Well it's been another year and with that comes another E3, with most coming in with very high expectations out of Microsoft and Sony with their respective answers to the Nintendo's targeting of the casual and non-gamer audience, and the always persistent objective of eclipsing the previous year's presentations and along with those, the consumer demand for innovative products, low prices, and a steady stream of new games. While being the single person that I am and given the monolithic nature of E3, I can't provide any detail about anything I wasn't able to attend but here's a glimpse into my E3 2010 experience:
Kinect World Premiere
I was incredibly impressed by this event, as Cirque de Soleil did an incredible job with their live performances and integrating them with the continuous Kinect presentation. The one downside with the way the event was laid out is that some of the on-floor presentations weren't easily observable from the seated sections; however, this didn't prove to be too much of a problem considering an abridged version of the premiere was posted to the Zune Video Marketplace (in 1080p!). Overall the experience was enthralling, and will certainly be one of those E3 experiences I will never forget.
Xbox Press Event
To ensure a good position in line I was on the first shuttle from the Wilshire Grand to the Xbox press event all the way over at the Wiltern theater. Even when I got there the line had a few people in it (broadcast media waiting to get in), but it looks like all of those dedicated enough to get to the front of the line bright and early were graced with a good position in the theater. SuperDunner and I were able to get a very nice location in the center of the first row. The theater itself was quite stunning inside and out, including a few Xbox 360's stood up on white pedestals accompanied by the Kinect sensor in order for the press to get photos that looked good. After the event these would be replaced with the new "Slim" console.
The actual content of the event was great, although I didn't particularly care for the trailers as they really just serve to fill time (and especially since we don't know if they're pre-rendered or not). Throughout the event I really enjoyed the way the stage presentation continued to change according to the content being presented, with the color scheme reflecting that of the game or other piece of content being presented.
As far as the particular announcements went, I'm excited for ESPN on the console especially considering it's free to gold members, the new Kinect games, and the features being brought to the new dashboard to integrate it more closely with Kinect.
Overall I thought it was on par with the usual Xbox press events, although I don't think it topped last year's (though understandable as nobody had any idea Microsoft's answer to the Wii would be controller-free or that Stephen Spielberg and the living Beatles would be on stage) and from what I've been hearing (if one were to pit the events together) that Sony and Nintendo's topped Microsoft's this year as well. Though I wasn't at either so I can't really say definitively.
Xbox Tweetup
The Tweetup at the California Pizza Kitchen was fun. It was pretty cool of them to buy pizza for everybody present, and it was even cooler to let everybody get hands-on (or eyes-on) time with the new Xbox 360 console. Not to mention that somebody there actually recognized me as litheon, which given my status as the man behind the curtain is a great feeling.
Kinect Premiere Cast Celebration
I just happened to be in the area when the Inside Xbox crew were headed to the Galen Center after the second night's event to shoot some video, so I tagged along. Seeing the entire area fully lit spoke volumes to how much detailed effort was put into making the presentation as spectacular as it was, and it was pretty cool seeing the cast being so excited about their second successful performance in a row. It was also pretty funny seeing Major Nelson being asked for a picture even on a closed set.
Activision Press Event
Activision held an event in the Staples Center a day or two before the Lakers game apparently with the intent to showcase some of their new games. My personal opinion on the event is that while it was cool, the only cool part was seeing the live performances from artists like Jane's Addiction, Eminem, and Rihana. The game trailers and presentations fell on deaf ears (literally... on account of all the pyrotechnics).
E3 Expo Day 1
The first day of the expo was quite enjoyable. I got a chance to play Rock Band 3 at the Xbox booth, and the Harmonix guys there were cool enough to give me the sticker I needed to present at the Harmonix desk to get a booth appointment. Allowing me to play Rock Band 3 some more, in addition to Dance Central (which was by far the game I'm most looking forward to when Kinect launches). Other than that I just roamed around the floor snapping photos, and playing with anything that didn't have a long line. One gem was the You Rock Guitar, which, given all the features, I will likely be picking up when it's available for purchase.
Halo: Reach Event
Microsoft threw down a very swanky event at The Edison hotel to showcase some of the new features in Halo: Reach, namely Firefight and all of the cool customizations to be had. Overall it was a great way to celebrate the start of the expo, and to get a chance to see some of the people I hadn't had a chance to meet up with on the show floor.
E3 Expo: Day 2
Day two (and three) were pretty much just more of the same, running around the show floor, running into people, and playing anything without a massive line. I did however chill out at the Xbox booth when Major and e tweeted they would stop by. That was followed by a steady stream of picture requests. Overall the day was great, but it certainly dragged on.
