Adam Kinney has post some articles in the past showing a Silverlight application for displaying gamer cards.  When the Playstation 3 finally caught up and created a "Portable ID", I thought this would be a decent chance to demonstrate some Silverlight chops. Yes, I have a PS3 and not an XBox360.  I thought maybe I'd make an application with unnecessary animations and sounds for fun, perhaps allow you to sort friends and setup notifcations that are not available from the PSN.  Here's my Playstation portable ID:

The gist of the online status is simply a JPG, in my case http://pid.us.playstation.com/user/drpayne.jpg , that gets updated when your status changes via the console.  Excited to run off and write code I created a Silverlight 2 app and set about downloading this JPG.  Except that it doesn't work because of Silverlight's cross domain security policies.  I'm not a genious in TCP/IP or DNS/BIND, but the policies used by Silverlight (mimicing those used by Flash) seem overly restrictive and make some scenarios that should be common and easy difficult or un-doable.  There may be a reverse-tunnel situation or similar DNS trickery that is capable with this type of application, but denial of service?  Check out what I just did in this blog posting:

<img border=0 src="http://pid.us.playstation.com/user/drpayne.jpg"/> 

When the markup for this page is downloaded to your browser, the browser then issues seperate http requests for content that lives on other servers.  That content comes from us.playstation.com, and Google analytics, and Blogged, and others.  This is, seemingly, not a security or denial of service risk in this particular situation.  The PS3 network site shown above did not need to place a client policy XML file in the server root, and in fact they would need to do work to prevent cross domain access of this type.  Sure, Silverlight has more than just HTTP networking capabilities, in fact for a future article I have a full blown instant messanger application implemented in Silverlight using Sockets.  In terms of being a good Technology Citizen, I can see Microsoft wanting to be very careful concerning what it allows devlopers to do with more general socket programming.  But HTTP?  Isn't this part of what the web is "about" ?

What do you think?  Is the cross domain policy employed by Silverlight too restrictive?  Does it not go far enough?  Just right?

Well, it was nice knowing you guys:

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/06/28/blizzard-introduces-diablo-3/

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/06/28/watch-diablo-3-teaser-and-gameplay-footage/

I pulled the trigger on a new desktop setup which is out for delivery according to the internets.  Because of my recent research I went ahead and went the quad core route, and after reading Scott Hanselman's blog post about going x64 being a complete non issue I'll be giving Vista x64 a try.  I also got a 1080p monitor and a Blu-Ray drive; probably slightly overkill but why not.  It's difficult to explain to non-programmers, but an appropriate setup with the right desk space, music, multiple monitors, and a repsonsive machine can make developing software a joy.  It can be a joy without a Raptor drive and a 24" display but these things help. 

I got a decent enough video card to check out some of the recent games, Bioshock being at the top of the list.

Call of Duty 4 for the PS3 is astoundingly good looking, good sounding, and fun to play.  I got this last night and playing in my home theater was some of the most fun gaming I've been able to do in a while, the multiplayer is surprisingly good.  I did not enjoy the multiplayer in the previous call of duty/medal of honor games.  I think I'm going to have to accept that as a 30 year old parent who's done some hand damage through years of overworking I'm never going to have the great FPS reflexes I used to but the game is still very fun to play online.

In other news, the Pope looks nice in his red cowboy hat:

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20071130_pope_blasts_atheism_in_new_encyclical/

I'm sitting at my kitchen table tonight burning about a dozen podcasts for my commute.  For a while I stuck to Dot Net Rocks but I've been throwing in the occasional Hanselminutes and Audioholics into the mix as well.  Tonight is the first time in a while I donn't truly have to do anything right now.  I still can't make any public announcements on the work situation but suffice to say my typical day is go to work --> pick up daughter --> put kiddo to bed at 8pm --> work till 12pm; throw in some required travel and marathon meetings and I'm more than a little tired.  I have two solid, relevant articles I need to complete and just haven't had the time.  In the next two weeks I'll be getting our new WPF based product into a demoable state and preparing for a talk in front of 600 people in Atlanta.

Tonight shall be spent catching up on Netflix night with my friend M. Chateauneuf du Pape and little else. 

Some people I know personally got an invitation to see Bram Stoker's Dracula on BD this weekend as one of my two Halloween movie nights this month.  I would encourage Milwaukee area nerds to try to make this one, in addition to the screening of one of my favorite films someone has promised to bring over a Halo edition 360 for some 106" front projection large and loud H3 action. 

I'm very excited about new toy #2 today.  This is the Splitfish FragFX for the PS3.  The XBox 360 needs an accessory like this as soon as possible.  The right analog stick has been turned into a mouse, and more importantly (though I have not tested it yet) they claim to have compensated for the analog accelleration (different sensitivity based on how far you push the stick) to make it smooth as silk.  Since I've been playing with a mouse since 1995 I've had trouble playing FPS games on consoles; I actually believe that anyone who were to learn both methods for the 1st time today would find the mouse to be superior anyway.  Those who claim the dual analog controllers are "just as good" will soon be very frustrated as I circle-strafe them.

