Every once in awhile I will start browsing amazon.com or whatnot looking for recent albums by my favorite artists. Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised and find a new album released just a few months ago, or whatever. And sometimes what I discover is a real shot in the nuts. Any time there’s a long lapse between releases, I get nervous (Weekend Players, I’m thinking of you). So it was with great trepidation that I started researching the fate of Lamb, one of my favorite bands.

I found out that they have been split up since September of 2004. I don’t know why this is such a big deal to me, since I obviously didn’t follow the band closely enough to hear about their farewell live performance nearly two years ago. But for some reason, I feel particularly sad about the whole deal. Lou Rhodes, the female vocalist, started her own record label Infinite Bloom, and has a solo album out. By what I read on Amazon today, the electronica melodies present in Lamb aren’t a part of her new musical endeavor. Oh well, nothing stays the same forever.

As I wrote last December, I go through cycles of reading new Web sites, or finding that I don’t read old ones at all.

I was interested to see how many of the sites I was browsing in December are still on my “high traffic” list, and which ones have dropped off.

High traffic in 12/2005:

• FZ6 Forum: I still visit this site at least once a day. Not only has it stayed in the High Traffic category, but I am contributing more than last winter.
• The Ars Technica news bits and journal.ars still get some eye-time, but probably even less than before. They have had a few interesting bits about evolution, and I enjoyed reading about the E3 video game trade show coverage. I still visit the fora daily. I’ll have my seventh year anniversary there this August.
• Friendster has fallen so far down on my browsing list you’d think I didn’t have an account there. I’ve been there maybe two or three times since December, mostly to farm birthdays of my friends onto my Google Calendar.
• I stopped playing World of Warcraft a few months ago, and as such I have stopped visiting about four sites a day completely. I visited my old guild’s Web site last week, and they’re having a meatspace get together. Oddly enough, I missed their last gathering when we all played Dark Age of Camelot. Sad.
• My RSS-fed sites (mostly your LiveJournals/other blogs) continue to be my biggest traffic. I may not actually land on these sites several times a day, but I do check to see if they’ve been updated every hour or two.

New high traffic in 6/2006:

• Pandora.com has been really a godsend. I’ve found a lot of new artists this way, and it’s just a great service. It’s really too bad that I can’t listen to it without the use of a PC or a Squeezebox. I’ve been listening to Frisky Radio a lot lately because I can stream the audio to my Xboxes.

Sites that were hot but then fell off since 12/2005:

• The Pontiac Solstice forum was a multiple-times a day visit until I learned just about everything I could. Most of the traffic now surrounds aftermarket kits I can’t afford (such as the drooltacular Hahn turbo kit) or people nitpicking over various issues, like it being too loud with the top down. IT’S A FUCKING ROADSTER, JACKASSES!!!
• I played EVE Online for about two months, and joined one of the Ars Technica player-run corporations my buddy Bond belongs to. Unfortunately, the game is just too buggy (even though the game has been out for three years) and the larger corp. vs. corp. battles remind me of Shadowbane too much for me to continue playing. During my knowledge ramp-up on the game, I visited about four boards a day, several times a day. I have eight bookmarks about to go the way of the dodo as soon as my account winds down in June.
• Howard Forums’ Motorola mobile phone forum was a real contender until I realized that the phone community was either completely comprised of n00blets or mobile phone gurus. Tutorials were either written by people who’d gotten lucky and didn’t know what they were doing, or by people who probably do mobile phone seem programming in their sleep. Regardless, I am satisfied with my mostly-stock phone configuration right now and don’t visit this site at all any more.

What’s new with you? Any particular gems you want to share?

I was busily backing up my DVD movies two days ago. I left my fileserver to encode and burn the DVD for me and went to take a shower. I came back about an hour later (the shower wasn’t that long), and noticed that the DVD burner tray was open, but there was no disc in the tray.

I must have forgotten to load a disc, I thought to myself. I put in another dual-layer disc and tried to close the tray.

The tray went about halfway in and then spat the disc back out. Weird. I pushed the tray in again, out the disc came.

I squinted into the drive and noticed a piece of white foam was sticking up where it probably shouldn’t be. Maybe the disc got too hot and got stuck in the drive? I grumbled and shut my fileserver off. I pulled the DVD burner out and unscrewed it, giggling at the “BREAKING SEAL VOIDS WARRANTY” sticker on the bottom.

