Scott Blomquist's space: Random observations

One tiny little letter

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 17:02:02 GMT

"unbeatable" and "unbearable" differ by one tiny little letter lexicographically, and by a whole lot more semantically. Sad that Outlook can't notice the difference...

Stupid then smart: Xbox 360 headset connector broke

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 00:36:20 GMT

I got an Xbox 360 message from a friend the other day telling me that my attempt at sending him a voice message sounded like 5 seconds of silence. I did some troubleshooting only to find that the tip of the headset's connector had broken off inside one of my controllers. That really pissed me off--I was less concerned about the loss of a headset than I was about the fact that I'd forever have a piece of headset connector stuck inside one of my Xbox 360 controllers.

Turns out that my worry was for nothing. The industrial engineering minds at Microsoft seem to have designed the controllers to handle exactly this contingency. If you first remove the battery pack from the controller that has the headset piece lodged in it, and then shove in an unbroken headset connector with the controller upright, the broken off tip will fall right out.

I'm pretty sure that this is the problem that Shodan1028 is describing over on the Gamertag Radio forums.

Work fewer weekends or your money back!

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 03:44:10 GMT

An article on siliconvalley.com that was talking about the recent class action settlement between video game publisher EA and some of its employees who were whining about being overworked has the following interesting thing to say:

in November, EA's Los Angeles studio tried cutting work hours with a process it called ``Five Great Days,'' which helps game developers to work five days a week -- instead of six or seven -- by setting major deadlines on Fridays instead of Mondays.

I'm shocked to admit that such an idea never really occurred to me. I've always personally been a fan of Monday deadlines just to give myself a couple of days of spillover at the end just in case I run over (which inevitably happens). It seems to me that if this Friday deadline scheme were instituted with appropriate self-discipline, the world really would be a better place with fewer weekends spent working to get things done on time.

Oooh, I'm scared now.

Thu, 26 Jan 2006 17:31:37 GMT

Was visiting a whole bunch of buzzwordful web sites this morning to stay up with current events. Grokster.com was on my rounds to see what had become of it (yeahyeah, not quite current events). Absolutely hilarious result pictured below.

What's sad is that having your IP logged by the RIAA probably is terrifying to non-savvy folks who went to grokster.com in order to download a tool to steal music. If they spent a few minutes thinking about it, they'd realize that they're not going to get sued or arrested because no one can establish intent to do anything just from visiting a web page.

Survey incentives

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 21:41:41 GMT

Lately, I've seen a new type of spam-like thing emerging. It's always some email or web advertisement that offers you some incredible incentive (free laptop! free XBox 360! free beachfront house!) for your opinion on some completely irrelavent subject (should Bush be replaced? which is better WalMart or Fred Meyer? which Olsen sister is cuter?).

I haven't bothered to click through any of these, so I'm spouting off with incomplete knowledge, but I can't help but guess that none of these peddlers have any intention of giving you anything, and I know that they're not just interested in getting your opinion on the inane question that they dangle in front of you to tease you in to their web.

Have any of you braved the security risk to click through and find out how they convert your time into money for them?

Interesting NBC radio ad campaign

Tue, 04 Oct 2005 23:18:51 GMT

Lately on the radio, I've been hearing what are probably 60-second ad spots for NBC's fall prime time lineup. It consists of one femaile and two male voices that somehow just sound young and hip. The voices spend 60 seconds just jabbering about what's on tonight on NBC in an exceptionally casual way. They comment on how much they liked the show last week, how hot the actresses are, and rumors that they've heard about this week's episode.

They even make mistakes and correct each other. For example, today one of voices said something about how some actress on Law & Order SVU won a Emmy, and one of the other voices corrected it to "no, it was a Golden Globe". But it was just like it would have gone down in regular conversation among you and your closest friends. I really mean exceptionally casual conversation.

The most amazing thing about this ad campaign to me is that it really does on some deep down human level make me want to be one of the cool kids that get to be part of their water cooler conversation the next time I catch them on the radio. It hasn't yet caused me to watch a show that I otherwise would not have, but I have to believe that it just might one of these times. Hell, I just might watch my first episode ever of SVU tonight. Just because my cool friends on the radio recommended it.