Magnus Nevstad

August 2006

( Monthly archive )

Domi Update - Merch, DOA '06 CD and Concerts

Thursday, 31. August 2006, 10:13:09

Figured it would be time for another quick Domi update!

I have over the last few months been in contact with someone I met over at the ESP Message Board who showed some real great drawing talent. I approached him with the prospect of designing some stuff for Domi merchandise and he was cool enough to agree, thanks Brono! We will most likely be printing out some t-shirts when the designs are ready and there will in all likelyhood be a cheaper version with only one color print on the front in some different color shirts, and a black/white shirt version with color print on front and back.

You can see to the left the latest design for the back - a great looking Shepherd with a Domified shepherd's hook

In other news, The Shepherd had been granted a place on this years DOA (Dean Owners of America - a world wide association despite the name) CD which will be available sometime in September. Some good exposure for us, there are already 4 Dean endorsees on this years CD, and also Dean Zelinsky himself has a careful listen to this CD!

Last but not least, here is a list of our upcoming concerts in the near future, come out and see us - the more the merrier!

UPCOMING DOMI SHOWS:

07/09/06 Martins, Lillestrøm

08/09/06 Amplifier, Oslo

21/09/06 Østsia, Kristiansand

22/09/06 Kragerø

26/09/06 Studentsamfunnet Bislet, Oslo

11/11/06 Gamla, Oslo

2 comments

Back in Blue... Black!

Wednesday, 30. August 2006, 16:06:26

dean, guitar, music

Just ordered some hardware directly from the awesome people at Dean to give my Dean USA TC V some new clothes; an all black look!

They were very helpful and gave me a great price too - a total of $86.50 for everything: 1x V plate, 1x jack plate, 1x TonePros bridge, 2x pickup rings, 6x Grover tuners.

On the left is a little mockup of how the two "outfits" will look, proper Bo I tell thee!

5 comments

Play backups on 360

Tuesday, 22. August 2006, 13:30:33

console, gaming, hacking, live ...

The people over at Team Underdog have now come out with their NME-360 chip which enables you to play burnt DVD backups of your games. According to some, solutions like these have been around for a little while already, but this one I believe to be the first actual chip and looks easy to install and use - and has some nice features;

The NME-360 enables your XBox360 to play backups of your highly valuable original games. NME-360 is a universal solution for ALL currently available XBox360 Consoles on the market.

It basically sits between your DVD drive and the rest of the system, and when necessary "tricking" the machine to think it has an original game disc inserted;

The NME-360 autodetects the inserted media. If the inserted media is a backup NME-360 injects the necessary information to the DVD drive enabling it to boot smoothly ahead! If the media is an original game, or anything else, which doesnt require any further action of the NME-360 then it simply falls asleep so there is no need for an external switch whatsoever. This way it can not be detected online when you play an original onlinegame.

Which begs the question whether you can play on Live! with backed up games, and a quick look at the Howto/Q&A states that:

Q: Can I play Xbox Live with NME 360
A: Yes you can! When you play original games NME 360 will not patch anything, so the drive is like an original unmodified one. We recommend that you DON`T play backups on live, due to the risk of being banned.

Their suggested retail price is 39.95 Euro.

2 comments

Sony Ericsson M600 in the wild

Thursday, 17. August 2006, 08:36:20

browser, devices, internet, mobile ...

Here at work I've been working for quite some time now on the Opera browser for the UIQ3 platform;

Ronneby, Sweden - Oct. 04, 2004
Opera Software and UIQ Technology, a fully owned subsidiary of Symbian Ltd., today announced that they have selected Opera to be the default browser in UIQ's UIQ 3.0, the new release of the UIQ Platform that is expected to be commercially available in Q4 2004.

It is quite the challenge, with it being Symbian 9 as well as UIQ having a whole new architechture, and recently the Sony Ericsson M600 hit the shelves making it the first UIQ3 device out there (closely followed by the P990). Here is a review of the M600, and some quotes related to Opera on it:

The M600 web browser is powered by the most advanced mobile browser ever created Opera Browser, Opera web experience in small screen devices is unmatchable, and if you looking for any mobile device with the best web experience always look for Opera logo in the box.

[..]

With the high-speed 3G mobile internet access you are in for a desktop experience in the M600 screen. I remember a lot of Treo users specially users trading in the stocks market use to complain a lot that they can’t access the java web-portal to see their stocks status, well, with the M600 Opera browser (with HTML 4.01, xHTML 1.0, CSS and Java script (ECMA script), WAP 2.0 support, and SSL/TLS security protocols) you can do just that, and amazingly the Opera browser support tab browsing as well just like in your Opera desktop version of the popular browser, so you can keep your stock market update page open and start a new page to check your email or open a page for each of your main stocks, now how cool is that!?

So make sure to check out some UIQ3 action if you have the opportunity, and don't forget that the Sony Ericsson W950i will hopefully be out Q4!

