47 posts from 2006

I tore a contact this morning. The right one.

Normally, this wouldn't be an issue. However, in my infinite wisdom, I never bothered to get another box of the little vision-giving discs of plastic. In other words, I get to walk around all day today with one good eye. I envy those with proper depth perception right about now.

You know people are excited about the Wii when they almost force me to show it off during class. I brought it today to play (and demonstrate) during lunch; it was as though everyone knew what was in the duffel bag. Then again, that might have something to do with me talking about it all the time. Anyway, I set it up for a few minutes in Patterns, and showed off the tennis game in Wii Sports. Darren played around with Golf for a while, grinning happily despite sucking more at hitting the virtual ball than I do here in the real world.

By the way, if you're wondering what a "Flatlander" is, you should watch Imagining the Tenth Dimension. It's a very interesting explanation of things like time and inter-dimensional travel. An explanation that actually makes a lot of sense.

Got my Wii last night. It is awesome. So is Zelda. Nothing else needs to be said.

Well, maybe my Wii friend code: 7731 6964 2312 0551

NOTE: There is a Vista Beta edition of Transcode 360 available now, which solves the permissions workaround in this tutorial.

Recently I took a passing interest in Microsoft's Windows Media Center, mostly because it looks gorgeous and I had heard it was easy to use. After realizing that Xbox 360's have MCE support, this passing interest became a prevalent one. Then it occurred to me that there are three Xbox 360's in the house. I about exploded with anticipation as I looked into what flavor of Media Center to pick up.

I decided on Windows Vista Ultimate Edition Build 5840 (The closest thing to final release available at the moment), mostly because it's Vista. You know, the shiny.

Shiny Vista

Anyway, setting up Media Center with a 360 is, in and of itself, a piece of cake. Run Media Center on the desktop, and go through the wizard on the 360. Takes about five minutes, tops. However, I quickly encountered a problem: for some reason that defies...reason, MCE on the 360 refuses to stream anything but Windows Media Video (WMV) format videos. But, what about all of my XVID, Quicktime, MPEG4, and other file types? This is a load of crap.

Fortunately, Google loves me.

A quick search and a bit of reading the 'friendly' manual led me to an amazing little piece of software called Transcode 360. It integrates right into MCE, adding an option to transcode a file under the 'More' menu. Simply click that, and the MCE server (my desktop) will convert anything into WMV and stream it straight to the 360, without so much as a hiccup.

The only remaining problem here is...Transcode 360 requires a bit of special treatment under Vista in order to work properly. Written in .NET 1.1 for Windows XP Media Center Edition, Transcode 360 has a few security issues. Due to the way Vista handles file security, if you install Transcode 360 to it's default directory, it will crash when MCE tries to use it. To get around that, simply install the app under the Media Center user directory:

Media Center User Directory

I used C:\Users\Mcx1\Documents\Transcode360 as my full path, but anything should work so long as it is in the Mcx1 directory. Note: This user directory will not be there until you have run the Media Extender Wizard at least once.

Also, you must have .NET 1.1 and .NET 1.1 SP1 installed. Vista Build 5840 comes with .NET 2.0 only, so you need to install them yourself. Those redistributables should work fine.

Well, that wasn't too hard. The thing passed 12-0, all in favor. As of about 12:30pm today, the Constitution of the Unified Student Government of Neumont University is officially ratified.

Now everyone that was previously in a position in student government is now out of a job. They're electing senators by the end of next week, with the former student body president Paul Baker and a few others acting as a temporary body to manage things until the new one is in place.

I am considering applying.

I tried. I tried to get some decent sleep. Kobe, on the other hand, decided it wasn't to be. About two hours ago, the dog broke into my room and stomped the crap out of me, leaving me wide awake and bored. Attempts to return to slumber failed miserably, so what does one do at 2:30 in the morning?

Why, blog about it of course. Aside from the illumination of the monitor from my laptop, I am surrounded by the Lights of the Witching Hour. Some call them computers and routers. The living room resembles scattered remains of a once-great Christmas light show.

I do enjoy the solitude sometimes, though. It is much easier to think about things when completely isolated from society. I've got a pretty clear image of what the rest of my week is going to be like. That image is arduous.

I'm not feeling any more words coming, so I'll keep this entry brief. Maybe I'll go for another one of those in-the-middle-of-the-street walks.

On the twelfth day of gaming, Nintendo sent to me
Twelve Yoshi's Islands
Eleven RPG adventures
Ten Clubhouse Games
Nine Kirbys eating
Eight Brain Age trainings
Seven Links a Swording
Six Nintendogs playing
Five Wii Sports Games
Four Excite Trucks
Three Elite Beat Agents
Two DS Lites
And a remote with a new Wii

Twenty-five days. I can't wait.

