nxe

NXE! That's 'New Xbox Experience' not 'Naughty Extraterrestrials Everywhere', which would really be NEE not NXE, but I couldn't think of another X word. I can't think of any way to describe the NXE excepted as an updated UI. (That's User Interface for all you non-nerds. I took an e-commerce course at uni last year and at least half of the content was just learning acronyms. What's with that? I don't think it's that hard to just write stuff out in full or perhaps IDTITHTJWTOIF.) As it was updating I decided to take some pictures in order to write this entry that you are reading now, but I am typing now.

I'll call this the 'Update in Progress Screen'. The 'Update in Progress Screen' informs you the approximate time remaining for the update to be applied. The green bar at the bottom displays graphically the approximate fraction completed. Exciting stuff! When the green bar gets to the end a new screen displays.

Looking at the time at the top right it is exactly 5 minutes since the last picture, which is the time the Xbox guessed was remaining. Lucky guess Mr/Mrs Xbox. Pressing 'A' to continue makes the following video play.

I did try to take photos while the video was playing, but of the 10 or so I took none were in focus. Don't bother actually watching the video, it is boring. Trust me, I watched it. Actually, I could have just linked to a video of the whole process, which makes this entry pretty redundant. After the video you have to make an 'Avatar', which is a digital representation of you that lives in your Xbox. I've you've seen the Wii's Miis, then Avatars are pretty much the same thing, only not as good. Here's me:

I don't think it looks much like me at all, especially when compared with my Mii. Looking around at other peoples creations, they all look pretty much the same and are all just very bland. It's not there is only a few choices when you are making them, it's more that all the choices are pretty much the same. For example, there is like 20 different noses but they are all very similar. I did give myself elf ears tho. The clothes were disappointing as well, you can't even change any of the colours which has really been the most basic part of character customisation from the time it began, way back whenever that was. Once your avatar is made you exit into the main screen, which is called the 'dashboard' for some reason.

I may have lied there, I might have seen this screen first but I can't really remember. I guess you need to know what the old version looked like but this is significantly different.

Well wasn't that fun?

I have a riddle...

What do you get when you capture a bat and a chicken, put them both in a box and shake the box? Some weird little bat-chicken babies, that's what. Flying around clucking in frequencies I can't hear and somehow using them to see with. Now suppose that one of the baby bat-chickens fell into a pile of batter you had sitting there, then bounced into a conveniently placed cauldron of boiling oil. After ricocheting around the cauldron for just the precise amount of time it takes to deep fry baby bat-chickens, it flies into you mouth and you think "Hey, this tastes pretty good but I can't be bothered to construct a Goldberg-esque machine for unnatural cross breeding and baby killing". Which is the same thought that I had, so I just bought batman shaped chicken nuggets instead.

There is the front, or possibly the back as I'm not sure which is which. I guess that it has something to do with the recently released 'the dark knight' batman movie. Was it all that recent tho? I mean were these sitting around in a truck for a couple of months before they were released? Or did they just decided that multiple months after the movies has left cinemas is the best time to put out chicken nuggets based of said movie? Or maybe I'm just trying to avoid thinking of a hilarious caption for the picture of batman? Probably the third option. Anyway... here is the back or maybe front.

Front? Back? Who knows? I think this side is more appealing as batman is swinging on a rope. I'm sure he is playing Spiderman. 'Alfred, you have to be Dr Octopus and I get to beat you'. You'd think that being a billionaire and all he'd be able to afford a Spiderman costume and not just have to wear his work clothes. Hmm... I bought these with the ulterior motive of writing about them and I can't think of anything decent to say. And I've had these pictures taken for three weeks so it's not like I haven't had time. I think I would be easier if they put more interesting pictures and the like on them. They'd be better with a campy sixties batman or being called 'bat-nuggets' or something.

Here is a bunch of them after sitting in the over for an appropriate length of time. The shapes aren't nearly as well defined as the ones on the box and by 'aren't nearly as defined' I mean they look like three lumps joined together by slightly smaller lumps. There should be a law stating that all pictures of food must be taken of the actual product, not one that has been airbrushed and photoshoped to look perfect. It doesn't send a healthy message to teenage food if they think they have to look like that to succeed. Although I guess close-up pictures of processed food are not very appetising.

Comic

Nothing to see here

It’s been over two weeks since I posted anything, which is pretty slack really. My excuse is that I’ve been busy with uni. Does that count? Maybe not.

