Bnpositive's Blog

For those of you like me that guy your Xbox 360 a little late, you can appreciate taking advantage of all those people that got them early and bought a ton of games. Enough games to turn many of the titles into Xbox 360 Platinum hits. Microsoft has just announced some new members to the list of games that can call themselves a part of the popular platinum list.

• “Battlefield 2: Modern Combat™” (Electronic Arts)
• “Burnout™ Revenge” (Electronic Arts)
• “Call of Duty 2” (Activision)
• “Dead or Alive 4” (TECMO Inc.)
• “Fight Night Round 3” (Electronic Arts)
• “Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter” (Ubisoft)
• “Top Spin 2” (2K Sports)
• “Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis” (Rockstar Games)

There are different games available in different regions. Just check out the full press release for all the details.

From this list, I think “Fight Night Round 3″ and “Call of Duty 2″ would be the only ones I’d pick-up soon.

My son, daughter and I have been playing with Legos and other building toys more and more lately and that reminded me of this website I’d saved quite awhile back in my favorites.

This is the Abston Church of Christ Lego church

The craftsmanship and attention to detail is astounding on this model of a church. As you can see from the screen shot, it seems like it’s patterned after the Crystal Cathedral, for the sanctuary, but not too much.

Have you uncovered other examples of Lego artwork around the web? Let us know in the comments.

I wrote recently about blogging from within the newest version of Microsoft Word 2007. In that post I had mentioned that the functionality of blogging in Word 2007 was very similar to what had been developed in the Windows Live Writer application. Not surprisingly, it would make sense to test functionality in a small, free program distributed via the web and get user feedback from that.

There’s now a new version of Windows Live Writer being developed and the Inside Microsoft blog got their hands on a copy of it and played with it a bit.

Verdict:  They’ve gone and taken what might be the best blog editing tool out there and made it better.  It looks better, has a few good new features, works better connecting to your blog (no more Temporary Post For Style Detection), has an even easier and better organized interface.  Great work!

Strong words. Can’t wait to get my hands on it myself. I was very pleased with the original version, so can’t wait to put some miles on the new one. Probably most exciting is easy insertion of tables. I know CSS is all the rage right now, but sometimes, you just need to present some good ol’ tabular data quickly.

The Inside Microsoft blog has lots more details about the app along with numerous, large screen shots of the functionality.

I’ve been debating on what I’d like to do with regards to updgrading to Windows Vista. I’m definitely going to do it, if for no other reason than I always want to have the newest stuff and I blog on a Microsoft blog.

My desktop is a few years old now and I know for sure that I’d like to upgrade the video card. I want to upgrade the card for two reasons:

1. To get all the features of Aero glass
2. To get dual monitor capability
3. TV DVR capability for my other entertainment blogs (Idol Stalker, CSI:Fanatic, Christian Music Fan)

So, the question becomes do I upgrade my current machine with all those items, or just go out and buy a new machine with Vista pre-installed?

As I ponder these questions, I also think there are plenty of other questions to ask myself about Vista. I’ve heard the stories of why it’s so good and agree with those, but I’ve also hear all the stories about the concerns and they’re valid as well.

Here’s a list of Windows Vista Myths that are debunked by Deb Shinder from Tech Republic. The ForeverGeek site got the scoop to me. Here’s their list of myths, be sure and visit the full article to get all the answers.

1. Myth #1: You’ll have to buy a new, high-end PC to run Vista
2. Myth #2: Vista will solve all your security problems
3. Myth #3: Vista is no more secure than XP SP2
4. Myth #4: The only thing new about Vista is the eye candy
5. Myth #5: You can’t dual boot Vista with another operating system
6. Myth #6: Vista requires (or includes) Office 2007
7. Myth #7: Most old applications and peripherals won’t work with Vista
8. Myth #8: You have to buy a Premium version of Vista if you have a dual core machine
9. Myth #9: You won’t be able to play ripped music in Vista
10. Myth #10: Vista costs a lot more than XP

Imagine my surprise today when I went online to order some pizza for lunch from Domino’s Pizza. I noticed a little graphic on their homepage that talked about free music and clicked on it.

It’s kind of a MySpace-esque music player that also gives you the ability to download the tracks you’re hearing if you like them. Looks like a good way to get your hands on some free music and maybe get introduced to some new artists and groups you might like along the way.

Currently available for download in MP3 format:

• Kate Voegele: Only Fooling Myself
• Bottle of Justus: Easy
• Ludo: Hum Along
• Obsession Day: So Into You
• Salme Dahlstrom: Hello California
• Arthur Yoria: Sleep Is On The Way

The Dominos site is powered by FreshTracksMusic, which has their own website as well.

