You may remember me talking about the new Xbox console (Xbox 360) and showing some shots of what might be the new wireless controllers as well as a game render. Well it would seem that some photo’s have been “leaked” I’m not exactly sure where they came from but they’re all over the internet. I do know that two of the photo’s came from an official Microsoft source (ourcolony.net). One of the pictures (the one of the complete system) is a computer render done by a fan based on the other photo’s on the internet as well as descriptions floating around from people who have actually seen it.

So here are the pics:

I should note that this looks to be about 150% the size of what the final console will be (note how HUGE the DVD tray is)

I’m definitely looking forward to this!

I was getting Set to make a nice post about a cool website I found that tracks prices of Transformers Alternators (one of my more recent obsessions).

Unfortunately when I arrived at my blog I saw a new comment on my latest post. “Oh!” I thought, “someone left me something to read!”. Unfortunately what was left for me to read was SPAM for Allegra and Zoloft. Not exactly something I would look forward to for reading. Checking the comment logs it would seem that most of my blog was Spammed with various cheap drug links. ENOUGH! I shut down the comment system completely. Then I went into the database and manually closed commenting on each individual post (thank god I learned SQL). Then I went and set to not allow any links in the comments. Finally I removed all the SPAM and put the commenting system back online.

Here is what gets me. The reason people spam comment systems on blogs is so that their link count goes up on Google. Recently, after many a complaint from blog software makers, Google and several popular blog software makers developed an HTML tag that gets wrapped around links in blog comments after posting. What this does is alert Google to completely ignore those links when ranking, making any effort towards comment spamming completely useless (aside from totally pissing off people who run blogs/me). As soon as I caught wind of this I patched my blog for it. Yet still I get spammed…

With the changes I’ve made any comment that includes a link will automatically get whipped out immediately. Further I’ve locked out all future commenting. I’m going to keep the newest or newest few posts (I haven’t decided yet) open for comments, so in the even that some idiot wasting time spamming me will only be able to spam a single post or two instead of the 250+ posts I have in the entirety of my blog.

Ok so it was Kate’s birthday on Thursday the 14th. You all remember Kate right? She’s the one that never updates her blog yet still hounds me when I don’t update mine . So anyway her father planned a surprise party for her at Pagliuca’s in Boston’s north end. Jamie and I meet up with Greg and rode the T in (a much more pleasant way to get around Boston than driving). Kate’s parents were there of course as well as her grandmother, aunt uncle and cousin. Aiden and Yvette from school came as well as some of Kate’s friends from home; Brie, Kat, and her future roommate Erika.

Pagliuca’s was amazing as usual. It’s a fairly small place but the food is excellent. I had a Spaghetti Carbonara which was essentially spaghetti with a cream sauce made of egg, cream, cheese, white wine, and fried bacon. It was awesome! Kate’s father was pretty funny. He kept quizzing Aiden with trivia on Ireland and Irish culture, of which Aiden knows nothing. He also kept trying to get Brie to do shots of sambuca after he twisted her arm enough to taste it. He’d order a shot for her, she wouldn’t drink it, so he’d drink it himself; it was pretty funny. After dinner and cake he went around the table asking if people wanted cappuccino. He’d say “you?” and point then count one higher “one… two… three”. Regardless of if you said yes or no he ordered another one. I think out of the 8 people he asked 2 said yes and he ordered 5.

After dinner Aiden and Yvette left and Kate’s father decided it was too early to be done yet. So we all marched down the street to Bricco which is another Italian Restaurant. I guess one of Kate’s relatives worked there but the place was far too high class (I think everyone in there was in evening gowns and suits) and far too small to handle us. On our way in I was stopped by a familiar face. Jason Jones, I didn’t recognize him at first but he’s a friend of my brother’s who went to Waterfest with us last year in his BMW. It took me a minute to realize who he was then I noticed a large wad of cash in his hand and realized he was a valet for Bicco which I thought was interesting.

After I waited outside for a short while and Kate’s mother finally convinced her father that there wasn’t enough room for us we did the smart thing and headed down to Caffe Vittoria. Almost everyone got an iced mocha and Kate’s father and cousin got gelato, I didn’t get anything, I was too stuffed from dinner (and Vittoria’s makes the best cannolis).

After Vittoria’s Kate’s family left and the rest of us went down to the water front and just hung out for a while. After the sunset we all headed home, Kate and the friends she came with to her car, and Jamie, Greg, and I to the nearest T back to ours. I didn’t get home too late but man was I exhausted. A great day overall. If you’re interested, Kate posted some pictures. I took the first few shots on the water front and other people took the rest (I swear I didn’t take that many pics of Greg). Kate made a big deal that she was going to finally let me take a bunch of pictures of her (because she always runs and hides when I try, then if I do manage take some she deletes them off of my computer later ). So anyway I gave her a hard time because once again none of the pictures I took with her in them appeared on her photo gallery. I swear I’m going to take a bunch of pictures of her when she doesn’t know it then wall-paper her new apartment with them or something.

