Perhaps my expectations for it were too high, expecting things like plot and decent graphics…. you know things games aren’t expected to deliver (apparently).

My qualms with Borderlands are simple…

1. There is no plot, or at least none to the point I played. You’re a character, on a planet, in a town… all of which you know nothing about or the history of it. Because of this, the endless list of “quests” turns into a laundry, or “todo” list. It almost feels like work after a while.

2. The graphics, although stylized, were designed almost to compensate for the game engine’s terribly slow loading time. It’s a feature of the Unreal engine to load low-res textures as a place holder while the full res textures are loaded and rendered. Because of this if you venture through the world too quickly, your screen is awash in murky, flat textures. Some people see it as part of the style; I see it as a lame compensation for a poor game engine.

3. The AI is stupid. Do yourself a favor and play as a sniper. If you’re far enough away, even standing in the wide open, you can pick people off without them even moving! As a low level character it took me 60 shots, but I was able to kill a higher level character because he just stood in place while I was lighting him up.

I can see how this game strokes people’s egos in the sense that you continuously build up your character and find newer weapons (which I’ll admit, there are plenty of). The game lacks substance though, which to me is paramount when committing a large slice of my time to playing a game.

So I’ll follow the trend many user reviews are following and create an equation to describe borderlands:

(((Fallout 3 – Plot) – Graphics) – Production Value) + Weapons = Borderlands

Borderlands SUCKS!

Bookmark It

What’s the big deal you ask? Well, from where I’m standing it would seem that historically cellular providers wanted to maintain a good bit of control over devices on their networks. Some providers limiting functionality to BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices depending on your level of service, while others such as Verizon installed their own Java based software platform on every phone.

Enter Android.

Android is an open source operating system for mobile devices, superficially targeting cell phones. I was floored when I was reading the initial release announcement and subsequent news articles regarding Android. Were cellular providers ready to release all control of the handset to the consumer? Safeguards be damned?

Contrary to my initial fears, it would seem that Android didn’t cause as many security concerns as I thought and honestly is probably the most widely used Linux distribution by the average user (including any desktop installations). So if anything, the “Year of the Linux Desktop” can be claimed as 2009 if you consider a smart phone a desktop

My previous concerns were brought back into the light recently with news articles about the Amazon Kindle being hacked to run Linux and the Android based Barnes & Noble Nook being unlocked as a fully functional Android device. My concerns?

As noted in the Nook article, these devices are now fully authorized cellular data network devices (free of charge, might I add) that are unlocked to be used for anything. Granted with the limited horsepower provided by these e-Readers prohibits many applications, but  it remains possible that in the future someone could hack a Nook or Kindle to be a free wireless modem.

See the problem?

I’m not saying open platforms aren’t the way to go. Nor am I arguing as a consumer that closed platforms offer any benefit for me. What I’m saying is that such issues bring up concerns for both the companies and the consumers on how to have open platforms and capitalist America living side by side.

That’s just my $0.02 anyways.

Bookmark It

I’ve been working on my first retail product and I’m really excited about it!

After trying to secure a 3rd party trading bot for Magic The Gathering Online (MTGO) v3 from Wizards of the Coast (WotC), I decided it was time to strike out on my own and write one. A lot of people had done so already using automation software (like AutoIT), but I went the path of a more professional software development environment and wrote it in .NET using C# and WCF.

WCF you ask? Yep! I don’t want to dive into the details too much at the moment but it will revolve around a central data hub providing real time updates to users of the application (vs. having to download and deploy a new version every time an update is published from WotC). There will be a bunch of good features as well!

I wanted to poll people on pricing though. I’ve seen prices for ‘Simple’ Magic Online trading bots for anywhere from $99 to $399! And to that, I haven’t even been able to find the price of a ‘Smart Bot’ anywhere, as it seems the people who build them keep the software to themselves.

What I’m thinking about doing is setting up a monthly pricing model. Here’s the matrix:

 Trade Bot: Your basic Magic Online trading bot. “Buying/Selling x Cards for x Tickets” or “Trading x Uncommons for x Rares”

Smart Bot: Each card in your library can be assigned a specific price. You’re running a Virtual Store on Magic Online.

