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Forza Motorsport 2...Almost Here

Thu, 10 May 2007 00:26:17 GMT

I haven't talked about it to much here yet, but I love my Microsoft Xbox 360. I had the original Xbox, and loved it, so last year for Christmas my wife and kids got me a Xbox 360 Premium.

Microsoft catches alot of crap for some of the goofy things they do on with their software, but I've gotta say, they hit a home run with the Xbox and a Grand Slam with the Xbox360. I love that thing. I could rant on and on about why I like it, but I'll save that for another slow blogging day.

Anyway, one of the best games for Xbox is Forza Motorsport. I love racing, any kind of racing, but espcially auto racing. I was a big Gran Turismo fan on the Playstation 2, but once I played Forza, I was hooked. It's a blast, the graphic's are amazing, and the physics of the car's are dead on.

The origianal Forza for Xbox works fine on my 360, but it's only displayed at 480P resolution. On May 29th, Forza Motorsport 2 is due to be released. I looks like it will do 720P resoution. Based on the trailers, it's going to be awesome. I pre-ordered my copy a couple of months ago so I should be the first to get my copy from GameCrazy.

If you like racing simulations, you have to check out Forza. You won't be sorry...

NYC bike race

Fri, 04 May 2007 06:47:10 GMT

One of the my long time loves is Mountain Biking. I don't get to do it as often as I like, but I do love cycling. Here's a cool video I found on Google Video of a bike race through New York City.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3123908086916868348&hl=en

How to convert date format's in MySQL.

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 15:42:28 GMT

As you can see in my Blog entry on how to import a Microsoft Access Database to MySQL , I ran into a small problem on converting all the dates from the format of mm/dd/yyyy to MySQL Date Format of yyyy-mm-dd.

Thanks to all the help I recieved from Guelphad on the MySQL Newbie forum in this post, I got all the dates converted and am good shape.

Here's how I converted the date formats on Guedlphad's Advice.

In my table(misequip) , I created a new column with a data type of DATE with a name (dt_deployed) similar to the column that contained my dates imported from Access (date_deployed) in string format. If you'll remember, I imported all the dates as a datatype of VARCHAR just to get them into the database.

I then ran this command:

mysql> UPDATE misequip SET dt_deployed = str_to_date(date_deployed, '%m/%d/%Y');

What that command does is UPDATE's the misequip table, SET's the new column dt_deployed to equal the out put of the MySQL function STR_TO_DATE that converts Strings to Dates.

Once I ran this command, I looked at the my database and all the dates were converted. Worked like a champ. I then dropped my original column, then renamed my new column to match the old name, date_deployed.

We will now be albe to do calculations on these dates now since they are in DATE format to figure out when warranties expire and stuff like that.

Hope this help some of you newbieMySQL guys out there,

Mark

How to import Microsoft Access database into MySql

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:49:12 GMT

I'm working on web enabling my inventory of IT Equipment with ColdFusion and MySql. The database is an Access database that is pretty simple, just name, model number, date of purchase, blah, blah, blah.

The first thing I've had to do to get this accomplished is to export my Access database as a tab delimited text file. In Access, under the File menu, I went to Export. That opened the Export Wizard. I gave the file a name "inv.tab", then on the first screen of that Wizard I choose delimited, on the second screen of the wizard choose "Tab", then set the "Text Qualifier" option to "None". Set a location for the exported file to reside, then clicked the Finish button. Upon confirmation of the successful export, I opened the text file I created with Access with a text editor (gEdit in Linux, Notepad in Windows) and looked at the file to make sure that all the columns and data looked ok. I've got 3 date columns in the database, and noticed that behind each date was a time and that the date format was wrong and wouldn't work in MySql. (We'll tackle the date problem in another post as I haven't figure out how to convert them all to the proper date format for MySql without touching each date by hand) Anyway, I did a find and replace and replaced all the times in the file with a space. This application I only need the dates. I verified that all the times were gone, then saved the file.

Then I connected to MySql via the command line client and create my database and created my tables to include all the columns to match the columns in my Access database. On the three date fields, I set them up with data types of VARCHAR(20). For now as I'm just wanting to get the data in the database. I also made all the columns to allow NULL's except the Primary Key. I'm working with some people on the MySql newbie forum to get help on converting the dates to the correct format. There is a MySql function STR_TO_DATE that will convert strings to dates in the correct format. I'm hoping that will help me convert all the dates at once.

