Recovering Game Settings from your XBox post RROD

We went out to do some grocery shopping last night and came back to an upset young man. Apparently the XBox 360 that we’ve had for some 5-6 years finally bit the dust – posting an “E-74″ error on the screen and displaying the dreaded red ring around the power button. The worst part of all was that my son had been playing his new Skyrim game over the holidays and was fretting over the thought that he’d just lost all of his hard work. The new XBox 360′s won’t accept the older externally mounted hard drives from the older units – what to do? No worries though…Dad to the rescue!

Fortunately, I had upgraded our systems hard drive from the original 20Gig HDD to a much beefier 120Gig HDD a few years back. The new drive came with an XBox 360 hard disk transfer cable, which has a special attachment on one end that snaps onto the external HDD connector and which has a USB connector on the other end. Once we got a new XBox 360 (the other one was probably 6+ years old) it was a simple matter to plug the old XBox hard drive into the USB port on the front of the new XBox and transfer the user accounts, avatars, videos and yes, game settings and saved games over to the new console. Problem solved and the son is downstairs swinging his broad sword and saving the world from Orcs…although he smells like a wet werewolf at the end of some of his quests ;?)

MIT Drone Maps Room in Real Time Using a Kinect

I’m totally digging the innovative uses of the Microsoft Kinect, with novel uses popping up every day. I also love the fact that my son, your daughter…pretty much anybody can start exploring and tinkering in this space because of this sub $200 piece of gear. The MIT/UW video caught my eye this morning…using a Kinect mounted to a quadrotor drone to create a 3D map of an environment. It sparks the imagination with possible uses underwater and on other planets where GPS isn’t an option. Keep up the good work guys!

More info can be found via their “Visual Odometry For GPS-Denied Flight And Mapping Using A Kinect” post.

Applying Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 with WebPI

Last week Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2010 was released to the masses. There were just two ways to install it, either run the web installer which pulls down just the bits that you need to install for your particular setup of VS2010 or pull down the ISO from Microsoft that had all of the VS2010 SP1 bits wrapped up in it. I went the ISO route and patched Visual Studio on my laptop without incident.

Now it’s been a whole 2-3 days and voila – a mo’ better way. I saw a tweet from @BradWilson today saying that “the best way to install VS2010 SP1 is via WebPI: it rolls in IIS Express + tools & SQL Compact 4 + tools”. Being the adventurous type that I am, I fired up the Microsoft Web Platform Installer version 3 (aka WebPI) and sure though, there was a “Visual Studio 2010 SP1″ option. If you don’t have WebPI already installed, you can get it here. Even if you don’t run VS2010, go and get it as it’s pretty much the swiss army knife for devs and admins wanting to add server and support software to your desktop and server. I added the VS2010 SP1 and let WebPI have at it. The installer churned for quite a while on #1 of 10 of the additions it was installing (the VS2010 SP1 installer) and afterwards gave me a pop-up saying it needed to reboot to continue installing the rest. I clicked reboot and when the system restarted WebPI fired back up and a UAC prompt popped up asking me if it was okay for it to continue making changes to my system. I said yes and a few minutes later the following window popped up when it completed.

WebPI VS2010SP1 Completion

As you can see, a lot more than just the SP1 got installed. IIS 7.5 Express, SQL Server 2008 R2 Mgmt Objects, Web Deployment Tool 2.0 and some tooling to support SQL Server Compact Edition 4 (SQL CE 4) were added to my system. A most welcome feature as it keeps me from having to hunt them down. Good job guys!

NoScript add-on for Firefox

If you’re like me, you frequently get called on to help others out when they experience “issues” on their computers. Let’s face it, we’re front-line tech support for many of our family and friends. One tweak that I like to do on family computers is #1 to switch them over to using Firefox as their default browser and #2 installing the NoScript add-on to Firefox. CNet has a quick video explaining NoScript (see below) but I end up having to take a more pragmatic approach by selecting “Scripts Globally Allowed”. Let’s face it, the first time a site doesn’t work because scripting was blocked, they’re going to make you set it anyways.

Even with scripts allowed globally, NoScript still protects you from other issues including Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Click Jacking and other nastiness that they’ll run across while browsing. It even has a setting to help encourage SSL connections to various sites to help prevent cookie hijacking while you’re on the road. While not a complete secure browsing solution, it’s another layer of security that MAY result in a couple less support calls.

Don’t just take my word for it, Steve Gibson has mentioned NoScript many times in his Security Now podcast. For more info on NoScript and what it offers, scope out the features of NoScript.

Disclaimer: Your mileage may vary. Don’t blindly follow my lead…do your own research and configure the sphincter pressure of your NoScript settings at whatever comfort level you have based on your research.