Some features I’m working on for the Smart Bot will be:

• User Credit System (and ability to create Credit Network spanning multiple bots)
• Interactive Website Showing Sales History / Income Information

I’m offering a time based licensing because I think it’s the most fair pricing structure for this type of software.

So I’m curious to hear back from anyone who stumbles across this blog post! I want to hear features and requests you would have for such a piece of software! I know Magic Trading bots are a shadey business at best, but I wanted to try to make a legitamite alternative to having to pay a lot of money up front for a piece of software you might not like.

I’ll try to post some screen shots of the bot in action while I’m testing it. I’m really excited about this project!

Cheers!

Bookmark It

The DNS-323 has been a great NAS! I had my doubts at first with a D-Link product, since in the past their networking products that I’ve used haven’t been quality. So my issue was, how do I upgrade from a RAID1 on a two-drive NAS to a new fault tolerant system that has at LEAST 1.5TB of storage. I mean, if you’re going to upgrade you need to make it count, so doubling the capacity of my current NAS was the primary goal.

I did some research and with NewEgg running a sale on the hardware, I settled on the Intel SS4200-E NAS. On the spec sheet, this NAS met my requirements because it supported up to four drives, RAID5 and RAID10! Technical reviews I found of the device put it at the top of the chart when it comes to RAID5 performance.

The inhabitants of the Intel SS4200-E NAS was going to be four Hitachi 1TB drives.

Intel SS4200 NAS

Well, let me backtrack a bit and go over the problem that brought me to even write this post.

Because I already had two 750GB SATA drives in my D-Link DNS-323 NAS, my plan was to setup a 1TB RAID1 in the Intel SS4200-E using only TWO Hitachi 1TB drives. Once the data was copied over, I would re-purpose the 750GB SATA drives in my old NAS as an additional 750GB RAID1 in the Intel NAS. Sounds simple, right? Wrong.

The first major flaw I found with this unit is that it only allows ONE CONTAINER PER DEVICE. Meaning if you have 2x Drives, you’re running a RAID1 or RAID0. If you have 4x Drives, you’re running a RAID5 or RAID10. That’s it! There is no way with the Intel SS4200-E NAS to setup two containers! I could have two independant RAID1 containers, even though I was using four drives!

What the crap?! So much for a business class NAS from Intel!

So I ended up having to buy two more Hitachi 1TB drives (which isn’t too bad, being they’re only $79 on Amazon with FREE SHIPPING! ) and finally settled on a 2.7TB RAID5.

Hardware setup was super easy as the Intel SS4200-E is an ‘almost’ tool free setup. I say almost because some of the thumb screws SHOULD be tightened with a screw driver

Intel SS4200 NAS

The software, EMC LifeLine, is pretty well polished compared to the D-Link and other NAS offerings. It makes great use of AJAX to display real time system status information on the screens and gives you even small features that other NAS devices might overlook. Small things like LED brightness, which trust me, when your office is near the bedroom, this one is a huge feature!

Intel markets this NAS as an entry-level and SOHO NAS. So it’s very entry level, to a fault. Other features are lacking such as FTP support. Your only option with FTP is to turn it On or Off. That’s it! You can’t configure even basic options such as port, permissions of quotas. So be warned if you’re looking into using this NAS as anymore more than at home storage.

The Media Server that comes with it is alright. My XBox 360 saw it without issue and was able to stream all types of media off of it without issue (such as MP3 and DivX). My only gripe with the Media Server is that you have to manually re-scan for updates. I’m not sure if there’s an automatic timer, because there’s no option for that in the configuration.

All in all, I’m pleased with the Intel. It met my basic needs for a home NAS but I can see how it would be limiting for someone looking for more advanced features or someone who requires more ability to configure the small options.

Bookmark It

The problem? Well, there are actually two:

First – It’s a violation of AT&T’s terms of service and you MIGHT get into a little trouble for enabling it.

