Archive for Technology

What-evah! I’ll do what I waunt!

// March 23rd, 2009 // 10 Comments » // General, Technology

Brandon posted a long time ago that he was going to make custom photos/ringtones for all of his contacts on his phone. I thought it was an awesome idea, but it sounded like a whole lot of work lol. So it’s taken me probably about a year now to get around to doing mine heh. Mine are images only though, no ring tones.

Jason’s gotten me back into watching South Park again, so I decided to use the South Park Studio maker thingy to make all of the images for my contacts since I didn’t have photos of everyone to use. First off, try to pick out who is who (its really not that hard, lol) and leave a comment with the number and name of the person. People to choose from: Jason, Jeff, Daryl, Megan H, Megan M, Brandon, Alicia, Daniel Bryant, and Myself.

01

02

03

I also did family contacts and some people from work too :D Here they are as well:

momanddad

debbieandtony

workguys

My XBL Achievements iPhone Web App

// January 30th, 2009 // 7 Comments » // General, Technology, Video Games

So part of my new years resolution was to build an iPhone version of  my XBox Live Achievement site that you could update the achievements you’ve unlocked, as well as view whatever achievements you’d like from the games you’ve played. Sadly, this data can’t be achieved through any Xbox Live API, so there is the whole thing where you have to specifically tell my system what games you are playing…and if a game you’ve played hasn’t been entered by myself yet, it won’t show up at all. Boo on that. But, if there are any games that you would like me to add, I’ll gladly get the achievements added for it!

Listen to me talking like the system is 100% ready for launch — sadly, it is not…yet. And it will only be available to Myself, Alicia, Jason, Megan H. Daryl, Brandon, and Megzirra (that’s how I’ve kept the 2 Megan’s seperated in my database lol). Anyway, I know that the system isn’t quite ready yet, but the desire to work on an iPhone web app was killing me, so I decided to start it anyway. That task was actually a lot easier than the main site, so it went along pretty quickly. I’ve taken some screens for you to see it, and no it’s not all fancy AJAX and stuff, but I think it turned out pretty nice. If there are any other features you think need to be implemented, please give me your feedback.

Keep in mind, the whole point of this lil web app is to allow you to have a “checklist” of a game’s achievements in front of you while you’re playing the game.

Ok, on to the screen shots.

This is the first screen you come to after you log in, it's the full list of all the games you have marked that you are playing. If no games are showing up in this list, just click on "Manage Your Games" to see the whole list of any game I have in my system (screens for this are a few images down).

This is the first screen you come to after you log in, it's the full list of all the games you have marked that you are playing. If no games are showing up in this list, just click on "Manage Your Games" to see the whole list of any game I have in my system (screens for this are a few images down).

 

Once you click a game, you're taken to the list of achievements for that game. When you unlock an achievement, just tap on the gray achievement point box on the right of that achievement to mark it as unlocked.

Once you click a game, you're taken to the list of achievements for that game. When you unlock an achievement, just tap on the gray achievement point box on the right of that achievement to mark it as unlocked.

 

Once you've unlocked an achievement, they will go to the bottom of the page, with a different style applied to them to stand out from the rest of the achievements in your list.

Once you've unlocked an achievement, they will go to the bottom of the page, with a different style applied to them to stand out from the rest of the achievements in your list. And if you accidentally clicked an achievement you didn't have, just scroll down to the bottom and click on the green box to turn it back into an achievement you haven't unlocked yet.

 

I have also given a way to toggle between only seeing achievements that are for "Online" and "Offline" or for seeing All Achievements for a game. Notice the circled area, when under the Online Setting, it shows that there are 14 achievements, and I've unlocked 50 out of the 140 achievement points available in online play.

I have also given a way to toggle between only seeing achievements that are for "Online" and "Offline" or for seeing All Achievements for a game. Notice the circled area, when under the Online Setting, it shows that there are 14 achievements, and I've unlocked 50 out of the 140 achievement points available in online play.

 

Same thing goes for the Offline Setting. It shows the amount of points you've gotten out of the total offline achievements for that game.

Same thing goes for the Offline Setting. It shows the amount of points you've gotten out of the total offline achievements for that game.

