DogsWithoutWings.com Blog

Here are the 3 best technology podcasts.

1. Security Now - Steve Gibson and Leo Laport discuss the latest security concerns in a way that anyone can understand.
2. Cranky Geeks - Hosted by John C. Dvorak. Discussions/arguments about the latest techno news.
3. This Week in Tech - Ex 'Tech TV' staff dissect the latest technology news.

Got my first real portable media player. Some things I like initially:   

• Subscription music - Hopefully they can get all tracks available, some are purchase only.
• Channels - A list of songs updated weekly based on a theme or recommendations. Downloaded and sent to zune automatically, can also be updated while away via wifi.
• Podcasts - You can pause podcasts and continue later at where you left off, even if you listen to other stuff.
• XNA - Created some stuff already, pretty cool.
• Future Proof - Updates will be available to my current zune (probably till a processor speed upgrade).

Only 3 weeks away.

One of the best games I have ever played. Still going strong for months, the trailer made me as giddy as a school girl. Doesn't matter what happens, I'm getting this game.

Diablo 3!!!

Wow, I loved 2. Too bad in its later life a lot of play styles were nerfed. The last game I bought for PC was the Battlefield 2 collection (I had B2 at launch, but went back to get all the expansions), wasn't really into 2142 because of the futuristic setting. Just for nostalgic reasons I installed D2 on my Vista laptop and got a Necro up to level 40 and it was a blast. I had to run the game as an admin, and it did crash once on me. But I've had it crash on XP as well. I'm still puzzled as to why DirectDraw gives me better performance than Direct 3D, even on my desktop. This game is 8 years old, I should not be having frame rate drops.

I just updated my site videos from Flash to Silverlight. I built the player myself so it looks very basic (ugly) right now. Most of the functionality I need is there but I will make updates to it periodically (mostly UI). I made this after reading a few chapters on WPF, which is the new XML based windowing framework for Vista. Since Silverlight uses a subset of WPF, I started the player project to test my skills.

Here's a video I captured at the zoo.

!Jordan (not Jordan = Kobe) was gonna lose anyway. The NBA could not have pushed it to game 7 since it was a complete blowout. Maybe Lebron should be pushed as the next MJ. At least he went out to Boston scoring 45 in the 7th game. That is what a superstar should be.!Jordan was never the goto guy, after hitting a few 3 pointers in the first quarter, he pretty much disappeared. As Reggie Miller did, if you are gonna go out, at least go out shooting.

-End of Season

Got it!

There is this plugin for Windows Media Center (Vista) that allows the playing of Netflix movies on the 360. Have to follow the setup directions pretty closely for it to work. But when it does, woot!

Netflix on 360

My needs have changed over the years. While I needed fast 3D graphics to do university research, I now need portability to stay connected in the business world. Moving from a 9lb Dell Inspiron 9100 to a 5lb Inspiron 1420 feels like having the weight of a baby removed from your belly. Well, it might feel that way.

I've seen them, but I never really got a chance to use this 'glossy' screen before and I am disappointed by the glare it produces around a light source. I wish I was able to test them side by side but I shipped my old laptop the same day I got my new one. Not sure why it is labled as superior, must make pictures look all nice and shiny. Along with the weight I dropped an inch and went with the 14" screen, losing a lot of real estate going from resolution 1680x1050 to 1440x900.

Speed wise P4 3Ghz HT (Win XP) to Core 2 Duo 2Ghz (Vista) feels similar, I wonder where 5 years in processor advances went. Doing some multithreaded enabled encoding would probably reveal the inner beast of this machine. The nVidia 8400M GS might be a downgrade from the mobile ATI 9700, both with 128Mb. Main memory is now at a large 3Gb, up from 1Gb. And hard drive 250Gb up from 60Gb.

Noticeably missing is the pencil-head mouse controller, although I opted for an internal bluetooth connector and wireless mouse, which is great. Overall the build quality feels good, battery life is around 3-4 hours with a long-life battery. Dell still sticks a couple 3rd party programs I could have lived without, I did uninstall them without any problems.

With a 30% off coupon code found using a Google search, I was able to get all a pretty good laptop for only $1140. If you are buying something online and see a coupon code box, always do a google search, I've been getting free Papa John's toppings by just doing a google search. More money saved = earlier retirement.

Hmm. My PS3 stopped reading discs. Looks like the drive is dead, damn Bluray. Less than 4 months with light use (mostly movies). I had just got Gran Turismo 5 from Gamerang and was just starting to get into it. I also had 2 Netflix rentals sitting there for almost a week because of all the NBA playoff games. Can't play them in my 360 either because they are BR discs. I did a search and saw that there are other people with this problem, some with only a few hours of play. Let's see how quickly they get me back up and running. Maybe I should go back to PC gaming. The system gets to be a little more expensive, but at least I choose quality (not cheapest) parts.

