David Gardiner - XBox

Christmas 2010

2010-12-26T21:38:00.002+10:30

It's been a big Christmas season in the Gardiner family this year. Last week we dressed up as New Testament-era characters in Aberfoyle Uniting's re-creation of Bethlehem in "The Road to Christmas". Thursday evening Narelle and I joined some friends for carol singing at a local hospital, then Christmas Eve we attended church as a family. It was a good service, and included this thought-provoking modern-day take on what Mary and Joseph went through:

On Christmas day we were hosting immediate family at our place for lunch, and were then joined by some extra friends for tea. Narelle had a thought a few weeks back that to cater for this many people, a second fridge would be useful. After checking out some second-hand stores, I ended up bidding (and winning) one on eBay.

It has been a great fridge. It fitted all we needed to fit in it, and saved all those minutes of "angst" when trying to fit the leftovers in it after lunch and tea. I must say that Narelle did an amazing job – the meat and veggies were perfectly cooked...and the pudding was out of this world.

(Narelle added the above two paragraphs while I was playing Kinect) But I agree, the fridge was a great idea. The day started at not an unreasonable time. We'd been to Church the previous evening, so things weren't so rushed in the morning. The XBox 360 + Kinect has proved a big success. Our family present this year, and all the family has been having a go - even our youngest (though sometimes to the frustration of other players!) – she can play some of the games, though some of the finer controls are too tricky for her yet. We've had a lot of fun playing:

Kinect Adventures – a great intro to Kinect and physical fun
Kinectimals – very imaginative game
Dance Central – funky dancing
Kinect Joy Ride – fun car driving – 2 players at a time

(Kinectimals and Kinect Joy Ride were presents, the other two titles came with the bundle). So far I'm totally impressed. The only thing I could wish for would be some family-friendly titles to be published that can have more than two players at one time (I've heard Kinect can track up to 6 people, though I think you'd need lots of space for that).

One of my other favourite presents had me up far later than I should have been Christmas night. I was only thinking the other day when we were watching "A Muppet Christmas Carol" that one of the best things to ever come out of the USA is Jim Henson's Muppets. That thought was reinforced by me getting a copy of Sesame Street: A Celebration of 40 Years of Life on the Street. A fascinating read so far.

Extra copper

2010-12-12T07:58:00.001+10:30

I had one regret when we did our house extension a few years ago. I'd neglected to install network points next to the TV antenna outlet that I'd put in our family room (what was I thinking!). This meant that the Media Centre has been operating on wireless for the last few months since we relocated it from another room. Not ideal, even though it's very close to the access point, and I also suspect the wireless drivers are responsible for the Media Centre machine constantly waking up from sleep-mode even though nothing was scheduled to record.

Replacing a skirting board provided an opportunity to hide some cables and remedy the situation. I was initially just going to put one cable in, but then figured that if I'm going to put in one, I might as well put in two. Plus, there's that special family Christmas present that might appreciate a network connection pretty soon (It rhymes with "Textbox Elect", and we're exercising great restraint in not opening the box until December 25th! We ended up getting the 250GB bundle from Harvey Norman – though don't let them try and sell you a more expensive bundle with a ripoff $50 HDMI cable)

I'd pulled the cables up into the ceiling in the family room a few weeks ago (along with replacing the skirting board), but only yesterday got time to finish the job and run them into our storeroom (where the modem and switches are).

I managed to pull one of the existing cables back up into the ceiling, tie the new cables onto it, then pull them all back down through the wall cavity into the storeroom (if that hadn't worked, I'd have had to resort to drilling a hole in the ceiling cornice and running some conduit down the wall).

I'd bought a new wallplate and fittings from Jaycar, so I connected those up and hooked in the existing F-type connector. I did discover that the wallplate was probably intended to be mounted vertically (as the network points would only mount sideways), but I can live with that. It's all hidden behind a sidetable/cabinet anyway.

I then plugged the cables into my 1GBit switch and tested them out in the Media Center. Even though the cable and fittings are only CAT 5e, so far I've managed to the existing cables to run at 1Gbit. Not this time, both were only connecting at 100Mb 😢. I didn't have a lot of spare cable to play with at the wallplate end, but I wondered if I had untwisted the copper pairs too much when I'd hooked them up to the wallplate jacks. I re-did one, taking extra care to keep the pairs twisted until right up to where the wires got punched in. Bingo, 1Gbit! I tried the same with the second, but unfortunately it was still at 100Mbit. Oh well – one out of two isn't too bad.

Now just to wait patiently for two more weeks until we can play with our XBox 360 and the Kinect controller. Should be a great way to work off Christmas lunch!

It's all happening!

2010-11-17T21:29:00.001+10:30

First Windows Phone 7 was release last month.. (still haven't got one but am warming to the Samsung Omnia 7(broken link, was originally www omnia7 samsungmobile com))

Then the first CTP of SQL Server 'Denali' was released last week..

And tomorrow (18th) Microsoft's Kinect for XBox 360 is released in Australia.

Don't tell the kids, but I'm thinking this might be the Gardiner family Christmas present this year!

Prices I've seen so far:

Big W 4G Bundle (1 games) $398, 250G Bundle (1 game) $528
EB Games 4G Bundle $461 (1 game), 250G Bundle (1 game) $549
Dick Smith 4G Bundle (2 games) $448, 250G Bundle (2 games) $548
JB HiFi 4G Bundle (1 game) $389, 250G Bundle (3 games) $549

Update 18th Nov, 9pm

Discovered good forum discussion on Economical Gamer site, which highlights Harvey Norman 4G Bundle (2 games) $468

The country of XBox

2007-01-08T13:10:00.001+10:30

I saw this sign out the front of the local video shop a few weeks ago, and last weekend remembered to take a photo of it!. It's a bit surprising, as I would have thought you would pick 'console' before 'consul' as the more well-known/spelled word. I suppose they do have those 'alternate world' games to which you might want to have diplomatic relations!