every item in your download history to get all of the licenses on to the new console.

MajorNelson.com

The past few days we did have a few blips on the radar on Larry's blog (for instance, it not loading at all) which was due to a RAID controller that went bad in our front-end server. We switched the site over to our database server, and Clay over at CentraComm did a bit of maintenance on the server by replacing the RAID controller and restoring a backup of the drive images. So this doesn't happen in the future we've got our web cache pointing at our front-end server as a primary but in the event anything ever happens our database server will be there to pick up the load.

I've also been working on a complete redesign for the site, with a unified theme across most every public page. We'll also have a threaded comment system similar to Newsgroup discussions (Which is of course, user selectable), and a simplified registration system not to mention quite a few additional features that will give Major's blog more of a community conversation feel moving away from the one person talks, and everyone else talks back model.

There isn't much news to report regarding the LiveAnywhere app other than I'll be working on it once I finish my online class, and the redesign/upgrade I'm working on for Larry's blog.

Audio Gadgetry

I recently purchased one of the new 8 GB Zunes as my old 30 GB Zune's LCD screen just stopped lighting up quite a while back. So far I've got to say I'm loving it. There is obviously a significant decrease in the amount of storage, but that does really force me to get the media I want to enjoy on there. Thanks to the relatively new (to Zune anyway) autoplaylist feature I've got a list of music that I enjoy in addition to some of the stuff I haven't given too much attention to on the Zune. Using that rating system and the "Don't sync stuff I don't like" sync setting, I indicate what music I like so I can get back to it later, and if I find something I really don't ever want to listen to again I'll "broken heart" it so it'll get deleted off of my Zune the next time I sync.

For this past father's day I did all of the component wiring (connecting the upscaling DVD player, DVR, speakers, and subwoffer all to the receiver) my step father's new surround sound system, and helped a bit with determining the items that did and did not need to be purchased. That rounded off the whole entertainment console, so now we've got a 42" 1080p TV mounted to the top of our entertainment center, 4 Klipsch in-wall speakers (with built-in crossovers), a Klipsch center channel, an amplified Klipsch subwoofer, and two Cerwin Vega speakers in a separate room. Although none of this stuff is by any means top-of-the-line, it definitely reveals the quality difference between compressed CD rips and the real thing. Not to mention when I'm playing Rock Band on it I feel like I'm playing at a show.

Althrough through great struggle I also managed to install a subwoofer in my car. I aquired the Punch XLC 12" sub, Punch 600 a4 amp, two front speakers, two rear speakers, and two crossovers all for the low price of $100. (All of that was sitting in my garage, so I persuaded the owner to hand it over. Yeah I'm a bargain hunter.) During the process I had to deal with figuring out where I should ground the amplifier (ended up just drilling it into the trunk), running the B+ power cable (ended up just running it through from the hood up through the door jams, then back in near the rear door of the car, through the seat and into the trunk), and the horribly tedious task of using a wiring kit to get the new deck to work in the car (i.e. crimping tons of wires together). Now I can make sure everyone hears the awesome gangster rap I'm blasting when I roll down the street.

Well that's about it. Now that I've got that out of the way I'll try to post regular updates.

How to use purchased content on your new console after console replacement

2008-05-05T13:06:00Z

If your console had to be sent in to be repaired, and you received it back only to find a new console then you've probably faced some of the challenges regarding the Xbox 360's licensing system. As it stands you need to have purchased the content you want to use on the console you're using the content on if you would like to use it without being signed in, otherwise you need the Xbox Live account that purchased the content to be signed in on the console in order to play the content.

Well recently the folks over at Microsoft modified the licensing so you can actually aquire the licenses to use the content on the console you received back from repair without being signed in. From Xbox.com's support site:

Attach your hard drive or memory unit.
Turn on the console.
Sign in to Xbox LIVE with the gamer profile that originally downloaded the content.
Go to Xbox LIVE Marketplace and select Account Management, Download History.
Select an item and then select Download Again.
Repeat step 5 for each item in your download history.

Although it sucks to have to redownload every single item you want to use, if you already have the content on your storage device it seems to just download whatever license is necessary to play the content offline that way your download queue doesn't fill up to the limit forcing you to wait until one item is download before you can start another.

Enjoy!

Live Anywhere app

2008-04-06T21:21:00Z

For the past couple of months I've been writing a small application for Windows Mobile to do some of the Live Anywhere functionality the Xbox division announced a while ago. It's far from perfect, but it goes a little beyond the average gamercard functionality by showing the extended profile, and all of the played games we have on record. The application uses a lightweight SOAP interface I have setup with majornelson.com to grab all sorts of fun data about any given gamertag. This API is also going to pave the way for some tools I'll be adding in the future allowing people to display extended gamercard and presence data on their own website, or even use it to build their own applications.

If you want to give it a try download and extract the zip file, and throw the three files onto your Windows Mobile device. I've included the .NET Compact Framework v3.5 (the version that runs on my phone), the application (just a straight .exe right now), and a certificate chain (in case your security config requires running only signed and trusted applications). So feel free to try it out and if you want to give some feedback or suggest features I'm all ears. I've also got some screenshots on Flickr if you want to give it a look.

