I've updated my blog's tagline (at least temporarily) to celebrate.  Halo 3 was just officially announced.  Hop over to bungie.net and check out the trailer, or download it from the XBox Live marketplace.

I simply can't wait.  I'm going to pour all my energy into building a time machine so I can travel ahead to 2007.

I've been loving my new phone.  In an effort to fully exploit and justify my unlimited data plan, I've been dreaming up applications for it.  My latest one is something I've always wanted to do.

I hooked up a bluetooth GPS and capture my position.  Every 10 seconds or so, I send the logged data to a server.  I then have a spiffy Rails app set up to display my current location on a Virtual Earth map.  The page uses AJAX to poll the server every 10 seconds or so to update my position on the map.

I've got lots of ideas for how to mine and visualize the data, as well as provide nifty tools for my friends and family to track my location, as well as hooking the data up to my Flickr uploader (rewritten now in just about 20 lines of Ruby code) to automatically geo-tag my photos when I upload them.  I've got lots of cool things I plan to do with it while we're on vacation this summer.

I'll have live demos for the public available soon.  Some of my friends have been playing with it already as I debug it. For everyone else, here's a shot:

If you're a friend of mine and want to play with the live version, lemme know and I'll shoot you the temporary link.  Most of the time, it's pretty boring because I'm at work, but hold on to you hat when I start going somewhere.

My old phone was giving me tons of trouble.  Dropping calls regardless of the signal strength and other really annoying things.  Unfortunately, we were part of the old AT&T Wireless group that never got completely absorbed by Cingular, so getting a new phone meant switching plans and providers and meant getting a new phone for Becky too.

Historically, I've done this kind of thing online, and invariably ended up with some problem that made me waste alot of time on the phone with customer support.  So, I did my research and just went to a Cingular store.  I walked out with my new phones.  I was very pleased with how it went.  I stuck with Cingular because most of my friends and family have Cingluar, which gives us unlimited talk time with them, so the plan minutes really don't mean anything.

I got a RAZR for Becky, and for the first time, I own a non-Motorola phone.  It's the Cingular 8125.  HTC makes it and Cingular rebrands it.  After having it a few days, it is the perfect phone for me.  It's a Microsoft Mobile "Smartphone".  It's basically a fancy PDA and a phone merged together.  I've owned countless PDAs in the past, and I finally had to promise myself that I wouldn't buy another one.  After a few months or so, I would stop using it because it was "one more thing" to carry.  And if I wasn't carrying it, I wasn't using it.

Smartphones are nothing new, but what's special about this one is the number of ways for it to connect.  It has:

• GSM/GPRS/Edge - The mobile phone data protocols
• Bluetooth
• IR - I actually used this the other day
• USB
• The big one.... WiFi!

Also, in addition to the normal draw on the screen entry methods, It's got a slide out keyboard.  So far, I've used the stylus mostly, but I can see falling back to the keyboard to write stuff longer than a textbox.

It also has a 1.3MPixel digital camera that acts like a camera when it's in camera mode.  So, it'll be easy to snap shots or videos of Jenna when it would take to long to get out the "real" camera.

It also has a mini-SD slot so I can add capacity.  I'd rather it have compact flash since I already have some big sticks of it for my real camera, but it'll have to do.

The only thing it's missing is built-in GPS. However, there appears to be a big market for Bluetooth GPS units, which would be fantastic since often you need the receiver in a different place than the map program.

So, it's my phone, so I'll carry it by default, and it's a wicked PDA, so I'll use that.  And the best part is that cost-wise, I've paid more for cellphones without most of these features

Well, my new TV arrived yesterday afternoon, so after work, church, and getting Jenna to sleep, I finally got to hook it up.  The first thing I did was fire up the XBox360.  The dashboard just about knocked me across the room.  It is breathtakingly beautiful.  I fired up Halo 2 to check for video lag (for which I had to send my previous set back if you recall).  I was pleased to find minimal lag "out of the box".  A quick jaunt through the menus revealed "game mode", which eliminated the lag altogether (or at least to a point indistiguishable from my previous lag-free CRT set).

So I'm really looking forward to the HD Olympics coverage this year.  I hope it doesn't suck like it did 2 years ago for the summer games.  We'll see.

All said and done, I couldn't be more pleased.  We see what little annoyances I can find in a week.  I'm pretty picky.

(pictures coming)

Despite my excitement, I managed to get some pictures of the out of box experience opening up the XBox 360 premium packaging.  I've got the photoset up on Flickr.  It was very well organized and easy to get into and get set up.  Once thing I thought was interesting was that the hard drive was pre-installed.

The AV cables have both component and composite connections for video, as well as analog stereo connections and an optical audio jack.  I've seen several people miss the HD/SD switch on the cable itself, which is nice when you've got the dashboard set up for 1080i, but you've taken it to grandma's who has a TV from the 40's.

