We are on to day 3 now of the playstation network being down. I've heard from some sites that Sony have stated they are trying to plug the holes that hackers are using to exploit the network, and they won't put the network back online until they have finished.
There is no end in sight!
I miss Black Ops!
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Playstation Network Down, Machines Taking Over? (UPDATED)
The Sony network went down some time last night, and remains down today. Most news sites are saying that it could be at least another day before things are up and running again. It is apparently not due to hacking, but some other unspecified cause.
No COD: Black Ops for me tonight I guess.
On a side note, today is supposed to be the day stated in the Terminator movies that the machines first take over. Could this be the beginning of the end? Lets hope not, I still have a prestige level to finish!
UPDATE APRIL 26: Found THIS blog post at the Playstation site just now. Looks like there is no end in sight! At least they have actually come out with a bit of an explanation this time.
No COD: Black Ops for me tonight I guess.
On a side note, today is supposed to be the day stated in the Terminator movies that the machines first take over. Could this be the beginning of the end? Lets hope not, I still have a prestige level to finish!
UPDATE APRIL 26: Found THIS blog post at the Playstation site just now. Looks like there is no end in sight! At least they have actually come out with a bit of an explanation this time.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Black Ops Disconnects with Distributel and VoIP
UPDATE JULY 23/11: check the bottom of the post for instructions on how to turn on DMZ on your voip modem.
I have been playing Call Of Duty: Black Ops for about 2 weeks now. It's a fantastic game, especially the online multiplayer, where I spend most of my time playing.
It does, however, suffer from one major drawback. Many of us suffer from constant disconnects while playing online. Up comes the dreaded "connection interrupted" with the Ethernet plug symbol. Once you get disconnected, you still get to keep your earned points, but lose any match bonus you might have coming. You also lose contact with your party and group.
This would happen to me pretty much every map. It was extremely frustrating, especially if I was having a good run and leading my team in points. (surprisingly, this does happen fairly often to me! Stop snickering!)
I scoured the net, searching forum after forum, trying to solve this problem. My brother-in-law lives 5 minutes away from me, uses DSL, like me, and rarely ever gets "dc" (disconnected). However, he is with Bell and I am with Distributel.
One of the common suggestions I found was to turn on DMZ in your router settings. I had a Linksys router, and turned on the DMZ setting as suggested, but it was no help.
Next was to try bypassing the router all together. I did this, but still nothing changed.
I then realized I had one major difference in my setup that many people do not. My home phone is also with Distributel, as part of the package. My home phone is actually a VoIP line (Voice over Internet Protocol). This means as well as the standard DSL modem, I have a VoIP modem as well. As it turns out, the VoIP modem has a built in router. After a quick call to the Distributel guys, meaning to find out how to disconnect the modem while keeping my Internet connection, I was informed the the VoIP modem has it's own DMZ setting. I turned this on and viola! No more disconnects.
So, if you find yourself having the dreaded "connection interrupted" constantly like I did, and you have a VoIP modem in your setup, be aware that the DMZ setting must be turned in that and not on your regular router.
UPDATE: Here are the steps to turn on DMZ on your VOIP Router:
1: type in 192.168.0.1 in your web browser. It may ask you for a name and password. It's been so long that I don't remember what they were, but I did find them on Google before. I think it was user:password or admin:password or even admin:user. Try combos of that, or google it. You could also call Distributel to get the password.
2: click on the advanced link on the top right hand side.
3: click on the Application tab, and at the bottom you will see the DMZ option. Enable DMZ and put the number 2 in the blank for the ip address next to it.
Good luck!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
I have been playing Call Of Duty: Black Ops for about 2 weeks now. It's a fantastic game, especially the online multiplayer, where I spend most of my time playing.
It does, however, suffer from one major drawback. Many of us suffer from constant disconnects while playing online. Up comes the dreaded "connection interrupted" with the Ethernet plug symbol. Once you get disconnected, you still get to keep your earned points, but lose any match bonus you might have coming. You also lose contact with your party and group.
This would happen to me pretty much every map. It was extremely frustrating, especially if I was having a good run and leading my team in points. (surprisingly, this does happen fairly often to me! Stop snickering!)
I scoured the net, searching forum after forum, trying to solve this problem. My brother-in-law lives 5 minutes away from me, uses DSL, like me, and rarely ever gets "dc" (disconnected). However, he is with Bell and I am with Distributel.
One of the common suggestions I found was to turn on DMZ in your router settings. I had a Linksys router, and turned on the DMZ setting as suggested, but it was no help.
