Daniel Premo’s Brain.
An ad I’ve been seeing on TV lately:
The commercial is unremarkable except for the end when Justin Timberlake rubs it in against Peyton Manning. I laugh when I watch this, probably because I’ve done a similar sort of thing with a video game controller.
Today I received an envelope in the mail from Comcast. It was addressed to “Comcast Customer” and through the window in the envelope I could see the words “Important update re: your programming.”
I expected it to be a procedural letter of minimal importance, but I opened it anyway. At the top of the letter there was some more text: “POSSIBLE NFL NETWORK CHANGES.” If you haven’t read about it in the news, Comcast (abd I believe all of the cable companies) are in disagreement with the NFL over whether NFL Network is a premium channel or a basic channel, how much the NFL should charge the cable operators, and how much the operators should charge customers for the channel.
Also from the letter: “The NFL Network may stop providing its programming to Comcast on May 1, 2009.”
Because of this, the letter offers me Starz free for 12 months, or an Internet speed upgrade free for 12 months. Starz isn’t bad, but it only offers one HD channel, so I went with the speed upgrade.
When the NFL Network started showing live NFL games, I added a package to my Comcast service so that I could see it. I wonder if this offer has been extended to all Comcast customers, or only those who currently pay to have the NFL Network as part of their service.
If you haven’t seen Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, you may not be familiar with the phrase “nuke the fridge.” In the film, Indy finds himself on a nuclear test site in Nevada and climbs into a lead-lined refrigerator to survive the blast. The phrase has been adopted by popular culture and has a meaning similar to “jump the shark.”
I recently read the Wikipedia article on Back to the Future. From the section on the film’s development:
Originally, Marty was a video pirate, the time machine was a refrigerator, and he needed to use the power of an atomic explosion at the Nevada Test Site to return home. Zemeckis was “concerned that kids would accidentally lock themselves in refrigerators”, and the original climax was deemed too expensive.
The footnotes seem to indicate that this information comes from Empire magazine, but I couldn’t find the article.
Steven Spielberg produced the three BTTF films. He also directed the four Indiana Jones movies. Did he pluck this (previously) impractical scene from an old project? Who knows.
Wednesday night I went to the Nine Inch Nails concert in Duluth, GA. I took Cat with me. I had fun. It was a good show. I took about sixty pictures with my iPhone, and put them on Flickr.
This is neat: DVD playback on the Nintendo Wii. Of course, it comes by means of homebrew, which in the case of the Wii, is much easier than it should be.
One thing I’ve noticed in the case of both setting up the Wii Homebrew channel and, now, DVD playback: Available instructions suck.
What I never found anywhere regarding the Homebrew Channel is that if the first Zelda save game freezes your console, reboot, launch the game, and try the second savegame.
Instructions for DVD playback are even more nebulous. The MPlayer provided alongside the DVD playback installer is very similar but not identical to the MPlayer provided in the Wii Pack Generator. I assume that the DVD playback installer works only in conjunction with this particular version of the MPlayer. In any event, both versions of the MPlayer are installed in my Homebrew Channel.
For that matter, why did I have to download two files, then execute one before executing the other? How about one file, one program?
The DVD player functionality, while certainly interesting, froze while I was watching Braveheart. The amount of polish on some of the Wii Homebrew software tells me there’s enthusiasm here, and that leaves me optimistic that the DVD player will receive bugfixes over time. Still, the Wii hardware is capable of only 480p output. It won’t be taking over DVD duties from my 1080p-capable Xbox 360. Ever.
As some of you may know, Halo 3 was released on September 25, 2007. It was developed by Bungie for the Xbox 360. On October 5, 2007, Bungie announced that it would become an independent company, no longer wholly owned by Microsoft. The Internet lit up with conjecture over why such a split occurred. Some suggested that Bungie wanted to work on intellectual properties other than Halo.
Meanwhile, Bungie has produced a podcast almost weekly since July of 2007. I have followed Bungie.net pretty closely since before Halo 2 launched, mostly because of Halo 2′s integration with the Bungie website. I didn’t give the podcast a listen until shortly after I got my hands on Halo 3. I think I was working on my Halo 3 Emblem Chooser™ but didn’t want to stop soaking up Halo 3 goodness.
The podcast has three regular contributors: Frank O’Connor, Brian Jarrard, and Luke Smith. Luke is new to Bungie, having come over from 1UP.com only in April of 2007. In January 2007, Luke interviewed game developer/producer David Jaffe, who was still Creative Director of Sony Santa Monica at the time. This interview was recorded for the 1UP Show, and is still available on GameVideos.com at this link (embedding screwed up my css). I have graciously embedded the video after the break. Luke asked one question in particular caught my attention:
A lot of these guys — like look at the Bungie situation. They made Halo. Halo’s a hit. That’s all they make now. That’s all they’re making, and you have sort of — you’ve ducked out of that. Like God of War was a hit and well, you’re still — I mean — you’re still painting on top of it, but you’re not — it’s not your grind. It’s not the only thing that you get to work on, like some of those guys. How’d you swing that?
Luke starts his question at about 9:05 into the interview, if you care to skip ahead.
Back in the day, I wrote a page in PHP that would allow you to try out all the permutations for Halo 2 multiplayer emblems. Since Halo 3 was released, I knew I wanted to update the emblem chooser.
The design needs some work, but I’ve put together a fully functional Halo 3 Emblem Chooser. Check it out.
So I sent my Xbox 360 in to Microsoft for repair. They sent me back a replacement unit. That’s funny, because the unit they replaced was itself a replacement unit.
So the current machine runs fine — it doesn’t freeze while playing Gears of War. That’s a nice feature. However, whenever the DVD drive stops spinning (like when I quit a game up to the dashboard) the 360 lets out a noise uncannily similar to the noise made by a Tusken Raider. A Tusken Raider repeats the noise a few times, but my Xbox 360 just makes the noise once. I’m afraid that one of these days I’m going to press the eject button and a smoldering puddle of plastic that used to be a game disc will pop out. But my fingers are crossed so that won’t happen.
This morning when I got up I signed into Xbox Live on my Xbox 360 and it asked me if I wanted to apply an update. So I’ve got the Spring 2006 Dashboard Update. I’m happiest about the option to always boot to the dashboard (instead of whatever disc is in the tray) and the ability to do something else while files download.
The only quirky thing I’v noticed so far is that the music play displays a “shuffle” icon when you’re in standard play mode, and a “standard” play icon when you’re in shuffle mode. So the button shows what you might want to choose, instead of the current status. This seems backwards to me, but whatever.
