Amazon is really working hard to become the first place you go to find digital content. We all know what the Kindle is doing for eBooks, and the Amazon digital music service is my favorite today. Well, I just found out that they’ve just jumped into the XBox 360 Live Arcade Games market as well! That’s right, if you want that cool new Live Arcade Game but forgot to pick up a point card (or just don’t really want to figure how how much that price translates to) then just head over to http://www.amazon.com/b/?node=979417011 and pick up your points or that game you were looking for through the Amazon purchase process. Now you’ll still have to enter your code in on your console (chat pad is handy for that) but that also lets you give gifts of games. So now you can get your friend that you KNOW you can beat a copy and they can join in with you online!
Archive for category Life in General
Nonstandard interfaces
Apr 2
Just as a note, recently I’ve been talking to a lot of people about nonstandard interfaces. For the next bit I’m willing to test out one of the current “nonstandard interfaces” available to us right now by dictating my blog posts using the native Windows 7 voice interface. I’ll be using the keyboard as little as possible during this test to determine just how far we’ve come with voice recognition. I doubt I’ll ever abandon the keyboard completely as that was my first interface to computers. But with this experiment I’ll be testing voice recognition in a variety of environments and tasks to determine if I can extend my toolbox for interacting with my systems. With two blog posts dictated already using voice recognition, so for I’m very pleased with how it’s going. The fact that seven is almost always spelled out and I have to correct it to a number is my biggest gripe speaks well for where we are.
I imagine the true test will be dictating in my car. That’s a notoriously noisy environment as my built in voice recognition system for my hands three phone can attest. But if it can work there even somewhat reasonably, then I’ll be able to take some of my input time (podcast listening) and turn it into input/output time (the reason I like to listen to those podcasts is that I get some great ideas, and having a better recording medium is always very helpful.)
Amazon has a free sampler of the Music you’ll hear at SxSWm – you can grab it here and put it on your Zune for that flight down. (Well I guess you could put it on another MP3 player as well… Like your Kindle or something.)
Delicious Tags
Mar 2
Chris has convinced me that Delicious is useful – not just for me keeping track of my own bookmarks but to get information out without re-posting or having things get stale. For that end, I’ve re-discovered my account and have put up a tag cloud at http://delicious.com/tags/PhilWheat – if you’ve got suggestions or recommendations, please feel free to leave me a comment below and I’ll make sure to see what I can do!
I’ve been meaning to dig in, but I got a ping earlier today and took another look. With everything going on right now in the world, it’s always good to try to keep up and continue building a strong base of knowledge. I use The Teaching Company (www.teach12.com) for opening up new thoughts and concepts, but it turns out that MIT and Stanford at least are opening up a lot of their courses on Youtube. Everything from Geography to Linear Algebra to Computer software and Hardware Design. VERY impressive.
Stanford: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=stanforduniversity&view=playlists
OK, nothing to do with tech, but I had to post it in honor of the new episodes coming out on Friday.
Jan 14
OK, I am old
Dec 17
remember when games like 
(http://www.retroist.com/2008/12/17/the-video-game-systems-of-the-1983-sears-wishbook/sears-wishbook-video-games-01/) were really neat!
I don’t see my old trusty VIC-20 there, but I think that’s because these are from Sears, and if my hazing memories from the stone age are correct, K-Mart (and later on, Service Merchandise) was where you’d find Commodores in those days. Then COMPUTER Stores came along!
We’ve come a LONG, LONG way in our systems – sometimes it’s worth it to consider where we are and where we were just 25 years ago.
Update on those changes
Dec 17
My blog has moved! The main URL’s should all be the same (and I’ve added some newer, easier to remember ones) but permalinks and historical URL’s will have changed. I’ll be moving over some of the historical posts, but probably not all – a lot of them aren’t really relevant any more. If something you actually refer to or link to has gone missing, just contact me or leave a comment on this post and I’ll make sure it gets re-added.
A New Era has arrived.
Sep 28
On the day where all the talk is around financial bailouts and economic meltdowns, there was one piece of incredible news. We now have a commercial orbital launch industry in the US. The Falcon 1 vehicle from Space X became the first privately designed, funded, and operated launch vehicle to achieve earth orbit. Now THAT’s an achievement. And from what I can see – they’re not going to be the only ones for long, there’s a good many other companies looking to follow up this momentous occasion. This is the foundation we needed to get everything from perfect ball bearings to high volume pharmaceutical refining to orbiting solar power plants to resource extraction from off world bodies. And it starts today – and hopefully will keep expanding. My fingers are crossed that we can make this new revolution stick and not end up in a Fallen Angels world.
Hmmm
Aug 21
On 1st August 2008 a link on the official Red Dwarf website strongly hinted at ‘new Red Dwarf’ – and stated that Robert Llewelyn would reveal all in an interview with Seattle based radio station KCTS9 on 24th August 2008.
I see the interview scheduled – hopefully there will actually be something to it! It is the Anniversary after all. And if someone in Seattle has a chance to ask – I know it’s not Red Dwarf, but see of he has any information about possibly resurrecting the “Scrapheap Challenge” show (not the US version, but the original, root show.)