How many computers do you have in your house? 
Submitted by Foomper.

Oh god.

I have a desktop, a laptop, and a fileserver (though the latter isn't plugged in at the moment). Matt has a laptop and his fileserver. Thomas has two laptops, a desktop, and I think he has a fileserver, too. Osborn and TJ each have a laptop and a desktop. John has his desktop, his fileserver, a third box that he uses for something, and his laptop. That leaves Katie, who is a noob and only has a desktop.

So a rough estimate of 18. If you considered our modded Xbox's (which make awesome media center centers after being hacked), then we're up to 21. Finally, you have the Xbox 360's, which I would basically consider a computer anyway. That ups the total to 24.

It's a wonder our power bill isn't four digits.

Two years ago, I was a student at the Rock Creek campus of the Portland Community College (PCC is the largest community college in the state; they have like seven campus'), taking gen-ed courses with the intention of getting a transfer degree. In other words, I had no idea what it was I wanted to do with my life as far as careers go, so I'd chosen to hang in limbo for the two years it would take to get the transfer degree. At that present time, I was toying with the idea of going into journalism or writing.

Yea, writing. How I went from that to software development I don't exactly know.

Anyway, there was this exercise we did in my Writing 121 class that has always kinda stuck with me. We were sent out to observe someone on campus and write about what we saw. The person I chose was a guy sitting in the dining hall on the first floor; I observed like a stalker from a chair on the 2nd.

I think it would be difficult to work on a english worksheet while listening to music, but Bob here doesn't seem to be having much trouble. A sip of his Aquafina, a thumb roll on his iPod, a glance at his thesaurus and he's ready to roll. Bobbing his head to whatever rhythm the signature white earphones convey, he scribbles down words to fill the blanks. Reminds me of a line from a song: "Adjectives on a type-writer, he moves his words like a prize-fighter."

The inspiration I'd had for that bit was the song by Cake called "Shadow Stabbing," about the mind of a writer on a binge. For some reason, a lot of people in the class loved the passage, commenting on how lyrical it sounded; I was surprised to get the praise, honestly. It sometimes makes me wonder if I could have made a career out of writing. I've always had a certain 'knack' for it. Even now, I have half a dozen changes I want to make to that excerpt to make it sound/flow better. Perhaps my enrollment at Neumont was a horizontal shift, rather than a vertical one?

Nah, gimme that code.

I am loving my Japanese class. Windows includes a cool set of language tools that allows you to convert phonetic Japanese (Romanji) into Hiragana. Hiragana is the most basic form of the Japanese writing system, where each character represents a Romanji vowel or a consonent and a vowel. Funny, I can write Hiragana on the fly with a simple key combo on my keyboard, yet I cannot read it myself. Only in a world like this :).

Anywho, if you haven't already guessed, I am back in Neumont. Have been for almost two weeks now. I didn't end up getting a student loan from my grandparents, and was looking (grimly) at the prospect of having to get a real job. Not that that would have been much of a problem, granted, but I love my university! Turns out, I could have gotten basically the same damn loan without a cosigner; it's called Signature 'Select.' To make me feel special or something, I guess. Why Neumont neglected to tell me about that option, I don't know. It would have saved me about two weeks of dashing around trying to get my loans in order, when it could have just taken me ten frickin minutes.

So, as is the tradtion, my class schedule:

Logic 1 8:00am-8:50am Mon/Wed/Fri
Business Preparation 8:00am-8:50am Tues/Thurs
Patterns 9:00am-9:50am Mon-Fri
Human Computer Interface Design 10:00am-10:50am Mon-Fri
Lunch 11:00am-1:00pm Mon-Fri (duh)
Projects VI 1:00pm-3:50pm
.NET Certification Lab 4:00pm-4:50pm Mon/Fri
Japanese 5:00pm-7:30pm Tues/Thurs

Kinda hefty, but meh. I'm at Neumont till it's dark pretty much every day now. Combine that with my Shaolin Kempo lessons (Mon/Wed/Saturday 1 hour group lessons, make up lessons after the Saturday class for an hour, and another private lesson on Friday), and I don't have a lot of free time. Oh well, who needs a life?

I can socialize in December.

What do you do to get rid of a cold or flu? 
Submitted by ashenflowers.

I rarely get sick, but when I do it's not pretty. Generally once or twice a year, I'll essentially disapear from the world for a day or two, to suffer in my room alone.

There are times that I get a small cold, though I wouldn't call that a sickness. In that case I just ignore it; I have no time to pay attention to little things like that!