I know you're thinking the lack of updates since last weekend has something to do with that Xbox 360. That's actually not true. :) In fact, I left the 360 behind at home last weekend since I knew it was going to be one crazy week.

It was Engineering Week on campus, and I was working with some of the other ACM co-ordinators on an event. Last year, we gave away a Sony PSP and a bunch of other stuff. This year, the big prize was a Nintendo DS, and there were gift cards and other giveaways too, of course. Preparation for E-Week is never an easy task, especially when you want to put up a good event, so we ended up staying on campus until 4AM on Tuesday morning building our "riddle boxes" and getting everything set up.

The second week of classes just got done, and I'm actually enjoying all my courses this quarter so far. Apart from the three courses that I've officially signed up for, I've also decided to audit an Information and Computer Security course. For those unfamiliar with the term, that just means I'm sitting through the lectures, but not taking the class for credit, which means I don't sit for exams or turn in assignments. The class is being offered for the first time to UCLA CS undergrads, the lecturer is an industry guy, and the content is really interesting, so I'm looking forward to learning some cool crypto stuff.

I finally did get some breathing time after coming back home on Friday night. Plugged in the 360 again this evening and downloaded the demos of Burnout Revenge and Project Gotham Racing 3 from the Xbox Live Marketplace. Both of them are excellent, although it seems like Burnout Revenge might end up being more fun. I also tried Oblivion, and while it looks like a very engaging game with an interesting storyline and breathtaking graphics, I'm not really planning to get into it, simply because I know it'll take up way too much of my time, and I really don't have that kind of time to spare during the quarter.

Anyway, hopefully you won't have to wait until next weekend for the next post. I've had a few things that I've been meaning to post about, and I'm going to try to get back to the regular posting schedule that I used to maintain. This blog just turned three years old five days ago. :)

The news about Apple's release of the Boot Camp Beta, which allows Intel Mac users to dual boot Windows and Mac OS X on their machines, was received with open arms by the tech community this week.

According to Apple's instructions, Windows XP Home/Pro SP2 are the only two supported versions. You'll need "a bona fide installation disc for Microsoft Windows XP, Service Pack 2, Home or Professional (No multi-disc, upgrade or Media Center versions.)," it states. However, Barb Bowman and Doug Knox figured out a way to get Media Center 2005 running as well. After all, MCE is still just Windows XP at the core. The instructions are pretty simple, and basically involve merging the two MCE discs into a single DVD. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that Macs lack a physical eject button for optical drives, meaning that you wouldn't be able to switch CDs during setup?

Anyway, Barb's using an external USB TV tuner with MCE on her MacBook Pro. I'm thinking the Mac Mini would end up being a nice, compact, and relatively cheap PVR for the living room with a similar setup. Interesting possibility, eh?

GotAPI.com is a handy API lookup service for a variety of languages, including PHP and MySQL, Java, HTML and CSS, etc. Apparently, a C/C++ module is also in the works, which should make it even more complete and useful.

Note that the site is simply a better presented front-end for the standard, official documentation for each language, so the information is accurate as well.

Bookmarked.

So my contract with T-Mobile has come to an end and we're in for an upgrade. I think the time has come to part with my 3650.

Some details - the Nokia 3650 is a Symbian Series60 smart phone. It's a tri-band (900/1800/1900 MHz) GSM device, and has been unlocked by me, so it should work all over the world with any GSM carrier that supports one of those frequency bands.

I've really enjoyed using the phone, and being a Symbian-based device, it allows you to install a whole slew of third-party applications that can do a ton of great stuff. Want to connect to a FTP server and upload/download files? Not a problem. Read RSS feeds on the go? Possible. Surf the web with a full XHTML browser, including Opera Mini? Sure. Send/Receive POP3 and IMAP email? Of course. There's a huge community built around S60 devices.

The phones (we're selling two, one is my dad's) are in perfect working condition (see pictures below), with small scratches and dings on the replaceable faceplate due to normal use. You can always buy replacement faceplates on the web for less than $10 if you like.



The package includes:

* One Nokia 3650 Phone
* One Original Nokia Battery
* One Original Nokia AC wall charger
* One 16MB MMC Memory Card
* Original Product Manuals

The auctions start at $50 each with no reserves. These things kill the RAZRs when it comes to functionality, by the way. ;) Take a look at the Ebay pages for all the details and full phone specifications: Phone 1, Phone 2.

Feel free to leave a comment here if you're interested or have any questions. :)

Just received word that I've been awarded a Xbox 360 for winning an internal nationwide contest of sorts through the Microsoft Student Ambassador program! Not sure whether it's the Core or Premium system yet, or when I'm actually going to receive the kit, but I'm totally stoked! :)