The Insomniac Coder

Image by Casul Media via Flickr The problem: We Xbox 360 gamers love to brag and share on our experiences playing the console, but there is simply no easy way to grab a screen capture or video. Some games have implemented this kind of feature and it is extremely popular. For example, Halo 3 let me record a game as pure telemetry, which kept the file size tiny, then use it to generate a video that I could edit for view angle (overkill). Forza 3 allows you to take captures with an in- game camera , and even allows exporting videos. Proposed solution: Implement changes to the Xbox 360 dashboard , that allows the user to: Hit the center button in the controller and quickly take a screen grab, which can be: saved to the Xbox 360 pictures library. sent to any of the members of the friends list. send it to the SkyDrive associated with the Live ID associated with the gamer tag . Optional: same functionality as #1, but as a video. same functionality as #1.2, but for other soc...

Image via Wikipedia My old piece of crap disposable Lexmark ($35 or so) died after about 5 or 6 cartridge pairs, and its demise matched the Christmas rush specials at Amazon. The end result was that Amazon was all too happy to ship to my door a Canon PIXMA MP495 wireless Printer/Scanner/Copier combo for $53, of which $3.95 was the upgrade to next-day for Amazon Prime . Last time I had shopped for a printer combo was only a couple years ago and it was hard to score one for less than $100, so either things are really rough for Canon or maybe I got too lucky with this particular Amazon sale. The printer was a pain in the ass to install. It boasts that it is fully compatible with Windows 7, yet its installer doesn’t understand the administrator permissions in Widows 7-64. I had to download everything, which meant half hour of finding each separate package needed, instead of letting me download one installer with everything needed for, say, Windows. It gets worse: the same CD had...

    In case you are wondering: Terrible Secret of State Cleverbot

Today's Dilbert is a cautionary tale to those of you that are either brand new to the work force , or are about to finish school and getting ready to join the working world: things don't make a lot of sense.   Yup. And believe it or not, this comic in particular is probably a word-by-word rehash of a real life conversation. I know because it has happened to me, even at my current job. The only relief is that none of my coworkers do this, but our customers do it all the time: they send you an email, then call you and/or leave a voice mail about it. And it doesn't click on them that if they send the email, and then call, it means you have to stop reading the tl;dr email to talk to them, which means you are not spending your time fixing whatever it is they want to complain about.   Dilbert comic strip for 12/26/2010 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive.

If you are a geek, you probably love this show already. PJ is obsessed with it, to the point that he would rather watch it instead of cartoons. Schedule: The Science Channel :: TV Listings :: How It's Made

Image via Wikipedia With Call of Duty: Black Ops long gone back to Amazon as a weasel trade-in, and completely losing interest in Dead Rising 2 after completing overtime mode, I found myself with nothing to play until at least Christmas . I bought Fallout: New Vegas but insisted on not touching it until my Christmas vacation so I could, well, go crazy with it. That meant no game. Luckily Amazon kept throwing some amazing specials. Alec Esoterica kindly sent me Splinter Cell: Conviction , which kept me busy for close to a week, and I scored Alan Wake for just $16. On top of that, it came with a code for the first DLC, and the second DLC went on sale for 200 points, so I snagged that too. Done. Allan Wake is not a bad game, but it violates the social contract that keeps us games to devolve into mumbling idiots. For example, it is implied and understood that you are allowed a certain freedom whenever in a given map. Even if the game is not a sandbox, you are pretty much free to ...

HijiNKS ENSUE – A Geek Webcomic – 3 Times A Week - » If Loving You Is Wrong… [Holiday Special Edition] One ticket, aisle please:

My long deactivated iPhone 3G is on its last legs, so I decided to bail out while I had a chance. I have been using Apple iPods since the original 5GB but my iPhone experience sort of got me out of the faithful customer mindset. I decided to go for the Zune HD 64 . It is slightly smaller and lighter than the iPhone 3G, it has wireless sync, FM HD radio and on top of that it was way cheaper, about $70 or so at the time I paid for it. On top of that Amazon was all too happy to hand me a $15 coupon for MP3s. The screen is OLED and gorgeous, the picture doesn’t do it any justice:   The casing is much thinner and feels very solid. It makes the iPhone 3G look bloated and cheap (I always hated the plastic backs of the 3G , to me the first generation iPhone will always look nicer): Yup, one more unique dock connector to worry about, and the earphone jack is in the bottom, which makes no damn sense.     The sharp lines of the casing are very elegant, the device lo...

