Wii Velcro Boxing

My latest project DIGG it here. Or check out all of the details on the Zenfar site. The main idea is to use the Wii remote accelerometer and blue tooth wireless networking to record your punches and kicks while training. Prototype software is available for download as well as links to buy the materials needed for you own Wii powered punching bag!

Vista is Ready

So I had some driver issues with my XP build that I had been running for about 5 years and had the crazy thought of doing a new Vista Ultimate install to fix everything. And to my surprise it worked out of the box with no issues. Windows Update for Vista even found all of the drivers I needed and updated them with no issues. Previously under XP I would not trust Windows Update for drivers only software updates. The Windows Firewall works as well and I haven't had to install ZoneAlarm. The only major problem is User Access Control which I had to disable. UAC was made famous in the security Apple Ad. To disable it just type msconfig in the Vista search bar and hit enter. Next select the Tools tab and scroll down until you see disable UAC. Launch it and then after it is done reboot.



With the one simple change Vista works like a dream with no Blue Screen of Pause that some of our Apple friends are dealing with.

SkyNet's First Attack

And so it starts Robots going crazy killing people...

Robotic cannon turns Killer!

At least T3 is going to happen before Planet of the Apes.

Nine Great Books About The Future

Nine Great Books About The Future, an excellent article on Forbes. Of the books on the list that I have read I can't help but agree with including them. It just makes me want to read the others as well, perhaps summer. Some missing titles may be Diamond Age, Friday, or Snow Crash? Diamond Age features China and Nanotechnology, Neuromancer (on the list) probably has Snow Crash beat. Friday had terrorism and alternative living arrangements.

I don't know about you, but I really enjoy reading about some aspect of the future and then seeing it in real life year latter. Starship Troopers had cell phones and in Snow Crash the author talked about Zombies people connect to the net that seemed to be having a conversation with people that aren't there, of course we see this all to often with hands free blue tooth phones.

ZenfarXNA

ZenfarXNA is my XNA project in which I hope to capture the essence of role-playing games. What is that essence you may ask?


You find yourself in a 20x20 room with two exits. One exit to the north the other to the west. There is a strange console and one angry Chaos Warrior in the room. What do you do?


Replay that situation twenty times and you have a fun nights entertainment.

Amazon MP3

I wonder if Amazon will allow associates to link to MP3 and get a % of the sales, such as it does with its other offerings. If so there could be hundreds of media applications that use the Amazon web service APIs and link to MP3 as well as play them. One of them would emerge as the killer app and then Amazon would reign supreme. One reason DRM fails is that it adds complication. Anything that adds complication to technology must be avoid like the plague.

Glen
Zenfar

Spyware

I don't care that much about privacy, but I do care about ownership and it is your PC and you should know what is on it and stop people from watching your every move. Here are some great programs that can help with this:

Ad-Aware

Spy-Bot Search and Destroy

Enjoy.

Vista

Know what you are doing and want control of YOUR PC back read on.

Vista has a built in administrator that is more powerful then the default one. To enable it right click on Computer from the start menu and select manage.



Next you can enable this account if you need a real administrator account. Right click on the Administrator account and select properties, and uncheck disabled.





You should log out at this point. Next log in add administrator and add a password. You can do this in Control Panel by selecting the User Accounts option.



Now you can log in as a real Administrator, this is called Built-in Administrator in Vista, but I like to call him su (super user). But do we want to use this account all of the time, I would say no. I would want to use the Admin account I made on install or perhaps a new one, but I want it to act like a real super user account. More on that next post.

BioShock

BioShock buy it! Play it! One great game and creepy too. I consider it a MasterWork along side of Oblivion...

MasterWorks is my term for a game that finally realizes the vision of the developer, other games before it hint at what is to come and then the MasterWork hits:

System Shock 2 -> Freedom Force -> BioShock
Daggerfall -> Morrowind -> Oblivion

Feel free to post about any other MasterWork chains in the comments.

Cheers!

Silverlight

A new technology from MSFT, should allow web based games that are much better than what we have seen to this point, at least that is the promise.

We shall see...

X-Box 360 Mania

So the long awaited price drop is here, we are talking $279, $349, and $449. The best bet is the $349 and make sure it has the HDMI port, that way you are getting a newer motherboard. Still I don't think it compares to PC gaming, what we need in X-Box Live and DX10 on Windows XP, that is what the market wants. We also need under $199 internal HD-DVD drives that come with Power DVD 7.

Fallout 3

Don't know if I can make it until Fall 2008 for Fallout 3.

Spirits Within

``I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don't become missionaries. Don't feel as if you're Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don't feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What's in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more.''

Alan J. Perlis

X-Box 360 < $100

Ok you don't even have to pimp ringtones on your web site for this one. Just get a wired X-Box 360 controller and a copy of Marvel Ultimate Alliance for the PC and you are there! Ultimate Alliance is one of the 1st titles we have played that integrates the X-Box 360 controller into the PC version of the game completely. All menus can be controlled with it and the buttons are displayed in the on screen hints. Also there is a CG movie with Galactus which is worth the cost of all by itself.