Title Image

Plane of NonConformity

Welcome to Plane of NonConformity Sign in | Join | Help

Front Page News

  • Xbox 360: Three red lights flash on the Right of Light: Round 2

    PC090223 It's happened again.  My Xbox 360 froze up when I was playing Assassin's Creed.  Then when I rebooted the 360 it started playing the opening animation but never made it all the way though.   It did this a couple times then I let it rest for about a half hour disconnected from the power supply.  I reconnected the power supply and a few seconds after powering up the Red ring of death showed up.   I've tried everything since then and haven't had any luck getting it to boot.

    I called up 1-800-4My-Xbox and after about 10 minutes on hold I was able to get a human. The process was a lot smoother this time around since they extended the warranty to 3 years for the red ring of death.  I didn't have to ask for a manager like last time and it sounds like I should have a replacement box back in about three weeks.

    My last one died on April 24th and I received the replacement on May 12th.  So it has been just under 7 months with this Xbox.  At least my first one made it 13 months. 

    At least this time around I can play Shadowrun on Vista.   But that's going to get old quick.

    12-09-2007, 2:23 PM by Carsinigin to Carsinigin
    Filed under: ,
  • Vision for GamerScoreGoal.com

    I set a goal for 2007 of getting a total of 20,000 Gamerscore on my Xbox 360.  The last couple months I have become obsessed with reaching my goal and I needed a good way to track my progress.   I was also coveting the API Samurai badge on 360voice.com, you know that place where you Xbox 360 blogs about what games you have played.  That and the realization that I haven't built a public web site from scratch since 2002 lead me to start GamerScoreGoal.com (GSG). 

    The current incarnation of GSG is really just a shell of what I envision for it.   I haven't had much time to work on the visible portions of the project, but the back end is really shaping up and is almost complete.   Once I have completed a few more internal features I'll start to concentrate on the user interface.

    Current features:

    • Gamerscore tracking and history - GSG saves your Gamerscore everyday since your account was created. You even can import history from 360voice if you have an account there. 
    • Goals - You can set yourself a goal like 20,000 point by Jan 1st, 2008.   GSG can then use your Gamerscore history and graph your progress compared to your goal.
    • Public Profiles - This is the real heart of the web site.  Currently it will graph your Gamerscore and goal (if you have one) and display statistics about your progress to your goal.

    Planned features:

    • Leader boards - Leader boards will bring in a social aspect to the site where gamers can compare there progress to other members. 
    • Goal Scoring - This will be a system of scoring how difficult a particular goal is compared to others on GSG.
    • Forum Signatures - The database for the site has all the required data to create forum signatures and that would be a great way to advertise the site.

    Possible features:

    • Community Server Integration - I would like to add forums and blogs into the site.  I definitely don't what to reinvent the wheel but I have concerns about the added complexity that a Community Server integration would bring.

    Concerns

    • Scalability - Since I'm not a member of XCDP and there is little hope of Microsoft expanding the program anytime soon there will be a point where I'll need to limit registration and limit features so that I don't over tax my data sources.  (Hint:  Sign up now)
    • Maintainability - I need to automate as much as possible.  GSG doesn't pay the bills.
    • User Interface - I want to make the site as useful as possible without a complex UI.  I view this as a real growth opportunity for myself as a developer.

     

    I feel that the site is really shaping up and will be useful to those that have an obsession with Gamerscore. 

    11-14-2007, 8:51 AM by Carsinigin to Carsinigin
    Filed under: , , ,
  • I had a bad feeling.

    An update to the 360voice main blog back on Oct 24th had a comment that they were working on a new feature.   I had a sinking feeling that it would be related to what I was doing at Gamerscoregoal.com.  360Voice.com has announced their new Challenge system.   It's a system were you invite a few of your friends to a timed Gamerscore challenge to see who can get the more points in a set number of days.

    Luckily It's not exactly what I'm doing here but there are some overlaps.   I like what they are doing and I'll issue a Challenge.   Join with the code APIO10V9.

    You can join by going to: http://www.360voice.com/join/APIO10V9 (Edit: I had to recreate the challenge.  The old challenge code linked to more then one challenge and no one could join.)


