10/30/2006 XBox Live Update, Happy Halloween

Here is the full news artical from XBox.com:

November 2006 Xbox Live Update

Beginning the morning of Tuesday, October 31, you'll be able to download a free system update that provides more than 85 new features and enhancements, including support for native 1080p games and movies, faster Arcade game list display times, and even more choices when it comes to video playback options.

This free update for Xbox 360™ will be distributed via Xbox Live® to all members (Xbox Live Silver and Xbox Live Gold) with no disc or hard drive required. If you don't have an Xbox Live account, you can easily sign up free by connecting your console to a broadband Internet connection. Once online, downloading the update is fast and simple, and provides instant access to many new features.

Expanded HD Display and Video Playback Options

  • With 1080p resolution, you now have the ability to enjoy both game and video content in the best high-definition resolution currently available.
  • Expanded video playback options increase the ways you can enjoy video content on Xbox 360. It is now possible to stream WMV video from a Windows PC running Windows Media Player 11 or Windows Media Connect.
  • You can now play video files from data CDs and DVDs, as well as from storage devices like USB 2.0 flash drives and Xbox 360 Memory Units.
  • Xbox 360 will support 50hz HDTV display modes, providing a much greater choice in how you watch DVD and HD DVD content.

Xbox Live Arcade Enhancements

  • Keeping up to date on Xbox Live Arcade games is now even more convenient with the ability to automatically download newly released Xbox Live Arcade trial games. This eliminates the need to manually search for new downloads on Xbox Live Marketplace each time a new game trial is released.
  • With the fast enumeration of games, see the games in your Xbox Live Arcade collection appear almost instantly. Get in and play right away.
  • With so many games to choose from, Xbox Live Arcade added new sorting options such as "Recently Played" and "By Category." These enhancements make managing Xbox Live Arcade collections faster and easier than ever.
  • A new expanded friends leaderboard within Xbox Live Arcade lets you compare yourself directly against friends and view leaderboard details of your top 10 friends.
  • A new expanded Achievements View within Xbox Live Arcade lets you view your full Achievement details for your Arcade games including descriptions, icons, allotted Gamerscore, and more, right from the Xbox Live Arcade dashboard interface.
  • The "Play Now" launch feature has been streamlined. Selecting "Play Now" after downloading a game in Xbox Live Marketplace now bypasses Arcade and takes you directly to the game.
  • Xbox Live Arcade now offers a "Tell a Friend" feature. Select this from the game info screen to send any friend on your friends list a message telling them about the Arcade game.

XNA Support

  • Amateur game designers will be able to test and play the games they create using XNA Game Studio Express on Xbox 360 systems when it launches later this year (separate download and subscription required).

These features are just some of the enhancements gamers and developers can expect as part of the fall update.



For the Full list go visit the XBox page and click the news link, or click on this: Full Fall '06 Update



10/26/2006 Open Office Turns 6

This month marks the six years for the Open Office Suite. If you don't know what Open Office is, you're missing out. This FREE peice of software in made by Sun Microsystems who you might know for their work in Java. So what is so great about this software suite? Well it will open AND save Microsofts Word, Power Point, and Excel documents and is cross platform, so users on Macs, Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows can all share documents. No matter if you are using it for homework or for a enterprise, this free software can save you lots of money over Microsoft's expenive software. Microsoft does a lot of great things with their software, but spending $300 on software to do homework is a little pricey.

And if you are in or around Cheyenne, Wyoming, then you should come to a concert on November 3rd. I will be there along with my girlfriend, so swing by. Below is more information:




10/25/2006 My Thoughts Go Out

I would like to start this post out with a dedication to Mandy, who was recently in a major car accident that broke some bones, did some cuts, and caused some major bruises. Mandy I am sorry I can not be there to help take care of you and be there for support. If you are in Casper, please visit her and try to cheer her up because I am sure she is bored sitting there in the hospital bed.

In case you haven't paid much attention in the last three weeks or so, there has been a new button over on the left menu called PRC Radio. Well PRC is Punk Radio Cast where they play all sorts of good punk music all day, 24/7, for free. So check it out, because it's a really good radio station. If you want to listen to it and still browse my site you will need to right click the button and select open in new window or a new tab.

I am a big Tim Burton fan, I enjoy most of his work (Frankenweenie was kinda weird). But I like most people love Nightmare Before Christmas. And this halloween they are showing, in select theaters, a Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas 3D. For more info, along with a bunch of goodies like Marlin Mansion's remake of This is Halloween check out their Nightmare Before Christmas 3D page. Go, go now.

That is all for today, and once again, Mandy take care.



