Accessing Digital Media from the Xbox 360

Is your Xbox 360 hooked up to the biggest TV and the best audio system in the house? If so, you might want to browse the videos, pictures, and music stored on your other computer. I thought you have to run Windows Media Center for this to be possible, but it turns out you can just run something called TVersity.

Install it, then use the provided user interface to pick which files/folders are available for browsing.

Once you get this running, how will your Xbox 360 know that it's there? The Xbox 360 looks for a media server broadcasting its presence on the network. For this to work:

• The Xbox 360 and your computer have to be 'on the same network'. I don't know exactly what this means (same subnet?), but basically, if both of these are going through the same router, you're ok.
• The computer's firewall needs to allow this new type of network traffic. On Windows XP, these are called Exceptions. There're two exceptions:
  • uPnP Framework (TCP 2869 and UDP 1900) - this entry's probably already there but might not be enabled yet
  • TVersity Media Server (TCP 41952) - you have to add this port yourself

At this point, you should be able to browse media through the Xbox 360 Dashboard menus. Instead of picking Console, pick Computer. If all is well, you should then see something like 'TVersity on XXX', where XXX is the identity/name of your computer.

Good luck!

BBQ at Mahdi's

Back in August, Mahdi invited a bunch of us over for a BBQ.



Thanks man!

Shooting Firearms in California

When I relocated to San Bruno back in 2001, I had to write the driver's test to get my California driver's license. I often tell the story about how I was reading the driver handbook and came across a section in the book which had to explicitly tell the reader that it's illegal to shoot firearms at traffic signs. It was amusing to me as an outsider because it reflected, accurately or inaccurately, the kind of place I was moving to.

Anyway, I've told this anecdote so many times that I started to wonder if I just made it all up. Luckily, I was digging through things in my study a few days ago and found a copy of the California Driver Handbook 2000. There it is on page 29:

Parallels between Harry Potter and Naruto

Some weeks ago, I saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Possible spoilers about the movie ahead!

Towards the end of the movie, Dumbledore and Voldemort duel with high-level magic spells. It was pretty exciting. I remember sitting there and being strangely reminded of this fight in Naruto between the Third Hokage and Orochimaru. It was awesome because both were using high-level jitsu's.

So I looked it up, and it seems I wasn't alone in making that connection. Thought I'd share a couple of pages I came across:

• An analysis about the two worlds and the parallels between many of the characters.
• A forum post which draws parallels between Orochimaru and Voldemort, with theoretical discussion about who would win in a fight.

Neat stuff!

Finally Purchased a Xbox 360

Recently, my friends executed their evil ploy of giving me a video game for a game system which I don't own. The game was Forza Motorsport 2. I played the original so much on the original Xbox that I just had to play this one, so I finally bought a Xbox 360 last night.

I hooked it up to my LCD TV and found that the TV was capable of doing 1080i, which looks very nice. Love the wireless controller (you should've seen the mess of cables when there're four of us playing Halo 2 with headset splitters!). Not sure why the 20 GB hard drive came with half the capacity already used up, but whatever (apparently, there's space reserved for emulators and CD databases).



Forza Motorsport 2 has been great so far! You can "feel" and hear the tires as you speed through the turns. There is now a 'photo mode' where you pause the scene and can freely place a camera to take a shot of the action. To get that photo onto your computer though, you have to go through a two-step process:

1. Upload the photo from the game.
2. On your computer, download the photo from the website (by signing in with your Live ID).

The picture above is an example. It's one of me attempting to drift my first career car (1990 RX-7) through a corner. Whee!

Authoring DVD's on Windows

Kevin brought over some edited video footage on his laptop. Our goal was to put that on a DVD so that he can just pop it into anyone's DVD player. Since my computer has a DVD burner, this should be a piece of cake, right?

Apparently not. Even though my machine came with Roxio Creator Plus (Dell Edition), it only allowed me to make data and audio discs. Windows XP comes with Movie Maker, but that only does video editing. To get that video onto a DVD, put in chapters, make DVD menus, and so on, I need DVD authoring software. This is probably where Mac owners laugh and point to the iDVD that comes with their computer.

After a lot of searching, I came across DVD Styler. You can drag-and-drop your video clips (MPEG or VOB) into it, then slap some text buttons onto the main menu page and assign them to play the different clips. I followed the PDF guide and quickly created a simple DVD.

When you're ready to make the final DVD, the tool creates an ISO file. This is an image file which Roxio (and probably most programs that come with your burner) can burn to a disc. I popped that into my DVD player and it worked!

So far, I've only played with short low-res video clips, so I'm not sure whether there's anything to watch out for when working on bigger projects with this tool. When I have the chance later, I'll definitely try it out.

ThoughtBoarder Kicking Horse

ThoughtWorks had its annual snowboarding trip at Kicking Horse again this year. We had four condo units for three nights. It was great to sleep in, play Xbox 360, and spend some time on the hills with my co-workers.





There were so many cameras around this time that I barely took any pictures. Check out these huge icicles just outside the front door of our "party house"!



Or how about this amazing view from the top -- mountain peaks jutting out of a sea of clouds!