Second – It’s nothing new. There have been hacks around for years that would allow you to use your Blackberry as a Bluetooth Modem for free, versus paying the $60 to enable a Smart Phone tethering plan through AT&T. What IS unique about this situation is that tethering was a HIGHLY PUBLICIZED missing feature from the iPhone 3.0 firmware for AT&T customers, so it’s compromise has drawn much more attention as previous “work arounds” have.

So what’s AT&T and iPhone owners everywhere to do?

The only solution I see to this problem would require AT&T to do something it hasn’t done…. I think ever: Put the customer first.

We all know that the “Unlimited” data plan you buy from AT&T for your iPhone (be it EDGE or 3G) really isn’t “Unlimited” and if you were to dig into your contract or Terms of Service (TOS), you would see that AT&T decides to not use the Marriam-Webster definition of “Unlimited”, but have decided on a new definition: “5GB/month”

I understand business involves some negotiation and some give and take, so as a consumer, I’d be willing to make the following agreement with AT&T:

I will agree to allow you to LOWER the bandwidth limit on the standard “unlimited” plan to 1GB, if you agree to not charge extra for tethering support and setup a tiered pricing plan for bandwidth where 5GB/mo is $40, 10GB/mo is $60, and so on.

Now honestly, AT&T, consumers of America, did that hurt too bad? No, of course not. It’s a perfectly fine compromise.

Do I think that’s what will ACTUALLY happen? No, of course not.

What I picture happening is AT&T will probably bring the iPhone tethering plan in line with their current Smart Phone tethering plans ($60/mo), and start charging people who are currently not signed up for this plan an astronomical gateway fee for using their “WAP” gateway on a per kilobyte bases (say, $1 per kilobyte).

Which would mean this picture would end up costing you $40 on your monthly bill:

AT&T will charge you for this!

Will AT&T cancel or suspend users who are currently using the “hack” to access tethering? Of course not! Why cut a paying customer from their base and give that money to a competitor, especially when they can charge you huge penalties!

So my suggestion to anyone using tethering is to just use at your own risk and know that what your does DOES violate your Terms Of Service. This way when you get a $1,000,000 bill from AT&T because you decided to bit torrent some Norwegian Porno while driving to Fresno, you won’t be left looking like our $40 man pictured above!

Cheers!

Bookmark It

What are they not telling you? That the 40GB plan is $54.90! The comparable in price plan they’re offering to customers who currently subscribe to Road Runner standard for $29.95/mo? A paltry 5GB! That’s right! Time Warner Cable is going to be charging home users almost THIRTY DOLLARS per month for a pathetically small 5GB of data transfer. Don’t think the marketing genius stops there! In addition to these new ridiculous bandwidth caps, they’re going to be charging you $1 per gigabyte over!

To break down these numbers, I thought I’d throw out some AVERAGE usage from my household, who DOESN’T use P2P file sharing or sites such as The Pirate Bay:

Average Amazon Unbox video rental file size: 1GB

Average weekly Rock Band DLC file size from XBox Live: 150MB (500MB if it’s a full album)

Average Netflix Streaming (High Quality) video: 2GB

So by looking at these numbers, just downloading the OCCASIONAL Rock Band downloadable content and watching a movie every OTHER Saturday Night would cause you to incur bandwidth overages if you’re using the standard $29.99/mo plan from Road Runner.

Is this a mistake? You’re damned right it is! Time Warner has obviously missed the boat that the internet is the future and by limiting people’s access to it, it’ll only drive customers away to other services that make online content more readily available (and cheaper!). So let’s discuss alternatives!

Alternative #1: DSL (“I just want regular Internet Access”)

"The Man"

Personally, I’m not a super huge fan of DSL because speeds vary depending on your distance from the telco and their bandwidth compared to the offerings from cable companies can’t complete. BUT, desperate times call for desperate measures!

AT&T offers a high speed DSL plan for $35/mo that has speeds of 6mbps downstream & 1mbps upstream. Comparable to Road Runner in price, AT&T offers a DSL plan for $25/mo that features 1.5mbps downstream & 384kbps upstream.

I agree that these numbers SEEM weak, but let’s crunch the numbers really quickly. What I want to do is compare maximum monthly cost assuming you leave your internet connection ONLY downloading 24 hours a day for 30 days (one billing cycle).