A Christmas-themed #earworm:

This is for the benefit of one of my coworkers, who is trying to come up with the same kind of estimate: Dilbert comic strip for 03/11/2002 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive.

This is what 180 calories worth of Christmas candy look like: There should be a law against posting nutritional values in Christmas candy packaging. It sort of defeats the purpose ...

Britain’s Ugliest Dog Finds Loving Home - Loldogs, Dogs 'n' Puppy Dog Pictures - I Has A Hotdog! This is exactly how I visualize my least favorite customer: The similarities are uncanny.

Tiger Woods Announces Return To Sex | The Onion Sports Network Hopefully in time for the 2011 Masters!

VODO - Pioneer One (2010) — a series by Pioneer One This is a Sfi Fi show that is being produced independently, funded 100% by community donations. The disturbing thing about this show is that not only was it funded by donations, but it was premiered as a legal bit torrent download. Disturbing to the powers that be, not to us. I saw the pilot and I loved it but felt that they would run out of money, so I was damn pleased to learn today that episode two is out. You can download both episodes (100% legally) with this link . Could this be the solution to the curse of the Friday Night Death Slot for TV Science Fiction? Pioneer One has had over a million downloads already, and there are over 36,000 people seeding it. And yes, it is THAT good. It has really good writing and acting, the photography is great, and the special effects are at least on par to the weekly SyFy Saturday Night feature crapfest movie.

Olly Moss on Star Wars - Signalnoise.com : At least somebody still makes an effort at originality:

12/19/2010 | FoxTrot.com In case you didn't get the joke, try this .

YouTube - How do japanese multiply?? For Karla, who just aced her algebra finals:

From: 75th Anniversary of the Plane That Changed Everything | Autopia | Wired.com   The Douglas DC-3 flew for the first time 75 years ago, and there are still over 400 that are still being flown.

Well, not really. I doubt we even have a quarter inch of accumulation so far:

Not much really, the Kindle 3s perform exactly like our former Kindle 2s, except of course for the lack of 3G connectivity. Ivette probably had an easier time with it, in my case I kept looking for the power button in the wrong place. The new lighted cases are really frickin nice (and the leather looks much nicer than the second generation cases), and so is having the closing band. I put velcro behind ours to keep them from straining the hooks. Ivette uses the light much more often, almost on a nightly basis. As for the screen, it is definitely superior to the screens in the first two generations. Battery life is incredible, even with wireless turned on. As for the lack of 3G, it is a non-issue, since I travel so little. In the remote possibility that I do hit the road, I just avoid deleting books like I used to (easier since Amazon introduced collections). In the remote possibility that I finish a book, I can read something else I got stashed. Or worst case scenario I can stop b...

The first of our two new Kindle 3 WiFis arrived today (the UPS driver fell asleep with the second shipment still in the truck). Our two current Kindle 2s have been sold already, sorry. The differences are not just in the casing measurements, the new device is much thinner. One thing I am not happy about is that they removed the numbers row from the keyboard. The new paging buttons are much nicer, it takes more effort to click them which will cut down on accidental page changes.   The new cases are nicer, and they once again have an elastic band to keep it closed. I am not too happy about losing the metal badge, I always thought it was a nice touch.   Ivette’s is pink and it looks hideous. I am sure Karla is going to flip when she sees it (and yes Karla, it comes in purple too): The reason the new device looks taller is because the case has a hidden light. Also notice how now all of the buttons are located on the bottom of the device, while in the previous generation ...

Yup, it’s #earworm time again.

Image via Wikipedia We already have: Black Friday: Day after Thanksgiving , the start of the Christmas shopping season . This now spills into the weekend. Pre-Black Friday: AKA, “Thanksgiving.” Yeah, people are freaking out over sales before they have finished cooking the stupid turkey. Cyber Monday: As crazy as Black Friday, but for online sales. This year this is turning into “Cyber Week.”   Now for the new: Brown Wednesday is the first big shipping wave from the online purchases since Thanksgiving. If you bought stuff on Black Friday, odds are you didn’t ask for Saturday shipping, so the earliest you could get them without paying an eye and a leg in shipping would be today. Expect lots of people (including myself) whining about FEDEX/UPS/USPS anxiety today.