Once the table was created, and the export files was checked, I started my first import by using the LOAD command in MySql.

I copied one record from the export file (inv.tab) into a new file (test.tab) and ran a test on it to make sure it would import the file in the correct columns.

Then, in the MySQL Command line client, I imported my test file (test.tab) with this command

mysql>LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE '/home/mbrown/test.tab' INTO TABLE misequip;

Much to my amazement it ran without error.

so I did a mysql>SELECT * FROM misequip;

Sure enough, there was my data. Cool. So, now I tried the big file.

I opened the inv.tab export file, made sure the line I already imported was gone, then type this:

mysql>LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE '/home/mbrown/inv.tab' INTO TABLE misequip;

No errors again. Cool!

Then I did a mysql>SELECT * from misequip; and BOOM, there's all my data! SWEEETTTT! I love MySql! LOL

Now I'm going to tackle the date convert thing. I'll keep you posted.

Web Site color calculators

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:55:11 GMT

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not creative at all. My wife practically has to dress me in the mornings... I really have no eye for colors at all. In an effort to make my web site colors “pretty”, I had to find something to help me with the colors.

Of course, when designing web pages, colors aren't as simple as just Red, White or blue. You've got to know the either the HEX, RGB, or HSV values to really get the colors you want. CSS does allow for general colors to be named, but how many of you use just the general colors?

I found a couple of web sites that are helpful when picking colors or color schemes for web pages.

http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html

http://www.drpeterjones.com/colorcalc/

http://www.pitt.edu/~nisg/cis/web/cgi/rgb.html

Fell free to add to the list if you have other you like.

Later,

Mark

I'm running naked today...

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 12:01:33 GMT

I removed all the CSS from my Spot today, just playing around, but it's kinda cool. Kinda reminds me of the vintage Internet days. Lots of text with one or two pictures....

I think I'll run naked (css-less) for a day, unless it'll cause a problem with Instantspot. Dave or Aaron?

Review of a very good beginner ColdFusion Book..

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 11:29:42 GMT

With the wealth of information available on the Internet on ColdFusion programming, I never thought I would buy a book on it.

I was doing a trial membership of Safari Books Online and found the book.Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7Web Application Construction Kit. I added it to my book shelf expecting to find just another programming book written for seasoned developers. I was wrong.

For the beginner this is a great book. You can find pretty much all the topics in this book on the Internet, but not all in one place, and not layed out in such an easy to understand format. The authors did a fantasic job of making it a very readable book. They take there time explaining topics, then show you the code, then explain it, line by line and how it all interacts together.

If your a beginner/newbie with ColdFusion, make sure and check this book out. It now has a permanent location next to my keyboard. We'll worth the $50.

Reset MySql root password

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 17:29:03 GMT

One of the problems I ran into when I started playing with MySql was trying to figure out how to reset the root password.

one night I was dinking around in MySql, and wound up locking myself out. I searched high and low for someway to reset that password, found a couple of hints at how, but couldn't ever get it reset. It was on a new install of Ubuntu and Mysql, so I removed MySql, reinstalled it, and I still couldn't get in. So, I wound up reinstalling Ubuntu, then MySql to get it to work.

Today I was perusing the mysql newbie from and saw this post. http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?10,149291,149311#msg-149311

Boy that would have been helpful about 3 weeks ago, so hopefully someone here might find it useful now!

Have a good weekend!

Dressing my spot up...

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:19:15 GMT

I have a little bit of time today, so I thought I would dress my spot up a bit. I finally got a headshot added. It was amazingly hard to find a current pic of myself. As I look thru the gigs of pictures I have, most of the pics are of my kids. Anyway. As I'm looking for ways to make my spot a bit more friendly, I found myself looking for some good header pics. I really didn't find to many, but it got me to thinking about stock photographs used on web pages. I found one good "free" stock photo site: http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml. I'm curious though, do any of you fellow spotted people or bloggers out there have any good "free" stock photo site you like and would share with the group?

I'm going to hopefully use some of the Style Manager features this afternoon, so keep an eye out. I'm not creative at all, so my spot may become very ugly very soon. LOL

Thanks,
Mark

Google Calendar and Evolution Coolness

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 00:37:53 GMT

One of my favorite things about Linux and/or Ubuntu is that I get to use the email client Evolution . I'm not a fan of Microsoft Outlook at all, and Evolution is a perfect replacement for it. All the features but none of the Microsoft bull.