Next was to try bypassing the router all together. I did this, but still nothing changed.
I then realized I had one major difference in my setup that many people do not. My home phone is also with Distributel, as part of the package. My home phone is actually a VoIP line (Voice over Internet Protocol). This means as well as the standard DSL modem, I have a VoIP modem as well. As it turns out, the VoIP modem has a built in router. After a quick call to the Distributel guys, meaning to find out how to disconnect the modem while keeping my Internet connection, I was informed the the VoIP modem has it's own DMZ setting. I turned this on and viola! No more disconnects.
So, if you find yourself having the dreaded "connection interrupted" constantly like I did, and you have a VoIP modem in your setup, be aware that the DMZ setting must be turned in that and not on your regular router.
UPDATE: Here are the steps to turn on DMZ on your VOIP Router:
1: type in 192.168.0.1 in your web browser. It may ask you for a name and password. It's been so long that I don't remember what they were, but I did find them on Google before. I think it was user:password or admin:password or even admin:user. Try combos of that, or google it. You could also call Distributel to get the password.
2: click on the advanced link on the top right hand side.
3: click on the Application tab, and at the bottom you will see the DMZ option. Enable DMZ and put the number 2 in the blank for the ip address next to it.
Good luck!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
iPad Review
I got my iPad for Christmas this year. I've tried to be patient with this blog posting, because I didn't want to post a review before I had enough time to truly experience the whole iPad phenomena. After over a month of use, I finally feel ready to post my review.
I got lucky, and found my iPad on kijiji for $650. It is the 32 gig, wifi and 3G version. This sells for about $880 (after tax) at most stores, so it was a hell of a deal.
Many people I've talked to about iPads voice the concern "it's so much money for something I'm afraid just wouldn't use much."
No problems on that front for me. You pretty much have to pry thing out of my hands just to get a peak at it. The list of things I find to do with it just seems to grow day by day. As a matter of fact, I'm writing this blog posting on my iPad right now.
So, rather than dwell on the obvious stuff that people (including myself) do with an iPad everyday, like surfing the net, checking email etc, I thought I'd talk about the other things I do, and the fun apps I've found.
Games
There are many hundreds of games for the iPad, ranging in price from free, to $9.99. Two free games I play on a daily basis are Trade Nations and Syndicate HD. Both are very "facebookish" type games, where you manage time and resources to gain levels. I consider these basic time wasters, because they give me something to do when I only have a few minutes to pop on and off.
As a fan of the MMORPG Eve Online, I tried a free version of a space game called Galaxy On Fire 2. I enjoyed it so much, I forked over the $10 for the full version. Similar to Eve Online, you fly ships around, doing quests and mining for minerals to sell. The graphics are incredible, the ship controls very well, and the main story line is great. Well worth the money I spent.
There are tones of kids games, plenty of which are free, that my 6 year old son has no problem managing. He even has his own page that is just for the games that I've installed for him. The touch interface seems to be a more natural way to him to interact with it, and he seems to enjoy playing on it as much as I do. I'll do a separate blog posting with a list of our favorite kids game at a later date. For now I'll just say that the list of kids games is very large, and will provide many, many hours of fun and learning for him as we continue to explore the app catalogue.
Video
Just like the iPhone and iPod, the iPad will play mp4 videos natively. Anything else will need to be converted. Unless, that is, you use an app! The one that I have been using is called Air Video.
Not only will it let you stream your video over wifi or the Internet from your computer at home, saving you valuable storage space, it will convert on the fly, your videos to your iPad. It's been able to play anything I've thrown at it so far. If you'd rather save the video for offline viewing later, you can have Air Video simply convert and save your video directly to your iPad for viewing at your leisure. The free version has full functionality, but limits you to only seeing 4 files in the side window at a time. I spent the $3 to get the full version, allowing me to see the full folder all at once. Money very well spent, in my opinion.
To finish this posting off before it gets too long and windy, I'll just add a couple of quick general points about my experiences so far.
Battery life seems very good. I have no problem making through an entire day on a charge, even with fairly heavy usage. I've even gone a few days on a single charge, with just moderate use. In sleep mode, the iPad seems to draw next to nothing, and wakes instantly on a button press.
The onscreen keyboard is great to type on, and the autocorrect works very well.
The app catalogue is very extensive, offering plenty of free apps, and plenty more at two dollars or less. I've barely scratched the surface, and browsing through the apps has become one of my favorite pastimes.