So, I've been waiting for Lair to come out for quite some time, and the several delays led me to believe maybe Factor 5 was having some PS3 issues or had generally bitten off more than they could chew, but the potential of this game was astounding.  I played the game for about an hour and a half the day it came out and my initial comments were "Wow the music is astounding" and "Damn, this is hard in parts".  The difficulty came mostly in the form of trying to get my dragon to do what I wanted it to with the sixaxis but on my second play it's really not that different than some of my experiences playing Decent Freespace, the last space shooter I had.  Your mind wants to instantly be able to do a 180 but your ship/dragon can't turn that fast.  There are a lot of controls and context sensitive actions that mastering makes the game more fun.  Probably THE most fun aspect is landing and burninating and eating soldiers.  I had people over last night and this part of the demonstration was met with cheers and applause.  I've read about the game chunking in 1080p, but since my projector is 720p I have not had this issue.

So, Lair is fun but probably did not live up to the hype and potential, which is too bad.  I hope some of the issues could be fixed with patches in the future.  But, it's fun and the music is freaking fantastic.  Lair is a better game than 4.9.

My beloved HD projector started exhibiting some issues, mostly during Blu-Ray playback over the HDMI port.  Cruising some forums it seems that this huge purple line or white flash I sometimes see could be fixed by either firmware (not user upgradable) or a stuck dynamic Iris.  My projector (PT-AX100U) uses a dynamic iris to increase the contrast significantly.  My home theater and gaming depends on this device, I'm incredibly spoiled by always playing games on a 106" screen in a huge room in 5.1 so I'm not going to bother with any games until I get it back.  This would be the 4th piece of technology I've broken in a very short period of time.

Movies at Damon's, which I know some readers are on the mailing list for, will resume when my projector comes back.  300 will most likely be the next title, as it is supposed to be stunning in HD.  Anyone in the metro Milwaukee area who wants to be on the mailing list, leave or send me your address.

Dear Sony,

Thank you for punishing your early adopters.  Revisions in console hardware and specifications are no doubt unavoidable, however cutting the price on the PS3 mere months after it was released, along with offering a new version containing an 80gb HD and the full version of Motorstorm so soon seems like a bit of a slap to the 6million or so people who just bought these things.  The loud and clear message is to not buy consoles at launch. 

I bought Super Stardust HD last night and it was so much fun I blew off a lot of other things I've been meaning to do.  I did not play Geometry Wars but apprenntly the dual-analog control scheme is borrowed from that game.  It took a while to get used to the gameplay but I'm hoping over the next week I can better my #300 slot in this ridiculous and addicting shooter.  I believe this is either already on XBLA or is on its way there.  Buy it, now.

I cannot wait for my chance to buy this: http://gear.ign.com/articles/799/799262p1.html.  This is an ingenious idea, and the Xbox 360 absolutely needs this.  I often wonder if PC based Halo players on Live Anywhere are slaughtering console players due to the natural advantage of the glorious mouse.  I imagine cries of "camper!" and "Low ping bastard!" being replaced with "PC snob" or "mouser!" or maybe "m04Z0r!" Yes, elite speak is dumb.

From Joystiq today, it appears that the next BioShock post apocalyptic game will borrow heavily from Atlas Shrugged for its backstory and plot.

   "Julian Murdoch at Gamers With Jobs takes us on a tour of Quincy, MA's Irrational Games, the developers behind this underwater, art-deco opus. But it's not the usual tour of a game in development, but a tour of the motivation behind creating a intellectually sophisticated game inside the framework of a "kick-ass shooter." With hefty dollops of Objectivism, Ayn Rand's political ideology, on display not only in the game's story but in it's construction, BioShock roughly mirrors the plot of Rand's polemical Atlas Shrugged. Knowing that may not interest some of you, they're of course eager to remind everyone that it's also a "kick-ass shooter."

Read the rest and view screenshots here.  As shown in Lair, Gears of War, Resistance: Fall of Man, and Tetris, games are beginning to have much better plots than most Hollywood movies.  I will certainly have to check out BioShock when it arrives.

So, Starcraft 2 is happening.  That's pretty sweet, though maybe not as geek lusty to some as a Diablo III announcement might have been.  I'm glad they did not try to turn this into a MMORPG.  Despite the game appearing to be fairly far along I can't fathom us seeing this before late 2008.  That will give me time to upgrade the desktop.

I've been having an issue with Folding@Home on Vista, specifically that the error "Could not connect to Work Server (results)" often, maybe always, comes up when my desktop completes a work unit.  The solution in my case was to uncheck "Use IE connection settings", apparently there are some issues with Vista+IE7+FAH 5.0.3.  I wonder how much electricity I wasted...

With consoles getting better at becoming livingroom media hubs and all-around entertainment devices I think remote desktop functionality should be considered in the future.  As I sit in my home office today working, it would be nice if I could force my console to wake on LAN and check for firmware updates or download content from my laptop, or see what other users are online for a quick game of Motorstorm over lunch.  What do you think?

Got a PS3?  Join the Blu-Ray.com folding team, # 56895.  I'm going to let mine fold for a while to see if the team moves up the ranks at all.

http://folding.stanford.edu/

http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-PS3.html

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=56895

My name is "drpayne", which is also my playstation network id in case anyone is interested in beating me at MotorStorm. 