That didn’t even fill two lines so I probably can’t trick you into thinking it is a proper entry.

1010011010

Saw this today. It made me laugh.

Honey is that ok?

I’ve been playing gears of war a fair bit over the last couple of weeks. I’m pretty sure it’s the most manly thing I have ever done. Here is a picture to prove it.

Well, it doesn’t prove I’ve been playing it, perhaps I wasn’t, but you won’t know that. It does prove the manliness tho. Everyone on your team is a really big muscleman. The guns are big and have a chainsaw on the end for some reason. Their personalities are well fleshed out, I mean one has a bandana, one a beard, etc. They all sound tough too. “I’m really tough” they say, but in a really tough way. I don’t know how to write in tough, but they know how to speak in tough.

You spend most of the time in the game shooting aliens. Most of the aliens look like people with dry skin. None of your squad have dry skin, maybe that is why all the aliens are trying to kill them. I’m just making that up, I don’t know what the real plot is but I think mine is better anyway. There are also these birds that kill you if you enter anywhere dark during the night. It reminds me of the X-files episode “darkness falls” where Mulder and Scully are out in the wilderness and there are these bugs that kill people who leave the light. Anyway..

The sequel is out soon, which will feature lots of sweaty hugging, revealing shower scenes and just friends spooning, which is the only logical follow up to the first game. Oh, while I’m stealing lines from Futurama, the guy who does the voice of Bender does the voice of the main guy in the game. It’s pretty fun to imagine bender being in the game, or it would be if I had ever done that before just now. If I wasn’t so lazy the game would encourage random acts of manliness in real life. If there were any trees to fell in the forest or heavy items to carry I would totally do that.

Computer/gaming upgrade

I got a bunch of new computer type stuff to make my setup better. So I'm going to whinge about how bad celery is.

Man, I hate that stuff so much. Please don't put it in my food. It's not just that it tastes bad, it's that it infects everything it touches with a gross celery flavour. Like in noodles or rice or anything. I have to go through and pick out all the celery, then pick out everything the celery has touched. It's the food equivalent of radiation.

You may as well just skip the whole salad thing and put uranium in my food.

Glasses

We were in the supermarket the other day and spotted a big display full of various kinds of character related glasses. I would have said super hero related as that is what they mainly were, but for some reason there was 'cars' and 'speed racer' themed ones as well. I wouldn't call ether of those super heroes. Was there a somewhat recent speed racer movie? Maybe the theme was 'recent-ish movies' I don't know. Anyway.. All up there was cars, speed racer, the hulk, batman, Spiderman and some other one I can't remember. I got one of each batman and Spiderman.



Neither are taken from their recent movie outings, and I think they look pretty 90's. I could be wrong, I was once before. Batman looks a bit too much like a body builder for my liking. The bottom of the picture declares him the 'caped crusader' and who am I too argue. The other side has the relevant logo one it, just in case you didn't know.




I've done some tests and have conclusively proved that drinking from these glasses taste 12% better than all other glasses.

Also, my spell check is picking up spiderman as a mistake (it says it should be Spiderman), but not batman. Way to pick favourites inanimate computer. No wonder batman has to work out so much; he doesn’t even get a capital letter.

Essay finished

I just finished my labour economics essay, so here is a wordle:


These things are cool, as I can fake actual content, rather then actually make it. I guess I should not be so lazy, but I'm not going to claim I'm on holidays till I've handed this in tomorrow. Stop hassling me, I'm much to busy to do anything as I'm not on holidays.

Take that!

Finished report

I just finished my accounting report. Well, finished a final draft anyway. It could probably do with another edit, but we'll see how motivated I am. As promised, here is a wordle:



Pretty interesting maybe?

Outrageous

The library keeps sending me overdue notices for books I have out. It's really annoying as they used to send reminder notices, which meant I never got fines. I think it is all part of a big cash generating conspiracy.

I've been writing a boring report all weekend. It's nearly finished but I think I've done it wrong and will be over the word count. It's annoying.

My xbox broke as well, so I had to exchange it. I lost all my saved games so I'll 'have' to play it some more to get them back.

Also it's hot and I have a blister on my foot.

Woe is me...

Cool little application

"Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends."

use mouse here to get there

I ran this site through it got the following result:


It seems I really tend to use the word really a really lot of the time. I might try running an essay through when one is finished.

