As an owner of a XBox360 I added my gamertag to the title page ... Gamescore of 55 probably means I don't play enough ...

Gamespot run an article on "Video Cable Comparison" for the XBox360, here:
   http://www.gamespot.com/features/6139690/index.html

Nice article to give you and introduction to the different video modes, and the visual comparison done in the article with sample pictures is pretty nice.

"How you connect the Xbox 360 to your TV could mean the difference between brilliant visuals and mediocre picture quality. If you have an HDTV you're going to want to use component cables to hook up the Xbox 360. For normal televisions, your best bet will be S-Video. Should you have an older-model TV that doesn't have an S-Video input, composite video might be your only option. Lastly, if your TV has only an RF input and you bought an Xbox 360, you probably should have bought a new TV first."

Summary: I see more hme entertainment investment in my future.

For the last couple of month I was a happy user of FolderShare, a simple way to create a peer-to-peer network helping me to synchronize data between different machines (and also work places). The software worked just great for me, no problems with NAT, proxies, whatever. I finally decided to pay the modest fee of $49 for the extended version (better protocol, less limitations...). FolderShare has been acquired by Microsoft (something I take as a sign of quality for the FolderShare software), and I received mail from FolderShare stating that the service is now free of charge and I will be receiving a refund of my fees at a pro-rated basis.

All I can say 'Excellent', great service, I was not really expecting a refund. Thanks, keep improving the software, and I won't mind if it stays free ...

My wife is running this charitable organization ‘Dormagener Tafel’, and I try to help sometimes, like carrying boxes, or setting up the computer, web-site, and maintaining it.

They still needed a printer for the office, with key characteristic: color (their letterhead is in orange), photo printing not needed, cheap, cheap ink costs, good text quality, low maintenance, fast... After some browsing I bought the Canon Pixus IP4200. These days it seems to be impossible to get a printer who is not able to do ‘photo quality’ printing. The printer is designed well, still small, can manage two different paper feeds, duplex printing, CD printing, etc.—and on top of all that, reasonable cheap, and individual printer cartridges for each color. Now I’m really jealous …

Installation was a breeze, finally an installation program which only lets you install the needed drivers without default-installation of all the other fancy software you need for photo printing, etc., but you in real life will never touch. The drivers look stable, well designed from the configuration possibilities, and text look amazingly sharp (didn’t try any photo prints). If this printer is still running strong in a couple of month, I might switch away from HP as the standard text printer for my home office...

Seen a strange error message lately? This one is my current favorite:

I picked up the latest Hulf game for the XBox last week: Hulk - Ultimate Destruction. I have only a few hours of Hulk play under my belly, but I’m actually liking this one a lot. Most of my time I did spend on the bonus missions and did progress just beyond the first boss into the game. About half of the bonus missions seem to be the usual – get as fast from A to B as possible, but others are a lot of fun … kick a car as quickly as possible into a destination area across town, rescue people from a building (I hate it if I rescue them, then press the wrong button and smash them into the ground instead of laying them down in the target area), or stacking cars on top of a building.

A good thing so far, no messing around with the ‘real Bruce’. You are playing the Hulk, and the surroundings are huge (a city area about the size of Manhattan) with lots of things to smash and kick … I collected lots of points in the bonus missions, and could buy all special moves I wanted. Now it is time to advance the story and see what else is going to happen. From the ‘staging’ area (the church complex) it looks like there is at least one other area which I might discover later in the game …

2 thumbs up from me

An additional notes to the parents: Not a kid-game, no blood, but you can pick up people and smash them to the ground or throw them around. In one  mini-game you have to wack people with a big metal stick while they are falling from a helicopter. Kind of brutal, but my personal best is more then 400 feet