Here are some of the known issuses with the app:

You might have a different processor than I do in your phone, and as such might need a different .NET CF install file than I have included in the zip file
I haven’t made a CAB installation file yet, so you’ll have to browse to where you saved it for now
I’ve included the certificate chain I used to sign the app with, just in case the security configuration on your phone doesn’t allow running unsigned applications; however, your security configuration might also prevent you from installing certificates to be trusted publishers
Currently I’m displaying some of the labels on the page to demonstrate the visual layout, and for a few debugging purposes; in the final version you won’t see anything until loading all Gamertag-related data is finished
I did my best to make this easy to use without a touch screen, but you may encounter some usability issues

Enjoy!

Call of Duty 4: Variety Map Pack Giveaway

2008-04-06T15:09:00Z

I've got an extra code for the new Call of Duty 4 Map Pack, so I'm going to run another giveaway for it.

The rules are the same as last time. So, if you're a registered user (here or at MajorNelson.com) login and post a comment here. If you're not registered make sure you set your name to your gamertag AND include your gamertag in your post. Also, I'm going to run the drawing after I check the post and see there are fifty or more comments; or 7 days passes (whereby comments on posts are automatically shut off).

Some general guidelines:

Do not attempt to enter more than once, if you do enter more than once you will be disqualified for this and any other giveaways I might do
Register if at all possible, if I have any question as to whether or not you've tried to enter more than once this will make it very easy for me to determine you are innocent

Anyway, good luck people!

Spring Break

2008-04-04T18:31:00Z

Hi all, sorry for not posting for a while, but I swear I've got a legit reason for not doing so. So this past week (22nd - 30th) was spring break at my university. However, being the kind of person I am I took kind of an extended spring break. So the week of March 16th a couple of my friends came out to go snowboarding up in Breckenridge and Keystone; and it was incredibly fun (despite having to go kind of slow due to my friends being used to the really tiny hills out in the midwest). I managed to get quite a few good pictures of the three-day snowboarding fiesta, so I threw them on Flickr. If you're looking for me, I'm the one with the obviously sunburned face. Yeah, that wasn't fun.

There other (and more fun) part of spring break was my trip to Japan. I went there to teach English at couple of camps for Japanese elementary, junior high, and high school students. It was defintiely a good time (minus the jet lag I had on the way back). The kids were definitely fun to work with, and were really good at understanding what I was acting out when the language barier was just too much for communication. So for a couple of observations about the trip/Japan in general:

Don't give elementary school kids fireworks (one of my campers almost started a huge brush pile on fire...)
Japanese toilet seats live up to the hype
Japanese baths are kind of strange, but once you get used to them they're very enjoyable (just wish we could use them in the morning as opposed to at night)
Narita airport's WiFi is not very secure (i'll probably write an article about how to bypass pay WiFi sometime around here)
C.C. Lemon is the greatest drink in existence (it's a super-carbonated lemon soft drink)
Akihabara (the elecronics district of Tokyo) is pretty much the best thing since sliced bread
Yodobashi-Akiba dominates any electronics store that exists in the United States (7 stories of electronics goodness)
Tokyo's subway/train system is amazing, not to mention very easy to understand

Enough of the talking anyway. Because of the huge number of pictures I took on this trip I actually purchased a Flickr pro account so I could upload all of them, so behold their glory over at Flickr.

Also, the reason I haven't posted for a while is because something went wrong with the Internetz while I was trying to post my little spiele on my pre-spring break festivites, so I lost the entire post and didn't have time to write it again before boarding my plane. In other news, I'll be doing a giveaway this weekend for the Call of Duty 4: Variety map pack and later today I'll be giving away some more arcade games on my Twitter account so try to keep an eye on that.

Later!

Arcade Winner

2008-03-04T09:06:00Z

This arcade winner this time around is Greenskull. However, there's also an interesting dillema this time as well. I sent my computer in for repair two weeks ago, and because they flattened my hard drive I unfortunately lost the code for Poker Smash. I do on the other hand have codes for Triggerheart Exelica and N+, so Greenskull please let me know which one of those games you would like. The one I have left I will run another giveaway for.

And sorry for the delay! Not having a laptop for a good week doesn't really help productivity at all.

Arcade winner, and.... yet another giveaway

2008-02-18T01:00:00Z

Appologies for the delay in announcing the winner, it was quite a busy week last week. Regardless the winner of Rez HD is HazyCloud, congrats!

I've got another arcade game to give away, this time it's Poker Smash.

For quick reminder here are some of the guidelines for these giveaways:

Do not attempt to enter more than once, if you do enter more than once you will be disqualified for this and any other giveaways I might do
Register if at all possible, if I have any question as to whether or not you've tried to enter more than once this will make it very easy for me to determine you are innocent
If the content is not available in your region then the code will not work, so please make sure it's available before entering

Arcade Giveaway Winners, my weekend, and another giveaway

2008-02-04T06:37:00Z

Sorry I'm a little late on announcing the winners, I'll get to that later; but here they are:

duzzyman	Sensible World of Soccer
HazyCloud	TEMPEST
uRBAN jAMAican	Omega Five
MrBigRules	Tron

As for the reason the reason this is a little late, I was up in Vail, Colorado all weekend (and I finally remembered to bring my camera snowboarding!). This was the first time I've been up to Vail in around 8 years, and I've got to say it still lives up to the hype. It just snowed on Friday while I was driving up there, so the snow was absolutley perfect with at least a foot of powder in most of the back woods areas. Best of all, I got back in time to watch the amazing last few minutes of the Super Bowl. Here are some of the pictures from Flickr:

Also, it's time for another Arcade Giveaway this time for Rez HD, as usual please post a comment in this blog post either using your registered gamertag or typing your gamertag out inside of the comment you post and please do not post more than once. Good luck all!