Squidpunch.com

So I noticed some problems with my 360voice plugin when playing around with my 3FS blog (yeah thats right anyone can now have your very own blog at 360friendspot, go get one!).  I decided I better put together a quick fix (essentially the hyperlinks in your blog were not properly processed, and showing the actual html that creates them), while I was at it I put together a little 100% club type thing as part of the plugin.  If you didn’t know the 100% club images I built over at 360voice were done using the public APIs - and I once again used them here.

One word of warning - I used cURL this time (since my PHP knowledge has expanded a bit since the last time I worked on this plugin  (almost 1 year ago since the last update actually!)., and because my hosting actually does have cURL - I just didn’t know it.  I did not however modify the old functionality to be based on cURL or use my new way of processing the XML - maybe next update! 

So if you use my 360voiceAPI plugin for wordpress - please head on over and download the update : http://www.squidpunch.com/supported-services/360voice-plugin/

Hey Squid you skipped a week again!  Yeah I am aware, but this week of all weeks I have a pretty valid excuse, perhaps a few.  I joined a new site officially, a site is moving, and unfortunately a site is dying.  This should be an interesting update. 

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The Gamer

• So how about this?  I got myself all worked up over my chatpad not working with the wireless headset.  Probably the next day it was working, and I figured wow I am a schmuck for complaning soooooo much about that, luckily last night it did NOT work, so clearly something is up, and I am not insane.
• I finally passed the end of Act III in Gears of War for Windows - only 2 acts to go
• I finished Pirates of the Caribean: At World’s End, to add to my 100% complete list.  Soul gathering was the most annoying part.  It isn’t hard, just time consuming.  It took about 16 hours total.
• I am up to level 40 in Kingdom Under Fire.  I can see why the game gets some mediocre reviews, it really is alot of the same, and to get all the achievements is without a doubt going to be a complete grind.  I however still enjoy the game and would tell everyone that might be interested to at least give it a rental and see what you think.
• The gamerscore challenge is over, as expected Pat2k9 nabbed the prize with a serious gain over all of us.  I opened my big mouth and trash talked Kanone into beating my butt too - I did finish up with 4th place.  Considering the time I have to game, and the games I have available - it wasn’t a bad placing I guess.  

The Coder

• I continue to dabble with the code for TheLiveEye.com - still nothing obvious, really just trying to test out somethings to make it more stable, or more efficient, so far I am not sure I made any real progress actually.
• DaKing240 sent me some more ideas to expand on his contest site - which I added some of that stuff to the site, but it was mostly basic HTML and throwing some ideas out on the site to expand later.
•   At work I have been essentially rebuilding the entire framework of our existing application - its proved rather fun, frustrating, and rewarding all at the same time - the first phase is almost complete after about 2 weeks.
• I did some coding for the not ready to announce project, which by the way will be officially announced and open for discussion soon. 

The Person

• Another boring week for the non-gamer, non-coding section of this little update.  I just did the normal things, spent time with the family, watched tv, etc.
• My DVR system died, so I missed Prison Break, rather annoyed about that
• Also due to the DVR issue, I once again missed the Sarah Conner Chronicles, I guess I am just not watching this show - if I miss too many episodes in the start of a show, I just never keep up with it - anyone else watching this?
• My wife got me interested in Dexter - so we rented the first season on DVD and watched that, it was interesting, not sure if I will upgrade to include showtime or just watch box sets when they come out yet.

So I just realized that I haven’t posted about my trip last weekend to hang out with Steve (Fatty Chubs) and Trapper (ChangeAgent) from 360voice.com.  That’t not entirely true actually, I did mention it in my Status Report, but at the time of that post I had not uploaded photos. 

Friday Evening after work I headed to my wonderful small time airport awaiting my flight to Chicago.  The flight was like most flights these days delayed, but luckily they offer free internet service in the airport.  So I was able to pass my time with Zelda: Phanton Hourglass on my DS (I still haven’t come close to finishing this game - I am such a slacker), and randomly browsing forums and chatting with friends etc. 

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Well Steve and Trapper from 360voice officially announced the big thing they were working on so diligently lately, and its looking pretty cool.  You can now create and join gamerscore challenges.  Remember the Old Spice Challenge from Microsoft?  Well its that, but with a twist (and the same sponsor to boot).

