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Thursday - April 27, 2006

Nintendo Revolution.... err Wii

Nintendo unveiled the name of it's newest console, and it's Wii. Does anybody else think that's a bad name? An explanation can be found on Nintendo's website.

Posted by jcraven at 2:08 PM | Video Games

Beep! Beep!

Ok, I'm sure you've seen the annoying Ford Mustang commercial featuring the song "Beep! Beep!". Well in case you were wondering, the band in the commercial is 13 Stories, and you can listen and view the lyrics to the entire song on their website. For those of you too lazy to click through, here's the excerpt from the commercial:

Do you wanna get in first? Let me know,
Come on and punch it, Beep! Beep! Beep!
Peel out in second, oh no! You love to go Beep! Beep!
Beep! Beep!

I'll sadly admit that the commercial has grown on me, but I still wish they didn't have to show it at every commercial break while watching the hockey games. Either way, I guess Ford's ad agency has succeeded in their evil plan......

Posted by jcraven at 10:50 AM | Television

Go Canes!

Canes won in OT last night. I'm sure Habs fans are complaining about the no-call against Koivu. I hope he's OK though. At least this guarantees another game at the RBC center. For game highlights, and lots of annoying whining from fans, check out TSN.

Posted by jcraven at 10:46 AM | Sports

Wednesday - April 26, 2006

RAZR canary

Engadget has pictures of the supposed successor to the RAZR. Check them out here. Looks like they've fixed the major complaint I have about the current RAZR, it's too wide. Adding in a 2MP camera and MicroSD card helps too. I was about to break down and finally pick up a V3i, but I'll probably hold out now.

Posted by jcraven at 11:10 AM | Tech

Dual Tuner standalone TiVo

TiVo Announces First Standalone Dual Tuner Product, the TiVo Series2 DT DVR. Click here for the press release.

There's two ways it can be setup:

1.) Single IR/serial port. The box is designed to work with one cable box and just analog cable on the second tuner.
2.) Dual analog cable (no cable box).

Oh, and it now has built-in ethernet, in addition to the USB ports. Interesting, now bring on the Series3!

Posted by jcraven at 10:19 AM | Tech

Tuesday - April 25, 2006

Heartbreaker

The Canes lost in double OT last night. Game highlights here. They yanked Gerber after allowing 3 goals in the 1st, and Ward looked pretty impressive. Let's hope it inspires the team to play well over the next two games in Montreal.

Posted by jcraven at 10:34 AM | Sports

Monday - April 24, 2006

Who needs human contact?

Why play real card games, when you can play UNO over xbox live? XBOXIC has the screenshots of the soon to be relased 360 download.

Posted by jcraven at 3:43 PM | Video Games

WoW weekend

We had a pretty quiet weekend. We did a little shopping, watched the Canes lose big on Saturday, and went to Angus Barn on Sunday. Other than that, we just stayed around house.

I played WoW a fair amount. I hit lvl 47, and maxed out my engineering at 300, along with a handful of quests. FYI, I have a link to my character on my main page. I participated in the Sunday fishing tournament (and did pretty poorly). I also made two runs to Zul'Farrak with random pickup groups (PUGs). Until this weekend, I've had fantastic luck with PUGs, but it all changed with these two runs. The first time, we actually did really well, but after the temple battle our priest pitched a fit when he lost his roll for Bad Mojo Mask to a mage. After that he just left, which is pretty childish. We continued and beat down 2 more bosses with a paladin healing, so it still worked out ok. The second run was a total disaster. The first time we wiped because of a low-level hunter attacking an extra enemy, which aggro'd 20 or so mobs. I'm now starting to understand why hunters have such bad reputations. Later on that run, the rouge aggro'd a bunch of mobs while trying to pickpocket them. After that, I gave up and left the group without even making it to the first boss. I still have one more quest to finish in Zul'Farrak, and a couple items I'd like to pick up, so I'll give it a shot again soon.

Posted by jcraven at 10:36 AM | Comments (1) | Video Games

Thursday - April 20, 2006

Wireless xbox mod

Here's a pretty good mod for your old xbox. It gives details on integrating a wireless bridge into your xbox. If I ever change my setup, I may give this a shot.

Posted by jcraven at 4:52 PM | Video Games

Wednesday - April 19, 2006

Go Canes

We went to the final regular season Canes game last night. Unfortunately it was not a pretty game, and they lost 4-0. We still had a good time though, we had great seats right on the ice. Here's a couple pictures I took with my phone.

Posted by jcraven at 11:48 AM | Sports

Monday - April 17, 2006

Rockstar what?