As you can see, if you’re only concerned with monthly transfer it would seem that AT&T DSL is the best alternative to your bandwidth requirements. If you need speeds higher than 6mbps, then it would appear you’re tired to Time Warner’s draconian bandwidth caps.

Alternative #2: Dedicated DS-3 (“I want speed, no matter the cost!”)

My doctor said I need more..

This sounds ridiculous, but hear me out. I’m sure nobody out there will debate that a dedicated DS-3 is a viable alternative to residential internet providers, but the numbers add up versus Time Warner Road runner because it’d be much cheaper per gigabyte and over twice the speed!

There are many DS-3 providers across the country and each one has different pricing structures. I took the average of a cross section of quotes it would cost me to have a DS-3 installed at my home in a coastal California city. I’ll break down the price using the same table above:

So as you can see from the above table, as ridiculous as a dedicated DS-3 line sounds as being used for residential internet access, it comes out being cheaper than Time Warner Road Runner! Food for thought for those people who have nothing but money to spare and demand top speed access and unlimited monthly transfers to their favorite… recipe sites.

Alternative #3: Dialup (“I want more monthly transfer, I don’t even care about the speed!”)

+++ATAH0

Wait, wait. Don’t close your browser yet. Just hear me out on this one

Dial up is something a lot of us remember fondly as our first gateway to the net. Internet providers did limit our usage, but it was time limited (for example: 30 hours per month). Not because bandwidth was more expensive then (which it was), but because telco fees were so high when it came to installing additional POTS line to the ISP. This way they could operate on fewer POTS lines without having to charge users higher monthly rates.

Dialup modem technology has plateaued at 56kbps over your standard phone line (depending on distance to the telco, same as DSL). The average dial up plan these days is roughly $9.99 and can be found in almost any market. It’s a fantastic alternative because it can work virtually anywhere without much additional hardware, effort on the end user…. or trenching fiber down the street

How does this even make sense as an alternative? Total monthly transfer! That’s right folks! Did you ever stop and wonder “Wait, 40GB per month? How much is that in kilobits per second?” The sad and shocking answer to that is about 16.5kbps. You heard me! The best Road Runner plan you can buy offers you less monthly downloaded data than a 28.8 modem!

So now that I’ve got your attention, hows about that great service comparison table again!

Have I sold you on dial up? Probably not But I’m trying to make the point that Time Warner has gone completely off the deep end with their pricing structure compared to the services that you receive. Am I the only person who’s floored that dial up is not only cheaper than Cable Internet but now also offers better monthly transfer at a lower rate?

Is Road Runner bandwidth REALLY $100 more expensive than dial up? No, if anything, bandwidth has become many times cheaper than it was ten years ago. So what gives?

Well, my personal opinion is that the bottom line here is the cable industry is in trouble from competition who have more focused and more easily maintained infrastructure. Competition in the Television market from companies like DirecTV and DishNetwork have forced some cable companies into bankruptcy because upgrading and maintaining a physical network has overhead much higher than that of a single satellite floating through space.

In addition, you have internet competition from companies like AT&T and Verizon who are starting to offer Fiber To The Premises (FTTP) in newer housing communities, which bundles internet, television and phone all under one low cost bill.

I hope everyone takes these points to heart and contacts Time Warner and asks them “What gives?” And if it comes down to it, look into one of the alternatives I proposed above because that’s our rights as consumers!

Cheers!

PS: If you get the DS-3, invite me over to your house. I have some stuff I need to download

Bookmark It

This week Microsoft rolled out Netflix instant streaming support with the new XBox 360 Dashboard (which they’re calling the “New Xbox Experience”) while TiVo is also rolling out Netflix support this week in their latest beta firmware update.

Netflix streaming allows people who subscribe to the (currently) $8.99 subscription to stream UNLIMITED movies available for Instant Online viewing to their XBox or TiVo for no extra cost on top of their monthly subscription. To sweeten the deal, Netflix also offers up to 300 movies in ‘HD’ quality at no extra charge.

