Amazon.com has a deal on now (till Feb 13, 2010) that if you buy two Xbox360 platinum hits games you will get a third game free! The free game will be the cheapest of the trio, but it’s still a pretty great deal.
I just picked up Bioshock, Fallout 3, and The Orange Box (Halflife 2, HL Episode 1, HL Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress) for approximately $50 cdn.
Go check this out! There are 35 games to choose from while supplies last.
There’s not much more to say than that; Saab lives on! It was officially announced today that Spyker cars was successful in their bid to purchase the company. I look forward to the future and the new models that will be introduced under the new management.
Now, if they can only sort out the Canadian distribution network…
This one has been bothering me for awhile. I picked up a new Xbox360 w/ HDMI to replace my old RROD 360 Pro system a couple months ago and ever sense then every other time I’d turn on my new 360 it would only output stereo 2.0 sound.
I Googled it a few times with no luck, but then I came across the “Display Detection” feature, which with NXE you’re able to disable. Display Detection basically reads the EDID of your TV/Monitor and sets the appropriate audio/video output for the 360; however, the 360 doesn’t always read the correct information and therefore selects the wrong output.
Under the “system settings” panel open up “console settings”, “display”, then look for “display discovery” – set this to “disabled”, your 360 will restart. Magically everything is now lo-fi 480i and stereo 2.0. Go back into “display” and now into “HDTV settings” to set your appropriate screen (480i – 1080p). Go back to the “console settings” panel and open up “audio” then select your appropriate “digital output” – stereo, Dolby digital, Dolby w/ WMA Pro.
That should do it; no more annoying display detection errors. Have fun playing with your properly tuned Xbox360.
Happy New Year everyone. Here’s hoping that you had a great 2009 and an even better 2010 to come!
January 1st, 2010 in
Life | tags:
2010,
Life,
New Year |
No Comments
Merry Christmas folks, hope you all have a good one and that Santa treats you well!
December 25th, 2009 in
Life | tags:
Christmas,
Life |
No Comments
For me and many other Saab owners and lovers, today is a sad day in automotive history. General Motors (GM) has officially pulled the plug on its Saab brand as it was unable to find a suitable buyer.
GM will now begin what they are calling “an orderly wind-down of Saab operations”, the meaning of which is not entirely clear to anyone. GM is assuring customers that their Saab will still be serviced and the warranties will still be honored although they are yet to tell anyone where/how to get the service done.
I received a letter from GM a couple weeks ago which was dated Nov 14 informing me that as of October 31, my local Saab dealership is no longer an authorized Saab dealer/service center. Nice of them to be on time with things… letter was dated two weeks after my local dealership was closed and I didn’t even receive the letter till the first week of December. I’m a bit bitter about this whole Saab thing.
Ultimately, it is a sad day for the automotive industry as a whole, Saab were innovators and the industry, let alone current car models, owe a lot of their successes to Saab’s innovations. A quick Wikipedia read reveals the following innovations from Saab:
- 1958: The GT 750 is the first car fitted with seatbelts as standard.
- 1963: Saab becomes the first volume maker to offer diagonally-split dual brake circuits.
- 1970: Saab introduces a world-first – headlamp wipers and washers.
- 1971: Heated front seats are introduced, the first time in the world they are fitted as standard.
- 1971: Saab develops the impact-absorbing, self-repairing bumper.
- 1976: Saab was the first manufacturer to produce a turbo engine with wastegate to control boost.
- 1978: Saab introduces another ‘world-first,’ the passenger compartment air filter (pollen filter).
- 1980: Saab introduces Automatic Performance Control (APC), and an anti-knock sensor that allowed higher fuel economy and the use of lower grade fuel without engine damage.
- 1985: Saab pioneers direct ignition, eliminating the distributor and spark plug wires.
- 1991: Saab is the first manufacturer to offer CFC-free air-conditioning.
- 1996: Saab introduces active head restraints (SAHR), which help minimize the risk of whiplash.
- 1997: Saab introduces Electronic Brake-force Distribution
… and the list goes on. How many modern cars use and profit from these innovations? A sad day indeed.
R.I.P. Saab Automobile AB
I sincerely hope that someone with the right intentions, proper financial backing, and sustainable plan picks up this brand in the future and returns it to its former glory. I will buy another Saab in a heartbeat, as quirky as my Saab is I love every little thing about it.