I was pleased that I did not have to supply batteries for the remote or the controller.  And, when I picked up a second controller, it also came with the necessary AA's.  That's a nice touch.

Perhaps my only qualm with the hardware itself (which I should probably add to my review), is that the power supply is external, and it is enormous!  Seriously, it's really big.  And it has a large orange LED on it that gives off an eerie glow in the dark.  But, I had forgotten about it until I uploaded the pictures, so it must not be that bad.

Did I mention that I got my hands on a 360?  I lucked out and got one at a very decent price from eBay.  Due the the last big shipment, eBay was/is pretty saturated and the prices have gone way down.  Anyway, I've had the 360 for almost a week, which I think is enough time to give it a thorough run-through and review it.  Overall, I would say it is "wicked awesome".  To back that up, I will give the list of stand-outs and disappointments:

Stand-outs (things I thought were great):

• HD - Many have already called the 360 the "killer app" for HD.  I would agree. There are lots of people getting HD sets and then watching SD, or ED (enhanced definition (480p)) on them and thinking that's as good as it gets.  Let me tell you, just firing up the dashboard in 1080i is a sight to behold.  Call of Duty looks just incredible.
• Connectedness - You can connect to the internet out of the box and download arcade games, movie trailers, game demos, and lots of other cool stuff like themes and such.  Viewing movie trailers in HD is pretty fantastic. It was incredibly easy to migrate my live account.  The new gamercard stuff with reputation, achievements, gamerscore, etc is sweet.  They've definitely been able to build upon the experience they got from XBox Live, and Sony will have a hard time matching the experience, having never seemed to "get" the online experience on the PS2.
• The Dashboard - This has received quite a bit of thought.  It's actually a useful thing now.  You can actually do stuff from here now.  Your friends list is always at your fingertips, you can play your music, either ripped from a CD, or on your PC, or iPod (the iPod support is very nice).  The arcade rocks.  Geometry Wars is definitely worth the ~8 buck download.   The marketplace is interesting, and I think we'll start seeing lots of cool stuff there soon.  Being able to jump into the dashboard at the touch of a button is great.  Built in voice chat also rocks, and is great for organizing a foray into Halo with your friends.
• Backwards Compatibility - Interestingly enough, I don't own any 360 games yet.  Halo 2 runs beautifully in 1080i thanks to the wonderfully implemented backwards compatibility.  I think this is more impressive to someone who knows the technical details of what's going on under the covers. (running code compiled for an entirely different architecture in a virtually transparent way)  The fact that the compatibility list is still growing because they can continue to update it to handle more and more games is also fantastic.
• Controls - The controllers are fantastic.  They are an improvement over the already wonderful "S" controller for the XBox.  Wireless connectivity is the icing on the cake.  USB connections for wired controllers (and MP3 players and who knows what else) was an excellent choice over a proprietary connection.  Being able to turn the console on and off from the controller is awesome.  The optional USB charge kit for the wireless controller is pretty cool as well and has a very long cord if you're low on batteries.
• Notifications - You get cool notifications at pretty much any time (with the exception of Backwards Compat mode) to let you know when friends jump online, or when you get an invite, etc.  I assume this is "shell" type functionality now rather than being part of the game code.  That gives everything a nice, unified feel.

Disappointments:

• DVD playback - I was hoping to retire my DVD player and use the 360 for playback.  Sadly, that will not happen.  There doesn't appear to be any DTS capability.  Also, it would not play the Dolby Digital track on one DVD I put in and just gave me Dolby Pro-Logic decoding from the stereo track.  There is no aspect ratio zooming to correct non-anamorphic or 4x3 DVDs.  I does play at 480p, but I was hoping it would up-convert to 1080i (I've got a rear-projection CRT and I only wanted to worry about geometry/convergence for a single mode).  Now, there may be settings to change these things, but I could not find them.  I would gladly retract this if someone can prove me wrong.  I supposed they could also update the software in the future.
• The headset - The headset that came with mine did not work well.  There is tons of static whenever the wire moves. I think it is a defect since my friend's seems to work OK.  I'll have to take it apart to see if there is a bad connection somewhere.  Luckily, my old headset (as well as any other "cell phone style" headset) works great, but without built-in volume and mute.  Speaking of mute, it is now a switch (instead of a button with an indicator light).  It is much harder to see you are muted when you're in the heat of battle.  Beyond that, they have "built-in" the voice support to the controller, rather than making it a separate module.  This is a good thing, but there were some things about the "old way" I really liked.  The old way, I could remove the voice module and then voices would play through the main speakers.  My friends and I used this in Halo to indicate that we were "away" (the voice icon changes) but would be back (so we could do things like get a drink or visit the restroom).  Now, maybe with wireless controllers, this isn't necessary since I can technically keep the headset on.  I haven't fully explored the possibilities with wireless.
• Video playback - It appears that you have to have a Media Center PC in order to watch your own videos.  That stinks.  What about my friends that have Macs? What's so different about video? I can view my own photos and listen to my own music.  Perhaps they simply don't want to deal with the codec issue.  I may be wrong about that too, but I couldn't get it to work.  I guess I'll have to turn one of my PC's into a media center. Scott says it works great.
• Dashboard downloads - You don't seem to be able to do other stuff while you're downloading stuff in the dashboard.  HD movie trailers take a while (why don't they buffer and stream?) and you're just sitting there watching a progress bar while they download.  That seems pretty silly to me.  When it's done, you get a neat little "done downloading Xxxxx" notification. "Duh, of course it's done. I can't go do anything else but sit here and watch it download".

