Xbox 360, PS3, Online Games, Addons

I've have had some time playing with the PS3 and have connecting and playing games online is second nature to me. It works very well and its free!

But I wanted to play some games that are only on the Xbox 360. After about a year of trying to decide whether to buy one or not, I finally took the plunge and bought it. I got the 60GB premium version with Burnout Paradise, Trivia Pursuit, redeem code for Connect 4, extra wireless controller and Lips with Microphones.

After playing Burnout extensively, I have grown to love the x360 wireless controller. Its big, the triggers are perfect for driving games and my hands don't get tired from holding the controller, unlike the PS3's Dualshock 3 controller. But the love stops there.

The problem is I have to pay to play games online. After spending money on the console and buying the games, I am left with a big f**k you from microsoft asking me to give them even more money to be able to connect to friends and play games online.

What value does this subscription give?

I've read in forums and blogs that people think that xbox live has better service, faster servers and all that crap. I am wondering whether people just bought into the bulls**t of microsoft. I am comparing this to playing online games on a PS3 that works just as well. Everything is integrated well into the game and you can easily buy game addons. Someone please tell me why do everyone just put up with microsoft charging for xbox live gold subscription!

Everyone should just cancel their xbox live gold accounts and make a point to microsoft that it is unacceptable to charge people to play games online!

This also reminds me, when have games become a shopping mall? What makes it okay for game publishers to charge ridiculous amounts of money for a game, and then charge even more ridiculous prices for game add ons, which should have been for free.

For example, Stuntman Ignition, I got the game on special for 9 euros (retail would normally be something like 40-50 euros). I was browsing through the store, and to buy a car it costs 300 microsoft points which is equivalent to 3.60 euro. If I buy 3 of new cars from the store, it will cost more than the game! WTF!

People stop using these services, cancel your xbox live gold account and make a point to microsoft, the money sucking machine!

Conrete Dragons @ Alkmaar: Still a lot to learn

The second regetta of the season and second overall for the 200m.

In the first race we came first, in my opinion lucky. The start was slow and the boat didn't lift off the water. By the time we hit the mid section of the race, we had made some real progress on the dutch dragons and were ahead by the end of the mid section. When we finally hit the last leg of the race, the team started to panic and started to increase the stroke rate without reaching longer. Everyone in the boat was doing doggy style paddling, short stroke without power. The dutch dragons and us are neck and neck but we just pimped them by 0.12 of a second.

It is clear from the first race that the dutch dragons strategy is to have an strong start, have an easier paddle during the mid section of the race and go home strong. What they failed to do in the first race is go home strong.

The semi finals and our second race we did much better. Didn't have the panic state because we were racing against the slower teams. The home stretch of the race was long and powerful and it felt we were actually contributing to the speed of the boat with each stroke, excellent!

The grand finals and we are up against the dutch dragons again. The start was the same, the mid section of the race was the same, but what changed is the finish. The dutch dragons pulled together and found a way to correct their mistake of the first race and put on and incredibly strong finish, leaving us to bit the dust.

The concrete dragons must overcome a different kind of stroke for the end of the race.

If the organizers of the NDBF are reading this, make the races more frequent, stop having 1 hour breaks between each race!

First Photo!

After the CT scan yesterday, the first photos are here.

It already has 2 arms and 2 legs. Head is on the right side of the white blob inside the black part, and legs are on the left side. The gray circle next to the white blob is where it is getting the nutrients from.

It is currently approx 21mm long, which means between 8-9 weeks old.

First Catch Herring

This is THE herring.

Its creamy and at the same time it has a fresh taste to it. Its not too salty and just salty enough to give it a nice taste. No fishy taste at all! Strange thing is, after three of these, I don't have the full feeling that I normally get.

This is the herring I've been waiting for!

Difficulties Parting With My Hard Earn Cash!

Second go at buying this (ST9320421ASG) seagate hard drive and same result as first. Unknown time for delivery!

These companies should fix their website so they have real time stock information instead of some fake number to lure customers in!

The first website to avoid http://www.hardeschijven.com/ their parent company is http://www.mapp.nl

In mapp you will find a list of websites that they own. Avoid those aswell!

Emails take 24hours for a reply and it has been 2 weeks already, I am still waiting for me money to come back.

Second website to avoid http://www.zercom.nl

On the day they told me they didn't have any stock, their website still says they have 4 avaliable and delivery time is 1-3 work days. WTF!! At least they have fast email response.

A word to these companies and other similar companies. Stop wasting my time!

Update: Got my money back from mapp.

Update 2: Recieved my money from zercom.

Love Hate Relationship with Macbook

Six months using a macbook, I only have one comment, it is the best laptop I have owned. Until yesterday.

When I got home and boot the macbook up, I was pleasantly greeted with the Stop Sign/ Prohibitory Sign and it went straight to the windows partition. WTF?

After searching around, I came across this article. After following all the steps, I finally gave up. So I started to backup all my files and preparing my macbook for a rebuild and cursing at the sametime how long it will take to get the laptop back where it was.

3 hours later, all files in the Drobo, I popped the OSX DVD into the drive, and started the installation process. 4 clicks later, the installation started, this can't be right I thought, where are all the options, but I didn't question it anymore as it was already installing.

About an hour later, I was at this registration screen which I clicked through, and I was presented with the OSX desktop! WHAT!! No drivers to install and everything was working! That is a good OS install, I am happy to do it all again.. well maybe..

After this experience, I just hope in another 6 months, my macbook doesn't suddenly bite the dust again, but even if it does, I know it will be easy to fix.

Microsoft Technology Rant!

As I try to build more and more complex applications, I am starting to find incompatibilites between various microsoft technologies.

