1:51 PM
Looks like Wiinja's got a little competition in the CycloWiz.
Both are seemingly capable Wii modchips, but the CycloWiz can be soldered without any wires at all, making for a super fast and super easy installation.
There's a hands-on Cyclowiz review online already and so far this thing appears to work flawlessly.
12:51 PM
I'm listening to a Hall & Oates concert from 1982.
How is this possible? I was only four years old in 1982!
The Concert Vault owns the rights to hundreds of live concert recordings and they're in the process of putting them all online. There's a ton up already and they're adding five concerts a week.
It it legal? Actually, yes! They purchased the recordings from the concert promoter who made them and they're paying license fees to ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. Sooo...yes? It's almost too good to be true.
Right now you can only listen through a streamed Flash interface, but they're promising direct downloads later in the year and full concert video streaming shortly thereafter.
For more concert recordings you can also check out the Internet Archive's Live Music Archive, an absolutely mammoth collection of lossless audio captured at concerts of bands with taping-friendly policies. The LMA recordings are mostly bands you've never heard of, though.
10:15 AM
Even though Tammy's in Boston this week there's no shortage of things for me to do. I've been keeping busy! Here's the recap!
Watching Studio 60 on Monday I discovered that a guy I knew in high school is playing Amanda Peet's personal assistant on the show. I looked him up on IMDB and sure enough, Kelvin Yu looks like he's doing pretty well for himself. He was even in Grandma's Boy, which I still haven't seen. I knew a lot of wannabe actors in high school, and I didn't really expect any of them to be successful, but it looks like Kelvin's making it. Good for him!
The CitiKitty is a complete and utter disaster. Once I broke off the first ring my cats decided to start shitting on the carpet about 50% of the time. I could deal with that. My cats make firm poops so that was pretty easy to clean up, and I was holding out hope that they'd come around eventually and go back to crappin' on the tray. I give my cats too much credit.
Tuesday night I got home from work, plopped down on the couch, and realized I was sitting in a pool of cat pee. I about lost it right there. I flew into a rage! I grabbed both cats and interrogated them by shouting in their faces. "WHO DID THIS! CORKY! WAS IT YOU? CONAN DON'T GIVE ME THAT LOOK!" Then I rubbed both of their bodies all over the pee puddle so they would remember - peeing on couches is bad and the big scary man will rub you in it if you do it again!
So then I unzipped the cushion, threw the cover in the washing machine and sprayed down the foam inside with a potent mix of Febreze and Nature's Miracle.
Then they did the exact same thing the next day to another cushion.
I've been working like 10 and 12 hour days this week and I had just gotten back from taking care of the horse, so I didn't really have the energy to throw a repeat performance of the previous night's tirade when I got home at 11. I could see the writing on the wall. The CitiKitty went into the trash and I pulled out the old cat box. My cats are idiots.
I also got sick this week. It's just a cold at this point but it's making it hard for me to get out of bed on time and I start to get really tired around 6pm.
Yesterday I installed Windows Vista on my work PC. So far so good. I'm still trying to learn where they moved everything around... Vista includes a new calendar application creatively named "Windows Calendar." It's pretty basic, but it's leagues better than the crusty old Mozilla Sunbird, which I had been using with XP. Aaand it supports my old .ical files, so I was able to import all my old contacts no problem.
And finally today news broke about Wiinja, the world's first Wii modchip. Wiinja is the size of an old PS1 modchip and only has five solder points! There's no word yet on whether this is a chip for the Wii motherboard or if they took a page from the Xbox 360 hacks and are just patching the drive's firmware. Here's a YouTube of it in action.
That's about it! This weekend I'll try to get some rest and take lots of vitamins. I really don't want to be sick right now! Please send me good vibes and mental well wishes.
12:29 PM
Good news for Guitar Hero-loving 360 owners.
There may still be hope for a wireless axe after all!
Based on this rumor I've decided to not get Guitar Hero until there's a wireless controller - licensed or not - for me to buy! You hear me Microsoft? I'm serious!
Or at least their website is, anyway. The newly-launched informationsociety.us has some rare old photos, streamed unreleased vinyl-era audio, and photos of the new band lineup, post-Kurt Harland. (Kurt's old not-really-updated site is still up at insoc.org.)
The extended mix of Running from the Creatures of Influence album is worth checking out. It's an electro classic!
They make no mention of their new album on the site so maybe they're still looking for a publisher.
It looks neat but I really like to have tactile feedback in a phone. A touchscreen might be fancy-looking, but $500 is just too much for a phone that won't let you install third-party applications.
I'm already a Cingular customer and I'm not stuck in any contract right now, so if the contract pricing isn't totally insane and a hands-on demo of the phone looks good I might get it anyway. It's just hard to give up the best most reliable phone I've ever had, and the iPhone doesn't really fulfill a need for me.
Windows Home Server
Microsoft announced Windows Home Server at CES. I've always wanted a consumer-level NAS device for my home - something that can store all of my music, movies, and ROMs all in once place and protect it all with RAID5. The problem with just buying a consumer-level NAS like a Buffalo TeraStation is that you'll wind up with a no-frills shared network folder via Samba and/or FTP. That's great, but it means you'll still need a powered-on PC somewhere on your network running the Tivo desktop software, Xbox 360 connectivity software, Shoutcast server, and whatever other specialized network applications you've got that'd make use of whatever media you've got stored on your NAS.
Windows Home Server is basically a NAS with embedded Windows so it can take over all of those tasks. There's no longer a need to drain your desktop PC's resources to transfer media to and from a Tivo, for example. The downside is that there's no web interface for it (yet).