No updates

No updates for ages as I've been busy with uni. Have an exam to study for next week and 2 essays to write. Both are only 2000 words so shouldn't take too long. One is on investment advice regarding Harvey Norman, the other on theoretical arguments for and against a basic income. The basic income typically refers to unconditional payment of a minimum income to all adult citizens, and replaces all other forms of social welfare. Pretty interesting stuff, although I'm yet to form an opinion on whether it is desirably. If I come up with anything particularly insightful perhaps I will post it here.

Disorganised

I feel really disorganised with uni this semester. I'm pretty much up to date with all my work, but I have piles of junk everywhere. Usually I have all my stuff for each subject all in order in a folder, but at the moment I have a bunch of empty folders and random stacks of paper. I really should organise it a little better, but I really can't be bothered. I probably do it in the midsemester break, but most of my assessments will be done by then.

Oh.. speaking of assessments I got 88 percent for the knowledge management quiz I did last week. Pretty happy with that.

I got a pirate goblet a few days ago, so I'll write about that when I can be bothered.

Xbox 360

I picked up an xbox 360 yesterday, and have been playing a bit since then. I went for the 'elite' model which is black and has a larger hard dick then the normal model. It came in some pack thing with a couple of games. Halo 3 and Gears of War, in case you were wondering. The gears case was broken and the disc wouldn’t run, so I had to exchange it this morning. Despite the broken game, I was pleased with the level of packaging. Overall there was relatively less than that of the Wii, with the majority being cardboard.

I played halo for a bit and it didn't really seem anything special, I'll probably give it another go during the holidays. Gears is fun, and will be more so when I rope some sucker in to play co-op with me. As repeatedly killing people can get old I bought Skate today as well (as well as what? I don't know, it's late and I'm sleepy). It is also fun. You just ride around doing tricks, not much to it really. The control scheme is different to all the other skating games I’ve played (ie the tony hawk series), so I still need some time to develop appropriate psychomotor skills (eg making the little guy jump over things, not go faster and crash into them, which happens quite a lot). Did that paragraph make sense? I don’t think it did.

Zack and Wiki

I had an interesting idea for a post a couple of days ago, but I couldn't log on so you miss out. Also I've forgotten what it was.

I bought "Zack and Wiki: the quest for Barbaro's treasure" yesterday. It sort of an old point and click adventure, but with crazy controls. So far I've opened umbrellas, cut down trees, dropped mushrooms into soup, etc. Fun stuff! It reminds me of playing games when I was little. Back before the ubiquity of the internet, getting stuck in games meant calling up the hint line (I think some games might still have that) or use the hint book along with some red transparency. I don't remember why you needed that, maybe they put the solutions so they couldn't be read, but general hints so you could.

I had an exam for knowledge management on Tuesday. Not sure how I went. There were forty multiple choice questions and I was out in something like ten minutes. That means I either went really well, or really badly.

Whatever...

The truth is out there

We bought the first six seasons of the x-files the other day, due to the Olympics removing all the normal stuff from the telly. It's been fun re-watching old episodes, as I used to watch it weekly when I was little and it was first on. It's strange how many episodes I don't remember at all, and how many I remember. I guess they must have replayed some episodes more than others or something. Didn't get the last three seasons as the get all weird when Mulder leaves and that new fellow joined. I think I'd stopped watching long before then anyway.

I used to read the novels and I still have one x-files t-shirt from then, so I must have been right into it, although I do not really remember.

Dr Pepper

We bought a six pack of Dr Pepper yesterday. That is exciting as they typically don't sell it here. There is an 'imports' lolly shop just down the road from me, although I've never been there before. I haven't had Dr Pepper since I was on holiday last year. If you don't like it then you have poor taste in good things.

They also had chocolate and stuff from England. If I'm feeling motivated in the next couple of months I might do an entry where I buy a bunch of stuff and put pics up here. Also I get to eat candy. There was pop tarts too, which have disappeared from the shops here.

Intentions

Just started this page. Like the one you are reading now. I mean it’s not like the one you are reading, it is the one you are reading.

The green layout is fairly offensive to me, I don't know why I picked it.

If I just feel like posting useless junk I'll do it here and keep my other page for my minis only. I'd post a link except that feels too much like work, and I’m posting here to avoid work. So if I was going to do that I may as well do work.


Whatever....