It came in one of those big Amazon boxes, shipped 2nd day courtesy of Amazon Prime, yet was surprisingly light. There was the usual bubble wrap, not that it really needs it; the packaging is as solid as a rock, but the games were jostling around, probably aided by a disgruntled UPS employee mumbling about how that Allen fellow got another large package.
I guess I’m a new owner of one XBox 360 console, a year late to the party and discovering the pioneers took all the good beer.
I had a Playstation 2 and PS1 before this, so I was curious to see what an American company came up with, and lo and behold – the XBox 360 radiates American qualities from its outset, impressing you with the size of its power brick, the droning of its fans, the whiteness of its exterior. Invest a bit of time, and discover more traits that betray its American heritage, from its ability to prettify pictures to its networking capabilities, not to mention how easily it fools others into giving it money; I say this as a former Canadian.
In wake of a certain friend who happened to get one very nice car, I consoled myself by spending a good 15 minutes looking for a wallpaper of a car I wanted.Of course, it only came in full screen, so I spent another 15 minutes tweaking it for widescreen monitors. Quick and dirty, but I figured I’d share it for those in search of large widescreen wallpapers; it was also theraputic in its own right.
Also check out Interfacelift.com, they feature much better quality widescreen and fullscreen large wallpapers.
Lately, I’ve been considering getting one of those fancy XBox 360 machines; I figure the pretty graphics will keep me happy during the day and the rambunctious purring of its cooling fans will lull me to sleep at night.
In the process of finding potential games to buy for the system, I figured sports is one area where more powerful hardware makes a difference and is better played on a TV over a computer screen, so I went around looking at those. Specifically, I checked out two games – NBA Live 2007 and NBA 2k7 – and I was trying to decide which I’d get.
As is par with most purchases nowadays, I went online and searched around, looking for videos, screenshots, impressions, reviews, rumor, etc. (the game was about to be released when I started this) Of course all the previews had good things to say (e.g., hype), but impressions and ultimately reviews varied widely, and impressions were good, ranging from good to bad to the worst game ever made to the greatest billion lines of code to grace the eyes of god. Who to trust when so many people claim to know what they’re talking about?
Jeff had a bit of fun redoing his computer recently, and along with me configuring Sui’s new laptop, I figured there are some randomly good, free utilities that I use that others might be interested in. Hence I’m giving mini-reviews; since I’ve used these utilities for a while, don’t be surprised if they reflect positively…
Ditto is probably the coolest program I’ve used that’s relatively unknown; it’s a Windows clipboard enhancement tool which makes you wonder why Microsoft never thought of putting this in Windows XP or even Vista. It allows you to browse through previously copied-and-pasted fragments of text, images, and files, as well as date them and search through the fragments. As a programmer, it’s very handy when used to recall snippets of code and variable names, but in general I use it to recall random strings () and site URL’s.
And from reading the site, I guess I haven’t been keeping up to date, as they’ve added the ability to sync the clipboard across computers, and in doing so allow you to copy+paste across multiple computers and effectively share files. Pretty neat.
Resource-wise, it takes anywhere from 10-20MB of RAM running in the background, which isn’t bad for today’s applications but not great either. It does install a database to hold your clipboard fragments, but it has never crashed on me or caused any strange behavior. If you ever need to look at code for any reason, I’d say this is a great utility to try out and keep around.
I had a chance to watch what’s probably one of the best movies to come out this year – The Departed, a Scorsese film based off of the popular Asian movie Infernal Affairs. It’s a pretty high-profile remake that’s been garnering excellent reviews, and I’m happy to say it doesn’t disappoint. ()
After watching the new film on the big screen, I went back and rewatched the older one for probably the 8th or 9th time to compare. I love these kinds of films done well because of their excitement and longevity – a capable director and editor is able to keep the audience intrigued and on the edge of their seats throughout as scenes twist and turn the plot, while a lot of the nuances and subtleties displayed by the characters only make sense after the 3rd, 4th viewings with the plot completed.
Just one of the few things they hammer into you in Introduction to Macroeconomics.
I’ve recently signed up for a UC Berkeley Extension course. It’s one of those online courses, which means all the material and class interaction happens through the tubes of the internet and its information is at our full disposal save for the class final, which has to be taken in an “approved testing facility”.
I guess the first question would be, why would someone subject himself to full-time work and part-time study after having studied for the past 20 years straight (Hong Kong preschool, like most Asian preschools, isn’t a walk-in-the-park); I suppose it’s a combination of personal interest, company sponsorship, and a determination that I need to do this now before I completely slack and refuse to do homework or look at another test. Work has provided me a fairly good life so far, so maybe it was time to take advantage of some of the extra weekend time it has given me to replace the precious but wasteful hours of sleep.