I've also found myself using Google's Calendar lately. My wife and I use it to keep track of when bills are due, when the kids' baseball or what ever sport practices are and to keep track of all the family and friends birthdays and such. My wife and I each have our own calendar, and share it with each other to keep up to date. Pretty neat how it works.

Now that I'm using Ubuntu at home almost exclusively I found myself not wanting to import or retype all those dates from Google Calendar. So, I got to looking around and found that you can publish your calendar in 3 formats. iCal, XML, and HTTP. I then started looking around in Evolution and found that you can add web calendars to the calendar views. So, here's what I did.

In Google Calendar, I went to "Manage Calendars", then clicked on my calendar and at the bottom of that page there are a couple sections. Calendar Address and Private Address.

The Calendar Address Section is only for appointments that are made public, but the Private Address is for everything on your calendar.

So, I clicked on the iCal button and it pops up a window with a URL in it. I copied that URL.

Then, in Evolution, I went to my Calendar, and in the upper lefthand pane of the window I right clicked and choose New Calendar.

That popped up a New Calendar window. For Type: I choose "On the Web", For name, just put something in there to distinguish which calendar it is, then under URL I pasted the URL that Google gave me. When I pasted it in the New Calendar window, I had to take the http:// section of the URL and make it webcal://, It should look something like this webcal//www.google.com/calendar../basic.ics.

Clicked Ok on that New Calendar Window, Restarted Evolution and there it was, my entire Google Calendar displayed in the Calendar in Evolution.

Pretty neat stuff.

Of course I couldn't leave well enough along, so I decided to try the same thing with Microsoft Outlook. I only worked on it for about 10 minutes, which is about how long it took me to set it up with Evolution, but I couldn't find a way to add web calendars to Outlook 2003. I'm not surprised...nor did I expect to be able to. It the abilitiy is there, it's not nearly as intuitive to setup as Evolution was, and I didn't really want to spend the time digging thru help files and forums to figure it out.

Anyway, they may be old news to some of you, but hopefully it'll help someone else get just a bit more organized

BTW, I read an article that a Windows version of Evolution has been released. I haven't tried it yet, but hopefully it works as well as the Linux version.

Later,

Mark

Baseball Season has started!

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 12:46:11 GMT

I'll be the first to admit that I've never been a baseball fan at all. My whole life I've never really cared about the sport at all. I played Little League, Babe Ruth, but once I got into high school everything was about Football, so I ran track because it helped me with Football. I just never understood how or why people liked Baseball so much.

Then I had kids, 2 sons. They both wanted to play Baseball last year, my youngest was to young to play yet, but my oldest son was 10 and played in the 10 and under league. What an absolute blast to watch him play last year. My wife and I really enjoyed and looked forward to watching him play. So needless to say we were looking forward to this year.

Saturday was opening day for the league. My youngest is playing Tee Ball and my oldest is playing in the 12 and under league. My youngest son's game was at 10 on Saturday morning. We pulled into the parking lot a the baseball complex and the temp in my car reads 38f degrees. We get to the right field, begin to warm up, and it starts SNOWING! Most of the kids were loving it. Game starts and we all had a blast, well, most of us did. We lost, but it was still fun and my son had fun, which is really what counts.

Now, I'm going to rant a little bit. All you parents out there, if you signed your kid up for a sport, you are making a commitment to the TEAM that your kid will play, even if conditions aren't perfect. What are you teaching your kids if you let them whine and cry about the conditions then let them sit out of the game? Your teaching them it's OK to let their team down just because they don't want to be a a bit uncomfortable. This is not how you develop productive hardworking citizens.

I'll get off my pedistle now...back to Saturday's game.

My oldest son's game was at 12:15 on Saturday, so we run to grab a quick lunch, then head back to the now 42 degree ball fields. The 12 and under games are scheduled to go 90 minutes or 7 innings, which ever comes first. I've never seen one go 7 inning though. The game starts, and it's a heck of a game, very close, good pitching, good hitting and good fielding. My son hit a triple and then struck out. They ultimately lost by 1 point, but what a game. What fun it is to watch them play.

I'm starting to see why Baseball is such a popular sport!

A few more tries with Ubuntu and BlueDragon

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 12:33:47 GMT

After taking a few days off from working on getting a server running Ubunutu and New Atlanta's BlueDragon Free Server up and going, I decided to take a fresh look at it.

