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Well I just got the best email I have recieved in a while.

Hi, you’ve been selected to win a copy of Gears of War signed by Major Nelson

Please reply back with

1. Your real name

2. Your mailing address

3. Your phone number

Thanks for participating in the Xbox All-Nighter, and congratulations!

-TriXie

Now I just sit and wait!

Hey everyone, just a quick post to let those that read this blog know that I am still around. I just am not gaming very much or on the computer much these days because of the holidays - but also because of our new baby in the house. Read my Family Blog for more details if you want.

I have a few small development tasks for the live eye that if I am lucky I can get done sometime soon - and I just found out that DeaconBlade 360 would like to talk about the live eye on his next show on Unscripted360 blog - and possibly interview me afterwards……I am not much of a public speaker but I have accepted the offer- I hope I dont end up sounding like a complete fool.

Live Eye Public API:
I have just completed the first 3 public api’s for the live eye, complete with samples here on my blog (here). The current APIs allow you to:

• Get a summary of the minutes spent on each game type
• Get a listing of your most recent activities (max 10)
• and to Get a listing of your overall top activities with the ability to filter out game types that you dont want inlcuded

some final touches, and these will be opened up to any live eye user that wants to use them =)

Voice Plugin now contains:

• Most Recent Blog entry
• Badges
• and Top 5 games

It is starting to take up more and more space on my sidebar - I may end up storing it in a page for demonstration purposes. If I am going to actually release it as a tool that others can put on their blog, I need to include ways to customize which “chunks” are shown, and perhaps even some formatting of those chunks. It will probably be a while (if ever) before I provide the plugin for download - mostly because I am by far no PHP expert, but also this is the first time I have tried to create a plugin - and I definately have a great deal to learn.

it is starting to take up a bit more space on the sidebar then I personally want to give on this site at the moment - so for now I moved it down to the bottom of the sidebar. Edit the plugin has its own page now

I was up much later then I care to admit working on a wordpress plugin. Not being extremely familar with PHP, or creating plugins added to the fact that what I decided to create uses a remote XML source, it was an interesting learning experience. The worse part about it is I had it completely working on my local test server and got a random CGI error here on the webhost. I modified the way I was parsing the XML and it seemed to resolve the problem. I might provide it for others as a download - if someone is looking for such a plug in. Currently the plugin generates a block for the 360voice Badges you have recieved. I might expand it to use some of the other API’s they provide.

This was mostly a learning experience so that I could get a better understanding on how to retrieve XML data from a remote source and use it in PHP - so that I can do so with some of the Live Eye APIs that I am currently building. The fact that I built it as a Wordpress Plugin - I just wanted to see if I could build one, and make it easier to integrate into my blog =)

Edit: well browsing the voice boards I found that the Bits Plugin all ready is a wordpress plugin that pulls up your blog entries, however it doesnt provide access to the badges - and it is having the same exact problems I was having on my first version of my plug in. I would guess this is something to do with the XML Parsing function, perhaps its not enabled on my hosting server or something like that - just letting everyone know that there is a plug-in all ready available that is similar to what I started here…..considering my PHP knowledge - it’s probably written a lot better =)

looks like they finally got some much needed patches read for this arcade title:

• Game-play has been sped up
• Auto Post blinds!
• Get in the game faster: You can now pay the big blind as soon as you join the table to start gaming faster (if you so choose to do so).
• Away Mode - the standard auto post blinds, auto fold hands us internet poker folk are used to
• Auto-Boot mode - kick out players that let the time expire more then 3 time times in one game
• Overall game pace has been increased (timers & messages for example)
• Blinds - structure modified so that intial blinds as well as increases make more sense for the table stakes
• Matching system revised: Players will no longer be matched into a game they cannot afford to join
• Improved Controls - making it easier to raise or lower stake amount for example
• Leaderboards - your full winnings and rank now properly show
• Art and Text Updated (also fixed some spelling errors)
• Known Online Exploits have been address - this will the leaderboards to be wiped - making the game a fair level playing ground

strangely enough (perhaps I missed it) they still are not providing camera support for the game…?
Edit: Apparently camera support is coming early 2007