Vanvalkinburgh.org

Got a refurbished Logitech Harmony 550 remote today, ordered it from amazon. Hmm must of been on sale when I bought it, I got it for $49.99, one day shipping is only $3.99 if prime member, total after tax and shipping was a little less then $59.99. Nice only having one remote instead of three, it can also control xbox 360. Easy to setup, just plug it into your computer by USB, and install their software, you just need to know the model numbers of all your stuff. Well the 360 doesn’t really have a model number, so you just put Xbox 360 in for it. You can get the Logitech Harmony 510 for $49.97, but I rather have the refurbished 550 for $49.99 at the time I bought it.

Couldn’t resist the release date delivery. So I pre ordered Fable 2, only around $5 for the release date delivery, the tax blows, that’s around $5 too. So total payed is around $70. They haven’t charged me yet, I don’t think they will charge me until they ship it, as if the price is less, then that’s what they’ll charge me, they have some price protection thing on pre orders. Could pre order Wii Music too, not sure if it’ll sell out, if it sells out then it would be worth pre ordering, and selling on ebay. But I think I’ll pass, don’t want to spend anymore money this month.

I played the first game, and it was fun, so I’m sure the second one will be just as good if not better, most likely way better. Would be fun to play online with somebody, but I don’t know anybody with xbox live and that is getting Fable 2.

Update 10/20/08
Amazon shipped the game today, should get it tomorrow. IGN has a review of Fable 2 here.

According to some blog on nytimes.com, the xbox 360 base system price will drop to $199. Hmm wonder how much the used/refurb’s will sell for. Guess I might have to buy a new one, if I can get a new base system for $199, already have hard drive and games, at least then I can get a longer warranty then a used or refurb would have.

Xbox 360, Lagging in Sales, Will Cost Less – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com

Update
Just read on amazon that the new 360’s have a three year warranty, another comment said “all 360’s have a three warranty”, I don’t think all of them do, guess I should check later, to see if my 360 from 2006 is still under warranty, I don’t think it is. But since the new ones come with a three year warranty, I’d be more willing to buy a new one for $200.

That’s what happens when turning on our xbox 360. It only lasted two years, out of warranty, which sucks. Don’t know, or want to know, how much it would cost to fix it. Probably cheaper to buy a used, or refurbished one. We already have hard drive, controllers, so all we need is a working system.

I don’t think I’ll be buying a replacement, not that big of a deal, I’ll just play the Wii. Can sell the games for some money. Hmm just need to figure out how to cancel the live account, hopefully it can be done without a working xbox.

Update
Looks like you have to call them to cancel xbox live, nice, fuckers.

Just watched that video, found on google. Tried doing maintenance, maybe that fixed it for a short period of time. Go to the memory thing and click X,X, LB, RB, XX or something like that, look on google. Hmm according to the description on that video, the freezing is the beginning of the “ring of death”. Nice guess this thing might not be working when the Fable 2 comes out. I’m not going to buy a new 360 if it breaks. Hmm actually I suppose I can buy a refurb for $200, and use wireless controller and hard drive, I already have. Cheaper then sending it back to microsoft, its out of warranty. Well wireless controller isn’t really wireless unless I put different batteries in it, the rechargeable battery from the plug and play kit, we got two years ago, along with the 360, is kind of dying. Not very far away from 360 anyways, so who cares.

Maybe it needs to be cleaned out, I don’t know, I guess opening it, won’t void the warranty, as it has no warranty. I think refurbs at gamestop come with a warranty, so that’s a good thing. This might be happening because somehow I left it turned on for a really really long time, thought I turned it off, but guess not.

Update
Not just GTA IV is freezing, also the demo of BattleField Bad Company freezes too, the demo is stored on the hard drive. Haven’t tried any games without the hard drive connected, couldn’t save them, if it worked.

Got Gears of War today, for $24. Gamestop has a special right now, if you trade two xbox 360, wii, or ps3 games, then you get an extra $10. I only got $17 total for Call of Duty 3 and Just Cause. I got the one with the bonus disk, haven’t played online yet though. I should have enough games to entertain me until Battlefield: Bad Company is cheaper.

Update
Stuck already, didn’t take to long to get stuck.