Overall, it totally rocks.  Go get one if you can find it.  I'll probably pick up this Logitech remote with some Christmas gift cards.

We had a great time today with Becky's family. I finally got Halo 2 and have been playing the campaign mode since I can't get online yet.  It's by leaps and bounds the most beatiful console game I've ever seen.  All the cinematic sequences appear to be rendered in real-time and look as good as pre-rendered sequences.  Very impressive.

I've been using the MSN Desktop Search (I'll refer to it as that since I have no use for the rest of the toolbar suite and immediately turned it off) for the past few days and it is good enough to make me uninstall Google Desktop Search.  The fact that it, by default, indexes source code, xml and anything I can write an IFilter for was enough for me.  I also like the search as you type.  Very well done.

The only problem I have is it seems to conflict with WindowBlinds, software that lets me load thousands of visual themes for windows.  I have to unload WindowBlinds, search for something, and load it back up again.  Then everything works fine.  I suspect it has to do with the order that applications register hooks (which has caused problems like this before).

I picked up the component cables for the XBox last night (they're different than the ones in that link.  It looks more like the Monster Cable version).  I must say, they are the highest quality first party component cables for a video game system I've ever seen.  They also add the digital optical audio output.  For only $20, there's no need to waste a colossal amount of money on the Monster Cable ones. 

There's nothing like shooting Jar-Jar Binks with a sniper rifle in HD widescreen 5.1 Dolby Digital goodness.

I've also updated my holiday wishlist accordingly.

[UPDATE:12/16/2004]  I took the box over to Dave's last night where we romped on Jar Jar for a couple of hours.  He's got a direct view CRT which is inherently sharper than my rear projection CRT and it is definitely quite beautiful.  Can't wait to get Halo 2.

Well, I sold some old games back to GameStop and got a sweet deal on a new XBox.  I'm holding off on the other XBox-related items on my wishlist in case I receive some for Christmas, so for now, I've got one controller and the game bundle it came with (NCAA 2005 football and TopSpin (tennis)).

I realize it's a bit late in the game for reviews, but, as someone new to the XBox, I thought I'd take a few minutes and relate my first impressions of the hardware (especially in comparison to PS2 and GameCube):

The console itself:

It's enormous and heavy! It's as wide as the PS2 (PS2 in flat position), almost as tall as the GameCube, and much deeper than either of them.  It also weights almost as much as both of them combined.

The front connections are pretty nice, rivaling the GameCube. The lack of memory card connectors helps with cleanness.  The mess that the PS2 becomes in the front is ridiculous with un/plugging multitaps, memory cards, etc.

The back is very clean.  A standard, non-polarized AC power cord connection, a single A/V connection, and an ethernet port is all there is. Both the PS2 and GameCube are pretty messy in the back.  The GameCube attempts to “cheat“ it's size by moving its transformer to the middle of the cable, which is very inconvenient. I suspect it will get more messy when I get the HD connector.

The controller (the “S” controller):

The controller worried me the most.  I had only played with the ridiculous huge controllers that used to ship with the console.  I was pleasantly surprised.  They seem to have taken their cue from GameCube on the size and general shape of the controller, which makes it pretty pleasing to hold (for me).  The joysticks/D-pad/button placement is also the same as GC, which I like much more than the PS-style.

The button layout is similar to the PS, organized in a cross.  My preference there is mixed, depending on the game.  The triggers are strikingly similar to the DreamCast, as well as the expansion slots, although there is no “hole” for an in-controller LCD screen, which I felt never really worked out on the DC.  I like the idea of the headset connecting to the controller rather than the console on the PS, which really sucked.

In addition, the buttons are pressure-sensitive (at least the main ones), which was missing from the GC.  It has some extra buttons like the “black/white” buttons and the “back/start” buttons, that seem to come in pretty handy for adding those extra in-game features without adding alot of confusion for button usage.  I'll have to see how they are utilized in other games.

