Monthly Archive for November, 2005

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Put your Mac to sleep via an MMS

Published on Wednesday, November 23, 2005 in Apple, Internet, Technology and Wireless. Closed

So you now you can put your Mac to sleep wherever you are, using your MMS capable phone. MSS is rather like a text message, except you can set it to send to an email. Which is how this funky Automator workflow works. The above version is the most basic form, without the reception of the email. The email part is taken care with Apple’s Mail and a rule inside that.

You need to send an MMS message to your own email address and make a note of the email address it comes from – the ones I send from my phone are in the form 447890126456@mms.vodafone.co.uk with the “7890123456″ being replaced with my actual mobile phone number.

The success of this process relies on you having your Mac set to automatically check for emails periodically – if yours is set like this then, erm, good.

When I have time over the weekend I’ll be sure to try this out, though I still have to figure what use I would get from it.

Mac Mini is sick…

Published on Wednesday, November 23, 2005 in Apple, General and Technology. Closed

… or was sick. After having my mini for over 2 months this was the first problem that had arisen. It seemed that when I tried to launch Word or any Office application as well as a number of other programs they would crash for some unknown reason. The screenshot can be seen above. After googling for almost an entire night it seemed the only choice was Terminal (like MS-DOS for mac) or re-installing Tiger. I didn’t like the latter so I started with Terminal. It required delving into the unknown, which I did. Time and time again the same error would happen. So I had to reinstall Tiger. This was bad, or so I thought. It is not like Windows. There is an option called “Archive and Install” which keeps your setting and work and just reinstalls Tiger. My applications, games and work are all untouched. Continue reading ‘Mac Mini is sick…’

Xbox 360 Errors: It’s begun…

Published on Wednesday, November 23, 2005 in Gaming, Internet, Microsoft and Technology. 7 Comments

So you know how I mentioned a while ago that someone spotted the 360 crashing in Wal-Mart, well now someone has actually experienced it on their retail version of the 360.

Some early adopters are discovering that waiting on line in the cold for two years to snag a box was the least of their problems: the game consoles are allegedly crashing during a variety of games and reporting a range of error messages. There’s even a pic up on flickr that purports to show the 360 crashing as the Microsoft logo loads.

I hope that this is just a one off to people who have 1st Gen 360′s. Like with the original Xbox Microsoft will fix minor problems and release them as a newer ‘version’ (seen in the about settings of the original Xbox). Even with that it shouldn’t really happen. Maybe it was because of the cold? Who knows, either way Microsoft better get this sorted out quickly or there maybe an epidemic. I wonder if this is just an anomaly or will we be seeing it here in the UK come December 2nd?

UPDATE: “Microsoft spokeswoman Molly O’Donnell told Reuters, “We have received a few isolated reports of consoles not working as expected.” She went on to say that, “With any launch of this magnitude, you’re bound to see something happening.”” [LINK]

Xbox 360 has landed, in the US at least

Published on Tuesday, November 22, 2005 in Gaming, Microsoft and Technology. Closed

For those of you lucky enough to be in the US you may or may not have bought an Xbox 360 (if you don’t know what one is then you don’t belong on the internet!) With the launch last night many shops (including Best Buy) closed early at around 6PM to get everything ready for midnight when the 360 launches. Many people arrived early to get in line and wait. Louis, a college student, had this to say:

The reason I’m here is because Gamestop didn’t have enough, and I really wanted the system the first day. Waiting 13 hours, out in the rain, 40-degree weather, but it’s all good.

To be honest I wouldn’t like to wait for that amount of time. But some people are crazy and are dying to get their ‘box’s. I really couldn’t wait on December 1st because I have school the next day! But if it December 2nd was a Saturday I would be happy to queue and wait for the launch. That is if I had the money to buy it. But since Santa is getting it for me (aren’t you Santa??) I don’t need to. I live in quite a small town so I don’t think the queue would really be that long, as in 1 and a half hours after launch and you’re still in the queue. That was what some people had experienced at their Best Buy. There are lots of postings and pictures of the queues and people buying 360′s so I’ll leave you with the links. If you have any comments, feel free to add them.
360 Launch Party at Best Buy Manhattan | Best Buy Launch Pictures | Xbox 360 Fanboy – It’s here

Xbox 360 Zero Hour Update

Published on Monday, November 21, 2005 in Gaming, Microsoft and Technology. Closed

Hopefully you’re all clued up about the Xbox 360 Zero Hour event. If not well then, simply put it is an exclusive party for selected people (From the European ‘OrigenXbox360′ contest or the American ‘Hex168′) to try out the new Xbox with Live, hang out and chill. It is a really fun even (from what I’ve heard) and everyone is having a blast. It started last night and goes on for 32 hours straight. It was in a secret location (airport hanger) in the Mojave Desert. Strange location, yes, but Microsoft really didn’t want any prying eyes. Some people have left, god knows why as I would stay there until I could (all those games!) Anyway, there has been lots of news, pictures and posting around this event so I will leave you with some links. I wish I was there. The people who went got lots of free stuff, including a 360 Memory Card and 3 Month Subscription to Xbox Live (do you really think they would have given more months?)