Ray Ozzie stated that Google’s ability to make significant money in advertising revenue has been a wake-up call for Microsoft. In a recent Associated Press article on Yahoo, Ozzie continued to share how various developments at Google are forcing Microsoft to do some things differently, which is a good thing.

He says he’s been laying the groundwork for software developers to develop the next generation of software applications and services. Interesting though, because it backs my opinions of the real threat from Google to Microsoft Office applications, Ray Ozzie continues to say that Microsoft has been threatened in the past by other services and web applications, but they’ve always forsaken some features to make it to the market.

Ozzie said Word, Excel and other parts of Microsoft’s “Office” suite have weathered threats from both desktop and Web-based programs in part because competitors always compromised functionality. For example, he said, users always have to be connected to the Internet to use a Web-based word processor.

Microsoft is doing what I believe is an intelligent response to the Web only applications. Developing software that has full-functionality offline with enhanced features that use the strengths and features of the online, connected world we live in today.

AP Source: Microsoft: Google was ‘Wake-up call”

My friend Ben has yet again found another interesting site to share with me. This time it’s called “monoface” and as you can tell by the screen shot above, the power at your fingertips can have drastic results.

The developers of the site have created the ability for you to click on various parts of a person’s face and exchange that part for the same part off of someone else’s face. As Ben warned me, it can become quite a time killer in your day if you let it.

The realistic mash-up of features with no noticeable borders of area is pretty impressive and further illustrates the power of the application.

Thanks to Ben for uncovering monoface for me and allowing me to share it with you.

I’ve been using my screen name “bnpositive” for years now. Ever since my initial days on AOL back in 1994 I think. Bnpositive is a play off of my last name “Bean” and my overall personality of being a generally positive person. Oddly enough, by blood type is also “B” positive, which plays in nicely. I like the name because of the play on all of this and the pronouncing of “Bein’ positive”.

Now the perfect icon for said screen name is obviously the smiley face, so I’ve been using it since back in the day as well since setting up my website. Or at least since images have been able to be used for buddy icons and other uses.

Now I’ve become a blogger and one of the add-on features of blogging is leaving your comments all over the web. I’ve been using coComment for awhile to track that activity and now along with my comments I can leave my “icon” or gravatar wherever I stop as well with the Gravatar website.

I used Firefox for about a year or so while IE6 was still on the market. I didn’t really like the initial beta of IE7, so I stayed with Firefox through that time as well. Now that the full-blown version of IE7 is available, I’ve got to say I like the layout and structure of IE7′s user-interface over Firefox. The only significant gap that I really miss is all the extensions that are available and wonderfully embedded within Firefox.

One of the big annoyances though to IE7 is that the Toolbar menu is buried and even when you do find out how to get it to display on the screen it doesn’t show-up where you’d expect it to be.

The folks over at Lifehacker direct us to Chris Hanscom who’s developed a registry fix workaround to put the menu bar back where you’d expect it to be.

And after the update, you get….

Lots of tips coming around from PC Magazine again. Sorry folks, but I save these things in my Inbox and read through them when I feel it’s something that would help me out. If it helps me out, I figure there’s probably someone else that it may bring some joy to as well.

Sometimes when you start Internet Explorer does it seem like it takes forever to get going? Are you telling IE to search for and verify settings for services you don’t use? Not sure what I mean when I ask if you are asking to use settings you don’t know about?

One of the recent tips in PC Magazine talks about speeding up Internet Explorer’s sluggish start-up behaviour by making sure you’re not telling it to search for proxy settings when you’re not using a proxy.

Now if only Adobe Reader would let you make simple changes like that for it’s start-up process.

Get all the details here.

PC Magazine has had some good Windows tips here lately. This one is about finding and getting back control of a window that’s hidden itself below other menus, off-screen, or even completely invisible.

This happens to me every now and then when I’m working on various applications and sitting on my local business network and using a VPN to connect to another client network.

Read the tip to discover or remind yourself what to do in those situations when you seem to have pulled the shades on your windows.

With all the activity and comments surrounding the posts on this site discussing Visual Studio 2005 and the problems people are experiencing, we’ve gotten the attention of some Microsoft folks that work on the Visual Studio team.

They’ve given me a performance diagnostic tool to use and instructions, but I no longer have VS2005 installed with the problems I was experiencing. I was trying to teach myself the product and learning while dealing with problems isn’t the best learning educational strategy for me at the time.

I’ve asked them if it would be possible for me to share the performance diagnostic tool and instructions with the readers here and have all of you send them your problems and information via the tool. I’m waiting to hear back from them with approval, but if they do I’ll be sure and post the follow-up information as soon as I can.

You can read more about the problems people are experiencing with Visual Studio 2005 at the articles below:

• Visual Studio 2005 – IDE Article
• Visual Studio 2005 Hotfix Available
• Visual Studio Complaints have been heard
• Visual Studio Update
• Problems with Visual Studio 2005