Amazing Aaron

Okay so I bought a PS3 at a yard Sale about a week ago. I got it for $15.00 because the Blu-ray drive does not work. The system works fine just as long as you do not need to use a Blu-ray, DVD or CD, which pretty much makes the system worthless.

Soon after buying it I tore into it and did some research. Turns out that the laser lens is at fault, so I went on ebay and bought a replacement lens. I just received the lens yesterday, unfortunately it was the wrong type. I ordered a KES-410A which has two lenses in it. One for reading Blu-rays and the other for DVDs/CDs. Turns out the system I bought uses an older model laser lens that works with just one lens providing both functions. The only problem is that the older lens cost more to replace (they don't make them anymore), and they are not as reliable as the new dual lens (hence the reason they don't make them anymore).

I hope to exchange this new lens in for the type I need (+ some extra cash), and hopefully have a working PS3 for less than it would have cost to go buy a new slim model or even buy a used one. Plus I'm learning a lot, and thats worth something!

I've been busy working on a Star Trek stop motion video. Yea I know I need help, but I think its turning out pretty good. Here are a few videos of what I've got done so far.

UPDATE: Checkout this guys amazing Star Trek TNG bridge scale model! http://www.gcfurniture.co.uk/scaled%20models.htm

Okay, so as some of you may know, there was a team meeting for the Xbox Live team, on the 6th of this month. During the meeting they had screens set up, and you could send in feedback about Xbox Live, and features you would like to see on Xbox Live. The tweets had to be hashtagged with #heyxboxlive to show up, and be seen by the XBL team members. Well it seems that something may have come out of this. One of the most asked for features, was a way to rate XBL games. If you head over to the Creators Club website, and check out the latest post, you will notice its entitled “Where to Find Reviews of Xbox LIVE Community Games”. basically its just a post with links to sites that review Community Channel games, but if you take a close look, you will see the following in the opening sentence.

Team XNA knows that user reviews of games on the Xbox 360 Console would be fantastic, but they don't exist, yet.

As you can see I've made bold the main word in that sentence! While I don’t think this post is talking about XBL games in general, but rather the home brewed Community Channel Games, everyone who has been following the Community Channel developments knows, its a feature that is really needed, and if they bring it to the the Community Channel, it might be on its way to XBL games as a whole! There's no way to know (unless they just come out and say it) if this was the user feedback, or just a feature they had planed all along. I do think its cool that the Xbox Live team seems to be become more open with the community, and I hope the team continues to listen to us all, and they get that new rating system up soon!

I have decided to buy an Xbox 360 Pro. I know I already had an Xbox 360 Elite, but that was like a year ago, and now I want a 360 again. Plus, I have a good reason, I’m going to be making an XNA game. For those of you that may not know what XNA is, its basically just the software, or framework, that you build games for Windows, and games for the Xbox 360 with. I have not decided what kind of game I’m going to make yet, but I have a lot of that’s for sure! On my last post, I talked about how I was making a game for a contest on YoYoGames.com. Well I did begin to make a game for the competition, but like a lot of things with me, it never got completed, for one reason, or another -I don’t even know why I didn’t complete it now :). The game was called ‘Lost Civilization’, and I got it to where it was playable, and was pretty near completion of it, but it still needs a lot of bug smashing to do, among other things. I’ve been wanting to finish it lately, but don’t know when I will get around to it -if i ever will. I might just throw it up the way it is on YoYoGames as a beta -more like Alpha really :). I will however put a screenshot of the game in this post for you all to see! I have made a few new videos, and put them up on YouTube, but nothing great, just me rambling about things. Mostly just about my new iPhone, and no, not the new iPhone 3G, but the first iPhone. I got it when it was the only iPhone, that shows how updated I keep my blog. I will tell you what, I will promise to post more, if you all tell me you want to see more posts, more often. Just leave a comment on this post, and I’ll see it. It will encourage me to write more, if I know someone is really reading it, LOL! Well, I’m going to sign off for now, I hope this was a good enough update for you! Till next post, I’ll C-U!

Okay, so I have decided that my show on hacking, modding, fixing, and all around taking things apart, is going to be called HackThat. I have already registered the domain HackThat.tv, where I will be posting all the videos for the show. I have only just started to get the site up and running, so it does not look like much right now. I am also pretty sure that I am going to be uploading the videos to the internet using MetaCafe, because they offer $5.00, for every 1000 views, which I think is pretty good! Especially sense YouTube only gives me…. hmmm…. well nothing. I also have been working on a game for a competition over on YoYoGames.com. In case you do not know about YoYoGames already, its a website where you can upload games that have been created with a program called Game Maker, that well, lets you make games. The completion is for the best casual video game based on an ancient civilization. I only have about 30 days left to complete the game, and I only have just started on it, so I am trying to make a very simple to make game. I will fill you all in on the game later on, when I get a little more of it done.