My frustration level is way down after the time off, I'm thinking more clearly now, so
I decided to try some different versions to see if I could get it to work, and so far I'm glad I did. I installed Ubuntu 6.06 Server, installed Apache 2.0.55 and BlueDragon 6.21. I now almost have the process committed to memory, but also followed the blogs referenced in this post to make sure I was right.

Much to my surprise, it works. Processes the CFML like it should and like is good.

So, my next step is going to be to try to install BlueDragon 7 on Ubuntu 6.06 Desktop. My Develepment machine is running 6.10 of Ubuntu, so I bought and extra drive to replace the 6.10 drive. If it works, I'll stay on those versions and I'll be good to go.

I'll keep you all posted.

Remote Access to mySql Database

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 04:38:16 GMT

As I'm playing with MySql I found that setting up remote access to the mysql server is a bit tricky at first, so I thought I'd share quickly with you how to set up account with remote access.

Here's the whole process:

I've got a Ubuntu box running MySql 5 on it. Once I got MySql installed (sudo apt-get install mysql-server) I set up the root account with a password. (mysqladmin -u root password "passwordyouwant") <--Thanks for that Aaron Lynch.

Then, log into the MySql server by opening a terminal window locally and typing:

mysql -u root -p (then enter the password you set above)

Following the tutorial located here , I then created a db, and table, and populated it with some data.

At this point I think, what if I want to administer this thing from my laptop? So, I installed the MySql Administrator (sudo apt-get install mysql-admin).

I tried to log in using the sql admin tool after the install. Typed in the ip address of the MySql Server, username and password, but it threw this error:

Could not connect to host
MySQl Error Nr. 1130
Host '192.168.1.103' is not allowed to connect to this MySQL server

I started browsing some forums and blogs and found that I need to edit the /etc/mysql/my.conf file to allow other machines besides the localhost to access the server.

  sudo nano /etc/mysql/my.cnf

  and change the line:

  bind-address           = localhost

  to your own internal ip address e.g. 192.168.2.10

  bind-address           = 192.168.2.10

  CTRL-X to close nano, y to save, enter to confirm the location

I try the MySql Administrator again, but get the same error or a 1045 error. So I get to doing some more research and find that for a account to access a MySql db remotely you have to tell the server the host name that you'll be connecting from or you can use a % as a wildcard meaning from everywhere. The MySql documentation does a great job of showing you how here.

I went to the server, logged into mysql locally (or via ssh) and typed:

mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'typeusername'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'typepasswordhere' WITH GRANT OPTION;

mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'typeusername'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'typepasswordhere' WITH GRANT OPTION;

The first statement gives the username permission to log on locally to the db from the console of the server, and the second statement gives the username access remotely from anywhere. I could have done 'typeusername'@'192.168.2.50' in that second statement restricting that username to only being able to connect from local and 192.168.2.50.

One note on those usernames. I created another username for remote access, instead of trying to edit root, as I was scared to mess with the root account. Plus I'm getting kinda tired of breaking these linux boxs and not knowing how to fix them:) Also the part that says "PRIVILEGES ON *.*" is giving this new account superuser privileges, so be careful with this.

Once I typed those two commands into MySql to create those accounts and privileges it started working like a champ from my workstation.

Of course none of this is anything new, but I found it a bit time consuming trying to get it to work. I'm still pretty new to mySql. Hopefully this will save some other newbies some of their time.

Later,

Mark

First Experiences with MySql

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 14:25:45 GMT

I've been playing with MySql a bit lately and have to say I'm impressed. To me this is a product of the Open Source world that really shows the benefits of Open Source software, especially in the documentation.

I've really just been playing with it, so I don't have any highly technical revelations to report yet, but what really has impressed me so far is the documentation that comes with it in the help file. You can find it on there web site here . For a noob like me the tutorial in that documentation is invaluable. Very simple, easy step by step examples on creating your first database, table, and getting data into and out of it.

Aaron Lynch , Dave Shuck and Rob Wilkerson all encouraged me to check it out and initially I'm glad I took their advise. Thanks fella's.

Stick a fork in me, I'm done!

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 03:11:51 GMT

Well, after 2 weeks and one day of working diligently, well, about 3 hours a night give or take, I'm throwing in the towel on the Ununtu/BD and/or Ubuntu/Coldfusion thing. I can not get either to work.