This is fucking pathetic, says the door is breakable or something, x isn’t the button, b isn’t the button, shooting it doesn’t work either. So what button to click? Oh your just supposed to get killed by that thing once it hits you, right. How come it says I failed then? Doesn’t that mean I succeeded, this is fucking pathetic. Maybe if you jump out of the way, and let the pathetic thing smash through the fucking door. Stupid gun that only functions outside, where the pathetic satellite is. Making a monster killable only one way, is fucking pathetic.

Yep the pathetic monster has to run into the door, guess the guy isn’t fat enough. Ahh well it keeps running into me, and killing me, better off playing online, suck at that too though.

I got the highest rank that I can get in the demo online. To cheap to pay $60 for the full game, my mom said if blockbuster’s has it, then she’ll rent it. I might buy it in the future when I can get it either new or used for cheaper. Wait I guess blockbuster’s doesn’t have it, oh well. But they have mario kart for the wii. Hmm I guess there was some fucking moron, complaining for 20 minutes or so, so she didn’t bother waiting, and trying to rent anything.

Oh yeah and I’m a fucking moron too, I edited the wrong post the first time.

The game gets kind of boring with only one online map, and not being able to unlock anything anymore. At least now I can get bored of it, before I buy it, that way I save money.

I got my kvm, my mom ordered for me on ebay, also got a vga cable for our xbox 360l, which she also ordered on ebay. Both work fine, now when fixing people’s computers, I don’t have to unhook everything from mine. I can switch between the 360 and computer. The kvm has four ports. The text is readable on my lcd monitor, it wasn’t on our crt tv, unless you go really close.

You can see the setup below.

Hmm the picture seems to be worse on the mini, not sure about the 360, some other computer that isn’t mine, it looks alright, but its using windows. Need a new monitor, have the old one be dedicated for kvm, and the other one directly hooked up to mac.

I was walking (on a… BUSY street) in front of your house (with an American Flag out front) today, you had your curtains open and you were doing “something”, sitting there on your couch. Exhibitionist? I wanted to just walk in on you… should I have? What would you have done? Does anyone else live there?

I’m pretty sure you saw me (I walked by like four times!)… Tell me what I was wearing? Do you usually do that there and around the same time (around 4 – 5pm)? Wow!! I’ll have the courage next time! (I drove by later and you were outside with your weed-eater, so you won’t have any doubt it’s you)

Quote from craigslist. My mom just ordered me a vga cable for the xbox 360, now I can play the 360 on my monitor. Nobody will see me downstairs in my room. If some lady walked in my house, I don’t know what I’d do. Probably have an anxiety attack. Hmm actually I’d probably be having an anxiety attack before they walked in, if they walked past my house four times. I’d probably close the curtains, grab a kitchen knife…

Update
The package has been updated, you no longer need to download and install ffmpeg, everything required is included.
Download fixed package
Hopefully the new package is fixed, intel only for now.

Update
You can download a build with video transcoding enabled here. You will also need to download and install ffmpeg.

Version SVN-578 2007-12-19

NOTE: please remove your fuppes.db

* fixed ffmpeg compilation for
older ffmpeg versions (patch from Klaus S. Madsen)
and with missing libswscale
* fixed FAAD decoder for Ubuntu (patch from Klaus S. Madsen)
* fixed stupid buffer overflow in
FFmepgWrapper (patch from Jared D. McNeill)
* MediaServer description values configurable
* libnotify support without gnome-panel-applet (#1814615)
* fixed #1822462 (ImageMagick includes)
* fixed #1815588 (segfault when en-/decoder fails to load)
* added optional refId support for virtual folders
* support for Yamaha RX-N600
* #1838835 temp dir configurable
* pass additional ffmpeg arguments (add node)

I updated the fuppes package to version SVN-578. You can download it here. You have to remove your fuppes.db file, otherwise it won’t work. Open a terminal and do the below:

rm .fuppes/fuppes.db

For the xbox 360 to see it, you might have to add the below to fuppes.cfg:

Under:

<device name="Xbox 360" virtual="Xbox 360" enabled="true">

Add:

<description_values> 
<friendly_name>%s %v : 1 : Windows Media Connect</friendly_name> 
<model_name>Windows Media Connect compatible (%s)</model_name> 
<model_number>2.0</model_number> 
</description_values>

So it should look like the below:

    <device name="Xbox 360" virtual="Xbox 360" enabled="true">
      <description_values> 
      <friendly_name>%s %v : 1 : Windows Media Connect</friendly_name> 
      <model_name>Windows Media Connect compatible (%s)</model_name> 
      <model_number>2.0</model_number> 
      </description_values> 
      <user_agent>Xbox/2.0.\d+.\d+ UPnP/1.0 Xbox/2.0.\d+.\d+</user_agent>
      <user_agent>Xenon</user_agent>
      <xbox360>true</xbox360> 
    </device>

You can find fuppes.cfg, in .fuppes, in your home folder, in finder click go and go to folder and type in .fuppes. Or type nano .fuppes/fuppes.cfg in a terminal.

Update
Download the fixed package here. That package should work.

Update 12/14/07
You can download a pkg installer here. It doesn’t contain my working config files though, you can find my working config files here. Fuppes will be installed into /opt/local/bin, so run /opt/local/bin/fuppes to start.

Fuppes is a free UPnP media server, which can stream to the xbox 360 and other devices too. No need to pay for some program called “connect360″. You can compile it yourself, or download the intel binary, sorry powerpc users, I didn’t cross compile.

Download Fuppes-SVN-549 intel binary OS X (Tested on my mac only, running leopard, no guarantee it will work. Use at your own risk.)

The source code has been edited, so you can go to youipaddress:port/presentation/options.html?db=rebuildv, which will rebuild your virtual folders, it already had the ability to update the database or rebuild the database by the web interface, I just added support to rebuild the virtual folders from the web interface.

The main reason was so I could add the following to a shell script:

cd /tmp && wget myip:port/presentation/options.html?db=rebuild
cd /tmp && wget myip:port/presentation/options.html?db=rebuildv

Which will obviously do the same thing as if you pointed your web browser there.

Download PresentationHandler.cpp (The only file I modified.)

If you make a cronjob to run the above commands, then you will most likely want to set a port number in fuppes.cfg, so it doesn’t change every time you restart it.

For those who can’t read my included readme file, I copied and pasted it here.

Install

Double click install, the install script will copy everything in bin/ to /usr/local/bin and everything in lib/ to /usr/local/lib.

Edit vfolder.cfg, and then copy it to ~/.fuppes, ~/.fuppes will be created the first time you run fuppes, or just do mkdir ~/.fuppes, vfolder.cfg isn’t required by all devices. If you don’t want to use the xbox 360 virtual folder configuration, then change

<vfolder_layout device="Xbox 360" enabled="true">

to

<vfolder_layout device="Xbox 360" enabled="false">

Then change

<vfolder_layout device="default" enabled="false">

to

<vfolder_layout device="default" enabled="true">

You don’t need to copy the included fuppes.cfg, as it will create one when you open it. It is already configured to be working with the xbox 360 though. You might need to put your local ip address in between

<interface></interface>

Also you will most likely need to change the shared objects, to whatever folders you want to share, you can add as many

<dir></dir>

as you want.

After you have it configured you can run it with fuppes, then type r, and then after that is done type v, if you need virtual folders. The source has been modified so you can go to youipaddress:port/presentation/options.html?db=rebuildv, which will rebuild the virtual folders, you need to do that after you update, or rebuild the database.

The script was modified so I could add to a shell script on my mythtv box, to automatically update the database, after it exports the show to the xvid format.

youipaddress:port/presentation/options.html?db=rebuild
youipaddress:port/presentation/options.html?db=rebuildv

Nothing will show in your browser when going to youipaddress:port/presentation/options.html?db=rebuildv, if you look in the terminal you will see that it is working, unless you don’t have a vfolders.cfg file in ~/.fuppes.

Uninstall

Double click uninstall, which will delete everything it installed, but it won’t delete your settings by fuppes, you can delete it manually by running in a terminal “rm -fr ~/.fuppes”

Don’t believe everything you read online, I thought you couldn’t because some jackass said “This won’t work. Remember that the USB ports are read-only. This means the 360 cannot write anything to the drive; no game saves, no music, no downloaded content, etc.”, from here. I don’t think datel, would be selling an external hard drive for the 360, if it didn’t work. Oh yeah that 160 GB hard drive from datel is a rip off, I’d buy an external hard drive from newegg.com. I’m not running out of space anyways, so I don’t need it. Don’t have any money either. Newegg has a 320 GB external hard drive for $100 from a good brand.