Guitar Hero II
Guitar Hero II is heading to the Xbox 360 in March. It'll ship with 10 more songs than the PS2 version and you'll be able to download additional songs through the Marketplace for a fee. The bad news about the controller is that it won't be wireless because Microsoft just can't shake that whole monopoly bug. The good news is that it has a 'mystery' port that'll more than likely be used to connect a distortion pedal in future titles. There's no word yet if you'll be able to battle or play co-op over Xbox Live, but at least they've confirmed there will be leaderboards.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
This is playable on the show floor at CES and should be downloadable in early 2007. This is great news. There's a whole generation of gamers out there who never knew the PS1 and the awesomeness of the greatest Castlevania title of all time (although the GBA and DS games have been pretty amazing!)
Konami claims that audio took up the bulk of space on the game disc in 1997 and that by using modern-day compression they'll have no problem getting the game to fit into the 50MB XBLA space requirement. They've rewritten the game engine from the ground up and will even let you toggle between the original or "enhanced for HD" graphics.
Panasonic Announces 50" 1080p Plasma
Press release. It's not up on their website yet, but the TH-50PZ700U is new for 2007 and is Panasonic's first 50" 1080p. They're also showing a prototype 42" 1080p plasma but have no plans to sell that this year. It's nice to see Panasonic has finally ditched those cheap-looking silver plastic bezels and have gone to all-black styling.
I'm sure there's more neat stuff that's been announced this week but these are the highlights according to me!
10:45 AM
There are a lot of crazy drivers out there. There's also a lot of lunatics driving cars. How do you tell the difference between the crazies and the loonies? Simple! The lunatics are the ones with stickers all over their cars.
I'm not talking about a couple of bumper stickers. I'm talking about people who go the whole nine yards with bumper stickers, full-window decals, and cardboard billboards on the top of their car. You know what I'm talking about. These people have a cause and they've dedicated their cars to promoting it!
Lunatic drivers can be broken down into three sub-categories: Political Activists, "The Government Took My Home" guys, and the Criminally Insane.
Political Activists Political activists are just what you'd expect. Their cars usually sport many, many different messages for a variety of different causes. The irony is that their opinions will have virtually no impact on these causes in the global scheme of things because a lot of them don't vote! Typical messages on a PA's car include "Free Tibet," "Israel assassinates women and children," "Impeach Bush," and "MEAT: It's what's rotting in your colon."
There's nothing really wrong with having an opinion on any of these things, but plastering your car with this stuff is an open invitation for ridicule and arguments with total strangers. And also it labels you as a political activist! I wouldn't consider that to be a badge of honor, but I guess some people would.
"The Government Took My Home" Guys These guys started out normal. They came from loving families and man they had it all - a promising career, a great wife, maybe even a kid or two. They were living the American dream. Then, somewhere, it all went horribly wrong. Maybe they lost their life savings in the dot-com crash. Maybe they came home to find their wife in bed with the pool boy. Maybe they tried cocaine at a party and couldn't let it go. Whatever the case, one thing led to another, bills didn't get paid, property was seized, and at some point the government got involved.
"The Government Took My Home" guys pretty much stick to that one message. You'll find it written on nearly every window of their car. Of all varieties of lunatics, these guys are the most likely to put plywood billboards on the top of their car, usually with a huge photo of their [seized] home and a rambling essay about their battle with the red-tape bureaucracy of the IRS. These are usually handwritten in chicken-scratch that's all but illegible from more than three feet away. Keep your distance from these guys. They are possibly the most unpredictable car lunatics you're likely to come across.
Criminally Insane The criminally insane probably shouldn't be driving at all. They've mastered the art of suppressing all but one personality, we'll call him "Dave", upon entering the DMV. Dave is a smooth talker with 20/20 eyesight and he thinks he's a retired driving instructor. The folks at the DMV all love him - he gives high fives all around on his way out - but by the time he gets home he's hungry enough to eat the flesh off of no less than three of the human body parts he's been keeping in the freezer for the past year.
The criminally insane mainly drive absolutely beat-up cars from the early 80s that look like they've been salvaged from a junkyard. They've dedicated their life to covering every square inch of it with any sticker they can find. If any part of the car's original paint job is visible then the voices start up again and demand blood sacrifice. Oh god the voices.
So in conclusion if you must put a bumper sticker on your car, keep it clean and keep it tasteful. If you've got more than one or two stickers on your car, I'd say you should probably take a long look in the mirror and ask yourself what your priorities are. Is your car a sophisticated and elegant personal transportation device, or is it simply a vessel for you to spread your crackpottery to the world? The choice is yours!
There's this guy. His name is 'Dark_Alex'. Today he released his own hacked version of 3.03. It's called "Dark_Alex's 3.03 OE-A".
What's it do? Well for starters it lets you run any homebrew application in 3.03. It also lets you convert and play your own PlayStation game discs into a format that's playable in Sony's own embedded PSOne emulator.
And oh yeah, any commercial UMD game that requires 3.03 will work with this firmware as well. There's really no downside. You can pretty much kick DevHook to the curb now.
I only had five martinis, but now I'm thinking three might just be my limit. I was pretty far gone when 12am rolled around. I even drunk-dialed myself at home and left a rambling two minute voicemail full of good wishes for Brett and Tammy in 2007! I really want to post that message here because man it was hilarious...but I think it may destroy any chance I'll ever have of running for public office. Not that I plan to. But I might.
We rang in '07 at our friend Denise & Jason's new house in Moreno Valley, just a little east of Riverside. They got ENGAGED. Oh ho!
![[Powered by Blogger]](http://buttons.blogger.com/bloggerbutton1.gif){kind=small}