I've followed 4 diffent how to's, reinstalled Ubuntu Desktop 6 time and server 3 times on 3 different computers. 1 mine and 2 I borrowed from work. I've made sure to follow the tutorials verbatim. Even to the point of making sure my directory structure matched the tutorials and I started cutting and pasting the commands in. I've even had the writer of one tutorials ssh into my machine to help me figure it out. Still have not successfully served up one single coldfusion page from any of my computers.

The only thing I haven't tried yet is trying to install it on something other than a Dell computer. I can't imagine why that would make any difference, but I've tried it on a Optiplex GX 620, 260 and 280. I'm not having any problems at all with any drivers in Ubuntu. Problem there is I don't have access to anything other than Dell's, and don't want to buy a new pc just for this.

They've all had wireless cards in them as my computer room doesn't have any cat5 anywhere close. Does that matter? I have no idea.

What I do know is I haven't actually written any ColdFusion for 2 weeks. Now that's sad!

I'm thinking what I may do at this point is get vmware installed and running, install windows on a virtual machine and host it all from there.

Why am I telling you all this? I don't know, I guess I'm just venting. Maybe after I actually get some code written I'll quit feeling so defeated! LOL

I'm going to decompress over an IPA from a brewery in Oregon now...

The ColdFusion Community

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:58:10 GMT

As i've been working thru the issues trying to get BlueDragon working on my Ubuntu box, I'm again reminded of the awesome community build by all you ColdFusion Developers. You guys are truely great.

Adam Howitt took 2 hours out of his Sunday afternoon to help me on the issues with BD and Ubuntu. This guy is a complete stranger, saw my plea's for help on the BlueDragon list, and very diligently has been working with me to get it running. Here's a guy that purely out of the kindness of his heart took hours of his time out to help a almost clueless newbie like me. Now that's community. That's the ColdFusion community that is making me love this language.

Please take the time to check out Adam's pages. http://www.webdevref.com/blog and http://www.walkjogrun.net.

Also, people like Dave Shuck and Aaron Lynch are always offing to help me out. The generosity of people like Dave and Aaron speaks volumes about the ColdFusion community they represent. Thank you guys!

Last but definitely not least I also want to thank Mike Hanson. I met Mike thru my church a couple of years ago. He has spent so much of his time teaching me and mentoring me on ColdFusion and other related technologies. I really am so grateful for his time and patience and wouldn't be nearly as far along as I am if it weren't for him. Thank you Mike,

If anyone actually reads this, I ask that you please check out the web pages of these 4 guys and support them in any way you can. They deserve it!

So, before I start suggesting group hugs here or at the next CFUG Meeting, I'll close this thing.

Later,

Mark

Easy Page navigation using CFSwitch and URL Variables

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 19:29:09 GMT

In some of my apps I've been writing, using CFSwitch is a really nifty way to do conditional processing on my pages, allowing me to get away from an endless number of CFIF's. Especially when using CFSwitch tags for controlling navigation on my application.

I know this isn't earth moving news for you seasoned cf developers out there, but I find cfswitch to be a very interesting and powerful tab.

A little back ground first. I'm slowly writing a app that will allow users to do reviews on service providers of a certain industry. I had a need for a page that has the service providers contact information, at the top, but has a link or tabs with links to be able to edit the service providers information, add notes, add a review, or view reviews. I didn't want to display all the forms down the page as I wanted it all on one screen so the user didn't have to scroll all the way to the bottom to add a note. They could click on a link, that would leave the service provider contact information at the top of the page, but change the form at the bottom to the appropriate form to add a note or what ever link or tab they clicked on.

As your reading this code, of course there are some assumption you will need to make. Like, this page is the resulting page from a query or a drill down page from a query. The initial url would be "index.cfm?=serviceproviderID=#url.IDFromDatabase#"

So, here's the code:

[codeShare mar12c6b]

It seems to work pretty well. Being new to this whole programming thing it was pretty neat to figure this out and not have to depend on someone elses snippet to get it working. So I figured I'd post it in case some other newbie need something like this on there page. This is the first time I've posted any code like this. I took my working code and "sanitized it" for this entry, so if you see an issue with it please let me know.

Later,

Mark

Database preferences and opinions.

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 19:56:20 GMT

So, this is probably one of those loaded questions like asking if a group of Nascar Fans likes Ford or Chevy better, but here it comes anyway. Well, after a bit of explanation as to why I'm asking such a question anyway.

