Here’s a story. You might recall the xbox360 fiasco of my previous post, well in that purchase I backordered the play and charge kit because depsite having it as part of their bundle, they didn’t actually have stock. They said it should be in the following week and they would call me to let me know, of course I was skeptical if they would so I made a point of checking. Previously a back order of mine went unfilled for over 8 months from Harvey Norman because each time I called them they had no stock. It’s only when I said enough was enough and I wanted my money back on the whole purchase that they magically pulled stock out of their asses. That was a vaccuum cleaner bag for my vaccuum cleaner, which if you could immagine a cleaner with no bag (on a model that needs one) is rather futile, thus my annoyance. Returning to my story, this magical play and charge kit that I was told (and I’m sure this was the original quote) no one in perth has any stock would be in next week. Yeah right. They didn’t call. I forgot to call them, but now I remembered. I’m going to follow it up.

I also ordered an Acer TV. When first checking this out and Tim eventually bought one I checked the ETA of the next batch of stock, because Tim got the last one that wasn’t a display one. ETA was Friday of the following week, that was on a Friday. I ordered on Wednesday, now the wait was up to a week and I would be called when it came in. Following Wednesday I call them back, now the ETA was Friday and I was instructed to call them if I hadn’t heard anything by midday Friday. Of course come midday Friday they hadn’t called me. I call them again, and I got some bull shit story about the warehouse being busy and not knowing IF my TV had come in or not, but they would call me to let me know. I made a point of them calling me if it had come in or not, either way I wanted to know. 6pm Friday sails past, no call. Then in a fit of pissed off range I call up on Saturday at around noon and ask to speak to the manager stright off, and of course he was more than willing to accomodate me by running off and having a look himself. He also said he’d call me back, but this time he actually did. YAY I got my new TV. Though I wasn’t able to get anyone to help me move it so I had to manage on my own (yet again).

iinet churning. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not completely pissed off about this, but I’m slightly annoyed. It shouldn’t take a week to get disconnected from a tesltra dslam. But alas it did, or 8 days to be precise, and telstra tech’s work weekends because I actually got disconnected on the weekend, and connected again about 2 minutes later on the very same day. Also anyone thinking of churning should keep in mind they charge you for complementary dialup at the same price as your broadband service, from the first date you use it (even if you don’t use it after that cause you realised how slow it was again).

Some days I amaze even myself. In a moment of pure brilliance I decided to portmap through my firewall the Vmware server console remote login port. This way I could connect from work to my Vmware server at home. Of course the bandwidth requirements are insane but since we have broadband2 now, meh. Not that this was without issue, port 902 being blocked at work for one, not that simple port blocking has been known to stop me before (hehe). Soon after I was running the full blown Vmware remote console at work, connecting to my Vmware server at home. Yay for modern technology, and the free Vmware server. Of course it ran like poo so I resorted back to VNC.

I then had a short but entertaining go at streaming DivX to the xbox360. Following the short but screenshot heavy guide at this site I soon discovered several shortcomings in his instructions. Here’s my quick howto (which of course is not tested)

1. Install Media Center Edition 2005
2. Install the Xbox connector
3. While thats installing (it takes ages) get the xbox360 ready to go by setting up the network on it (interesting point, my router’s DHCP issue wasn’t accepted by the xbox360 so I had to set it manually)
4. At some stage the xbox360 extender will want to talk to the MCE pc, obviously you can’t proceed until the MCE pc is ready
5. By this point the xbox360 should be functioning as a media center extender and should be able to play wmv videos (at least)
6. Install the offical DivX Player (includes divx6 and google toolbar hmmm) (this might not be needed, you might only need the codec)
7. Install the MCE Video Encoder
8. In the MCE encoder, click Tools, Install Media Center Add-ins
9. Reboot at least 10 times to be sure (that’s what I remember)
10. On the MCE box I added a network share to play from, the xbox360 couldn’t see that, so I had to copy the files locally
11. On the xbox360 add the folder on the MCE pc to my videos
12. Try to play a video, after a short delay it will complain about missing software (codecs)
13. Press the info button on the xbox360 remote
14. Select More…
15. Click on start the MCE encoder. This will take a moment before it returns
16. Click on Play MCE encoder (this might not be necessary)
17. The preview should start automatically, so to make it full screen, hit left and click on the preview window
18. … amazing
19. Upgrade you’re existing HTPC so you won’t need the extender
20. Be happy and play xbox360 games

Other geeky entertainment from this week: A doctor wrote about the geek lifestyle and various health problems related to it. I found this neat little ISO recorder tool for windows, which makes it easy to not only burn, but create iso’s of existing cd’s. How handy is that ! I also found this gallery of case mods.

And then the bizzare: McDonalds outsourcing … the drive through window.

On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid

I’ve been wanting to get back into gaming for a while. About a year back I realised that I watch too many tv shows and movies and should get back into gaming. So I stopped getting more and tried to catch up. Yes, I tried, I’m still trying and the end is not in sight. Gone are the days of enjoyment being gained from doing mindless things. Now I get bored doing everything. So I built up a new gaming PC. No doubt you’ve all read about the problems I had there. I reach completion and still nothing. I created a kickass unattended windows installer and still, nothing. I get a 14 day trial to Eve Online and have yet to activate it. Not that I don’t want to, the game looks awesome, and I’ve always wanted to play a massively multiplayer game something like a cross between Wing Commander Privateer and Frontier Elite and this looks like the closest thing around.