5 comments

Fiddy K

Wednesday, 16. August 2006, 11:35:15

Visitors (blog + photo album)
50001

2 comments

XNA Game Studio Express

Tuesday, 15. August 2006, 15:09:10

console, gaming, xbox 360

Interrestingly enough, soon anyone with a PC can write programs for the Xbox 360 thanks to XNA Game Studio Express which is set to be released this fall. XNA Team Blog has some interresting info:

It is all about helping the community at large develop games using the Visual Studio environment on the Windows computers. Then they can run those games on either Windows– or on their retail Xbox 360. Yes. That is right. You will be able to run your own code on a regular, bought-at-a-store, Xbox 360, including the one that you already own.

So basically we're getting an SDK which allows for development for the 360 on your regular Windows machine. But how does it work and what is included you ask? And how will this be distributed, how will others get to try your stuff? Can any 360 play unsigned code? There are many obvious questions, and here are some of the answers straight from the horse's mouth:

Running unsigned code on your Xbox 360 will require a yearly subscription of $99.00. The tools Windows runtimes will be free of charge.

[..]

The program we are building, however, is more than a beginner tool. You will be able to write full-on games with shaders and high-end graphics if you want to go deeper.

[..]

They’ve also got lots of tools that will make game development much more accessible to the story tellers and artists who aren’t as into fancy code.

[..]

When we ship XNA Game Studio Express this fall, you will be able to share your final product with anyone on your windows machine that you want, but there is no support for sharing Xbox binaries other than sending your source around. We fully intend to fix this in the future, and if I have anything to do about it, it will be sooner than later. The more people that sign up for the subscription and start showing cool innovative content that everyone wants, the easier it will be to get this done.

I think first order of business should be to port XBMC to the 360...

2 comments

QuickSilver & Launchy

Monday, 14. August 2006, 18:01:12

quicksilver, apple, windows, launchy ...

If you are an Apple owner, chances are you have used or at least heard of QuickSilver;

A unified, extensible interface for working with
applications, contacts, music, and other data.

While a bit hard to put into Lamens terms, QS will index all your files alot like Spotlight and give you an interface for typing in. simply put, it will then search for matches and let you launch programs, view files etc. Simply by typing in (part of) their name. Powerusers who use QS will tell you this is just the tip of the iceberg, however useful - QS also supports modules and there are tons of useful ones out there.

A new and simmilar, if only very basic, tool called Launchy has come to my attention thanks to my colleague Lasse Magnussen who recently got a MacBook Pro;

Launchy is a free windows utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager.

Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!

With this I can for instance prett ALT+SPACE to bring up Launchy and type "op" and press enter to run Opera, which would in total take me all of a second. You can also specify what folder to index and what file extensions to look for within the specified folders. QS it is not, but indeed better than the Start menu

3 comments

PS3 vs. Wii

Friday, 11. August 2006, 09:15:08

console, gaming, nintendo, wii ...

I found this little spoof, in the vein of "Mac vs. PC", quite hilarious! Press play below to see it:

3 comments

Nokia's mobile browser

Monday, 7. August 2006, 17:59:31

opera, browser, nokia, symbian ...

Those not following the mobile phone/device market that closely, and more in particular Nokia, may not know that a little while back they decided to drop us at Opera Software and start using their own "new" browser for their Symbian S60 devices. I for one still believe we have a superior product, and now that the new Nokias have started hitting the market it seems there are some that share our views.

I just read a funny article over at Reg Hardware, The Register's hardware section had the following to say:

A special circle of Hell needs to be created for the souls behind Nokia's new web browser. This is the fruit of the decision to develop an alternative to Opera Mobile based on the KHTML engine used by KDE's Konquerer and Apple's Safari.

[..]

This browser also sucks up all available memory from the phone - quite an achievement considering the E70 has 80MB of RAM. Three or four pages in to a session, the browser runs out of memory.

3 comments

Domi in the Movies

Friday, 4. August 2006, 10:43:30

domi, movies, finland, tampere ...

A while back, a good friend and colleague Ivan Kuznetsov got me in contact with Alexander Savin, a filmmaker and friend of his. Alex, working for the finish company Karisma Films was scriptwriter and operator for the movie "Leijonan sydän", and after hearing Domi wanted to know if he could use some of our music for the movie. I thought this was a great idea, so naturally Domi agreed!

The movie is now done, and Ivan wrote some about this movie which was filmed in his home town of Tampere:

"Leijonan sydän" tells about a teenager Leo (played by Markus Kosonen, who is also a producer of this movie). Leo is really passionate about hockey and wants to dedicate his life to it. But eventually he finds himself playing at the expense of school, relationships with his girlfriend Jonna (played by Irina Ritvanen) and health.

It is a movie about growing up, learning to make important decisions yourslef, friendship and love. Good humor, dynamic and realistic sports filming, philosophical dialogs, make this movie worth watching.

[..]

After "Leijonan Sydän" was played in Plevna and Niagara movie theaters in Tampere, rights for TV presentation were sold to YLE (Finnish Broadcasting Company) for the next ten years, so you have a pretty good chance to see it on TV.

Can't wait to get my copy, I do hope there are English subtitles as I am rather low on local Finish friends at the moment. The Domi songs used in the movie were the classic The Shepherd and an old ballad called Away From Home. You can see a trailer of the movie here.