Sure enough, there was a DVD trapped inside, along with the white foam disc (presumably to cushion the laser head) and a black rubber band that is probably used to connect the drive opening/closing gears.

I dug the DVD out and it was scratched more than my back during the heat of passion:

I thought about trying to reattach the foam disc and the rubber band, but the disc looked pretty jacked. I also figured that if my drive broke down under normal conditions, I was sure it would fail again with already tweaked parts. I took these pics for posterity and then junked the drive.

Luckily, the replacement drive is about 1/3 the cost of the original. I also needed an excuse to buy a 16-port switch and some CAT5 cable from the fine folks at Newegg.com. Hopefully my replacement gear will arrive by Wednesday this week.

I have been using Anthony Logistics Shaving Cream for well over a year. As I wrote last August, I hate shaving, and the smooth, thin, slightly minty shaving cream from Anthony’s helped make shaving tolerable.

I have gone through two bottles (one small, one large). Instead of ordering another $15 bottle from Mens Essentials, I decided to try a four pack of Edge Advanced Sensitive Skin with Aloe. Standing tall at 9.5oz per can, The entire four pack was $9.99 at Costco. If the Edge gel sucked, I would be out a meager amount, and maybe some of my buddies could use it on their less sensitive, less crazy-to-shave mugs.

The experiment:
The testing procedure was simple: after showering, I applied the Anthony Logistics shaving cream to half of my face using my shaving brush. I applied the Edge gel to the other half of my face, also using the shaving brush. I then proceeded to shave my face with a two-use old Gillette Mach 3 Turbo razor.

Pre-shaving observations:
The Edge gel was much thicker than the Anthony Logistics cream. I would say the gel was at least three times as dense. It was a bit of a hassle getting the gel off of my shaving brush. I was immediately worried that the thicker gel would gum up my razor, resulting in an uneven shave. The Edge gel put a slight tingle on my face, which I theorized later might be due to the palmitic and stearic acid in the product, and possibly isobutane.

Shaving observations:
I shaved the Anthony Logistics side first, as I always shave the right side of my face before the left. I figured this would also balance out the time the shaving product was allowed to set on my skin, since I applied the AL cream first. The Mach 3 Turbo went about its business, with a slight scritch-scritch sound when it hit the most troublesome part of my neck, right where the bottom of my jaw meets my neck. Aside from the slight tug I felt in the Trouble Zone™ I continued my right-side shave without a noticeable incident.

I started on my left side with apprehension. To my surprise, my razor slipped easily across my well-gelled skin. As I expected, I had to rinse my razor out more frequently. It seems like I took slightly less time shaving my left side than my right, but it could have just seemed that way since I was a bit shocked at the Edge’s performance. I finished up and rinsed my face with cold water.

Post-shaving observations:
The first thing I noticed after drying my face was that I managed to cut myself on the right side. It was a small nick and nothing serious, but I would have expected any slashing to have occurred on my left side.

The Edge gel smells too much for my preferences. The Anthony Logistics cream smells great, and isn’t too heavily scented. I haven’t done a full-face shave with the Edge gel yet, and am a little worried that between it, my Dial soap, and my Anthony Logistics aftershave cream I’ll smell very … product-y? I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.

The ultimate test:
I asked Lady Jaye to touch my faces later that night. She ran her fingertips across the right and left sides of my throat. “Which one is smoother?” I asked.

“That one,” she said, pointing to my Edge side.

Indeed, I thought.

Conclusion:
Well, as much as I hate supporting the mass market, I gotta say for $2.50 a can this Edge is the motherfucking bomb. Holy shit, I spent more on my Americano today than I did for an ENTIRE CAN of this highly flammable product that performed as well, if not better, than my snooty niche market mens’ skin care cream.

Anthony Logistics, as much as I’ve loved you this past year, I have to move on. It’s not you, baby. It’s me.

I read a magazine the other day that suggested singing “Happy Birthday to You” in your head while you wash your hands. Apparently it takes ~20 seconds to sing that song, and it was recommended that I spend at least that long washing my hands.

As such, I have been singing “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Dr.Faulken, happy birthday to you” more this week than I have in the last five years put together. I am beginning to wonder if I am going to develop some sort of disorder, wherein if I actually have to sing that song for its intended purpose I will feel the urge to wash my hands — or worse yet — will be unable to wash my hands without singing that song in my head 25 years from now.

