The Xbox 360 Fall update hits next Tuesday and the full changelog is here.

Of particular interest to me:
- Added support for DivX and Xvid
- Added support to show friends a real name
- Added support for listing multiple computer sources in Xbox Guide music sources
- Improved Xbox guide performance ~2x

Here’s a video walkthrough of the new features. The dashboard does seem a lot more responsive!

Charles Martinet is the official voice of Mario, Wario, Luigi, Waluigi, Baby Mario, and Baby Wario.

This video interview cracks me up. (Click the ‘Launch Player’ text link on the right.)

The past few weeks I’ve been working on a project that has made me question the wisdom of writing something that’s xhtml 1.1 compliant.

I’m all for web standards. If browsers supported them as universally as they’re supposed to, the world would be a happier place.

xhtml essentially is reformatted html served up as xml. One direct benefit of this is that compliant documents must adhere to a strict set of formatting rules. You’ve got to go all lowercase, you’ve got to close all your paragraph tags, and you’ve got to do a whole bunch of other stuff to pass validation tests.

Anyway, the real problem is that you can’t rely on being standards compliant to ensure a consistent display of whatever you’re working on, wherever it’s viewed. What you can do is design/write sites that are compliant, put a badge on your site that proudly proclaims your nerdish mastery of xhtml 1.1, and then promptly blame any display problems on noncompliant web browsers, washing your hands of the situation entirely. Then you’d go back to lurking Slashdot threads, energy drink in hand, and call it a day.

It’s a little sad that 15 years after html hit the scene the most effective way to build web sites is not to design to standards, but to test a standards-compliant site in a handful of the most popular browsers. In the end it’s more work, but someday in the far future when we’re viewing the web on something other than web browsers (!) it’s supposed to make our lives easier. Just wait and see!

If you’re a fan of easy-listening holiday schmaltz as much as I am, you’ll be happy to know that Ernie (Not Bert) plans to share 57 more Christmas albums in 2007 in addition to those already shared in years past.

These albums were mostly recorded in an age of innocence, mainly in the late 50s, when Christmas songs were arranged and performed with emotion and an attention to detail. Back then ‘Christmas albums’ weren’t considered novelty gimmicks – they were popular with just about everybody.

You’ll have to deal with RapidShare for all of the downloads on Ernie’s site, but if your ISP is totally awesome – and SBC Yahoo! DSL totally is – releasing and renewing your IP is a quick and easy way to get around the ‘one file per hour’ download restriction.

Honestly. What the hell is this.

Amazon’s Kindle is trying to make e-books popular, and it’s doing it in the worst way.

It’s cool because
- it runs on Sprint’s EVDO network and doesn’t have a monthly fee or contract
- it’s got a super sharp screen
- it never needs to be connected to a computer. ever.

It’s horrible because
- there’s no backlight
- DRM
- RSS feeds cost you a buck or two per month. per feed!
- FREE books from the Gutenberg Project will cost you a dollar through Amazon.
- it looks like an 80s handheld electronic game: huge, clunky, plasticy, angular, awkward, ugly, hideous, atrocious, yadda yadda.

I’m not expecting Apple-caliber aesthetics on a product from Amazon, but good lord the Kindle is fugly and that’s its biggest flaw. That keyboard should have been retractable, like a slider phone!

Would you really want to hold that device in your hand? I’d rather stare at it from afar in horror. Those corners could take an eye out.

The Kindle is also $400. Amazon should be giving these away. They’re selling you the blades, so the razor should be free! And if not free, then definitely no more than $50.

Yes, if you hate reading – books in particular – the Kindle should be right up your alley.

Here’s hoping that we’ll see Kindle 2.0 sooner rather than later.

Way to ruin Christmas, Amazon.

Xbox Live turns 5 today.

What does that mean for you? It means that Carcassonne is now FREE as long as you download it before midnight Friday.

After Friday it goes back to being ten bucks.