Overall, I have come to truly love my iPad, bringing it with me pretty much everywhere I go. I continue to find new, fun uses for it almost every day, and would recommend one to pretty much anyone with the desire to have a fun, adaptable piece of tech ware to carry on the go.
Stay tuned to my blog, there will be plenty more postings on uses, apps, performance and more to come!
I got lucky, and found my iPad on kijiji for $650. It is the 32 gig, wifi and 3G version. This sells for about $880 (after tax) at most stores, so it was a hell of a deal.
Many people I've talked to about iPads voice the concern "it's so much money for something I'm afraid just wouldn't use much."
No problems on that front for me. You pretty much have to pry thing out of my hands just to get a peak at it. The list of things I find to do with it just seems to grow day by day. As a matter of fact, I'm writing this blog posting on my iPad right now.
So, rather than dwell on the obvious stuff that people (including myself) do with an iPad everyday, like surfing the net, checking email etc, I thought I'd talk about the other things I do, and the fun apps I've found.
Games
There are many hundreds of games for the iPad, ranging in price from free, to $9.99. Two free games I play on a daily basis are Trade Nations and Syndicate HD. Both are very "facebookish" type games, where you manage time and resources to gain levels. I consider these basic time wasters, because they give me something to do when I only have a few minutes to pop on and off.
As a fan of the MMORPG Eve Online, I tried a free version of a space game called Galaxy On Fire 2. I enjoyed it so much, I forked over the $10 for the full version. Similar to Eve Online, you fly ships around, doing quests and mining for minerals to sell. The graphics are incredible, the ship controls very well, and the main story line is great. Well worth the money I spent.
There are tones of kids games, plenty of which are free, that my 6 year old son has no problem managing. He even has his own page that is just for the games that I've installed for him. The touch interface seems to be a more natural way to him to interact with it, and he seems to enjoy playing on it as much as I do. I'll do a separate blog posting with a list of our favorite kids game at a later date. For now I'll just say that the list of kids games is very large, and will provide many, many hours of fun and learning for him as we continue to explore the app catalogue.
Video
Just like the iPhone and iPod, the iPad will play mp4 videos natively. Anything else will need to be converted. Unless, that is, you use an app! The one that I have been using is called Air Video.
Not only will it let you stream your video over wifi or the Internet from your computer at home, saving you valuable storage space, it will convert on the fly, your videos to your iPad. It's been able to play anything I've thrown at it so far. If you'd rather save the video for offline viewing later, you can have Air Video simply convert and save your video directly to your iPad for viewing at your leisure. The free version has full functionality, but limits you to only seeing 4 files in the side window at a time. I spent the $3 to get the full version, allowing me to see the full folder all at once. Money very well spent, in my opinion.
To finish this posting off before it gets too long and windy, I'll just add a couple of quick general points about my experiences so far.
Battery life seems very good. I have no problem making through an entire day on a charge, even with fairly heavy usage. I've even gone a few days on a single charge, with just moderate use. In sleep mode, the iPad seems to draw next to nothing, and wakes instantly on a button press.
The onscreen keyboard is great to type on, and the autocorrect works very well.
The app catalogue is very extensive, offering plenty of free apps, and plenty more at two dollars or less. I've barely scratched the surface, and browsing through the apps has become one of my favorite pastimes.
Overall, I have come to truly love my iPad, bringing it with me pretty much everywhere I go. I continue to find new, fun uses for it almost every day, and would recommend one to pretty much anyone with the desire to have a fun, adaptable piece of tech ware to carry on the go.
Stay tuned to my blog, there will be plenty more postings on uses, apps, performance and more to come!
Saturday, January 29, 2011
DVDStyler
DVDStyler is the program I use to burn all my movies and TV shows. It can encode your videos from pretty much any format to proper DVD format, and it does it much faster than other free programs I have used. It seems to encode at a rate of about half the time the actual video is, so a one hour movie will encode in about 30 mins.
Creating a dvd menu in this program is extremely easy. You can set any picture you like as a background. In the sample above, I added a wallpaper image as the background, and simply created text links to each episode. You can also drag each video marker on the bottom to the menu window in the middle and it will create a still image from that video to use as a selection marker. Overall, very simple and quick.
Click here to go to the DVDStyler website.
I have no problems recommending this FREE program to anyone that has videos they need to burn to DVD.
Click here to go to the DVDStyler website.
I have no problems recommending this FREE program to anyone that has videos they need to burn to DVD.
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