Best of Xbox 360 Showcase
On Wednesday night, Microsoft held another event that showcased a good amount of the triple-A games coming to Xbox 360 this fall, including my most-anticipated favorite Rock Band 3. It was held at The Edison again, and was just as swanky as the night before.
E3 Expo Day 3, Crackdown event, more fun, and wrap-up
On the third day I had pretty much seen everything I wanted to, so I took the opportunity to take a very relaxed approach to roaming the show floor and left a little early in order to rest up for the night's festivities. Thursday night also had another event at The Edison with pretty much the same people, so hopefully the lack of pictures is understandable. It was nice however being underground at the time, as the Lakers had just beat the Celtics and the general consensus was the city would be on fire (literally...) as a result. While we were able to avoid much of the rioting as a result of staying underground, we did observe a taxi cab that had been lit on fire being gowed away on the back of a flatbed truck.
After the Crackdown event, DMZilla, on3nightstan, and I made our way to the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World party where Ubisoft and Sony were showcasing the new game (tied into the movie). Though the line was packed, Stan and his army of connected people got us in without any problems. We also ran into DaKing240, DjDatz, and one of their new staff members at the event. After the kegs all dried up (and the event ended) we all went our separate ways, which ended up with DMZilla and I chilling with the Ruffian guys until about 3am.
After that it was hotel, checkout, and then a plane ride back home. Followed by a very long rest to recoup the energy lost from the past week.
For anyone interested, I've got more pictures and videos on my Flickr and YouTube pages.
If you've browsed MajorNelson.com via the site (instead of the RSS feeds) in the past couple of months you may have noticed the "Marketplace" link up in the top navigation. This links off to our Marketplace blog, which pulls data on all of the content that goes up on Xbox Live directly from feeds on Xbox.com and tags them based on all sorts of meta data we can associate it with it based on the types of requests we're making.
All of this means that you can easily use it to drill far down into the pile of content based on "Tags" we assign to it, and from there you can do whatever you like with that data like say tossing it into an RSS feed; so here are the easy to follow steps to getting all of the content you want syndicated how you want:
- Hit http://marketplace.majornelson.com
- You'll see on the top of the page the "Tag Cloud", which shows the 100 most frequently used Tags
- Start first with the region from which you want to pull content, so if you're trying to get content from the United States then click "United States", after that you can ignore any other region tags that may be in the tag cloud unless you want content only present in two or more specific regions
- Now you want to select the type of content you want to pull down, of which there are currently:
- Game Add-Ons
- Game Demos
- Full Games
- Gamer Pictures and Themes
- Videos
- Movies
- Music Videos
- TV Shows
- Xbox 360 Games
- Xbox Live Arcade Games
- Xbox Community Games
- Xbox Originals
- Based on the type of content you select there may be additional tags you can filter by, so say you chose "TV Shows" you will see specific TV shows in the tag list or if you chose "Music Videos" you will see specific artists in the list of tags
- Once you drill down far enough, if you would like to aggregate these results into a dynamic RSS feed click the "(RSS)" link at the end of the breadcrumbs; this will then show you the RSS feed constructed with the 16 most recent pieces of content that match your criteria
- Feel free to assemble several of these RSS feeds to get a list of specific content that you want to see!
Enjoy!
Blah blah, blog, blah blah, haven't in almost a year, blah blah, might start blogging more blah blah or maybe not. Ok, glad we got that out of the way.