And if you’re like me and already paid ten bucks for it months ago, you get JACK! Happy Birthday, indeed! I swear to god Xbox Live is the most spoiled five year old I have ever known.

Anyway Carcassonne is a pretty good game as board games go. It even supports the camera! Don’t pass it up!

It’s been a few years since I’ve head anything about Internet’s Peter Pan guy. Until now.

He’s getting married. To a girl!

It just goes to show there’s a good match out there for everyone.

When I first found out I was going to be a father I was pretty excited.

When I found out a few weeks ago that I was going to be a dad to a daughter, everything got a lot more real and the excitement level pretty much blew up by a factor of ten.

I can’t really explain it, but once you know the sex of your upcoming baby the whole thought of having a child changes a little bit. Mentally, the baby goes from being a ‘thing’ to being a ‘person’. And then all these feelings come out that you never knew you had.

I’ve always wanted a daughter and I’m excited that I got it right on the first try. I know most guys want sons, but not me. Not yet anyway. Who wants to wake up at 6am to go to soccer games? Not me, that’s who. But a 6pm ballet recital? I’m all over it.

Every day that goes by I get more and more excited to be a dad. Every kick I feel through Tammy’s belly and every new baby gizmo we register for gets us that much closer. Strollers and car seats are all modular now, snapping together like Tetris pieces or a big plastic transformer. And thanks to some neat federal regulations, all cars made after September 2002 already include a standardized system of frame-mounted hooks for installing car seats.

Having a pocket-sized Tammy that I can take with me wherever I go is also a nice bonus.

I have so many plans for this baby you don’t even know. I’m going to make her laugh so much it’s insane. My wacky antics will be unstoppable. I want her to grow up to be the next Tina Fey. I’ll teach her how to ride a bike and poop in a toilet. I’ll teach her how to be a good, caring, responsible person. I will hug her so much and so often that barf on my shoulder will practically be a term of endearment.

So yes, I would say I’m ready to be a dad.

Some guy did some detective work and aggregated the ‘last played’ data of gamercards across the Internet to come up with a totally unofficial but probably not-too-far-off accounting of sales numbers for Xbox Live Arcade titles.

According to the list, more people have Uno than any other Arcade title and Texas Hold ‘Em is the biggest moneymaker.

Of course Uno comes free with the Vision camera and Hold ‘Em was free for the first two days of its release, so those two probably shouldn’t count.

I picked up Guitar Hero III over the weekend.

It seems a little easier than GH2. It feels like it’s much more forgiving of poorly-timed strums. I might have just gotten better though.

They also got rid of Clive Winston, my favorite character. I had to settle on some punk with a mohawk. I don’t even know the guy’s name. I’m hoping that Clive is just a secret character that I’ll be able to unlock at some point, and then his aged-rocker experience will flow through my fingers and give me the edge I need.

I’m still not that great. I can five-star most songs on Medium without too much difficulty. Hard is…hard. Expert is painful to watch.

I’ve said this before, but I really feel like RedOctane/Activision/Neversoft is limiting themselves with their reliance on classic rock songs. If I ran things I’d release “Guitar Hero: Weirdo Edition” and although it’d only sell five copies it would be chock full of 80s synth-pop and new wave, and classic jazz guitar from the likes of Wes Montgomery and Django Reinhardt! You can’t tell me that wouldn’t be tons of fun, because it would.

I played online last night for the first time. Network play in GH3 is a little rough around the edges. Once you’re in a match things work great, but getting a round to start without seeing ‘Connection Lost’ takes a few tries.

At some point I unlocked the ‘Meet your Maker’ achievement because I “Beat one of the creators of Guitar Hero 3 at their own game.” I was too busy focusing on notes to see what the achievement was, so I have no idea who I actually played against! But I beat them on medium, so they must not have been very good. Or maybe they saw they were playing against a guy named Elbow Macaroni and let me win because I deserved it for having such a great name. I may never know the truth.

Rock on.