So, let’s review the score. HD-DVD has gone the way of Beta Max and although both Apple and Amazon have offered rental and purchasing of movies electronically but are still bound to their respective platforms (Apple being iPhone/Pod and Amazon being TiVo) including the PC. I’ve yet to see either party partner with another distribution outlet which is expected from Apple but almost a shock with Amazon.

When I think about it though, Netflix is an obvious answer to the question of what company would be the first to provide movies to Microsoft for online streaming. Netflix partnered with Microsoft in the first place to provide online instant viewing of movies through Microsofts (at the time, new) Silverlight technology, which is a competitor to Flash (which popular video sites like YouTube use).

So now you have a company with an already established shipping and distribution system setup for physical media (both DVD and Blu-Ray) and has partnered with two ‘direct to TV’ companies who have in total over 30 million set top boxes already installed in homes across the WORD! Could this be the coming of the revolution?

I certainly hope so!

About six months back I finally decided to just sell my entire DVD collection. I personally was just done with physical media. I was tired of moving them, dusting them, having them take up space and never really sitting down to watch them. I mean really, I owned a little over 200 movies and sat down AT MOST one time a month to watch one. It got so bad that some of the movies were still in their original shrink wrap packaging. The industry had hooked me on the idea that I needed to COLLECT movies and I had come to the realization that it’s seriously a stupid hobby.

I became a personal flag barer for electronic distribution starting with the ability of renting a movie from Amazon unbox for only $.99 (when they’re on sale) but even then I’d have to wait about 30 minutes for the movie to buffer enough for me to be able to watch it the entire way through without having to pause and let it buffer some more.

Enter Netflix. Not only does it let me INSTANTLY begin watching a movie by detecting my connection speed and ability to download data at real time, but I can also ’shop’ online for more movies to watch while not at home using Netflix.com. This means I can think of a movie while at work or on the go, queue it up and watch it instantly when I get home.

The bonus? This is all covered under my $8.99 Netflix account that I already had. Oh sure, there are more costs involved, but let’s break that down (and to keep it fair, I’ll break down as if I’m starting with NOTHING):

- Netflix: $8.99/mo ($107/year)

- XBox 360: $199 for Arcade Edition ($199/year, first year)

- XBox Live Gold Account: $7.99/mo ($49.99/year)

- Digital Cable: $39 for 10mbit down/1mbit up (in my area) ($480/year)

So even including your monthly Cable bill, you’re only looking at a monthly average cost of only $70 or only $29 pr month if you don’t include your monthly cable internet bill! FOR UNLIMITED INSTANT MOVIE VIEWING!

That’s pretty amazing to me! I hope more people hop on this bandwagon and we begin the revolution! Down with physical media!

I’ll step off my soapbox now

Cheers!

Bookmark It

My projects as of late have mostly been electronic in nature. I’ve actually had three projects on the burner:

Replacement of the capacitors on my Mortal Kombat 2 arcade machine’s CRT controller

This was far more time consuming that I thought it would be. Not because it took me an actually long time to desolder and replace the capacitors on the board, but ordering the CORRECT caps and waiting for them to be delivered took the most time. I decided to use Mouser for my components and they delivered as promised. I posted pictures of my extracting the CRT controller here. From what I was able to gather with some Google-Fu and the few English markings on the board, I determined it was a Wei-Ya C829HR CRT board. Of course there aren’t any cap kits for this board (for whatever reason), so I had to order all the caps (about 30) one by one getting their voltage and capacitance from the one’s that are currently on the board. The one cap that I wasn’t able to find (easily) a replacement for was this monster bipolar 75v 4.7uf cap.

FINALLY finishing my Replica 1 computer (which I posted about starting here… over a year ago)

I know, totally lame right? I’d like to say it got put down during the move and I forgot but I literally think it was just the time of year and I was tired of freezing my ass off in the garage with only the glow of a soldering iron to keep me warm So I picked back up the kit and finished soldering the rest of the 50-or so IC pins and fired it up. I got a response on the video port but when I reset I get random giberish. I checked and the oscillator is clocked in at 1mhz and voltage at the test points looks OK. I’m thinking it’s probably a bad rom. I’m currently e-mailing the project creator and he’s been very helpful!

