Summit catches 3D gaming in upswing

I was reading this article about 3D gaming and it could not be any more dead on about the timing and readyness for 3D gaming.

Summit catches 3D gaming in upswing

When I was at CES in January I saw the huge amount of hype and push for 3D TV. I just have no desire to gear up to watch TV. That is when I relax and I don't want to put on battery powered glasses to do it in my own living room. I understand that porn watchers are going to ultimately drive the technology like most innovations.

I did get a chance to experience the Nvidia gaming booth and I was bown away. The games are computer generated so the natural depth perception isn't quite the same as looking at real people in a movie. I already sit down and gear up to play with my gaming mouse, keyboard, headphones, and microphone, so why not throw in some battery powered glasses too? After checking out a game hands on in Vegas, I'm ready for 3D and will be making a purchase soon to get there.

Ignite Dallas #2

I've been following the TED events for a few years and I've always wanted to go but haven't been able to get approved to attend. If you are not familiar with TED it is a gathering of people who give timed presentations on their big ideas. You have to be reviewed and your idea has to be pretty riveting or game changing to present.

To be able to attend an event in person you have to write an essay and be pretty important. I do appreciate being able to watch all the videos on www.TED.com. I find them very inspirational and they continue to give me hope for the future of humanity.

Recently other groups have been working to emulate TED such as SMU with their TEDxSMU event which I also tried to get into and was not accepted. I stumbled on another group which I was able to get into and I'm looking forward to seeing what the event holds. This group is called Ignite Dallas. I registered on EventBright for only $20 here and there is a Facebook page here. I'll attend and report back on how it goes. It's Wednesday June 2nd from 6pm till 10pm at the Granada Theatre.

Brightcove - B2B Marketing with Video

I was sent this video by someone and I have to say that it's a good way to think about video. I've never seen this type of cohesive approach to video before and I wanted to share it with others. This is probably only interesting to you if you are in marketing but I could be wrong.

Brightcove - B2B Marketing with Video

View more presentations from Brightcove.

TetriTherapy?

A friend of mine sent me this link which discusses the output of some research on the positive benefits of playing Tetris to reduce the incidents of traumatic flashbacks. I have to admit that after a hard day at work or when I am particularly stressed out I find myself wanting to play a game. For me it's always been a way to de-stress and unwind where others might turn to more harmful vices such as smoking, drinking, or drugs.

One of the drawbacks I've found is going too far down and playing too much. This has caused me to have the reverse effect where I can't sleep and I toss and turn with thoughts consumed from the game. I can play whole games in my dreams and wake up frustrated with very little deep sleep. On the other hand if I find myself not having played games for a few weeks I'll end up with nightmares where my brain goes into overdrive and so I balance things out with a little gaming every few days keeps me emotionally and mentally on an even playing field.

I'd love to hear others and what their stress outlets are as I suspect this type of conditioning and self treatment isn't segmented to me or gaming. Am I alone and a freak on this or can others ratify my realizations?

Blog Format

I've been talking with my co-worker Chris Ebbeson (@ebbynezer) about his blog and our common situation. We want to blog more but we don't have enough to say to justify sitting down and writing something formal. We agreed that Twitter is far too small and Blogging is often too big. I am going to start writing smaller blogs as a matter of practice and not let size of the article prevent me from sharing my thoughts.

Chris on the other hand is giving Tumblr a try. I have to admit I've not actually gone to Tumblr before so I created me an account (solarcurve.tumblr.com) and will be checking it out. I am impressed with all these sites and their ability to post to one another and seamlessly get your information out there. I am also afraid of overkill and duplicate postings. What are your thoughts?

A new look at the old password

In this day and age it's important to have a strong password and most organizations are doing a good job of requiring a password with higher degrees of strength. More importantly more and more organizations and even your operating system are opening up to much longer passwords that support special characters such as spaces.

If you are like me you have different passwords for different things and you probably have a hard time remembering the cryptic codes of mixed numbers, letters, and special characters. A few years ago I switched over to pass phrases which have eliminated a lot of issues but also helped me with my attitude and self-confidence. You might be thinking what?

Microsoft Windows for example will support passwords up to 128 characters in length including spaces and special characters such as exclamation points (! also known as bang), asterisks (* also known as splat), and even question marks. Many other sites are supporting moderately long passwords which open up more possibilities. Rather than a password of “abcd1234!” or something similar to fulfill the complexity requirements consider to switching to something more fun, easier to remember, more secure, and possible self supporting.

For example I was using a variation on "I am organized!" which is pretty easy to remember and helped me think about wanting to stay organized when I was doing my work. This is much easier to remember and is 15 characters instead of the traditional 6 or 8 characters which means it's MUCH more difficult to crack. The spaces and punctuation are keys to a tough-to-crack password and ways to make it unique to you to avoid easy guesses.

With that being said it's important to not have something so obvious that it becomes part of the standard password guessing and hacking attempts. A bad example would be "I am sexy" or "I am smart". Both of which might be helpful but you need to customize it in some form or fashion such as "I! am very smart" which supports that need as well as pushes the affirmation to another level. I do not suggest that you have to start with an "I am" prefix as you can and should create a variation that supports your personality and needs such as "On time is how I roll."

Given that I lock my work station every time I get up at work and I have to log back in I've found this approach to be quite a positive and helpful change. Since I have different passwords for different things I am bombarded with positive messages throughout the day as I log into various systems and sites because I think it as I type it. I hope that you will give it a try and that it will work for you too.

Windows 7 and Xbox Media Center Extender

I've been tinkering for about a year trying to get my Microsoft Xbox 360's (Yes, more than 1) to be able to stream music and media from my computer to my TV's and this has been a constant struggle with no success and no idea how to get it working. I even tried on the other computers running Windows 7 and had the same issues but I couldn't even get it to work on XP either.

I was convinced at some point along the way that it had to be a network issue because perhaps I didn't have Multicast and Universal Plug and Play (uPnP) working right. I am running a Cisco Pix 501 for my Firewall and Router and a Netgear GS724T for my switch. Those are both non-home devices and maybe they were part of the problem.

After exhausting efforts there I decided to take another look at my computer itself. I am running a licensed business edition of AVG because I am a big fan and most things online point to the problem being a firewall configuration for it. I am however NOT running their firewall because I am running my network behind the strict pix configuration. This means I am running the stock Microsoft Windows Firewall that comes built into Windows. I had been trying to get the communication between the Xbox and the computer to work with it both enabled and disabled with no luck and I kept getting the same error of "Cannot Configure Extender".

I decided to enable the Windows Firewall again and check the program settings for enabled apps which revealed that the "Media Center Extenders" and "Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service" was not checked. Checking them and clicking "OK" made communication work instantly and the problem was resolved.



I followed all the instructions I could find and even went to http://www.xbox.com/pcsetup like the Xbox screen says to do but this bit of instructions wasn't mentioned so I am posting it for others in case they are beating their heads in on the same issue.