Skip to content

Entertainment

Miyazaki Film Festival

Via BoingBoing:

CartoonBrew.com is reporting that Turner Classic Movies is planning to air 9 Miyazaki films (the one’s Disney acquired distribution rights for) in January. The titles include Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky, Porco Rosso and Whisper of the Heart.

If you haven’t seen a Miyazaki film – even the popular ones such as Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away, you owe it to yourself to check out these animated classics. It’s unknown at this time whether they will be dubbed or sub-titled, but either way this is some of the best animated movies you’ll ever see.

More X-Box Fun

Playing around with the hacked X-Box, I figured out how to edit the XML configuration file to have My Music & My Movies on the XBMC point directly to my Buffalo Terrastation that houses all my movies and music – no more network browsing to get there, nice and easy.

Then I did something which I haven’t done in forever, which was hop on IRC. Got the link to download some emulators, and threw up MameOX and a Sega Genesis emulator. Threw some roms on the X-Box, and I was playing Elevator Action. I had upped Vanguard as well – I don’t think my wife is happy with me now as that was one of her favorite games growing up and she knows it’s there just to distract her. 🙂

Modding my X-box

I soft-modded my X-Box tonight and am currently listening to an album in MP3 located on a network share on an external hard drive in my den from the comfort of my living room as I type this.

I used the Mech Assault hack to get the Evolution X dashboard installed, and then just FTP’d over the software for X-Box Media Center.

Reading the instructions X-Box Scene seemed daunting. 30 steps, downloading this file and that file, modifying files, etc. In reality, it was just a few steps:

  1. Plug in the memory card into a controller and turn the X-Box on
  2. Copy the MechAssault save file from the controller to the hard drive
  3. Reboot the X-Box with MechAssault and load the savegame which starts the softmod installer
  4. Follow the instructions, including backup your files, and Evolution X is installed
  5. Go to a PC and download the X-Box Media Center file and extract it
  6. Edit one file and follow the instructions in the notes of the file
  7. Look at your IP address on the X-Box dashboard and go to a PC. FTP in to your X-Box
  8. FTP all the XBMC files to your apps directory on your modded X-Box
  9. Reboot the X-Box. From the Evolution X dashboard, choose Applications and choose X-Box Media Center

Voila – you’re running XBMC. I went in to Music, chose look over the network, chose my Buffalo Terrastation’s workgroup, and 30 seconds later was listening to Liz Phair – and it automatically uploads the songs you’re listening to Last.fm, which I mentioned in the blog a week or two ago.

It’s pretty slick – the UI is fantastic, the applications and formats XBMC supports is impressive, and the performance is blowing away the experience I had using Microsoft’s Media Center Extender for X-Box.

I have some research to do to see if I can automount samba shares (which could be really slick when I have MythTV working later) but for now automounting music and photo’s would make me very happy.

Congrats to the Winners

Congratulations to the winners: Fazin overall, Stirling in 2nd, Haf and Vhex tied for 3rd. (Updated per Haf’s comment).

Overall, the event was even better than last year. Well coordinated and executed, and a ton of fun. The food and drinks were good, the games and gamers even better, and a ton of fun was had by all. Except for Vhex placing for a second year in a row.

DSC00272

Sat. night’s pictures are up at my Flickr site, I’ll get them a group and link ’em tomorrow.

Jenny is a gamer



DSC00239, originally uploaded by silwenae.

Here’s another favorite from the pictures so far.

Jenny, Jim’s (Fazin/eth0) wife sits down and spanks us all in her first time playing Flatout. Towards the end of the match she’s playing (and winning) as she answers a call on her cell phone.

Beginner’s luck!

Click the picture to see the notes on my Flickr site.

Whirlyball



DSC00233, originally uploaded by silwenae.

The BFG event is off and running and we’re having a blast. We played Whirlyball & Lasertron last night.

Here’s a shot of the first winners for Whirlyball.

Off to Chicago

Off to Milwaukee today to drop the family off at the in-laws, and then Friday to Chicago for the BFG LAN party!

Expect more blogging and pictures like I did last year.

I need to be in this shot this year!

BFG Sat Night2-42