As I'm sure anybody reading this knows, the super-mega-humungous-important E3 was last week and if you've kept up on any of the coverage all around the internet you'll for certain realize that it's back to the old school spectacle that was E3 2006 (ok, maybe not quite there yet but still awesome none the less). So the stage was set for some serious announcements to be made which they were and then some. I'm sure anybody reading this knows all about the great news that came out of E3, so I'll cut to the chase of what was my E3 experience:
May 31st
- Ate dinner with e, Stepto, Jaken Bear, mechANGEL, SpaceGhost2k, Knuckles Dawson, and DjDatz @ the Daily Grill; which mainly encompassed everybody at the table tweeting about the exact same things
June 1st (Xbox Press Briefing Day)
- Got in to the Galen center about an hour before the briefing started
- Got setup backstage to make sure none of the majornelson.com hampsters failed (Shadowed Ghost was tending to the chat server hampsters)
- Did a little walk through of the backstage area, and literally walked right next to Steven Speilburg after he prepared for his little bit on stage
- Met with Marc Whitten in one of these private rooms they had setup in the rear of the Galen Center
- Saw the amazing setup of all the equipment they had backstage
- Saw the press briefing (albeit with divided attention between the live blog and the chat)
- Went to the very small blogger lunch and info session Marc did and saw him announce/demo the Instant-Streaming, Full Game downloads, Avatar Marketplace, and this kind of centralized music center that tied in with Last.fm
- Ate dinner with e, Stepto, H2O Rip, mechANGEL, PMS Kitty, and this dude who works for AMD whose gamertag I do not know
- Went to the "Evening at the Standard" Microsoft held to show off all of the games they were going to show on the expo floor; played Firefight with Major, and (I believe) with some Bungie folks as well. Also went up to the roof of the standard and hit this pretty awsome that had a bunch of Xbox, and Harmonix folks there with The Beatles: Rock Band there for anyone to play (saw Don Matrick, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse aka "McLovin" from Superbad and their respective entourages rock it out)
- Ended it all with a looooong walk back with Knuckles to our hotel
June 2nd (Expo Day 1)
- Got up fasionably late, which worked out seeing as the show didn't open as early the first day
- Registered for my "Industry Affiliate" badge after being hastled a little bit by the lady I was talking to (but thanks to my MVP lead's prudence it wasn't really an issue)
- Rolled into the show floor and did a little wandering before showing up at the Xbox booth
- Got inside the booth with Major, lollip0p, and DMZilla
- Esentially was dragged (not that I'm complaining!) into a small room on the second floor with nothing but lights, a TV, Natal and whatever it was running on, and an Xbox 360; met the presenter who gave me a five second run down of how to control the game he was using to demo Natal (Burnout) and then proceeded to have me "Jump In" ;)
- I just put my hands up like I was driving and then stepped forward to mimmick stepping on a gas pedal and away I went, not calibration or configuration what-so-ever
- Worked perfectly with the lights off, and was sensetive enough to even the slightest of turns
- There are unconfirmed reports of my jaw also hitting the floor
- Yes, it really works that well; seriously
- Pretty sure I spent most of the rest of the day at the Expo just saying how awesome Natal was, no seriously, I'm not kidding
- Got in to see Harmonix's presentation on The Beatles: Rock Band thanks to lollip0p
- Got dinner with Major and lollip0p (who explained a couple of questions that were really bothering me)
- Went to this Forza Motorsport 3 party, took pictures of all the cars that were there (and got in that Audi they had on stage at the briefing!) and left to try and get some sleep
June 3rd (Expo Day 2)
- Spent a pretty good portion of the day trying to get of the top scores in Need for Speed: Shift, in order to win the BMW M3 they were giving away (Didn't come close though unfortunately)
- Watched a few of the demos Xbox folk were doing around their booth for Instant-On HD Streaming and presentations on 1vs100
- Went to the Tweetup at In-N-Out and got to say high to a few members of the Xbox community local to LA
- Went to a Games for Windows and Windows 7 party thrown by none other than Tony Hynes (Basteylon), Chris Paladino (CPaladino), and Nelson Rodriguez; was great to catch up with these guys (and they are doing awesome)
June 4th (Expo Day 3)
- Strolled onto the show floor fashionably late
- Played a bunch of the games that were around the Xbox booth
- Did a little wandering around the other side of the hall with e (The atmosphere over there was quite a bit different)
- Hit up Video Games Live (but alas, didn't bring my camera), with tickets that were front and center (Thanks to SpaceGhost2k for the tix!)
Seeing as I was lucky enough to attend E3 2006 and can say in comparison this year was amazing. It wasn't at all crowded, even though there were some wait times in some of the lines. Microsoft's announcements were huge, which is in itself awesome but they also had everything I can think of available to at least see in person if not available to try yourself. The games were awesome (seriously Alan Wake blew my mind), and the atmosphere was awesome. While some companies' press briefings were bland or just not well orchestrated; it was nice to see that everybody is still working on innovating in unique ways, and I'm sure we will see an even more great news come TGS.
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.
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!
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:
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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
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I haven’t made a CAB installation file yet, so you’ll have to browse to where you saved it for now
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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
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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
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I did my best to make this easy to use without a touch screen, but you may encounter some usability issues
Enjoy!
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:
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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
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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!
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:
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Don't give elementary school kids fireworks (one of my campers almost started a huge brush pile on fire...)
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Japanese toilet seats live up to the hype
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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)
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Narita airport's WiFi is not very secure (i'll probably write an article about how to bypass pay WiFi sometime around here)
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C.C. Lemon is the greatest drink in existence (it's a super-carbonated lemon soft drink)
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Akihabara (the elecronics district of Tokyo) is pretty much the best thing since sliced bread
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Yodobashi-Akiba dominates any electronics store that exists in the United States (7 stories of electronics goodness)
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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!
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.
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:
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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
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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
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If the content is not available in your region then the code will not work, so please make sure it's available before entering
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!