Then came urban gaming. We played a game of manhunt (personhunt whatever) in the Perth CBD. It was fun. I’ll go next time. Many kudos to Nathan for organising it all and making it run so smoothly. I was even able to do some retail therapy while playing ! I fineally got Smash Bros for Gamecube and another controller, sure 2 indigo controllers could be confusing, but I need one more so I might be able to get yellow or something.

We then went to Timezone for some game therapy. Lots of Mario Kart and Dino Duel took place, some DDR and at least 3 races at Daytona (my that’s old now but still fun).

Then came the xbox360 (though chronologically it came the day before manhunt). Now here’s a story. It took OVER AN HOUR to purchase this specific xbox360. I bought my car in less time. This is largely thanks to the useless staff at Harvey Norman who don’t know what they are selling. Grumble Grumble. I have Tony Hawk American Wasteland, and at least this one teaches you all the tricks again from the start (I haven’t played THPS much since THPS4 which I got on PS2 when it launched). Oh and Project Gotham Racing 3, which I would have thought would look better at 1080i than it does. I guess all consoles are designed to be used on a TV after all. Not that my 24″ Dell isn’t nearly the same size. I noticed when playing DVD’s it switches back to 576p to play DVD’s, so at least it’s a progressive scan dvd player, but it would have been nice if it upscaled to 720p or 1080i using it’s grunty hardware. Ahh well. Next up will be trying it as a media center extender.

Now I have a new dilema. I have PSP, Xbox360 and a fully sick (and riced up) game PC. Not to mention other games on consoles I want to play more (GT4 on PS2, Smash Bros and my other GC games which deserve my attention). Ideally I need to quit work to get the time, and I say QUIT because cutting down hours doesn’t work, not here. I should just get a burger flipping job like I’ve always wanted and just be happy being me. After all I can’t easily stop being me. But then if I quit I’d feel obligated to do more for White Llama (my current dead horse). Though with that much time I’d be able to redesign my web site, the llamas site (and yet to be finished member tools), clean my house properly. Maybe get some friends. Perhaps I’d update this site more often with more interesting posts rather than the pepetual doom and gloom that has become the norm (the previous post didn’t have a single link, I’m trying to remedy that in this post). It might even give me a reason to get up in the mornings.

Then came the Xbox360 session with Tim’s shiny new 37″ (94cm) Acer LCD. OMFG it was awesome. Even HTPC stuff on it was sweet, though using DVI it should be. 1366×768 was probably the best rez to run on it. But this did show up a problem, the 2.8Ghz P4 was not fast enough to play Quicktime 7 HD trailers, which on my 24″ dell (1920×1200) powered by Athlon 64 X2 look sweeter than pure powdered sugar. They looked good on the Acer but the PC wasn’t up to spec to play them smooth. Though after further investigation even the Athlon 64 X2 doesn’t play all of the quicktime trailers smooth, the 2.35:1 ones seem ok, but full blown 16:9 one has problems on high motion and cpu usage peaking to 75% of the DUAL core 2.0ghz CPU. Looks like an HTPC upgrade is on the cards, to something faster than 2.0ghz Athlon 64.

I’m churning to iinet, which means disconnecting my westnet dsl. The email from ii said as a reminder to disconnect, but they didn’t actually state that anywhere. So far the story goes; Thursday, signed up online at around 00:30. Received email reminding me to disconnect my existing dsl at around 23:15 on the same day. Called westnet to cancel dsl at around 09:30 on Friday, this being the last day of the month, I specifically made sure I wouldn’t be billed for next month. No disconnection happened on Friday, Saturday or Sunday so I leeched like I’d never (well hadn’t for a while) leeched before, well until 13:45 Monday when it fineally got disconnected. 6gb for free isn’t to be sneezed at. Though the adsl line sync was still there right through to Friday morning, yes 1 whole week later.

Over this weekend (which coincided with April Fools day) I managed to catch up on some much needed filmage. Notable titles include Little Manhattan (which was pretty damn good for a New York Romance story), Fun with Dick and Jane (which also was good and gave me new found respect for Jim Carrey though not quite up to his Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind performance, though I liked Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events aswell, but I digress). Previously though recently I had watched The Boondock Saints for the first time, and it’s also very good. The 40 Year Old Virgin was a really good laugh. I had also never seen American Beauty and now I really understand the plastic bag being the most beautiful thing in the world gag from Not Another Teen Movie. I also really liked the remake of Oliver Twist and if I wasn’t so busy (and such a lazy reader) I’d read the book myself.

Some quick geeky links: Link Shell Extension for making symlinks, junctions etc. Easier than the Sysinternals one. 2Hotspot seems to be an easy to setup FREE program for setting up wireless hotspots with captive portals.

We’re sorta like 7-11. We’re not always doin’ business, but we’re always open.