1/13/08: Purchased
5/3/08: Stopped reading discs
5/3/08: Called for box
5/9/08: Got box, shipped. They actually paid for overnight, unlike MS' ground.
5/20/08: Got PS3 back.

One of the things I noticed about Forza and GT was that the front wheel drive cars suffered from a lot more understeer in GT. Supposedly Forza runs a better physics engine (technically), but it all comes down to which one feels better. As the video below shows, it is much harder to lose traction in Forza around corners with the Acura Integra. Note that traction control and stability control is disabled for both games. Having owned that car at one point, I have to say that I prefer the GT physics better in this case.

It seems my WRT54G has been giving some problems sometimes connecting to the Comcast cable modem so I bought an extra Linux version (the one I already had was an early version so it also had Linux, but didn't want to brick it and not have connection) and I installed the DD-WRT firmware and wow is it good. So far it connected with no problems, the menus are better, more options, can even function as a wireless bridge to connect an Xbox, etc.

Flashing was pretty easy, all I did was follow the guide which had me install the 'micro' version because of a limitation with the stock Linksys firmware. After that I upgraded to the 'general' version and after transferring some settings over manually from my current router, I plugged it in and was ready to go. It did slow down on me once but it was because the connection limit is set to 512 by default, I raised it to the maximum of 4096 and have had no problems since. This is one of the things I have to donate to, other than Dell's Plant a Tree For Me.

Just because, I added flash video to the list of site features. Xbox video shown as test.

Want to know how often each numbers are drawn in the Florida Lottery? Check out my Florida Lottery Statistics Site. Not yet sure how this data can be used.

A few days after trying the Battlefield: Bad Company beta for a few hours, I realized that there was nothing really drawing me back to this limited time experience. Something about this Battlefield game did not feel Battlefield enough. Sure we like companies to change their long running franchises to keep them fresh, but as a sum-of-all-its-parts this game feels average.

So let's start with this new Frostbite engine. This definitely improves the 'war feel' by adding destructible walls, trees and buildings. A giddy feeling comes over you the first time you clear a bunch of trees with a stationary machine gun. I noticed a few people not yet absorbing this new gameplay mechanic. A teammate and I were running toward a building, there was a wall just up ahead and he started to head around when I shot a grenade into the wall, then I see that he veered back into my direction and through the newly blown hole in the wall.

Sound was suppose to be another breakthrough feature, but with crappy TV speakers that has not yet made an impact on the experience.

Why does this not feel Battlefield?

The only mode playable in the beta is called Gold Rush. There are 2 gold objectives that need to be destroyed/defended depending on which team you are on. If they are destroyed the defending team moves back to another base with 2 new objectives and the attacking team moves up to their old base. The attackers have a limited amount of spawning to get the job done, but the defenders have a limited amount of bases to fall to. This objective based mode feels a lot like Call of Duty but the gameplay doesn't fit. The movement of the character is much too slow to be married with this everybody meets in the middle design. Some of us are that type of player, but some others want to take off and capture the flag which is not so heavily guarded.

The respawning screen has to go through some sort of overhaul. You get to follow a teammate but there is an overlay which makes the screen dark enough not to be able to see what is going on. Then you have to wait for a progress bar to fill, while you are not seeing anything and after about 20-30 of doing this you realize that dying is torture in this game.

So will I rent? Sure. Hopefully some of the other maps are more open, maybe some other modes of play. I liked Battlefield 2: Modern Combat even with all the bugs.

So we have been having some problems with one of the computers running Vista SP1. It would disconnect whenever we try to access one of the shared folders or connect via remote desktop. After trying a whole bunch of suggestions, the solution was to uncheck TCP/IP V6 from the network card's properties. Hopefully this is fixed before IPV6 takes off, or the computer becomes obsolete.

Took about 8 weeks, but I finally got my 5 free Bluray movies. Originally sent for them in the middle of January and got them in the last week of March. Planning to dump them to eBay.

Seems like someone that works in my building got an IS-F. I could tell because they park it everyday in a spot furthest away from the building, with no other cars around. I tend to be picky about my parking spaces but as time goes on I realise that my doors (especially the passenger side, because it faces the other car's driver side) will get dinged up. Also with a leased car you become less attached. I wonder how long before they begin parking with us 'mortals'.

Note: Ferraris, MBs, BMWs, Audis, Vipers all park in the same lot.

I got my beta key through IGN, woot. Noobz beware! Servers up on the 25th.