Well now neither ushare or tversity works. Ushare plays the file then it just pauses. When using tversity, the 360 says the file isn’t supported. So I can’t stream videos anymore, to the 360. The connection should be good enough. To bad there’s no non buggy software for linux.

Update
If you copy the converted video to a usb thumb drive, or secure digital card, or whatever, as long as it has a usb connection. I have a secure digital card reader, so copied the video on to it, and plugged the card reader, into my xbox 360, and the file plays fine. Would work with an external hard drive too, I don’t have one though. No more wasting time on buggy software, I’ll wait until its stable.

A new patch has been released by KeithB from geexbox’s forum. Which makes it possible to stream videos to the 360. If you have the latest update for your 360, then you can stream MPEG 4 files, with an audio codec of AAC or FAAC in linux.

How to with debian/ubuntu packages

Instead of transcoding while it streams it, I will convert the files first. You can do it easily with tversity. Go to the library and go over the top left. Make sure you select the video file before converting.

That is running in my cache, not running tversity right now. Thats why you only see a black area.
You still have to do ln -s xxx.nuv xxx.avi

Streaming files to the xbox 360 in linux

Update
It broke, can’t convert anything anymore, with tversity. Didn’t do anything.

We had Christmas early, as my grandma wanted to just sit around on Christmas day, since she has to go to work on Tuesday.

• 3 dvds
• 3 xbox 360 games, Gun, Cars, Call of duty 3
• 3 nintedo ds games
• Nintendo shirt, thats to small for uncle
• Tool set, surprised I got one, needed a new one for a while. The cheap compusa one, kind of broke.
• Black DS lite
• Pop corn
• Cable ties
• New sweater, needed a new one
• Rechargeable batteries, mainly need for camera.
• Gloves

Might of forgot something, anyhow thanks to everyone who got me something.

Was going to take out the commercials of my tv shows I record, but I can’t edit them, because windows movie maker doesn’t support mpeg 2 files. It supports mpeg 1 files I think. The reason was so they would be compatible with the xbox 360 without converting them again. So I’m using the xvid codec for it and virtual dub mpeg 2. The official virtual dub doesn’t support mpeg 2 files. Can’t save back to a mpeg 2 file either. The program that came with my tuner doesn’t work right, I only want to edit the file once. It came free with my tuner, but you have to pay for the upgrade. If I could do a direct stream copy for the video in virtual dub, then it wouldn’t take so long. Rather skip through the commercials. Takes way to long to compress it. To bad I can’t find any programs that’ll do what I want for free.
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The new encode 360 has a GUI. Still converting two videos. Oh yeah I don’t watch heroes on Monday night anymore, cause I’m a lazy ass, and go to bed at around 8 pm. I need a lot of sleep, otherwise its even harder to wake up. Or sometimes I go to bed at 9 pm, when the show starts. I usually don’t stay up till 10 pm. Nice having a tv tuner, the last episode was 42 minutes, without commercials. I rip all the commercials out before watching it.

I hooked it up to my grandma’s t.v. I could barely tell a difference. I wouldn’t spend 600+ for a very small difference in games. I might spend $40 to hook it up to a monitor. But I probably won’t even do that. I don’t think $40 is worth a small difference either. Oh yeah it was 1080i, maybe not p, but I doubt, I’d notice a difference with that either.

I guess it isn’t broken, haven’t messed with it for a while. But the reason I never got it to work before, is because my xbox is messed up, and will only work with my old game adapter. My xbox 360 works with the WGA54G game adapter, the game adapter has the newest firmware too, I already had the settings plugged in. To get my computer to work with it, all I had to do was, disable mac address filtering. If its not working, its probably because you don’t have the right mac addresses. After adding my computer’s ethernet mac address, and enabling the filtering again, it connected without a problem. My original xbox, can’t connected by ethernet to router, or any other game adapter, which really sucks. Basically microsoft’s software on it screwed up. I don’t know how to flash the bios, I think you need a modchip, which I don’t have. Also I would only want to flash the bios on the xbox, to see if the bios is messed up, or re install the update somehow, the update that you get from xbox live, or a game cd, that automatically installs.
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