In the entire time I’ve had my XBox 360, I kept getting disconnected from the XBox Live service after 30 minutes or so, no matter what. I could be downloading or playing a multiplayer game, it didn’t matter. I thought at first that it was my wireless setup (I am using a Netgear wireless router as a “client” and going straight into the XBox 360) but it turns out I was wrong.

The XBox Live service has a “heartbeat” and if it can’t connect to specific ports after specific times, it assumes your connection is garbage and disconnects you. If you’ve got a UPNP (Universal Plug-n-Play) router, this doesn’t really affect you, since your XBox 360 tells your router to forward those ports and everyone’s happy. But I do not have UPNP compatible router; in fact I have the semi-expensive business-class Cisco PIX 501 firewall. Therefore these ports needed to be routed manually.

According to this Microsoft KB article, you need to open/forward the following ports:

TCP 80
UDP 88
UDP 3074
TCP 3074
UDP 53 TCP 53

My problem is now solved. I hope this can help someone else out there.

Just thought I’d post some pictures from our Julian Getaway from the 31st of last month. Enjoy!

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I had heard of Slacker Radio, but always thought it had a physical device that you needed to purchase in order to listen to the music. It turns out that’s not entirely true. You can actually listen online in your web browser (similiar to Pandora) for free all you want. They also have an excellent iPhone app that gives you a lot of the same functionality as their hardware device, but for free. I’ve been using the iPhone app on and off the past month, so I’m going to be basing my review on that.

First off, I have a regular iPhone. It doesn’t do the faster 3G data transfers (just EDGE.) I have tried other radio applications on my iPhone and found that they either sounded terrible, or skipped/stuttered all of the time (due to the aforementioned EDGE vs. 3G speeds.) Slacker works differently than other streaming radios in that it actually sends you the entire song as fast as it can. This means the odds of it stuttering are pretty slim to none, even on the slower EDGE network. Once a week I drive to Riverside (easily 2 hours each way) and I have only experienced a few “drop outs” of service in that time.

Slacker is different from Pandora in that it has pre-programmed “Stations” of music, similiar to picking a genre on your iPod or type of radio station in your car. The selection is pretty good, too. I sometimes listen to “Electronic Hits” and am surprised at some of the old/rare gems that it chooses to play.

Slacker is also different in that it allows you to skip songs and also ban songs/artists that you no longer want to hear on that channel. If you don’t pay for the service, you are allowed 6 song skips each channel each hour. If you pay their modest subscription fee, you’re free to skip as many songs as you want. No limits. And you can request to hear any artist or song instantly as much as you want.

I recently cancelled my XM radio subscription, so Slacker has basically replaced it. I really think this is the future of in-car/portable radio, due to more and more cell phones being internet-capable. I was even able to use it in the “middle of nowhere” during a vacation getaway up in Julian a few weeks back. I hooked my iPhone up to a set of speakers and put on the Slacker “80s, 90s, & Todays Hits” station as background music to just hanging out with friends. Worked great.

I really recommend this application, especially if you’ve got an iPhone and are tired of hearing the same ol’ stuff in your car. Check it out and let me know what you thought in the comments below.

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but when I saw the trailer, I was instantly intrigued. Being a film fanatic (and growing up wanting to work in Hollywood doing special effects) I wondered how they pulled off Brad Pitt’s aging in reverse. Turns out they made a website all about the special effects (no doubt to assist them in winning the 2009 Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, Best Makeup and Best Art Direction.)

Check it out at http://www.benjaminbuttonfx.com/ – I was fascinated.

No worries. I think I can help. See, I purchased the Steam version of Fallout 3, and when I installed Steam originally, I put it in a location different than the default (\Program Files\Steam\ is the default, I opted for simply \Steam\). The new Operation: Anchorage DLC (download content) for Fallout 3 doesn’t seem to like the fact that my copy of Fallout 3 is in a different place.

Upon starting the game, it looks like the DLC is loaded (it even shows up in the main menu’s “Download” section) but you will never receive the radio signal in your Pip-Boy to start the quest.

If this is your situation, and you’re running Vista, you’re in luck. You need to create a symbolic link. This is basically a “fake” directory that links to another directory.