So I had some money saved up for for doing something to my car, and some other money saved up for a computer upgrade. I decided my PC didn’t really need the upgrade so I put it all into my car. I finally got around to buying a Cobb Tuning AccessPORT. Basically the AccessPORT allows me to download new “maps” for my car’s computer that are appropriately tuned for other modifications I’ve made. Since I have a “Turbo Back” exhaust I was able to go with the “Stage 2″ map. Stock the WRX makes about 170HP at the wheels (for those non car people most HP numbers given by the manufacturer are at the engine’s crank shaft, you can subtract about 25% to estimate what your car makes at the wheels). A Stage 1 map can take a stock WRX and put it up to 195HP at the wheels. My stage 2 map utilizing my Turbo Back Exhaust brings it up to 224HP at the wheels. Which puts it in STi territory, not only that my car weighs a bit less and because the turbo is smaller the power arrives sooner. I got the AccessPORT in on Thursday and finally got around to Re-flashing my car with it today. I spent way too much time trying to get it to work with my desktop (to download the maps from the website), mostly because it uses the serial port. Once I got that squared away, hooking it up to my car was a breeze. It’s pretty cool too it allows me to store up to 10 other maps for things like legal Auto-cross maps, Valet Mode (can’t drive above 3500RPMs), Security mode (allows the car to start and idle but not drive), As well as economy maps so if I find myself in a place without 93 octane I can fill up with a lower grade and not worry about it. It also works like a OBD-II reader and code clearer which is always handy.

Oh and as for how it drives, I’d definitely say it was worth it.

Jamie sent me a listing for a house in Tilton earlier this week. I recognized it immediately as something we’d seen listed before, I seem to remember seeing it in a search and then us not liking it for some reason (what reason I have no idea why). This time there were more pictures included and we looked a little deeper and decided we really liked it. We looked at it Friday night, and needless to say we made an offer. Let’s just hope all goes well. The bed rooms are moderately sized as well as the kitchen. The living room is smallish but half of the basement has been sectioned off and finished into a “Family Room”. Which when we went there consisted of a large stereo system, pool table, gun rack, and bar (definitely a NH family room if I ever saw one). Unfortunately the Pool Table doesn’t stay but the bar does which is cool. We’re going to make the place into our theater room. Another great plus is there are 2 garages, one of which is separate from the house and rather spacious, which is great for working on cars (It will be SOOO nice to have my own garage for once). The way the house is decorated now is kind of blah but we’ll be re-painting most everything and bringing in our own furniture so that’s not exactly an issue. We really like this place, keep your fingers crossed for us.

This morning my father mentioned to me that I hadn’t posted in my blog in a while. I thought this was strange because I remember writing something here recently and thought I had been. I figured time was just moving faster than I realized and maybe I hadn’t posted in a while. So I’m on my lunch break and I’m thinking “hmm maybe I should see when my last entry was” Sure enough it was 2 days ago… only you wouldn’t have been able to see it. Apparently one of my entries last week was only partially uploaded and the database saved it as a draft instead of publishing it (because I never completed it) then all subsequent entries were also saved as drafts (this is how I have the blog setup, if I have one draft it doesn’t publish further entries). How does this happen? Well it’s simple my cable modem at home is a piece of shit and hasn’t been working properly for quite some time now (even last night I was booted no less than 7 times). So most likely I “published” my entry and went to go do something else not knowing that I wasn’t connected to the internet, so it had only saved most of the entry. In any case I retyped what I remember of it and have published all the missing entries. So you all should have something to read now… Just to help you out… start HERE.

EDIT: I just fixed all the time stamps… they were all reading today at 11:42 (because that’s when they were published not when they were written)

