Archive for the 'Microsoft' Category
I first saw this nice little trick a year or so ago. A fellow admin and friend of mine, Tommy, used a Bluetooth® headset to automatically lock his Windows machine whenever he stepped away from his computer and his headset was no longer in range of his PC’s Bluetooth® dongle. I don’t remember how I stumbled upon this blog post yesterday, but I am glad I did. This post shows you how to implement a similar solution using an application called Proximity and some AppleScripts to achieve the same result.
The cool thing about this solutions for the Mac is that the events that are triggered when the specified Bluetooth® device enters and leaves the Mac’s Bluetooth® proximity are AppleScripts. AppleScripts allow you to easily program for the Mac. AppleScripts are pretty much the same thing as shell scripts for any other operating system and command line environment, like batch scripts for Windows and Bash or C Shell scripts for Unix based and derived operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD. Basically, with a solution like this, you aren’t tied to the developer’s ideas of what should happen when you step away from your machine. The ball is totally in your court and your goal is only limited by your creativity and your programming ability.
Last night, Chris and I played the mess out of some Crackdown over Xbox Live on our Xbox 360’s. What a night!
Chris and I played until 1:30AM this morning co-op and I believe he played single player until like 4:00AM this morning. We were jumping over everything, picking up everything, killing everybody, and blowing everything up. It was a lot of fun. The last time I played this game was when Joey and I played some online co-op. That was a month or so ago and after playing last night, I am going to have to put some more time into this game. It is extremely cool!
So, here’s the deal. If you don’t have a 360, get one. Once you get your 360, go out and buy a copy of Crackdown. Then, once you’re signed up on Xbox Live, add “Cocoa Crusty” to your Xbox Live Friends List and let’s get the carnage on!
Until next time!
First of all, let me just ask, is it 11:54PM or 10:54PM… My mind and body can’t tell. The time change last night appears to have taken place already on all of my physical clocks, computers, etc., but my mind hasn’t really caught on yet. Just to be safe I have ironed my clothes for tomorrow and have already shaved my head and face. I don’t expect that my alarm going off at 6:35AM (5:35AM “my time”) tomorrow morning will have a very nice effect on me and I just might get up a little late… We’ll see.
I should also let everyone know (you know who all 3.234 of you are) that I didn’t ever get around to creating my giant poster (or was it a huge poster?) this weekend. I ended up doing some things around the house, working on a couple of projects for FS, and went to work today with Chris.
Last night, while playing World of Warcraft, I installed the latest version of Microsoft’s Windows operating system, Windows Vista Ultimate. Since I am a Mac “fanboy” now, I installed Vista on my MacBook using Parallels Desktop for Mac. Running the latest and greatest offering in the Windows realm on a virtual machine (VM) may seem crazy, but let me tell you, it runs great!
In order to install Vista in a VM on my Mac, I had to first install Windows XP because the version I have of Vista Ultimate is an upgrade version. The Vista installer has to be run from within the operating system you are upgrading. No more booting to the upgrade CD, showing it a full version CD and giving it a product key. Now it has to be installed from within the OS you’re upgrading. Oh, well. I installed another licensed version of Windows XP into a VM and as soon as the install was completed, popped the Vista DVD in and was on my way.
When installing Vista, make sure you have at least 16GB of disk space available for the OS to install itself and some room left over for installing applications and patches/updates. It is pretty beefy, but overall the install went very smoothly. I was impressed that the OS installed so painlessly in Parallels. Nice!
So, now to do some testing. I have little experience with Vista at this point and since it is the latest and greatest from Microsoft, I figure I should become familiar with it. You never know, Windows XP could be EOL‘d tomorrow and everyone would be forced to move to Vista or never receive another update for their OS. It has happened before, it could happen tomorrow, I’m just saying…
Again, while my experience with Vista is limited, I can tell you this about running Vista in a VM with Parallels: No Fancy 3D Eye Candy. All of the really nifty, 3D, Mac-like features Vista includes require DirectX 9.0 or greater. Either Parallels doesn’t have support for it or the video card in my MacBook can’t get down like that. Either way, the OS looks great and I am only missing eye candy, which I already get plenty of from my Mac. Everything else appears to work flawlessly.
Until next time…
I fired up my Xbox 360 this evening and was greeted by a wonderful sight on the 360 Dashboard. An old school favorite of mine was being advertised for sale in the Xbox Live Marketplace, Paperboy. I have played Paperboy for years and love every minute. I have played it in the arcade, on my Nintendo SNES, and on my original Xbox on Midway Arcade Treasures.
Oh, don’t think the fun stopped there because it didn’t! I fired up my Nintendo Wii, checked out the Wii Shop Channel, and saw that Kid Icarus for the original NES and Super Mario World for the SNES were recently addes and available for purchase and download. You better believe I pulled both of these titles down to the Wii. I remember playing these games back in the day and having a blast!
I think Microsoft and Nintendo are on the right track by making classic games available for “now-gen” consoles. I have purchased about 6 titles from the Wii Shop Channel and around 16 from the Xbox Live Marketplace. I mean, how cool is it that you can play games like Frogger, Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Joust, Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and now the games I mentioned above, on a current piece of hardware with some graphic and gameplay upgrades (Xbox only for graphic upgrades, 360 Achievement Points, and online gameplay)?
Being the Old School Player that I am, I really enjoy sitting down for some old school gaming and then turning around and playing next-gen games that blow anything away with amazing graphics, audio, and gameplay. Gaming has come a long way but it is still nice to see that these major players in the gaming industry still make the old school titles and franchises available to us for cheap.
Until next time…
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