Since I can’t justify buying a Slim Devices Squeezebox, I started looking for cheaper alternatives. Cheaper meaning something I didn’t have to buy and that I already had around the house. I considered putting my file server downstairs, but that also serves as my DVD and CD ripping station and that seemed like a bigger pain in the ass than it was worth. Plus, my file server is a full-sized tower and has roughly a hojillion fans in it. I started pricing out a Home Theater Personal Computer (HTPC) but to build one and configure it was upwards of $600+ easily, and I’d have to learn a bunch of new crap, like how to capture and encode TV programs on the fly.

Then I remembered my original Xbox, which was sitting downstairs. I hadn’t used it since … well, maybe since we moved to Richmond last year. I have been playing my GameCube and my PS2 a lot more. I knew that the Xbox could be modified to do all sorts of neat tricks, like run homebrew code, copy DVDs and games to the hard drive, and jump through hoops of flame. Well, maybe not the last part.

I dusted off the ol’ black beast and went to work.

The end goal: Xbox Media Center
The magic bullet for watching video and streaming audio to our televisions would take the form of Xbox Media Center, an open-source project that is so damn good it should be a commercially-produced product. It allows for the decoding of almost any audio or video format one could think of, and
Soft or Hard?
The first thing I had to decide was if I wanted to hardmod or softmod my Xbox. Hardmodding meant buying a special chip and soldering it to the motherboard of my Xbox. You can also buy solderless chips, but I heard that they were fragile and any bumping or serious moving of the Xbox would muck up the solderless hardmod. I wasn’t too keen on soldering, so I looked into softmodding. It also has easy-to-use hooks to Xlink Kai, which is a free way to play Xbox games online with other people, local weather, an RSS reader, and all sorts of other stuff. More on that in the future.

Softmodding could be accomplished by an exploit found in a select few original Xbox titles. The short version is that certain versions of MechAssault, 007: Agent Under Fire, and Counterstrike cause a buffer overflow on the Xbox, which allows for running unsigned code. By loading an alternate “dashboard” (essentially the OS for the Xbox), you can run your own code on the Xbox and enable all kinds of new functionality.

Read the fine print
I immediately ran into a few problems with softmodding that I wouldn’t have had I chosen to hardmod my Xbox. The first of which was that there are about 100 different HOWTOs on the Web about softmodding. Unfortunately, none of them are 100% up to date, or 100% informative. The tutorials that were more up to date sometimes left of crucial information (more on that later). Tutorials that were very specific often were written two years ago, and as such the steps on what to do after you exploited your Xbox were out of date. I had to consult two different articles and three different forum threads across two boards to get my shit working right.

I chose to use MechAssault to do my softmod. I’m not sure why I chose this game, as it was probably the most complicated choice out of the three options. MechAssault has been released in several “editions,” and some of the editions have been fixed so that the softmod exploit won’t work. The way to identify which version of the game works is by looking at the serial number on the printed label on the front of the disc. It also means reading the serial number on the disc itself. This last bit was left off of the tutorial I used for the majority of my hack. The article was written in 2005, and I guess the author assumed that by now everyone knew to double check the MechAssault serial in addition to the disc serial.

I walked in to EBGames and went up to the counter. There were three young men working behind the counter, and one of them greeted me and asked me if I needed any help. I wondered if I should make up some bullshit story about wanting to play MechAssault, but I decided that honesty was the best policy here and blurted out, “I want to softmod my Xbox. I’m looking for a certain version of MechAssault.” They all smiled in unison and began digging through the used games behind the counter. I looked at the serial number on the front of the disc, it was what I needed. I bought the game for $2.99 used and bought a replacement cable for my Xbox controller ($4) and a memory card ($15). I actually had to come back for the memory card, as I had forgotten that I needed them when I got the game and the cable the first time.

I came home and began the extremely tedious job of hacking my Xbox controller cable to a USB cable. See, Xbox controllers are actually USB devices with a proprietary plug on the end. How Microsoft ;). I spliced a USB cable to the controller cable so that I could copy the exploit files from my computer to the Xbox memory card. I could have bought a pre-made cable for about $10 +shipping on eBay or a commercial version from Circuit City for $30, but it was worth it to me to spend about an hour doing the cable myself.

