I've been anticipating the next Pixar film for quite some time...that film, of course, is WALL-E.  There have been many trailers going around but the newest bit of information that contains a tidbit of information was recently posted at Slashfilm and Cinematical.

If you click on the image in the link above you'll see some text under WALL-E's hand.  With some trivial manipulation in Photoshop you see this...hmmm...strange language...considering what we've seen in the trailers so far.  Of course, it is known by this point that the ship that visits Earth in the future is of human creation...or creation of a creation of humankind.

Just a few hours ago I met one of the last goals for 2007 (the other goal for Winter 2007 specifically is uploading right now).  I have a small prototype of the small game working as previously mentioned.  The game is simple but with the lack of time these days it was important to make a push to get it done.

I reached my goal a few hours ago but I wasn't happy with it as it only ran at 6 frames per second at 1080p.  Lowering the resolution didn't work so I had to track down some particularly nasty memory allocations that were being done during rendering and voila...60 fps :)

Work can now continue...must fix the controller handling though, it's no fun right now. 

So...I wanted to share content to my 360 from my machines.  I have a mix of Windows and Linux running throughout the house but most of my content comes from two main sources (one windows and one debian box).  Sharing content from Windows to the 360 is quite easy with WMP but I have most of my content on the Debian server (set up specifically as a data repository).  I tried to use EnableRemoteContentSharing (search google...but not really needed) to try and get the data to the 360 from WMP directly and although the content was listed I was unable to play any of it back.  So...now to share directly from the Debian box.

Solution?  Fuppes.  It's a free UPnP server that can run on Windows and Linux.  I grabbed the latest SVN release, compiled it, set it up as per instructions for 360 compatibility and was off!  Of course, it didn't work right away.  There's a few things one must ensure.  First, the fuppes user (I'm on Debian here so I'm not running it as root) must be able to read the directories being shared as well as all the directories that are parents of the target share.  I believe that most people are running into issues at this point.  Second, avi files aren't being listed by the 360 for some reason...lots of reasons probably but you can rename your files to have them appear (after rebuilding the fuppes DB).  I also disabled transcoding as the 360 supports the formats I need it to support.

I got it working this morning at around 0530 so I haven't had much time to test it but hopefully this will those of you running into issues with it. 

For far too long I've been wanting two things:

1)  To watch movies on my large TV downstairs.
2)  To write code while I watch movies.

I believe the only solution is to obtain a powerful enough laptop to work downstairs.  Then over time to buy large monitors that will sit on the coffee table downstairs so I can write code and watch movies at the same time.  This plan needs to go into effect soon because...to be honest...I need to watch movies/TV and I need to do work.  So it has been written...so it shall be done. 

Well, been busy, a little busy but yes busy is the right word for this.

A few weeks back (first weekend in November I believe) I had a movie/game night with Omar where we went over the game design of a small strategy game.  This game is not Ahhh-choo as we're delaying that until we have more funds and have a better demo.  I've talked to a couple people about the game and while it is a very simple game people seem to like the idea.  It will be a fun little game that many people recognize and are familiar with.  We hope to add some small interesting elements to it that will appeal to a wide variety of people.  More details as WP wants to release them. 

Everybody remembers Chris Crocker and his statements about Britney Spears, right?  If not then here's a link to the video (language warning).

Of course, what you may not know about is the response by Seth Green...here it is.

Yesterday I visited Fry's for the first time.  I visited the Sunnyvale location and I'm still a little bit awestruck.  Frys is an electronics superstore where they have quite a few things...although that's putting it lightly.

They have a whole section (about half the size of my local Futureshop) that's dedicated to electronics components like resistors, capacitors, soldering items...

They have a live piano performance that's piped throughout the entire store as opposed to having generic radio/top 40.  The pianist was playing popular pop songs and mixing them together flawlessly. 

They have 160 check out counters...my local Futureshop has 4.

They had an aisle full of kites...in an electronics store...

I did not see 2 out of the four walls while I was there. 

Visiting the US is always a strange experience for me.  Being Canadian we don't encounter things like announcments about terror alert levels, we don't have aggressive looking helicopters flying around overhead, we also don't have as much American media as I thought we did.

There's always a lot of concern in Canada about US media flooding through Canadian TV but that's really not the case.  While a lot of content is created in the US or is influenced by those here the networks in Canada do a great job of filtering and mixing it with native content.

I've rented a Ford Mustang here.  It seems to have a lot of rattling bits.  There are a lot of strange sounds that don't sound right.  It moves from 0 to 60 quite quickly :)

David Beckham is about to head onto the field in the MLS game on TV.  Busy now. 

TIME!

Got back yesterday evening from Harvest 2007 in Peterborough.  I played with Grandma's Special Recipe and we edged out the local A team (Old Skule) for first place in the finals.  Quite a bit of fun!

Our tournament record was 7-0 with two 11-1 and one 11-0 game (final was 15-9).

Jon posted his list with his ranking so it only seems fair that I do mine.

1. "No Country for Old Men"
2. "Lars and the Real Girl"
3. "Juno"
4. "Heavy Metal in Baghdad"
5. "SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO"
6. "The Mosquito Problem and Other Stories"
7. "Control"
8. "Chrysalis"
9. "Margot at the Wedding"

So...just got back from Control and Heavy Metal in Baghdad.  Very interesting but also very tired now so please expect an update on this post during the day on Sunday.

Both are good films and very interesting.