Rockstar (the makers of GTA) decided to release a 360-exclusive title. To everyone's surprise, it's Table Tennis. The trailer was posted today, or it can be downloaded in HD on your 360. Supposedly it will be released next month. I doubt I'll rush out to buy this one......

Posted by jcraven at 4:27 PM | Comments (1) | Video Games

Spam sucks

Somebody has recently started sending out spam with the return address of [random crap]@jeffcraven.com. This is very annoying, as I had about 50 bounce messages over the weekend for accounts that no longer exist, or bouncebacks from spam filters. Unfortunately, I don't think there's a single thing I can do about it. For now I've simply started filtering out the messages, hopefully it doesn't catch anything important in the process.

Posted by jcraven at 3:48 PM | Tech

Mr. Fix-it

For about a month now, our leather recliner has been broken. A 1.5" chunk of metal broke on the frame. Over the holiday weekend, I decided to take it to my parent's house, to see if it could be repaired. Luckily my dad was able to weld the support back together with minimal effort. It was pretty cool. Maybe I should take a class or two at Wake Tech.... it might be a fun thing to learn. They have an extensive list of welding classes here.

Posted by jcraven at 3:26 PM | Misc

Sunday - April 16, 2006

Happy Easter

Posted by jcraven at 10:38 AM | Comments (1) | Misc

Thursday - April 13, 2006

Sony MDR-V600 headphones

I picked up a pair of Sony MDR-V600 headphones from Amazon this week. Technically, they have a 10-20 hour break-in period, but even out of the box these things sound great. I mainly bought them so I could watch TV/play xbox without disturbing Lara if she was working or sleeping. Last night I plugged them up to my PC to play WoW, and I couldn't believe all the extra sounds and music I've been missing. It really made me realize how terrible my PC speakers are. They obviously thoroughly whip the iPod's skimpy earbuds too, but aren't nearly as portable. They do come with a nifty pleather storage bag though in an attempt to make them more travel-friendly.

Posted by jcraven at 9:50 AM | Tech

Wednesday - April 12, 2006

DirecTiVo lives!

According to ExtremeTech, DirecTV and TiVo have extended their contract for another 3 years. I'm hoping this means new TiVo integrated units, not just 3 additional years of 'support'. I'd also like to see a software update for my aging HR10-250, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

Posted by jcraven at 3:39 PM | Tech | Television

Friday - April 7, 2006

The other Lara

The demo for Tomb Raider: Legend, was released on Xbox Live Marketplace earlier this week. I tried out the demo, and have to say it's pretty impressive. The graphics are fantastic, and the motion physics are great. I've never been a huge fan of the Tomb Raider series, but this may be enough to make me change my mind. The game is still very tough (unless you cheat your way through the puzzles). Also, I'm not real fond of the camera, but it may just take some practice. You can also invert both the X and Y axis if you please. I would definitely recommend downloading the demo if you're a 360 owner, or maybe go rent it when it's released next week.

Posted by jcraven at 3:22 PM | Video Games

Wednesday - April 5, 2006

WoW update

A week ago, Blizzard issued a patch for WoW that included a ton of new features and enchancements. The full list is here. One of the new features is weather. Yesterday while in Booty Bay, I saw my first rainstorm. Kinda cool.

Posted by jcraven at 3:55 PM | Comments (2) | Video Games

Windows on Mac

Hell has frozen over. Apple is now distributing a package that will allow you to install a licensed copy of Windows on your Intel-based Mac. The beta, called Boot Camp can be found here. Thanks Steve for the link.

Posted by jcraven at 11:28 AM | Tech

Kanata trip

Other than the sweet ride, I don't have a lot of exciting details about my trip. We spent most of the days working. We stayed at the Brookstreet Hotel, which was really nice. I'd highly recommend it.

On my only free day, I decided to travel to Quebec and visit the Casino du Lac-Leamy. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures. Driving around Quebec was an interesting experience, as almost all of the signs in the area are in French. Luckily everything in the casino was bilingual. After I made my contribution to the Canadian economy, I drove back to Ontario, and visited downtown Ottowa. I didn't have a lot of extra time so I couldn't walk around the city. I have a couple pictures of the hotel and 1 of our 3 buildings here. If I get the chance to return to the area, I will probably schedule more free time to see more of the city.

Posted by jcraven at 9:26 AM |

Tuesday - April 4, 2006

Best movie ever

Click here for the teaser.

Posted by jcraven at 4:25 PM | Movies & Music

Monday - April 3, 2006

Final day

My flight back to the US is late this afternoon, so I have a couple more hours left in Kanata. I'll post details of my trip along with pictures when I return. In the meantime, be sure to check out what I've been driving around the past couple days.

Posted by jcraven at 9:42 AM | Comments (1) | Misc