Being a newbie to CF development and databases I tend to lean towards simplicity. My background as a IT Manager hasn't gotten me very much experience with the big server based DB's like MSSQL and MySql. In the past, if we've needed "hardcore" db work done by boss tells me to hire a "SQL Guy". So I haven't learned to much about the inner workings of the different server based DB's.

When I started learning ColdFusion I found working with MS Access db's very simple. Easy to setup, easy to edit and easy to muddle thru setting up my first one to many relationships. As far as I can tell Access will do what ever I want or need it to. Hopefully some day I'll have to worry about the limitations of Access, but up until now I was just looking for simplicity. Learning ColdFusion is enough to keep me busy, but I would really like to move over to Ubuntu Full time. (I'll explain why in another yet to come blog entry) But moving to Ubuntu, or any distro of linux makes me look at another db as an option, and of course that leads me to MySql.

I've found a couple of good tutorials and the the documentation on MySql's site is pretty good. It seams easy enough to learn. But I'm curious as to a couple of things:

In your all's opinion....

1. What are the advantages or disadvantages to using MySql for your ColdFusion datasourse?

2. What are the advantages or disadvantages of using MySql over MS Access, MSSql, or any other popular db? Windows or not.

3. It seems like most hosting companies support MySql. Do you find that that support is generally pretty good?

4. For a newbie like me, is this just going to "muddy" the overall learning waters for my new found love of web app. development?

5. Should I just stick with Windows and the initial easy of use and quick configuration to get my budding ColdFusion career going?

Ohh, such deep thoughts and questions...LOL.

Can't wait to read you all's advice.

Later,

Mark

BlueDragon update

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 03:07:33 GMT

So, I'm into night 3 of trying to get BlueDragon working with Apache on Ubuntu 6.10. Tonights task was trying to get the web server adapter on BlueDragon Server 7.0 to work with Apache 2.055. The built in web server works fine, but I can't figure out how to get apache to work. I've got a simple index.cfm document that will not display at all. Actually no coldfusion pages will display. All I get in my browser is a blank screen.

I'm no Linux expert by any means so bear with me here. I followed the directions layed out by Adam Howitt his blog as well as the article on we3Geeks for setting up the symbolic links to Apache2. Basically it says to do this:

  sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/apache/bin
  sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/apache/conf
  sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/apache2.conf /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf
  
  sudo ln -s /var/www /usr/local/apache/htdocs
  sudo ln -s /usr/lib/apache2/modules /usr/local/apache/modules
  sudo ln -s /usr/sbin/apache2 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd

So that's what I did. I'm guessing the location of apache2 is correct as I browsed to the locations and verified there were files and folders in them. I'm not sure which files should be there as the article doesn't say.

Adam howitt's blog lists the same commands and his versions are a bit closer to mine.

I've verified within BlueDragon Administror that the port 9999 is setup and in the servletexec.conf file the port is set to 9999 as well. So, I'm stuck at this point. So, any help you could lend would be greatly appreciated. I'm probably not giving you nearly enough information, so if you need more please ask.

Thanks and I'll talk to you later,

Mark

Guitar Hero

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 13:48:46 GMT

So, I had to go to Colorado this past weekend to help my mom move. While I was there my twin brother was telling me about how much fun this PS2 game called Guitar Hero was. I've seen it in stores, but it never really played it or had any interest in it. My brother talked me into playing a couple of songs and WOW. That game is a blast. As soon as I got back to town, actually on my way home from the airport, I stopped and bought it.

I get it home, hook it up, and start playing. By the time I get finished with about my second song, my wife and 11yr old son are both begging me to play. So, we start taking turns playing songs, completely consuming the rest of the day. What a blast!

Just in case you don't know what Guitar Hero is, it's a video game for the Sony Playstation2 where you have a controller that looks like a guitar, and you play a variety of popular rock songs by hitting the buttons on the frets of the guitar and strumming using a bi-directional button along with the music. If you miss a note, the song sounds bad, the crowd is unhappy and you loose. It's well worth the $80 in my mind. I find it fasinatingly fun.

I'm not a very big PS2 fan. I love my Xbox and Xbox360. So as far as PS2 games go, this is one of the best in my limited ps2 playing time.

As we were buying the game the manager at the GameCrazy in Frisco said it's coming out for Xbox360 in about a month or two. So, I'm going to go PreOrder it next time I'm in the store.

Check it out, it's amazing fun and addictive.

Later,

Mark