Appologies for not posting as of late, I've been pretty busy and have been making a habbit of going up to the mountains to snowboard every weekend. I'll be posting a review of my new Samsung SCH-i760 in the next few days, but I thought it would be an appropriate time to give away some more Xbox Live Arcade games courtesy of the folks over at the GamerScoreBlog.
The games are:
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Sensible World of Soccer
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Tempest
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Omega 5
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Tron
Also congrats to Tree for winning the Spongebob arcade game!
When logging into majornelson.com (or litheon.com) you might notice that you are redirected to the secure page. Although we generally wouldn't purchase SSL certificates for our sites, especially the wildcard certificate for majornelson.com, DigiCert made a very generous offer to quite a few Microsoft MVPs and as such Major and myself now have SSL. So thanks to them you can now rest assured that nobody will be harvesting your login credetials.
I must say DigiCert has a very user-friendly experience, even for
somebody, like myself, who has never gone through the process of
creating or requesting a certificate before. If you're ever looking for
a wildcard certificate or a certificate with a few subject alternative
names (domains it's valid for) you should definitely check them out.
They have a very friendly, responsive, and incredibly fast staff (even at 3 AM).
In case you're curious SSL works by using asymmetric cryptography to obscure data sent between both the client and server. In the process the client requesting information from the server receives a public key from the server, with which it can generate it's own private key and then encrypt it before sending it back to the server. After this both parties will be able to encrypt and decrypt data sent between them so they can be reasonably sure that no untrusted third party could be maliciously intercepting their communications. During this key exchange progress is generally where the protocol is most vulnerable because the client could potentially be given a bogus certificate by any entity performing a man-in-the-middle attack, which would allow them to retrieve encrypted data sent to them, decrypt it, and then send it off again to the server as encrypted. However, it is very easy to combat this by paying attention to any sort of certificate errors you may receive during browsing. If you ever receive a certificate error when visiting a site you trust (and have visited it securely) it's usually accurate to assume somebody is trying to intercept your communications.
In other words, if you ever receive a certificate error when visiting litheon.com, majornelson.com, or any other website for that matter don't ever input any sort of information that you would not trust in the hands of a third party. Also if you ever have any issues in regards to security with either site feel free to send me an email.
I hope you all had a good holiday despite some of the recent issues Xbox Live has been having.
I'm currently in the process of looking for a relatively large HDTV for my dorm room (when I say large somewhere between 42 and 46 inches) that I can move over to an appartment next year. Now I've never really bought a TV before so I don't exactly know what I'm looking for, but after some research it seems that I would probably want to purchase an LCD. The ideal candidate would do 1080p and have a relatively good response time so gaming on it isn't an issue. What I've had in mind is this TV on Newegg. It's a little pricey, but from what I can tell this TV is a pretty good deal and will do the job pretty well. So I'm looking for any suggestions anybody might have in regards to the purchase of a TV, anything from where to get it or where to get cables, to whether or not purchasing an extended warranty is a good idea.
Also, if anybody wants the new SpongeBob arcade game send me a message over Xbox Live or post a comment here and i'll do a drawing between the first 10 people to send me a message. Please don't enter just for the sake of getting something free though.
Thanks!
Congrats to Yellow Legend, h00d00, and dotKenneth for winning in the latest giveaway. Sometime around here I might give away some Xbox Live subscription codes, and maybe a code for some Microsoft Points.
Just a reminder, please do register when you get a chance to smooth the process for future giveaways.
Anyway, hope you all enjoy those games and if you didn't win best of luck next time. Happy holidays to you all.
So this last Sunday I went to a at the Fillmore Auditorium in Denver, CO where Metro Station, Amberlin, and Mae were playing while Motion City Soundtrack was headlining. I've got to say I was very impressed with all of the bands that played, except maybe Metro Station who really didn't seem to get the crowd going at all not to mention they seemed to be trying very hard to look punk when they really didn't play anything but some sub-par emo. Amberlin definatley got the crowd going (everyone went from just standing to rushing the stage to get up close), and although I had never heard of them before this I must say they do have some potential. Mae was quite good, but given how their music is more relaxed than something hardcore like Amberlin the crowd just kind of stood there.
Motion City Soundtrack was, obviously, amazing. I've never actually been to one of their shows before Sunday but they definatley did an excellent job getting the crowd pumped up to listen to them and most of the songs they played were all of the ones the crowd wanted to hear. If you haven't had a chance to listen to them head over to my profile over at Zune.net, click on them and give some of their songs a listen. If you're into indie/pop rock you will probably enjoy them. I managed to get a few good pictures of the show as I was in the second row for the majority of the time (got to love general admission). Check out the ones below or look at all of them on Flickr.
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