 

Up above, I mentioned that once you log in, if there are no games showing up in your list, or if you're looking for a specific game that isn't appearing in that list, you can go to Manage games. When you click the link to manage games it takes you to a list of every game that's in my system. Just click on a game's title, and then you can click the checkbox on the right of that game to toggle it on/off. Once you "Return to Your Game List", that/those games will show up in your list. Might be a little confusing (I'm in no way the best person to explain things...), but since I can't pull from the XBL API, this is the only way I can do this :( Anyway, the next 2 screens show the toggling checkbox.

Up above, I mentioned that once you log in, if there are no games showing up in your list, or if you're looking for a specific game that isn't appearing in that list, you can go to Manage games. When you click the link to manage games it takes you to a list of every game that's in my system. Just click on a game's title, and then you can click the checkbox on the right of that game to toggle it on/off. Once you "Return to Your Game List", that/those games will show up in your list. Might be a little confusing (I'm in no way the best person to explain things...), but since I can't pull from the XBL API, this is the only way I can do this : ( Anyway, the next 2 screens show the toggling checkbox.

 

Unchecked

Unchecked, this game isn't showing up in your list

 

Checked and Now You're Playing that Game

Checked, and now it's showing up in your list.

Another Nine Inch Nails Props Post

// January 23rd, 2009 // 1 Comment » // General, Technology

I know that I’ve already posted about my respect for Nine Inch Nails’ frontman Trent Reznor, but he keeps impressing me every time I turn around. There’s a new blog entry on nin.com about the video projects that people are doing with the 400 Gigs of free HD video that Trent gave away from the Lights in the Sky tour. The new entry provides links to a new forum that was setup specifically for the fans to share any of their creations that they’ve come up with from the videos. People have uploaded some video clips, High Res screen caps, as well as low-to-high quality MP3 options & Lossless 5.1 Surround Wav files from the concert footage. 

I’ve been a Nine Inch Nails fan since I was in the 5th grade (like 14 years) so I’ve always thought Trent Reznor was an amazing artist and a very very smart businessman, but I have to say that after everything he’s done, he is the one and only artist that has earned this much respect from me. He takes care of his fans like no other musician does, and seems to truly be in it for the love of what he does, moreso than just for the money. I really do hope that more musicians follow in his footsteps. It’s nice to see someone has our back.

Metallica completely blew it for me with the whole Napster thing. I used to LOVE me some Metallica — now I feel “meh” when I hear them. I mean their whole deal with the Napster thing back in the day completely baffled me because it was a straight up attack on their fans. I mean it wasn’t in any way diplomatic at all, it was just “YOU KEPT US FROM GETTING MORE MONEY, WE WILL SUE YOU NOW!” I know that the whole digital music thing back then was a brand new concept, but the mentality of “ignore it (and just sue) and it will go away” instead of trying to understand and adapt to the new technology, blows me away. I remember reading an article (I believe it was in Rolling Stone) that said the RIAA executives didn’t even really know what the internet was and was just blindsided by the Napster situation. Really? You’re the head of the entire United States recording industry and you’re not trying to stay up with technology? Wow. You can tell their “higher ups” are old, old, old people. If I were the US Government, I would have put an end to the insane amount of STUPID lawsuit cases the RIAA has been involved with for the last 9 years. It’s ridiculous. Their actions make me WANT to steal music…and on that note, an awesome Diggnation clip on that exact statement:

Nails!!!!!1!!!!

// January 7th, 2009 // 5 Comments » // Technology

HO-LEE-CRAP, check this out! Trent from Nine Inch Nails had a blog entry not too long ago about wanting to make a Live DVD for the Lights In the Sky Tour from this past year — long story short, things didn’t work out the way he wanted to, and there was no way he could get the DVD produced before the tour ended….so he just posted this on the Nine Inch Nails website:

Your gift… 

The internet is full of surprises these days. 
I was contacted by a mysterious, shadowy group of subversives who SOMEHOW managed to film a substantial amount (over 400 GB!) of raw, unedited HD footage from three separate complete shows of our Lights in the Sky tour. Security must have been lacking at these shows because the quality of the footage is excellent. 

If any of you could find a LINK to that footage I’ll bet some enterprising fans could assemble something pretty cool. 

Oh yeah, you didn’t hear this from me.