    Carsinigin

    11-09-2007, 3:30 PM by Carsinigin to Carsinigin
    Filed under: , , ,
  • Call of Duty 4

    This is going to be the first holiday season in the last couple years where I actually had to limit myself and decide months in advance what game I'm going to pick up.   Well this Call of Duty 4 comes out and I'm going to pick it up.   There was a great beta test for the Xbox 360 a couple months back that really sold me on this game.

     

    11-05-2007, 5:30 AM by Carsinigin to Carsinigin
    Filed under:
  • Hey this isn't the Internet I signed up for.

    In 1995 when I first got onto the Internet I could immediately see the potential.  A single network where anyone can publish their work and share it with the rest of the world. Where the world's knowledge would be at everyone's fingertips.  Where everyone was free to express and debate their opinions. It was going to be a happy place.

    Since I was a wide-eyed idealist teenager I imaged that the Internet would fundamentally change our society.  Since information would be so easy to publish no one would bother to try to sell it anymore.   The Internet would set all information free.   There would be no need for to sell books anymore, unless you really like holding a book then it's just a small printing charge based on the number of pages.   Anything you would want to know would just be a search away.

    Now when I look around the Internet everything is dominated by commerce and greed.  People only sharing their knowledge because it brings in revenue from ads.   Putting their personal life on display for vanity and touting their personal (mis)knowledge for fame and selling t-shirts to finance their empire of vanity.  Where any search for a product brings up 10 pages of SEO'ed results to some unknown web stores before it brings up the manufacture's page and then an other 20 pages before it brings up honest reviews of the product.

    I guess it's the commercialist(I guess that is a word, it's in spell check) society we live in.   The scariest thought is that there are a lot of people out there that think there is no other way.   They don't understand that sometime you may want to give your knowledge away just to enrich the world around them for the betterment of society as a whole instead of the quick buck they may get today.  

    08-31-2007, 12:59 PM by Carsinigin to Carsinigin
    Filed under:
  • July Wrap Up

    July has been a busy month for me.   At work I've been involved in what can best be described as a failed attempt to launch a new product.   You know a product is doomed when you just have a small role in it's launch and the product manager swings by your desk to ask you basic question about the product function.   Apparently because I can code I'm automatically an expert on the product, even though the only thing I did for it was create a simple app that connects up to the device and shoves the customer configurable program into it.   Oh Well.

    Home life has been great this month with my wife's birthday and a month filled with home improvement projects that are never as simple as they should be.  The big one this month is the back door.  I was going to scrap and paint it one Saturday afternoon.  Three weeks later it's finally scrapped and patched up but the on and off rain this last week has kept me from painting it. 

    07-31-2007, 9:20 AM by Carsinigin to Carsinigin
    Filed under:
  • Obsession

    GasMask Hello.  My gamertag is Carsinigin and I'm obsessed with video games.   I just bought Shadow Run at full price. I swore to myself that I would wait until it was reduced or I could get it though GameFly.  As I got back into my car, in the Best Buy parking lot, I realized that I had just purchased Forza 2 from GameFly and that they should be sending me Shadow Run next.  Fuck.  Luckily I was able to remove Shadow Run from my game queue before then sent me that.  But I could have just wanted 2 more days for them to send it to me and saved $20.  Oh well. 

    06-13-2007, 1:08 PM by Carsinigin to Carsinigin
    Filed under: ,
  • Xbox 360: Three red lights flash on the Ring of Light

    P4240077[5] I got the dreaded red ring of death tonight well I was in the dashboard voice chatting.   WTF????   I wasn't even stressing the Xbox's cpu with a game.  The hard drive was not under strain of I/O.  There was no DVD disk in the drive to spin.   After one year and a month my 360 gave up on me.
    04-24-2007, 8:01 PM by Carsinigin to Carsinigin
    Filed under: ,
  • Guitar Hero

    I need to check the model number of my Guitar.  So far no problems. but who knows. 

    Link to Red Octane says two Xbox guitar models 'defective' - Joystiq

    04-10-2007, 10:02 AM by Carsinigin to Carsinigin
    Filed under:
  • Website Chat

    A few BLS members have asked about having a webchat on the new website.  I may be able to use Gabbly for that chat.

    04-09-2007, 10:17 AM by Carsinigin to Carsinigin
    Filed under:
Powered by Community Server, by Telligent Systems