Building a Blue Box

This year I decided to be Woz for Halloween (I figured Fat Nerd is an outfit I’d be able to pull off ) and I wanted to have a sweet accessory to go with my outfit of a vintage apple shirt, name tag and rockin facial har. I decided what cooler than actually building a function blue box! I found this schematic which seems to be the defacto one that everyone since the 80’s has been using. The down side? Exar no longer makes the XR2207 voltage controlled oscillators. I tried to get samples straight from the company, but no luck. I was able to find them through some IC resellers, but they wanted $30 per chip, so F’ that noise!

Again, I activated some hardcore Google-Fu and found this slick project by a website called ProjectMF.org. He used a PIC microcontroller to generate the frequencies which is waaaaay easier and makes sense in a more modern world I used his schematics and again ordered the parts from Mouser. I was able to solder together the power supply portion and will fire up the PIC programmer later this week! Super cool!

So anyways, I haven’t been hacking away on the code or software projects lately but I find my creativitiy comes and goes through phases. I’m just in a hardware one right now, but I’m sure sooner or later I’ll fire up Visual Studio again

Cheers!

Bookmark It

There is no simpler a solution than a DVD player that outputs the 480i signal decoded from the DVD to an HDMI output. There’s no processing, no deinterlacing, no scaling. Just decode it and output it. Bam! Done!

My current home theater is based around a Denon AVR-2308CI Receiver which handles all my video processing thanks to it’s magical voodoo (and a DCDi video processor ). When searching for a DVD player to solve my previously mentioned DVD watching dilemma, I wanted just a simple DVD player that can output 480i over HDMI. Why should I waste my money on an upconverting DVD player when my receiver can do the same function (and probably better). Seemed simple, right?

WRONG!

It seems the internet defacto DVD player that does 480i is the Oppo Digital DV-980H which weighs in at $169 MSRP! There are a couple other options as well, including the previous Oppo Digital DVD player model, DV-970HD which was specifically marketed as a ‘cheap’ player that supports 480i over HDMI. The problem you ask? It’s no longer offered directly from Oppo and it still sells for > $100 in the secondary used market.

An hour or so of Google-Fu later I landed on the Pioneer DV-400V-K DVD Player! Pioneers own website lists its MSRP as $99 and with some luck I found it refurbished through an Amazon reseller for $49! EURIKA! At last the lords of the Internet blessed me with a little devine intervention on my search results

I got to wondering after my pilgrimage to find this DVD player, why does it have to be so hard? I mean, if manufacturers like Denon offer Receivers with video upscaling and deinterlacing already included, why do they also sell DVD players with the SAME functionality? You’d think they’d try to offer a family of products that not only work well with one another but don’t waste your money on duplicate hardware that you won’t be utilizing. Denon is a prime example of this because even their ‘low end’ DVD player still carries an MSRP of $169 (and even then, it uses the built in DVD hardware deinterlacer without offering pure 480i output).

So as I said, there HAS to be a good quality family of products out there that are symbiotic and AFFORDABLE because they’re saving money on not having to waste it on unused hardware.

Bookmark It

Sounds simple, right?

So of course now when my wife and I actually sit down to play a DVD movie, randomly it’ll just freeze the picture and appear to lock up. It’s not a hard lock as my XBox still responds to IR commands (open/close the tray, power on/off). At first I suspected the Denon receiver as it is taking the video from the XBox in using component and scaling it out via HDMI. Multiple restarts and power on/offs of the receiver and the picture wouldn’t unfreeze meaning the XBox 360 itself had locked up.

What the hell!

I’m sure there are some who are at this point thinking, “Your XBox is defective!”… I would completely and 100% agree (as I’m on my 3rd one), but I can play titles like Bad Company and Arcade games for hours with no problems, so I doubt it’s a hardware defect within the machine itself.

I suppose I’ll swallow a big ole’ slice of humble pie tonight and call Microsoft Support, BUT, just in case they find nothing wrong I’m curious if anyone else has had this issue!

Thanks!

Bookmark It