As soon as the SplitFish comes out for the PS3 I think I'll start playing FPSs competetively again, I absolutely cannot play these games (like Resistance) with a console controller.  It ain't natural.

My Monday was interesting.  The high point arrived at 9:30am when my accountants called with the lowdown on 2006 taxes, seems I saved too much $$ aside for my business taxes so Damon is getting a new laptop.  Its never good when the high point arrives so early...

I was to meet some business associates at the Brewer's Opening Day around 10:30.  I've been to games in the new ballpark before so I thought I knew how much traffic to expect.  I was to show up to cook veggie kabobs (I have a mixture and method I think is pretty good though I'm not a vegetabletarian) for the vegetarians and people who think Brats are unhealthy.  Once I got close to the stadium, it took me from 10:20 until 12:30 to go the last 4 miles.  Already super late because of this, I then follow the parking herd only to realize that all forms of parking are sold out and I have to park on National Avenue; let's just say its as far as I could be from where I needed to get to.  (For Milwaukeans: 41st and National to the East end of the North Lot, Giants 2)  So I got my out of shape self to run the 3 miles and stayed at the game for a while.

I picked my daughter up from daycare to learn she's finally done running a 105deg fever.  I got around to beating God of War 2 last night as well, they are obviously getting ready to start God of War 3 on the PS3.  I'm not sure if the ending was as satisfying as God of War but the game overall was better.

I saw this first here: http://feeds.joystiq.com/~r/weblogsinc/joystiq/~3/103076806/

First, its my opinion that Microsoft absolutely did the right thing by not including HDMI when the XBox360 released.  The rollout of everything related to HDMI from a hardware standpoint has been rough and incongruent.  HDMI support in hardware (players, TVs, projectors) is only now reaching a tolerable point and would have hurt the Xbox360 when it launched.  Copyright holders are, of course, jumping up and down to get everything going over an HDCP enabled connection and the future of video and sound is HDMI 1.3 right now with its wider color depth and increased bandwidth for high definition audio.  I do hope they are making this an HDMI 1.3 device.

With the new price of $476 if you were to buy the Wireless adapter, the wireless controller/charging station, and the HD-DVD add-on your total price is $800.  Suddenly Sony doesn't look quite so crazy with the $599 PS3, do they?  Granted, you don't NEED to buy the HD-DVD drive for $199 but for $600 (HDMI Xbox+wireless controlers+120gbhd, 60GB PS3 with Bluetooth and Blu-Ray, both w/802.11) would you rather have 60gb more of hard drive space or High-def optical disc capability?

At any rate, while it may piss of the 6million existing Xbox360 customers its the right move for MSFT to make, and also in my eyes validates many of the PS3 design decisions.  It also means I may get an XBox360 to put in my home theater for Gears of War and Dead Rising now that I can (almost) get an HDMI version.

{edit: Tycho agrees with me and then some http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/03/21/#22092}

I am running VS2005 on Vista with the Beta of the patch that allows it to run on Vista or with some Vista specific enhancements.  I set the ide .exe to always run as administrator and cannot get over the fact that it still asks me if I'm sure every time I run it.  This is ridiculous.  Of course I could turn off UAC but part of the reason for doing this was to learn the ins and outs of what my clients will experience with Vista.

I got the Smartphone 2005 SDK and am working on a smartphone video game which will be the subject of a few posts: nothing innovative at this point but if I can leave MotorStorm alone for long enough I'll get into some interesting code.

Check this post on Joystiq:

http://feeds.joystiq.com/~r/weblogsinc/joystiq/~3/91677544/

Check this quote:

" In short, the single- and multi-player elements of the game are merged, so those heretofore mindless enemies -- yup, they're your fellow carbon-based mammals."

Now, that's kid of an interesting idea.  I picutre either playing as the Hero with actual smart enemies but otherwise being mostly like any other game, or putting yourself in the "bad guy peon" queue.  In this queue you would play different bad guys with their own moves/powers/weapons/whatever but ultimately far weaker than the Hero since in all games the hero must kill 343,999,777 weaker peons before he can get teh powar up win teh game!  You would play for a short deathmatch-ish time then wait in line until the system needs to spawn another bad guy, possibly jumping from game to game depending on a centralized server sending bad guys to whatever system they are needed.  A cool idea, and one more to add to my list if they bring out an Xbox360 with HDMI.

I love this article on Ars today

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070214-8849.html

A quote:

... "

First and foremost, ratings based on partial game footage would become a thing of the past. Currently, the ESRB hands out ratings after viewing a reel with representative content prepared by the developers. Sen. Brownback thinks that's not enough: "Video game reviewers should be required to review the entire content of a game to ensure the accuracy of the rating," he said. "The current video game ratings system is not as accurate as it could be because reviewers do not see the full content of games and do not even play the games they rate."

"...

Good call, Mr. Out of Touch With Reality.  Does that mean all 80 hours of Final Fantasy XII should be "watched" before the game can be reviewed?  Maybe just a slide show of every model, texture, and environment and a dump of all sound used in the game?