Been using some of the X-10 stuff lately to control all the vampire electronics I have (no need for all the video game units, etc. to be running all the time - and being able to turn outlets/power strips on and off with my remote makes it worth the effort), and the new apartment has been driving me nuts. One of the controlled outlets would only work sometimes, and would just turn on and not off others. Finally traced it down this morning to the CFL light bulbs in the kitchen. 3 bulbs, 2 of one kind and one of another - when the 2 that are the same are both on, the X-10 outlet in the other room won't respond. Unscrew one of the CFLs, and the outlet works again!

I swear, if it's a weird problem I'll find or encounter it!

I'm well past my 30 days, so I guess I'm gonna have to live with my new HTC Rhodium (at&t's tilt2, known as the Touch Pro 2 on every other carrier).

Been checking out the custom ROM's on XDA and while most are great, they all have things I don't like about them. I think I'm gonna have to learn how to use a ROM Kitchen and cook myself up a good custom ROM for this phone. It's already radically different from stock, and running 2 interfaces simultaneously, so I might as well take the next logical step and try to brick it! :-p

The amount of information available in mind boggling, but with all the incredible software out there I'm hoping I can get rid of a ton of bloat and add in my programs without using up the precious device storage and make this thing run faster than the Millennium Falcon (yeah, I went there!).

It still pains me that HTC removed the D-Pad (and many other buttons) from there phones, and basically restricted the ability to use these phones with only one hand. If only there was a way to upgrade the hardware on my trusty old HTC Wizard (Cingular 8125)...

Still, if I'm gonna have to "live with" the best phone on the US market (until the HD2 comes out early next year), I might as well make it better than new :-)

(there's also talks of porting Android to the TP2 - that might be interesting to try as well...)

Sony buys Ghostbusters game from Atari

Sony Computer Entertainment has today announced that it has bought the upcoming Ghostbusters game from Atari, just one month before the game is set for release.

The game, which is scheduled to hit shelves on June 19th, will coincide with initial filming on a third film that is also being made by Sony. Sony, obviously eager to capitalise on the popularity of the franchise, has apparently decided to make the previously multi-platform game a PlayStation exclusive.

Ghostbusters: The Game will now ship as a PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 exclusive when it is released in June, with the exclusivity lasting for several months, after which a PlayStation Portable version will be released, according to GamesIndustry.biz.

It's unclear what will happen to the remaining versions of the game, most notably the Xbox 360 release, but early reports indicate that Atari will retain the rights to publish the game on that platform at some point.

WTF????? In one move they fucked over the majority of the gaming community, and insured the game will not make nearly the amount of money it could have for them - Brilliant!

I'm almost mad enough to kick my new Sony HDTV! Almost.

SETI@home completes a decade of ET search

The SETI@home project, which has involved the worldwide public in a search for radio-wave evidence of life outside Earth, marks its 10th anniversary on May 17, 2009.

The project, based at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, records and analyzes data from the world's largest radio telescope, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The collected computing power of hundreds of thousands of volunteer PCs is used to search this data for narrow-band signals (similar to TV or cell-phone transmissions) and other types of signals of possible extraterrestrial origin.

SETI@home was conceived in 1995. Development began in 1998, with initial funding from The Planetary Society and Paramount Pictures. It was publicly launched on May 17, 1999, and the number of volunteers quickly grew to about one million.

I joined on 9/04/2000 (Profile - Account data) I'm on old man on the interwebs...

TVersity is, so far, the only DLNA server I've found to work quite well on my network (streaming to the Xbox works great), and the only thing I wanted for either the Xbox or my Roku Player was Hulu. :-D

So I find out that Tversity just released an new Pro edition of the TVersity Media Server with support for Hulu, and a ton of other major players.

Coolest thing? They offer a truly unlimited trial version - relying of customers to buy the license only after they've used it enough to actually want to pay for it!

If you have an Xbox. PS3, or any TV/set-top box with DLNA, you really should give this software a try - nothing is better than a ton of content delivered to your HD tv with ease :-)

A&E
E!
History Channel
BET
Bio
G4
Crime & Investigation
Palladia

G4 and History are good, and they finally gave us SciFi HD a few months back, but there's still a couple stations we don't even get on iO that they get on FiOS. Since the only thing I get through my Cablevision account is internet, I'm thinking of going to FiOS for internet and TV, and keeping the Cablevision DVR through my landlord so I'll have both! Of course, I'd lose the free WiFi that's nearly everywhere from Cablevision which would negate dropping the internet from my phone to cover extra TV service, but I guess I'll have to think of something...

Yesterday, I wanted to look at cheap and small TV's so I could use a small one to play my X-Box on until I bought the 52" Samsung I wanted in a few months, so I convinced my boss to go to PC Richard after we got lunch (he needed a new fridge anyway). I was just trying to gauge what the picture was like on a small-mid sized cheapo LCD, but then I spotted something that I just couldn't pass up: a 42" BRAVIA V Series LCD Flat Panel HDTV for $770.
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Seriously - they made the new Xbox "experience" an even more cumbersome thing to navigate (the old one was pretty good and efficient), but the whole idea of avatars is such a hacky kiddie thing. It wouldn't be so bad if you could get rid off all the crap. I really don't care what they're pushing with the spotlight and xbox today crap, and now it's tossed in your face so you can't ignore it, but the only thing you can hide that I can find is the Welcome to Xbox stuff. The Netflix integration is pretty good, much nicer on the surface than Roku's box (although why they used a stupid cell phone signal indicator instead of the easy to read dots like Roku is a little odd, not to mention hard to actually see on a quick glance). At least the dashboard is responsive - but other than adding in new ways to throw bigger ads at you, there really is no point to this forced "update" (Netflix could had been added to the old media blade).

edit: Installing Fallout 3 to the hard drive kicks ass. Although I doubt the shorter load times and quicker response time in-game will be as good for older games, the noise reduction from not having the obnoxiously loud optical drive alone would almost be worth paying for!

Rebuilt the hard drive unit for the Xbox360, and although finding a machine that would work was a little chore, in the end it was painless and less than half the price of buying a new official one. Plus the new hard drive has ShockGuard and SoftSeek technologies in it so it's faster, quieter, and less likely to break than the original. DIY FTW!

Remember those scumbags that handled the CompUSA liquidation? They're back...

Nothings says shit-fucker like a firm that raises prices, then "discounts" them to sell things for more than the regular selling price to screw customers.

Smart Shoppers Are Going To Circuit City Stores That Aren't Closing

By the way, the liquidator raised many prices. True TV's are 10% off the MSRP, but in many cases Circuit City was already selling them for 30% off the MSRP. Smart customers are simply going to the Circuit City 5 miles away which is not closing and offering lower prices.