This is pretty cool. Hawty McBloggy blogged about a site that generates some spawn time stats (Halo 3 - Time Wasted Respawning). The script is interesting. But more interesting was that it makes use of a Halo API.
Stopped using Xbox Live for Gamer Card
Due to issues Ive been having where Xbox Live!’s gamer card, I've converted my gamer card to one from MyGamerCard.net. Recently, it appears that Xbox Live! has been requiring you to sign into their site before showing someone’s gamer card.
Halo 3 Badge
I thought this was pretty cool, a number of flash or image badges from Battle Record that uses your Halo 3 service record. Check out one of the images below:
Disney Mix Stick Pain
Well, the wife received a Pixie Power Disney mix-stick for Christmas this year. I know, it is marketed for kids, but it an interesting shuffle like MP3 player. Yeah, no screen, but with a 1GB of flash RAM, expandable with an SD card, it appeared to be a great little player. That is, if you can get the music on it to play!
More Lego Fun - 318 Windmill
Well, it’s been over a year since I last played around with my Lego ray tracing and even longer since the last time I traced a new model. Well, ’tis the season to build new models! I did some searching around and found a model from 1969: 318 Windmill.
Safari - 3.0.4
It appears that a new version of Safari is out: 3.0.4. It is still a public beta, but they did fix a few niggles from the last version. For one, tool tips now work. For another, the inline spell checking is now working. Looks like IE7 is still lagging in that area. Surprising since Microsoft Word started whole trend. However, Safari, not to be one upped by Firefox, has also seen fit to include a grammar checker. Although, it tends to error on mundane things, like titles and numbers with periods.
RSS Fixes - Sort of
I’m trying to get Brief in Firefox to display my site image. For some reason, it won’t display the image and I can’t seem to figure out why. It displays other sites images fine. Sigh.
Tag Cloud
I’ve been using the tag cloud concept on a lot of other sites and find it useful at times. The idea is pretty simple, supply keywords or tags to your content. Those tags are then counted and a tag cloud of links is displayed, with more frequent links larger then less frequent ones. Since my site was lacking in that capability, I decided to program it in.
Yes - 15k
Oh, yeah! 15K—on the nose! Next up 20k!
Getting into that Web 2.0 Thing
I’ve been hearing a lot about the Web 2.0, but not sure how much I’ve been participating. I signed up for a Digg account, but didn’t really get into it. I’m still not sure what is considered Web 2.0. If you check out Wiki's definition of Web 2.0, I’ve already been part of the whole Web 2.0 deal by blogging and using and creating RSS feeds. In many ways, my use of 360voice and its API probably qualify as well. After thinking about, maybe I do a lot more with Web 2.0 than I thought.
Daughterly Love
You know your daughter loves you when she says: “Come play Halo. Oh, wait. I got to kill you one more time.” Priceless.
Memories of Daitarn 3
I grew up for some time in Naples in the early 80’s. Surprisingly enough, this was before any English TV was available to us. That didn’t stop me from watching TV, even if shows like Star Trek were dubbed in Italian. I would often spend time watching the cartoons, also in Italian, and a particular favorite of mine was Daitarn 3.
HD What? HD DVD vs. Blu-Ray Wars
Although, to date, I own neither of the latest HD disk formats—heck, I don’t even own an HD TV set yet—I find the whole format war rather interesting. Having lived through the Beta vs. VHS, but not really understanding it, I find it fascinating how two companies complete against each other.
Being Big Brother
I’ve been a fan of the Big Brother (US) series since season 2. This summer, like the last 7 ones, wasn’t an exception. I enjoyed my weekly dose of other people’s reality. Like some previous BB’s, this season included an interesting twist from the outside—a plane banner. It got me thinking, “how hard is it find the Big Brother house?” In particular, I was interested if I could find a satellite image of it.
Hanging Around at Marapets
Okay, it may seem silly, but my daughter had me try one of her favorite game sites called Marapets. Okay, okay. Before you go snickering, I actually found the site pretty interesting. For one, it isn’t just for kids—so don’t put it down yet. It is designed to be kid friendly, while catering to all ages. So, the candy sweet coating aside, it actually has some interesting concepts going on.
iDust? What you get when you blend an iPhone.
I’ve been a big fan of the Blendtec “Will it Blend?” videos on YouTube. The latest installment was unbelievable — he blended an iPhone! What a waste of $600, but it is cool to watch. Take a look below.
Viva Vista?
Well, I traded Viva Piñata this week for Windows Vista. I decided to bite the bullet and give Vista try on my laptop. So far, I’ve been pleasantly surprised.
Unicode and the like
I’ve run into a bit of an issue. XML uses UTF-8 encoding. I wouldn’t think it would be a big issue, but my web pages render in ISO-8859-1. Since my ISP uses perl 5.6.1, I can’t easily encode/decode between the two Unicode formats. So, I thought I’d just render my pages in UTF-8. Ouch, bigger headache. Now older articles don’t look right and some of the WebAPP code converts things wrong. I’m still looking for a solution. For now, you may find some things display wrong here.
MS Home Server
Microsoft has released a public beta of their Microsoft Home Server software. I’ve had various “home servers,” usually older computers, running various version of Windows and Linux. My current one is running Media Center, but it is also a desktop for my daughter.
Apple vs. Microsoft: Typography
So, I’m still hacking around in Safari. If you read earlier article, you might remember my complaint about the fonts being a bit blurry. Well, in my wandering around the Apple discussion boards, someone was nice enough to post an interesting article on the philosophical differences between Apple and Microsoft.
Having fun on Safari
I was looking to try out Safari on Windows the other day, but all the links to get it were down. Now I know why! Apple released Safari for Windows today. Well, not one to wait around, I promptly downloaded it to give it a spin. In fact, I’m writing this article in it right now.
Userbars moved to Flickr
Due to issues I’ve been having with ImageShack, I’ve moved some of my userbars over to Flickr. So far, things appear to be working just fine.
Lego USB Drive -- Want One!
Interestingly, an Australian firm is offering a USB drive encased in a LEGO® brick. I just have to say that “I want one!” They look too cool and, of course, very geeky! If you haven’t noticed, I'm a big Lego® Bricks fan. Unfortunately, 50 bucks seems a bit steep. Maybe I should hollow out some of my own bricks and build my own. Hummm...might be worth trying.
Revenge against Rubik — The Idiot’s Cube
For those people that feel a little “less gifted” when trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube, along comes the Idiot’s Cube.
Lego Rubik’s Cube
While playing around with Live!, I ran across a web site where someone created a LEGO Rubik’s Cube. They have some pretty interesting pictures, including a movie. Unfortunately, it is very big and doesn’t appear to move very well. If it was smaller, I might try to make my own.