Well Ourcolony is coming along nicely. It would seem there are some “leaked” images of what the new official wireless controllers will look like. Notice they match the teaser pics from ourcolony. And confirm wirless, relocated start and back buttons the differt shaped controller and d-pad. Also notice that the black and white buttons are gone and there are now shoulder buttons above the triggers on each side. In addition to the leaked pics. Ourcolony released a render from the (rumored) Xbox 360 release title Project Gotham Racing 3.
Another interesting tid-bit is Microsoft has decided to pull out the big guns for the unveiling. Most (probably all) new consoles are unveiled at a press conferenced that is closed to people not in the media or gaming industry. This means that fans like myself usually have to wait for the news to get posted and then must interpret it through the filter that is the media. I mentioned before that Microsoft was unveiling the new Xbox on the 14th. Well Sony decided to do something really sneaky and unveil the PS3 3 hours before the new Xbox in a location too far away for anyone to be able to physically make both press conferences. So Microsoft one upped them again. They decided instead of the typical closed doors press conference they are going to unveil the new system on May 12 worldwide being broadcast across all MTV networks. It will be half hour show hosted by Elijah Wood and feature a guest appearances but a lot of other stars from music, movies and sports. Now I don’t personally like MTV but I think it’s a fantastic move on Microsoft’s part, besides what other channel has worldwide coverage AND appeals to the younger members of the population.

In other news I am sore as hell from the Gym, I seriously feel like I was just at a fight club or something.

Jamie and I went out to look at houses today, it was a house in Franklin. From the outside the place was huge, but the inside was really setup poorly, lots of wasted space. The living room was tiny and the master bedroom was essentially a loft that took up the entire second floor. For it’s location (think rural Troy area) it had a TON of land, but it was really a bowling ally. Meaning the land was barely wider than the house but it went back about 10 house lengths. The place was pretty nice, it was the nicest house we’ve looked at so far but I just don’t think it would work for Jamie and I. It had a lot of nice features like a garage, Hot Tub, Wood Stove, a Huge mud room/entry way. But really it was like a giant 2 story 1 room apartment. I’m staying optimistic. Jamie and I have been searching for a while and it seems like it’s just now picking up We’ve already found a few other places we’re going to look into.

You may have remembered me mentioning how the old gym I used to go to burned down. Well they’ve moved into a building right down the street from NHBB. I decided that now that I should try to work going to the gym into my weekly routine. I’ve tried other exercises but I found it difficult to stick with them because I just get so bored and don’t look forward to doing them, things like running or biking, I just can’t get excited about it. I signed up at the Galaxy on Wednesday but Wayne, the owner/my trainer, wasn’t in so I decided to start Today. I’ve only been there one day and I’m already enjoying it. There is something about weight lifting that I enjoy that no other exercise seems to offer. I can’t put my finger on it but at least it’s there. I can already tell that I’ll be in a world of sore pain tomorrow and for the next few weeks. I’m looking forward to it.

My brother’s friend “Flo” cooked dinner for us tonight. He’s going to school for culinary arts and he is GOOD. Everyone kept making suggestions for what he should make and I held to my “make something I’ve never had before”. He made us a meal that he came up with himself. It started with this creamy rice and shrimp with some greens and brussle sprouts (let me tell you I HATE brussel sprouts but these had the sweetness of a fine chocolate and I was left wanting more of them) the main course was duck (which I’ve tried before and didn’t really like) along with sweet potatoes and a bunch of other stuff that I couldn’t tell you what it was except for that it was probably one of the best meals of my life. After that we went out for ice cream at Friendly’s. So full… sooo good.

Do you remember ilovebees.com If you’re a Hardcore videogame fan or Halo junkie you probably do. I honestly never got into ilovebees.com but it was a “viral marketing” technique setup by the entertainment marketing company 4orty 2wo (which by the way was started by two ex Microsoft empolyees). Basicaly the pitch was they setup a fake personal website about some woman who loves bee keeping. Then they made it look like there was some form of electronic virus that was taking over the site (think the Matrix trying to break throuh). There was cryptic puzzles all over the place that turned it into a giant worldwide scavenger hunt across the internet for clues and miniscule peaks at Halo 2 before it was release. The “viral” part is more how the people playing the game spreads like a virus. The “winners” of this game were given the opertunity to play halo 2 a month before it’s release they were also each given a free Xbox, Halo, Halo 2, A year’s subscription to Xbox Live and a bunch of marketing junk (hats, shirts, bags, etc.). There’s rumor that Ourcolony.net is being done by the same company that did ilovebees.com (but there is not way to know for sure). This time we’re assuming the game is about the next generation Xbox console (Codenamed Xenon). So far there has been a glimpse of what the new controller will look like. People are assuming the “prize” this time will be pictures and info on the new system before it’s released anywhere else. We’ll see. I should also mention the site has a count down timer that ends on May 12th. Microsoft is set to unveil the new console on May 14th so it’s difficult to say what it’s really counting down till?
If you’re interested in joining the ourcolony.net game you can join the “X-Scene” colony by going to ourcolony.net typing play into the box. Next click Join an Existing Colony and type the X-scene password which is 13897122. This will take you to a registraion screen where you can create a username and password. Enjoy the game.