Texas Puke

We’re heading over to a community-wide Chili cook-off in a few minutes. Rather than trying to compete with the “most authentic” or “hotter than blazes” categories of chili, we decided to make a concoction that I can only categorize as “most addictive”.

The reason our entry is called “Texas Puke” is not actually known. Some surmise that it is because it “looks like puke” as it has a wide assortment of beans, salsa, cheeses (does Velveeta actually count as a “cheese”?) and other goodies thrown in. My assertion is that it is called “Texas Puke” because it is so yummy and so entirely addictive that you’ll eat plateful after plateful until you actually puke. This was proven at one gathering wherein my older brother ate so many servings that we lost count and, while driving home, he asked us to pull over so that he could yack alongside the road. Not because the food was bad – quite the opposite, it was so good that he couldn’t stop eating it.

Texas Puke in a crock pot

The recipe was shared with us by one of my dearest friends – Mr. Ed. Where he got it from is unknown. All I know is that I expect to inflict a consider amount of over-eatage at tonight’s festivities. Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

• Hamburger (2-3 lbs)
• Pinto Beans (1 can)
• Salsa – medium/hot chunky (1 jar)
• Hormel Chili w/beans – (1 can)
• Chili Beans (2 cans)
• Heavy Whipping Cream (1 pint)
• Velveeta Cheese (4 lbs)
• Mozzarella Cheese – grated
• Tortilla Chips

Cook hamburger and drain fat. If you want, you can add Italian sausage for more zing. Add Velveeta cheese, beans, whipping cream and salsa in a crock pot and cook for 1-2 hours on slow simmer. Stir often or it will burn.

Once it has cooked, serve over tortilla chips and sprinkle with mozzarella cheese. I usually let the individuals partaking of this delightful goop to season it with whatever chili powders, chipotle seasonings, etc. that they feel their tongues can endure.

Enjoy!

OCEANIC Tech Talk from Two Years Ago

I was doing some housekeeping on one of my web servers this afternoon when I ran across an old Tech Talk video that I recorded two years ago. The OCEANIC Tech Talks were lunchtime presentations that I did every few weeks that basically covered new technologies that had piqued my curiosity. I’d bring a loaf of bread and some peanut butter and jelly for those who didn’t bring their lunch with. I let this particular video run in the background while I worked this afternoon and it dawned on me that not much awesomosity (my made up word) has happened in the last couple of years technology wise. An interesting look back for sure.

Technologies that I discussed were varied and mostly things that I thought could be of use to us either in our personal lives or in our research endeavors.There was one minor disturbance near the beginning when somebody walked in late for the session and they were up on the main campus (~86 miles north of the southern campus) and they were trying to get the two-way video feed to wake up from sleep mode. I was experimenting with Camtasia to do this kind of screencast and never published it because of the little interruption.

Topics for this particular Tech Talk included:

• Microsoft Surface 1.0 + speculation about Second Light
• What does a Trillion Dollars Look Like?
• The PI Clock
• The new (back then) iPod Nano
• 3M MPRO110 Micro LCD Projector
• Sanyo Xacti Waterproof Video Camera
• 3D Minoru Webcam
• Cuisinart Green Gourmet Cookware
• Coleman “Flash Cell” Cordless Screwdriver (I still use this in the server room)
• A discussion about Capacitors and Super Capacitor technologies
• eReader Technologies
• Solar Trees and Solar Parking Lots

Eclectic and varied technologies for sure. A little bit of something for everybody. Definitely something that I enjoyed doing – researching cool new technologies and presenting the most interesting ones to my colleagues. Now if only I could paid to do this (Note: Donations to the University can indeed be made and earmarked for OCEANIC towards that end ;?)

Electric Car Gas Stations

One of the interesting dilemmas that we face as we move forward towards all-electric cars is the issue of “filling up”. Once the charge indicator gets so low, it’s time to top off the charge to make sure you have enough reserve energy to complete your travels. One of the main methods of re-charging the EV’s is the adoption of charging stations like GE’s WattStation, discussed in this video:

The WattStation and other charging station technologies are fine if you have time to stop and charge up, but what about when you’re on a long trip? It’d be nice to have the in-and-out convenience that we have with traditional gas stations. You pull in, fill up and you’re on your way in 5-10 minutes or so.

I ran into another interesting video that discusses a method that allows you to do just that. You pull your car into a Battery Switch Station and a robotic assembly removes the battery pack from underneath your car and replaces it with a fully charged replacement. You’re in, refueled and back on the road in 2 minutes or so. Neat stuff for the road warriors, taxi’s, delivery people, etc. A demo of the concept is here:

Now the trick is to get both of these technologies integrated together. Ensuring that we have the ability to plug-in when we have the time and a charging station is nearby but also designing the vehicles for a quick change of the battery pack for those long hauls.