First one being ADO.NET DataServices & Silverlight:

Since I am building a Silverlight application that uses RESTful services to get data, I wanted to make sure the packets that I am sending are small. Comparing JSON and XML packets, JSON packets in general contact less crap, and hence the reason I choose to use JSON string instead of XML. At the sametime I wanted to be flexible, so I designed my webservices to be able to return JSON and XML based on the ACCEPT header (which is exactly how ADO.NET Data Services swtiches between the two formats).

I am now discovering because of a restriction on WebHeaderCollection, I can't switch between the data, and probably will now be forced to use XML!

Another restriction I discovered is that the silverlight plugin is restricted to POST and GET request methods. The decision is for this restriction is because the plugin is designed for the lowerest denominator of where the plugin might be used. I can see how this makes sense, but I want control over this not microsoft.

When I develop software, I know what kind of computers and software I am targetting. I know the limitations, so I want the flexibility. To get around this, I needed to implement POST Tunneling into my webservice so that I can do a normal POST and an extra Header called "X-HTTP-Method-Override" with the real request method I want.

AARGH!!

First Month Living in Amsterdam

First thing I have to get off my chest... I can't believe I am living here in Amsterdam.  

2 years ago when I first set foot on Amsterdam soil, I would have never dreamed of living here, but now that I am here, it feels quite comfortable here.  No fighting for a seat on the tube, no black boogers coming out of my nose and generally a bit more relaxed then I was in London.  

I always felt a bit more aggressive in London.  It got to the stage where I was pushed a little and I would push them back harder.

I do like living in London, it was a fun. Things were cheaper than average once you know where to buy stuff (sorry to all the tourists that get ripped off), and there is a lot of variety for everything.

But now that I've started to live in Amsterdam, I have to say I am starting to enjoy it more and more (although at first I was scared of the language barrier).  I mean where in the world do they let you grow Cannabis at home.  I am ready to buy some seeds and grow a plant at home.

Fashion is a bit strange, I haven 't really managed to find any nice clothes, but eventually I will.  I might end up buying clothes from the big brands if I get desperate :)

My new job is pretty cool.  People seem pretty nice.  Almost have my own office, although I like this configuration, because its much better then sitting in a room by yourself.  I share a large office with a Romanian guy.   At the moment, the .Net developers decide how the application is to be made, that is the two of us.  :)

I guess life is good for the time being... Oh, and I have lost count of how many haring's I've eaten since I've got here.

1 Year Later

Can't believe it has been one year since I've updated my blog.

I need to do this more often, wish me luck...

One Massive Update

Boy has a lot happened since I last added a blog.

Work at Aspiren is awesome! I first starting fixing bugs on one of the products, but that changed to implemented reporting services in the application. As part of that task, I wrote an application to release reports and data sources with a click of a button. Did a release of all that one month later, but ran into permission problems because of different environment settings. The day after we figured out what the problem was and released it the night after. No complaints so far, only more work with reporting services.

The Christmas parties with Aspiren was awesome! We where taken to Bristol to join the parent companies Christmas party, there were theme park games, dancers and a casino. I won a little teddy bear from the hammer thing. We also had a Christmas party in London and there was drinking and eating. :)

I spent Christmas in Rome and the food is awesome. The coffee, pizza and gelati was soooo good. The best place to get pizza is Naples and there are a few big gelati stores near the patheon. Saw all the usual sites like the Colosseum, Fontana di Trevi, Spanish Steps, San Pietro and of course Cheppella Sistina. The paintings of the Sistine Chapel is a must see. I am not a big fan of paintings, but I could not help but stare at these paintings. It seems like some of it pops out of the wall when you know it is flat. I guess that is the brilliance of Michelangelo.

Also Howan and I discovered a more efficient way of travelling. Without any check in luggage! We did the entire Rome trips with just back packs that is small enough to take on the plane with us. The amount of time we saved is great and we didn't have to take this massive suitcase around with us.

I also started dragon boating in London. I am caught in trying to decide which team to join. Raging Dragons or the Thames Dragons. Choices! Either one, I will be trying out for the GB team once I am fit again.

January has been a pretty busy month at work. Made version 2.0 of the report services deployment app and also learnt ExtJS. Also found out on the 16th of January that I was to stop at India before heading back to London from Hong Kong.

Shopping is always great in HK, especially cameras and accessories and small electronics. The bank account took a hit this trip:
1. Canon Telephoto Lens 70-200mm f/2.8 IS L - $13000 hkd
2. Shure SE530 - $3000 hkd
3. PSP Slim + 4gb memory card - $1800 hkd
4. Maglite LED Torch - $185 hkd
5. Nintendo Wii - $2300 hkd

Total damage = 20285 hkd or in gbp

I had the opportunity to take some photos with the new lens at my cousins wedding (Congratulations Joyce and Eric!) and I am very happy with the results. I am glad I spent the extra money on the Image Stabilizer version of the lens, because without it, I am sure all my photos at 200mm will be blurry. The only downside is that it is heavy and another thing to carry when I go on holidays. Oh well, at least I will have awesome photos now.

Shure SE530 is steep in price, but I have justified it because I use it everyday at work (mmm, or a poor excuse to buy the best headphones). The sound that comes out of this thing is awesome. The bass is clear, the highs are crisp and the mids are very defined. I guess thats what you get with three different speakers in the headphones and plus the sound isolation feature, you can't go wrong. The only problem is that I now hear imperfection in any mp3s below 192kbps. You can hear where the highs are chopped off. I will now have to encode all my CD's in 320kbps and above.

Which brings me to India, where I am sitting in my hotel room digesting all the fantastic food that I've already had in the last 2 days I've been here.

I was supposed to work on the brand new interface for one of the products, but it was decided back in London that it will not be included in this version and will be included in the next version. So now I am implementing reporting services into this product to replace what the product currently uses.

Life goes on......