Archive | September 2005

Network Priorities

Online gaming (XBOX Live, PC FPSs, MMOGs) generally forces you to turn off anything else that is using your home network (streaming media, downloading files, etc). Luckily, the Hawking Broadband Booster has arrived. It sits between your broadband modem and your router, prioritizing traffic. Gaming traffic(and probably VOIP, etc) is given priority over downloads and P2P. Judging from the TeamXBOX review, it does it’s job.

Gameboy Micro

gameboymicrouspacksmall.jpg

Sooooooooooooooon

XBMC – DVD Menus!!!

XBoxMediaCenter, the homebrew collection of tools for playing dvds, videos, and music on your XBox, just added support for DVD menus. This is a huge step. I normally use XBMC to play all my DVDs at home, but this will let me get at those special features(commentary), too! WOOHOO!

It’s too bad that Microsoft is putting so much effort into blocking homebrew content on the XBox360 – consoles are such beautiful platforms for ameteur coders to thrive.

Gulp

Dave Prochnow, writing about a trip on the highway in the wake of Katrina:

So off we went. Getting to the highway involved doing things that you would NEVER EVER do with kids in a car—driving off the road, driving through people’s yards, and driving over power lines. Yes, we had to drive over power lines. Luckily at least one of them was dead—that was the one that just touched our roof antenna. Gulp. Finally, on the highway, it was social chaos. People jostling for gasoline, cars stalled on the road everywhere, and people walking around dazed. It was an Irwin Allen “disaster” movie, only we were in it.