Okay, so we have the exploit files on the memory card now, and all I have to do is put MechAssault in the Xbox, load the exploited save game, and BOOYAKA we have a softmodded Xbox. No problem — disc in … copy save game over … load save game …. Hrm. “Cannot load save game ‘Run Linux.’” It didn’t work. Thinking that my homemade cable led to a save game corruption, I took the cable apart, put it back together, and copied the files to the memory card again. Still no dice.

I was at my wits end and was considering doing a hardmod when I went back to one of my other tutorials. That’s when I learned that certain versions of MechAssault had the proper game serial on the front of the disc, but were the wrong disc serial on the back. I went back to EBGames, said, “I need a different version of MechAssault,” and they gave me what I needed without so much as a smirk.

Okay, so we have the exploit files on the memory card now, and all I have to do is put MechAssault in the Xbox, load the exploited save game, and BOOYAKA we have a softmodded Xbox. No problem — disc in … copy save game over … load save game …. Hey, this time it worked! I was well on the way to backing up the essential default files of my Xbox and installing the new dashboard. Once I had all the right pieces in order, the process was quite fast and easy. I softmodded the Xbox I have for the downstairs in about 10 minutes without a snag.

Ever since I’ve softmodded my two Xboxes I’ve been looking for others to join my little club. So far there haven’t been any biters. Trust me, if you find someone who’s already done it, it will be MUCH easier on you. :)

Luckily this isn’t me, but someone recently crashed into a deer on their FZ6. This is the same bike I ride, on the same type of roads I ride on. Hitting a deer, by far, is my greatest fear while riding my bike. Partly because they don’t give you much time to react and approach from areas we’re not accustomed to looking for hostiles (unlike an intersection), but also because hitting a deer on a windy country road means that I might be in a sparsely-traveled section of road, and if I was seriously hurt aid might be a long time coming.

This video is not safe for work, as the rider screams the F word at the end.

Deer vs FZ6

Sometimes my job is fantastic, as I often get in either at project conception and get to talk about strategy and potential features, or in the build phase, when we realize that all those potential features we liked some time ago were really dirty bitches in disguise. It’s a great turn of events during a project’s life, because some people buckle when the ship starts to sink. I like to think I’m one of the last folks to buckle, and that gives me a warm fuzzy.

However, typing in “Initial Image-less Check In” several dozen times as I update new online documentation is not one of my more technical finest moments. The reason I am posting this is that if I go on a kill-crazy rampage and lipstick “INITIAL IMAGE-LESS CHECK IN” on every victim’s mirror then you’ll know where it came from.

Sleep tight, gremlins ;)

Some folks have been doing a total conversion mod of the game Freespace 2 to incorporate Battlestar Galactica models. They released a trailer for their unofficial endeavor, and I’ve hosted it on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Apparently this demo movie has been around since this January, but it was reposted on Ars recently and therefore got my attention.

Lots of these free total conversion mods are in development, but normally the team releases a trailer, or a Web site with some screen shots, and then the word gets out and they are shut down by the content’s parent company. In this case, it’s Vivendi/Universal that could put down the hammer on the development team. There is especially a big bru-ha-ha if the parent company has their own video game title coming out. Many Star Wars TCs were squashed by the Hammer of Cease and Desist thanks to LucasArts.

I went up to Rockville today to visit some friends and do a little bit of work, in that order. I used to go up on Fridays, but with Lady Jaye working doubles these days, it’s a bit more difficult to arrange for dogs sitters than it is for me to drive up on a different day.

I was reminded why I didn’t like living up in the DC area. After a doctor’s appointment, I thought I would swing by Costco to get some 2 pound bags of coffee beans from our favorite roastery, Mayorga. The parking lot was almost completely full, even at 2:30PM. The checkout line was six counters across and probably ten customers deep. The center two lines (always the longest), were backed up past the first two aisles of merchandise. I made a quick circle around the front part of the store and made my exit; I didn’t feel like standing in line for 20 minutes like I used to when I lived here, and I had a meeting with The Captain at 3.

The real kicker was being held hostage by the rush hour traffic. Instead of coming home as soon as my work was done, I stayed in town until a little past 7. Luckily and were kind enough to keep me company and have coffee with me until it was relatively safe to leave town. Even then, traffic was still pretty heavy around 495 and 95 until I passed Fredericksburg. Still, I made it from RKV to the house in a little under 2 hours.

Oh well, I still had a nice trip, and now I’m glad to be home with the doggies!