Xbox.com Zero Hour Page | Team Xbox Post | Zero Hour Flickr images

Front Row on my Mac

Published on Monday, November 21, 2005 in Apple, General, Internet, Movies, Podcasting and Technology. Closed

First of all I’m going to say I do not condone hacking nor piracy. What I have done is purely for educational purposes only. So please don’t sue me Apple, I don’t have any money. Because of the nature of this ‘experiment’ I cannot provide links from where I got the files. All I can say is I used Apple’s legitimate Front Row updater to update the Front Row on the new iMac’s (w/ iSight) from v1 to v1.0.1. Pictures after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Front Row on my Mac’

WordPress and K2 Updated

Published on Sunday, November 20, 2005 in General. Closed

I decided to upgrade to the latest version of K2 (my theme in wordpres) after noticing that they have had another upgrade and I had some free time. Mostly I didn’t want to upgrade because I made a lot of changes in K2 that I really didn’t want to re-write. But I will have to do that sooner or later so everything that isn’t where it should be will get replaced. If you see anything that should be here but isn’t then leave a comment to this post.
I also updated WordPress (to a Beta version) as I saw a story on digg about this and that it had a ton of cool features. I’m glad to say it does, there are many changes which are good and intersting, some will take time getting used to. I will make a seperate post about the changes later.

Gamestop Warning: Website orders for 360 won’t ship until 2006

Published on Saturday, November 19, 2005 in Gaming, Internet, Microsoft and Technology. 2 Comments

For some it can be annoying to find out that just when you are about to order your 360 from a site such as Gamestop.com, that they place a banner saying they have ran out of 360′s and the next allotment will ship in 2006. Michel Cassius, Head of Xbox Europe, told the Official Xbox Magazine that they were assured that Microsoft had geared its production of the Xbox 360 with a view to continuous stock shipments flowing into stores after launch. It looks like Gamestop cannot guarantee this therefore they are posting red bold letters on each Xbox page to make everyone aware. Microsoft has also previously admitted that some US consumers will be disappointed on November 22, but they have denied claims that stock levels are being kept low on purpose to create a greater demand. A lot of retailers in the UK have posted that their first batch of 360′s have all been pre-ordered but you can “still order yours today in the hopes of receiving it before Christmas“. I hope I can get a 360 for Christmas and not have to wait until god-knows-when for the next shipment.
I found a good comment that tells a person’s first hand experience with their order from HMV.

I pre-ordered my 360 the first of September with HMV and was just told that they will be luck to get 10 per store so I’m going to head to ASDA at midnight and run the gauntlet to get one as I’ve been told they are getting 100′s per store and will not be pre-selling… guess we’ll find out what’s what in a couple weeks!

This is not very encouraging, and to think that they pre-ordered it 3 months ago. Will there be hoards of unhappy people come December 2nd or happy faces? We shall see, not long left now…

Screenshots from Xbox 360 games

Published on Saturday, November 19, 2005 in Gaming, Microsoft and Technology. Closed

Here are the pictures:

Kameo: Elements of Power

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter

Call of Duty 2

Perfect Dark Zero

Condemned: Criminal Origins

Project Gotham Racing 3

Quite a few games had commentary behind it to show what is new in the 360 and how the games have managed to utilise these features. Pick up the magazine for yourself to see the videos and read the interesting articles inside. The DVD that the pictures are from had two sections of videos. A ‘Trailers’ section from which I got the pictures from, and and ‘X05 Special’. I’m not sure what that means but the footage from those weren’t too bad either. Now back to the mag…

Official Xbox 360 Magazine

Published on Saturday, November 19, 2005 in Gaming, Microsoft and Technology. 2 Comments

So I was looking around town today and I bought a copy of the latest Official Xbox 360 Magazine. This is the second issue which you can see above. It came with a free DVD showing footages from games, both in game footage and trailer/teasers. There were also interviews included with some devlopers of some games. I had a quick peek and I was ashamed to see that a lot of the footage was either not very good quality or you could see that it hadn’t be done very well. Obviously some had been transcoded a couple of times which means the quality of the videos didn’t show me what I wanted to see from the Xbox 360. The only good high quality video was from Kameo. But even that was a trailer/teaser and not real in-game footage. I have made some screenshots of the games which I will post later. Right now I’m going to start reading the mag!