December 18th, 2009 in
Automotive,
Saab | tags:
Automotive,
GM,
Saab |
1 Comment
Can someone please explain Google Wave to me? I got my invite a couple days ago and I have been playing around with it and inviting friends to play with me, but I cannot figure out for the life of me what purpose it serves!
I somewhat understand what it can do… essentially a collaboration suite which can serve multiple purposes, but really what problem does it solve? There are already a zillion applications which do similar things – Google Docs will allow collaboration on documents, any 1/2 way modern calendar application will allow you to create and share events with friends. I can’t see how it will make a good IM solution since you have to be signed into the site to use it, there is no desktop or push notification; I’m finding that friends are now sending me IM messages to say “check your wave” so that I go and see what new IM they posted.
I’m going to keep playing with it and see if I can figure out some neat purpose for it, but if anyone can point me in the right direction please feel free to leave me a comment!
I’m sitting here using a new 2.13GHz MacBook Air which I currently have on loan from a client. I have never actually had an OS X computer to myself before; I have had friends with them, but I’ve never been able to configure one to my liking and really play around with it. I’m starting to buy into the hype!
The ease of use is fantastic and the OS looks great. Don’t even get me started on the physical machine itself, the craftsmanship is superb and the screen is breathtaking! If it were not for the astronomical price ($1,899 for this build) I’d have one already.
I am in the market for a new home computer, perhaps I’ll try my hand with an Apple product… although, I do have some other big ticket purchase plans coming up in the future. Time will tell.
This post is for anyone who has ever gotten the “This computer cannot connect to your home server. Check your network connection and make sure your home server is powered on. If your home server has recently restarted, try again in a few minutes.” message.
I recently, for no apparent reason, was greeted by this message when trying to login to my WHS box via the desktop console. I have done some research on the issue and apparently it is caused by your computer being on a different domain than your WHS box. As to why it happened all of a sudden, I’m not sure. It worked fine for me for over a month.
Anyway, here is your fix… you have to add your WHS box to your computer’s host file. In order to do this you need to first assign your WHS box a static IP address using your router. Since each router is different, I cannot explain how to do this, you’re on your own here. It should be in the documentation for your router.
Once you have setup a static IP on your router for your WHS box the next step is on the computer with which you are having connection issues. Navigate to this address in Explorer: “C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc” and open the file hosts using Notepad.
Once you have the hosts file open you need to create a new entry between the lines “127.0.0.1 localhost” and “::1 localhost” for your WHS box in the following format: <whs static ip address> <whs box name>. As you can see in the picture below, the static IP for my WHS box is 192.168.1.106 and the name of my WHS box is grendel; obviously the IP and name of your WHS box will be different so fill it in appropriately.
Once you have the new entry made, save and close the hosts file. If you followed the steps correctly you should now be able to connect to your WHS box again!
Bonus points for anyone who can tell me what “Grendel” is.
Without much fanfare, certainly where I am located, the first movie in the series of 4 of the remake of the legendary Neon Genesis Evangelion anime was released in Canada. I had heard about this move coming out about a month ago, but did not hear about a release date. I found out it was in theaters 2 hours before the only showing and scrambled out of bed to make it (the showing was at 10 am).
The first movie, Evangelion 1.0 – You are (not) alone, was a faithful retelling of the first 6 episodes of the original series. There were some reanimated scenes taking advantage of some new-tech CGI stuff and there were also some extended scenes and new pieces added. The animation is top notch, as it was in the original series.
I’ve been doing some digging about this new, 4 movie series and have come to find out that the next three movies will take the series in a new direction. The aim of this retelling is to “make the series more accessible to the general public”. The original got very strange, very fast after the first 6 episodes or so; to me this retelling is a welcome change and I hope they can make more sense of it. Apparently the ending will be completely rewritten and easier to follow.
The second movie, Evangelion 2.0 – You can (not) advance, has already been released in Japan and if the lag time on 1.0 is any indication it’ll be two years before we see 2.0 in Canada. It’ll be the longest two years of my life…
Do yourself a favor and go see this in theaters if it’s still playing around you, you won’t be disappointed.
October 4th, 2009 in
Video | tags:
Anime,
Evangelion,
Video |
2 Comments