My world goes black before I feel an angel steal me from the greedy jaws of death and chance
And pull me in with steady hands, they've given me a second chance, the artist in the ambulance. - Thrice

10/17/2006 Contact Me Made Easy

I have been wanting to do this for a while, but couldn't find a good enough script to use. Well I have finally found one that impresses me. No longer do you have to visit your Yahoo!, Hotmail, GMail, or use an e-mail client to contact me, simply go to Contact Me page (over on the left hand menu) and type in you e-mail, header, and what ever you want to send to me. Quick and easy, so give it a swirl.



10/16/2006 No Pre-Order for Me

Sorry for the lack of updates here lately. It's due to a few things, work, school, but mainly due to a new girlfriend. So I have been spending a lot of time talking with her, and sense she lives out of town, my weekends with her for the past few weekends. But I haven't stopped thinking about you the reader/user of my site. I have been coming up with plenty of new ideas that would attract you here a little more. What would be really nice if you guys could give me feed back about anything and everything you like/dislike.

But anyways, I was one of the first site on the Internet to have posted about the announcement of the EB Games/Gamstop pre-order information. I even sent the news to Slashdot and was it was posted here and was on their main page. I sent the news to GamerAndy.com, but wasn't given credits. But alas, I was not able to make it to a store to pre-order before they were all out due to work. Which made me a little upset because I didn't even do the update that I came in to do until after 11:00 and they had me show up before 9:00. I could have easily been there when the store opened, done my pre-order, and made it to work to do the update. Oh well, I will just do another Wal-Mart midnight wait in line like I did for the XBox 360.

EB Games has yet to announce their online pre-order information yet, so if you are like me and missed out on pre-ordering your Wii, keep checking back here at the site because I will announce it the minute I find out about it just like I did this last one.

MySpace fanatics be aware, there has been a couple cases now of people trying to sue about content that has been put on MySpace.com. The most recent one kinda caught my attention because it's people being stupid again, either that or just greedy. The most recent one I have heard about, a couple students created a fake MySpace account of their principle purtraying her as a lesbian. The weird part, and the part that makes me think they are just being greedy, is they are not sueing the students who did the act, but instead the parents of the kids saying they weren't being responsible about the kids actions. That has to be the stupidest thing I have heard in months. Even if the parent's were a computer suavey couple, and they were to block MySpace through the firewall (which a lot of schools IT departments don't even know how to do) the kids could have easily done this at a library, Wi-Fi hotspot or anything like that. In order for these parents to prevent something like this, they would have to follow them every where they go: to school, to a friends, to get food, etc. because the Internet is everywhere. To say the parent's were responsible would be like saying that it's the teacher's fault because she didn't tell the kids not to do that because it is bad or because she didn't already have a MySpace page created. In other words, it doesn't make much.

And the last thing I want to leave you with a great local band called A Perfect Abandon who played an awesome CD release show this past Friday. To check out three of their songs, check them out on MySpace (kinda funny how that came full circle), A Perfect Abandon.



10/12/2006 WII RESERVATIONS!!!

Real quick because I am at work.

Tomorrow, October 13th, EB Games/Gamestop will begin the reservations for the Nintendo Wii. See images below:





10/9/2006 Firefox 2.0 Beta

Look at the falling leaves. Yes it's that time where the leaves turn color and fall to the ground, so I kinda thought it would be cool to do it on my website as well. The downfall will increase as the month goes on.

Red Vs. Blue has released another episode to the public today, the second in the new season. And over at Penny-Arcade their comic this week accurately describes how many gamers feel about the upcoming months with so many big title releases.

I love using beta software. It's cool to see what is coming up and to see the progress of software. I am a big Mozilla fan, I used both there Firefox and Thunderbird products when they were in beta, and the latest version I am doing the same. The latest stable build is 1.5.0.7, but if you are like me and enjoy betas you can get the Firefox 2.0 Release Candidate 2 from here in tons of different languages for Windows, Linux, and Macs. There has been a lot of changes in the interface such as a almost translucent feel to the standard toolbar. Everything I tried seemed to work, all javascripts, CSS's, and AJAX scripts seem to work normal. Most pages seemed to load at a normal speed, but that is something really hard to measure do to the fact that I can't measure the current load on other peoples servers.

And the last bit of news I am going to leave for you is a little more info on the Wii launch pre-order. I didn't post last week when I found out the news because I was really sick. But the only thing I have learned sense then is that the info is coming soon. Nothing exciting, you can go to EBGames.com and sign up for pre-order information for both the Wii and the Playstation 3 there. But you can pre-order the games already, but I have never seen the point in that if I don't have a console in the first place.