XBOX 360

The great Xbox update

Martin Hinshelwood — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:45:14 GMT

I hope everyone is looking forward to the new Xbox live experience that will be going Live tomorrow! Hopefully we are passed the days of the ring of death from the update, unless you have a hacked box :)

Although I am not really interested in the Avatar piece, I think it will be well worth it. The update process is a little different this time, so you are not surprised there is a video detailing the process.

I never made it into the Preview program this time around, but watch this space for my Avatar tomorrow :)

Technorati Tags: Xbox,Xbox Live,Xbox 360

Xbox Live to Twitter Update (v0.2.3)

Martin Hinshelwood — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:25:07 GMT

I have updated the Xbox Live to Twitter application and it works quite well now. There are currently too many updates as you can see from my twitter on the left of my blog .

I will hopefully be adding some more customisation functionality to allow "only online" or "only title" changes to propagate. I may try to add some SQL Compact bits so differences in Achievements can be logged, but the data is currently limited...

I like this play pen as it allows me to explore some of the .NET 3.5 functionality and improve (much needed) my UI skills.

You can download the application from CodePlex along with all the source code.

Technorati Tags: Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, Twitter

Xbox Live To Twitter

Martin Hinshelwood — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 14:23:00 GMT

I had been trying to find an application that provided updates to twitter from my Xbox. There is such an application written by Duncan Mackenzie, but I could not get it to work. I tried everything and ended up decompiling the application to see what was wrong. Well, it seamed that the guts of the application was missing! The source code has all of the UI elements, but none of the bit to do the updates.

I tested the web service and it worked, so the only thing to do (Duncan has not updated the application since May 2007) was to write my own version. As I did not have access to Xbox Live data directly, I have leveraged Duncan's web service and only created the front end.

You can download the application from CodePlex along with all the source code.

if you have any problems, please create or vote for Issues via the interface.

Technorati Tags: Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, Twitter

Festive holiday studying

Martin Hinshelwood — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:26:27 GMT

I am sorry to tell you all that I am now (as of Friday past) off for the holiday period. With a little luck and some saved holidays I will not be back in the office until the 3rd January 2008 :) I will be in the office for damage control on the 31st, but apart from that I am a free man...

Well, I have been looking after my daughter and playing my XBOX and generally faffing around with a lot of miscellaneous Christmas stuff online. I have still not got my Sharepoint 2007 development box working after the Service Pack 1 / McAfee fandangle, but I am hopping that I can get it done at some point this week, if for nothing else but piece of mind...

I am keeping up with my feed reading, an I came across an article on the Visual Studio Magazine site that highlights the little known uses of WPF. The author (Kathleen Dollard) highlights the things that I thought WPF was for anyway (but largely ignored) and its benefits over WinForms. I think that Kathleen has hit the nail right on the head that WPF will be the way foreword for future .NET application development, but it does have a steep learning curve and it is different from the way that we have built applications in the past. I have resigned myself to learn this black art of WPF and increase my skill set with this worthwhile weapon in my arsenal.

I can only hope that Kathleen Dollard and other experts provide the same level and topics of articles, and like Kathleen said, Microsoft should also push its developers to show off WPF in this way.

So its WPF for me this holiday...

I will leave you with the "Hinshelwood family Christmas elf's" or "me as scrooge" if you are on the other Christmas spirit :)

Technorati Tags: Xbox, Xbox 360, Winforms, WPF, Christmass

P.S. Yippee, 200 posts...Just in time for the New Year...

Xbox 360 Elite

Martin Hinshelwood — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 12:40:21 GMT

Wohoo, I traded my sometimes crashing Xbox 360 in for an Xbox 360 Elite in Saturday. Over the last two weeks I have been playing Bioshock to death, but the crashing finaly anoyed me enough to get it sorted.

I could either have sent my Xbox away to Microsoft to fix for £150 (no ring of death :() or trade it in for £140 with a couple of games that I do not play any more and get an Elite for £105. it was a no brainer...

To sweeten the deal, I got Medal of Honor: Airbourn for a tenner and ponied up for Stranglehold, which I have been playing constantly...

I love my Xbox :)

hinshelm vs fernienator

Martin Hinshelwood — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 16:20:00 GMT

Or me vs my brother-in-law!

I think that I am winning!