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So after my post yesterday I was headed out the door of the hotel to wait for Trapper and Steve for the BBQ as I said.  I would have never guessed how the rest of that night played out though - sure some of it went as I expected - food, rock band, and meeting Trapper’s wife and kids, but so much more happened.

I left the hotel, and there wwas noise and banging going on everywhere, then I noticed a bunch of streets shut down - apparently it was Pride day, and there was a parade going through - so to try and keep the boys from having to deal with closed roads and congestion from the parade, I thought I would be smart and take the subway over towards Steve’s apartment.  Well I thought I was a big shot and knew what I was doing, unitl I realized I went 3 subway stops the wrong direction, ending up deeper into Boston - no big deal right?  Just hop off and get on the other direction to make up for the mistake.  Except when I  got on the other train it kept stopping and waiting for trains ahead of us, extending the time it was taking to get there - and of course being underground my cell wasn’t really working so there was no way to warn them of my screw up.

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Well Ymiris finally talked me into doing the podcast I always said I wanted to do for 360friendspot. head on over and check it out.

First episode, a pilot if you will, where Ymiris and Squidpunch get together to talk about gaming in general, some of the recent releases and gaming news. This is the first time I was actually running the recorder, doing the editing, etc - so hopefully it came out all right for you guys.

If you want to send us some feedback or be on the show email us at podcast@360friendspot.com

head on over and check out the show: http://www.360friendspot.com/2008/05/12/friendcast-episode-1/

Not 100% sure what is going on - I got an email from the host about high CPU usage and was attempting to look at the things they provided me as troubleshooting steps, but they seemed to have disabled the site for now.

I know the traffic was up more then it has been in quite some time, but it wasn’t high enough that it should have been affecting the CPU usage of the shared server (which is what they mentioned in the email from support).

So I am currently waiting for a response from support about the site, and if the site was going to be this active on a regular basis I definately would have to start looking into upgraded the hosting plan again - all though it really looks like there is some problem with one of the apps I have running on the site which is what is slowing it (and apparently many other sites) down.

I’ll post more if/when I know more to post!

Today was an interesting day to say the least.  For starters, I was in charge of a pretty big change at work - the task at hand was to change a single server which currently houses about 5 live websites, as well as the databases for those webistes and about 15 or so windows applications (and even an access 97 database ’application’) to be split into two brand new beefier servers.  One for those websites, and the other for the database server.  So that involved updating all those sites to run against a remote database and updating all of the applications to point to a new database server - and just for some extra spice we upgraded from SQL 2000 to SQL 2005.  Today was the fall out from that change this weekend - which actually had very little issues, so job well done i guess!

Next on the plate was this little site called UnlockTheAchievement.com - it seems to be a bit popular, maybe you have heard of it?  I knew it was going to do pretty well, but it has surpassed (at least my) expectations…I am just glad that the code all works - though the server has had its trouble off and on, I don’t think it is code related.  The server has been hit with a pretty good amount of traffic from, xbox360fanboy.com, xbox.com, digg.com as well as the 40 some community sites which are hiding the images as well as promoting the site.  From that site has been a pretty good amount spillage over to my blog here (I have never had this many visitors!) as well as 360friendspot.  Both of them are hosted on my shared hosting plan - which apparently is taking a pretty big performance hit from the new found traffic (oops!).

…If you code it….they will come

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/

Got a press release for the movie based game “Spiderwick Chronicles” which shipped today.   It is coming to us from Sierra Entertainment and developed by Stormfront Studios releasing on most platforms (even PS2 - I didn’t even know they were still releasing PS2 Games!).  I am downloading images and box art  as I post this and will submit links to the images once I have them available.  I normally think that movies that are games and games that are movies usually end up not delivering, but the last couple I gave a real chance ended up pretty enjoyable.

Keep reading for the official press release

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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.

What: Undertow
When: 1/23 - 1/27
How Much: FREE!

Don’t forget to nab your free copy of Undertow before the 27th, and of those of you that all ready paid for a copy - don’t forget to call support and get your 800 points!  I called support earlier, about my wireless problems, and happened to bring it up - they told me that I should get 800 points within 24-72 hours.  I asked if it would just happen or if I had to call, they said it would have just happened - but if I were you, I would call to make sure.

So recently I got the Messenger Kit, and previously I had the wireless headset.  As I posted not long after getting the messenger kit, I found out that it is not possible to use the Messenger Kit and MY wireless headset together (same problem I saw with the DDR dancemat so long ago).  I just accepted that it wouldn’t work with the dance pad, but now the addition of the chatpad starts to annoy me.  There was no warning on any of the packages of the wireless headset, the DDR Mat, OR the messenger kit indicating they cannot work together, yet clearly mine does not.

Strangely enough a friend of mine said he uses his wireless headset and has the messenger kit connected all the time - so that got me thinking that perhaps its just my headset - and I called support.  Support WILL replace my headset, but its going to cost me $59.99 - yeah thats what it would cost me at the store on any normal day - and I might be able to find a sale for even less.  I understand that you cannot support a product forever, but the fact that I got the wireless headset when they first came out, and the messenger kit just recently makes it physically impossible to see a compatability problem between the two devices within the 90 warranty - so how is it fair I have to rebuy a device because the one I bought was defective - but coudnt possibly know that until almost a year later.  Needless to say, I don’t use the wireless headset enough to justify paying essentially $120 for it, forget all the bad reviews, and times I remember hearing - “reset your F***ing mic” on Gears of War because of the weird feedback it would give in that game - I wont be getting a new one.

But now I wonder - what other devices have compatibility problems with my wireless headset - and how many people are having similar issues.  Leave a comment - I am curious what devices you have and if the wireless headset works or not.

The xbox 360 has quite a few accessories out now, and all of them SHOULD be supported with the wireless headset, since I cannot find any verbage saying otherwise, but I am curious how many people have working combinations - and how many have similar problems to mine

So the rumors have been flying for a while now, but is it true?  This is supposedly a video of our beloved Golden Eye 007 in the flesh - Xbox Live Arcade style..

No achievements, and could simply be an edit job - I tend to think it MIGHT be fake, but with the number of rumors floating around perhaps the game itself is a truth….  What do you think?