Another improvement over the GC is that the right joystick is the same as the left one, not a little crippled nub.  They are also both concave on the top, which I like more, especially when attempting to execute the awkward “push the joystick“ movement, (which is missing from the GC).

I also like that cord extension connections are built-in to the cord rather than use the larger console connection.

It's pretty hard to beat the overall comfort of the GC controller, but the things the XBox adds and improves upon seem to make it superior.  It's pretty easy to beat the socks off of the PS controller.

P.S.  XBox live support is great. They very quickly determined that the uPnP support on my router was keeping me from connecting.  Disabling it did the trick.  I'll have to see if that was causing problems for some of my PS2 games.

This past week, Becky's PC finally had enough problems with it to warrant a new one.  I think the final problem was with the interupt controller.  Anyway, I always enjoy an excuse to put together a new one, and I felt this was as good an excuse as any to start experimenting with my Home Theater PC project.  It also will take over the role of serving this page, at least for a while.  The old server will become Becky's PC, and will be a welcome upgrade.

I decided to go 64-bit so I could get a head start looking at the migration path for .NET apps (which is extremely low friction (not even a need for recompiling in most cases)).  I ended up getting an AMD64 combo from Fry's with an MSI motherboard.  I've been more and more frustrated with Fry's recently.  The motherboard is pretty good, but mine seems to have a problem with the on-board ethernet.  You can wiggle the connection around and the link light will turn on and off, and the drivers seem to have trouble (the latest 64-bit nForce3 drivers) recognizing it and such.  So, I've got to exchange it this evening.  Seems like I have to go through that at least once for almost everything I get there.

Other than that, I'm very pleased with the performance.  Seriously fast.  When the POST screen is the bottleneck in the boot process, you know you've made a significant performance jump.  Hopefully, we'll be up on the new system soon.  I'm torn on whether to run XP or Server on it.  I'm going to be using it as a media center, so XP seems to be the route to take.  On the other hand, I'll be hosting some stuff on it as well, which makes Server the more appropriate route.  Any feedback?  I initially installed server and thought the network problems were driver issues with the platform.  So it's got XP on it now.

I ran across the new web-based MSN Messenger the other day.  I haven't had access to messenger from work in a long time.  The old version didn't work through our firewall, so I developed a local proxy to tunnel the traffic.  Then they started blocking that traffic outbound.  Then they rolled out a crappy customized version of it to collaborate in-house which couldn't go outside the firewall.  But this web-based one works perfectly through the firewall, so I am once again available while at work...within reason of course.

After many frustrations, I seem to be back up again (if you hadn't noticed, my internet connection has been really flaky the last several days.  I replaced an aging router today that seemed to be on the fritz.  The upside is that I now have 54Mbps 802.11g wireless access in my house.  Whoo hoo.  Hopefully this is the end of the trouble.

My new router also natively supports dynamic dns registration, so I don't have to run the registration client on my pc anymore. Me likie.

Well, the other day, I fot one of the things on my wishlist that was mostly for fun...the Roomba vacuum cleaner.  Basically, it's a vacuum cleaner that vacuums without you.  I thought it was mainly going to be a toy, but it's incredibly effective.  Perhaps the most pertinent example is that it can vacuum under the bed (provided there's not alot of crap under there).

Since it operates best when the room is clear of large debris, it has the side benefit of providing a good excuse to generally keep the floor clear.  Both Becky and I are pretty bad at just throwing things on the floor.  As most of my former roommates can attest, I treat it like it's like one big shelf.

Anyway, needless to say, I've done alot of vacuuming the last few days, without really spending very much time.  I would recommend it to non-geeks as well.

Update: I suppose I should say, “Thanks Mom and Dad!!!!”.  I helped them with some computer stuff and it was a thank you gift from them.

As many of you know, I've been using SharpReader to keep up to date on web logs.  I track at least 40 daily, and my team at Motorola is now using web logs and aggregating RSS feeds to build and publish our weekly report.  Which is awesome by the way.

SharpReader has been frustrating me lately.  It seems to do strange things especially when using RDP to log into my workstation remotely...things like hog the cpu so much that the RDP client can't even shut it down.  This has bitten me several times when trying to do something important, and since I've got a new laptop, it's become essential. that I be able to use RDP without worrying.

Another RSS aggregator I looked at initially when I started using SharpReader was RSS Bandit.  At the time, it was a pretty small project and didn't have many features.  It has matured quite a bit and I am now using it as my aggregator of choice.  It's design has taken alot of concepts from Outlook 2003, which rocks (and is the first Outlook version to do so).

Anyway, just going public with the switch.  I'll let you look at the features and decide for yourself if it's right for you.

Since it's getting so hot out, and I've been getting frustrated at taking my shoes on and off all day long, I got some new sandals. They're Adidas soccer-style sandals.

Now maybe I can get a tan on my pasty white feet.