1. Click the Vista logo and type “cmd” in the search box. If you’re not running as an administrator by default, you need to hold down CTRL+SHIFT when you hit enter in order to get admin privilages.
2. Type in cd “\Program Files\” – or if you’re running Vista 64 like me, cd “\Program Files (x86)\”
3. If you already have another Bethesda game installed (like Oblivion) you’ll want to do this:
   
   cd “Bethesda Softworks”
   mklink /D “Fallout 3” “[put path of your actual Fallout 3 directory here]
   
   Otherwise, if you don’t have any other Bethesda games, you need to type this:
   
   mklink /D “Bethesda Softworks” “[actual Fallout 3’s parent directory here]
   
   Note that I said PARENT directory on that last one. So if Fallout 3 is installed in D:\Games\Fallout 3\, you will want to provide the path D:\Games\ as the second parameter.
4. Everything should be good to go! Run the game and enjoy. Within a minute or two you should get the radio signal.

Hopefully this helps someone else out. I was getting frustrated, having spent the money on the DLC and not getting anywhere. And tsk tsk on Bethesda for not making this issue more well-known.

Ever since Bethesda came out with the 1.1 patch for Fallout 3, I couldn’t play the game anymore. Once I got into the game and started wandering around, I’d randomly “freeze” up… the video would stop updating, but the sounds/music would still play. Keyboard clicks and mouse clicks did nothing, requiring me to ctrl+alt+del and kill the task manually.

It looked like I was SOL until the next patch, but I found some help online:

The game engine has some issues with processors that have more than 2 cores. You can force the game to only use two of them and it will stop the freezing. I haven't had it freeze once since I did this several days ago.

Open up the fallout.ini file in: My Documents\My Games\Fallout3
Find the line:

bUseThreadedAI=0

change it to:

bUseThreadedAI=1

Add another line after it and insert:

iNumHWThreads=2

This will limit the game to 2 cores and prevent the engine bug from causing the game to freeze.

Surprisingly, this worked like I charm. I do indeed have a quad core processor, so it sounds like this was the culprit. Why 1.1 broke the game for me.. I have no idea. It sounds like Bethesda needs to do some better testing on multi-core processors.

Hopefully this helps someone else out there!

I always love the concept of random people doing something unexpected in a crowd. It’s funny to see how people react.

I’ve been hit by this a few times, and it’s darn confusing at first, but it makes sense (kinda.)

In ASP.Net, if you reference a control’s .Visible property, it not only checks if it’s been set to Visible = True, but also if it’s parent control is Visible = True. Only then will it return a “True” value back to you.

For example, let’s say you have a PlaceHolder, and inside the PlaceHolder you add a Label control:

   1: <asp:PlaceHolder ID="phParent" runat="server">

   2:     <asp:Label ID="lblChild" runat="server" />

   3: </asp:PlaceHolder>

And then in your code, you write:

   1: phParent.Visible = False

   2: lblChild.Visible = True

   3: Response.Write(lblChild.Visible)

Your response is going to be “False” because the Label’s parent control is not visible.

Just thought I’d share this as a warning to anyone else who might get tripped up on it.

I have an MX Revolution mouse, and recently it started double-clicking when I was just doing a single click. I thought it was a hardware problem so I went through their customer service department to schedule a replacement.

They’ve sent the replacement but I noticed the same exact problem on the replacement. After much hair pulling, it turns out to be a software/driver problem. After removing the Logitech software/drivers and going back to the default Windows ones, the problem disappears.

The moral of the story is: if you’ve got a Logitech mouse and the buttons/scrolling are acting up, don’t just assume it’s the hardware. Try the default/older drivers first.

1. I don’t know why our government feels the need to waste the money, but it seems we’ve exhausted our 1+ billion dollar budget for DTV coupons already. I ask myself: why is the government funding people getting digital television converters in the first place?
2. If you are getting your television from the cable company (like most people I know), then you DO NOT NEED A DTV CONVERTER.
3. If you have a box from your cable company, you DO NOT NEED A DTV CONVERTER.
4. If you have a newer TV capable of receiving OTA (over the air) digital channels, you DO NOT NEED A DTV CONVERTER.

However…

If you are using rabbit ears, or an antenna on your roof or something, you WILL need a DTV converter.

However…

There’s no guarantees you’ll be able to get much of anything. Some stations are broadcasting digital signals from different towers than the analog signals, so your antenna may need to be pointed in an entirely different direction, or it simply may not work any longer. Your mileage may vary.