Currently in an open beta format in which you simply play to be considered the winner of the challenge - but they have mentioned in future there will be a prize structure in place for some of these user created challenges. 

 Near the tail end of their Alpha phase of this project I was added as a tester - I played a few challenges and for the most part lost - but it was fun in any event.  Keeping with the blogging format, the system generates a blog entry recapping the gaming done by all attendees, and you also have the ability to talk smack to the other members of the challenge while its going on.

Another popular thing on the voice blogs are the badges, which they added some new ones based on challenges as well, so head on over and check what they have brewing.

http://blog.360voice.com/2007/11/old-spice-exper.html

 Also, it hasn’t been officially announced, but Trapper said it was OK to talk about so here goes.  Next weekend (Nov 16th) Trapper and Steve are having another 360voice Code Weekend, and I was invited to attend!  So it will be pretty cool to meet the boys in person, get some gaming, get some drinks, write some code together and discuss the future and ways that we can work together for the future!  Can’t Wait!

So recently I was contacted by dotKenneth, in relation to my work with the 360voice API.  He was looking for a way to convert the current Voice APIs to a Standard RSS format so that he could use it in his lifestream.

Just in case someone else has a need for this same process, or would like me to expand the tool to cover all the voice APIs (currently it only converts the get-score API) I have decided to list this as one of my supported services.

Check it out here

So I have created a few different wordpress plugins

• one that connects to 360voice (shown here)
• one that connects to the live eye (shown here)
• one that pulls the gamertile of the user from xbox.com if they are using their gamertag to comment (just post your feedback to see it in action) 

Does anyone actually use my plugins on your site? 
Do you care? 
Should I make more? 
If so, what would YOU like to see? 
Would you like to use the Live Eye or Xbox tile Comment Plugins?

Just looking for some feedback from those of you that visit my little blog.

Officially the only one that is publically available is the 360voice plugin, but you can see the live eye plugin in action here (and if you want to use it let me know), and finally just put a comment to see the gamertile plugin in action

It looks like they are really doing some promotion for this game, yet another community site is giving you the chance to win a copy of the History Channel Civil War. The latest giveaway is provided by 360voice.

How to Enter:

1. Send an e-mail to mail@360voice.com with the subject “Sherman’s March”.
2. In the body of the e-mail please include your gamertag.
3. You have until April 22nd at 9:00PM EST to submit your entry.

That’s it! One entry per person… the winner will be chosen at random. If you are chosen we will require a valid name and shipping address to mail your title. We can not accept entries that do not have the correct subject, received after April 22nd at 9:00PM EST or do not include your gamertag. In addition to the prize you will also get the contest winner badge!

read all the details here

Activision / History Channel - if you are reading this ( I doubt you are :)) I would love to have a similar givaway for 360friendspot but not a clue on who to get a hold of to make it happen.

after a friend looked over the code and it seems to working fine on his blog as well, I have decided to provide a download link to the 360voice plugin I created. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

My 360Voice Badges

My Latest 360Voice Entry

squidpunch’s Xbox - Jul 24 2008

I thought squidpunch just wanted to listen to music or watch a DVD. Turns out he was there to game. With a gamer score of 52,395, I should have known that was the case. That is a gain of 10 points over last time! He rocked out to Condemned 2: Bloodshot acquiring 1 achievement, and then he started getting all these friend requests because of high awesomeness levels.

I always like to end with a little bit about squidpunch and the ongoing gamerscore challenge status. Follow every up and down over here. 4 other people are also involved… which is madness. squidpunch has the number 3 spot… With 4 days to go, anything can still happen though… get on it!

My 360Voice Fav Games

My 360Voice Leaderboards

Top Gamerscore: 1760
Daily Gamerscore Change: 12320
Total Games Played: 479

100% Complete

Get this Plugin

Read More

you can read all about the plugin, and download it by going to the 360 Voice Plugin Page

Last night I played College Hoops 2k6. I rented it because it is one of the launch games that I have never played and I play a launch game from time to time working on the 360 voice Launch King Badge. It is amazing the difference in games these days. I mean I know that sports games are notorious for somewhat simple achievements, but this only have 5 achievements worth 1000 points. If that wasnt enough I got 3 of them by simply playing one game! This is definately a far cry from the more current titles with 50 achievements and ALOT more effort to obtain them. I guess to make an honest comparism I should rent College Hoops 2k7.