A ‘movie fan’ posted a comment to my Awesome Max Payne Review.  I was suspicious, because, let’s be honest here, this blog isn’t exactly high-caliber reading material, despite the eloquence of that particular review.

I searched for his comment in good ol’ google, and it looks like the same text, “i suspect the storyline for Max Payne is a lot more exciting when it’s happening in the form of a video game…“, has been posted everywhere else, with minor variations.

Looking at movie fan’s link, Kingdom of God Media, and the typical motivation for blog spam simply isn’t there: there is no money to be made.

1. There are no ads.
2. He has a donate link, but I have difficulty imagining that gets much action.
3. He does link to an Amazon.com page selling a book he wrote, but that’s only on his other blog, Books By Patrick.

And, true to its tag line, “The Mysteries of God’s Kingdom Revealed Through Movies, Music and Television”, it does interpret movies, music, and television with a religious frame, but not a ‘convert the heathens’ frame.

So, why?  Why, Mr. Patrick Roberts, why do you post the same comment everywhere?  It is not a bad comment, sure, but what do you have to gain from it?

By process of elimination, or perhaps by process of lack of imagination, I’m only left with ’self promotion’.  At the very bottom of his blog, there are several links to ‘blogtoplist’, ‘blogtoparea’, and other such blog-ranking web sites.  By posting the same comment to multiple web sites, he is probably google-bombing his blog to a higher ranking.

And, because of the very minor variations in the comment, and the fact that my anti-spam filter did not flag it, I am under the assumption that he went to each site and posted the comments himself, without the aid of a spam bot.

So, I wondered how he found my eloquent review.  While my review is perhaps the lowest ranked item in a standard Google Search, it is in the first few dozen hits for Google Blog Search.

The Wii Wheel is surprisingly well crafted.  I expected it to be a worthless hunk of plastic, because:

1. My Gamecube steering wheel makes Mario Kart Double Dash unplayable.
2. Excite Truck’s wii-mote steering is not very accurate.
3. The Wii Zapper, a similar peripheral, is annoying at best.

And yet, somehow, the Wii Wheel works well.  The only problem I have with it is hopping into a turn while skidding in the wrong direction, but I experienced the same difficulties in Mario Kart DS, where only the D-Pad is to blame.

10,000 feels like a large enough number, and with the diminishing dollar (USD) it must surely be a small fortune or two! Alas. I had a choice between several cheesy trinkets (TiVo Antenna Headbands! TiVo Coasters! TiVo Plush Dolls! TiVo Hooded Baby Bath Towel and Wash Mitten!) and exactly one iPod Shuffle (1 GB). While I like cheesy trinkets as much as the next guy who poses an Orc on his stove, the flammability of the TiVo Plush Dolls was almost certain. I had to go with the Shuffle.

I had no intentions of using the iPod Shuffle, you see. I’ve owned a 30 GB Zune for about seven months now, and I haven’t been unhappy with it. Sure, it really is a little white brick, but its a cute little white brick that plays hours of music and video.

Shortly after vowing to save it for a forgotten birthday or impromptu Christmas gift, I opened the package and loaded on some Guano Apes and Flyleaf. I started listening to it ‘for fun’. I brought it into work. I used it in the kitchen. And I would use it in a boat. And I would use it with a goat… And I will use it in the rain. And in the dark. And on a train. And in a car. And in a tree. It is so good, so good, you see!

I haven’t used my Zune since.

How is this possible? How can a small and stupid iPod without a screen compete with a Zune that stores every song in my collection? I’m not entirely sure.

Pro: The Shuffle is small. Really small. Tiny, even. Before I tried the Shuffle, I truly didn’t mind that my Zune was a brick. I just sat it on my desk at work, and I just accepted that my headphones would occasionally disconnect when the cord got hooked on my chair. The Shuffle stays clipped to my clothing, so the cord doesn’t hook on anything.

Con: I tend to lean against walls and desks, which has increased the Shuffle volume to deafening levels. I should really learn how to use the Hold function.

Pro: I’m not tied to my desk with the Shuffle, I can just get up and walk away while listening to music. With the Zune I had to take off my headphones, which takes just a little more effort.

Con: I look like an iPod douche bag while walking around work with white ear buds firmly in place.

Pro: When I attach the Shuffle to my front pocket, I feel like I’m Captain Picard when I press Pause or Play. I almost mutter “Beam me up.”

Con: I don’t like Star Trek. That much.

Pro: The Shuffle is small enough you can wrap the cord around your ears and clip it behind your head.

Con: This is what it looks like:

Con: The Shuffle will blink Green and Orange in obtuse combinations to notify you of its state. I thought you were good when it came to user interfaces, Apple?

Con: There seems to be a significant static hum if the Shuffle volume is very low.

Con: It is not possible to listen to the Shuffle and charge it at the same time, because the headphone jack is also the power port.

Conclusion: I am truly surprised and impressed by the iPod Shuffle. I can’t say that it is worth $50 (USD) to everyone, but I can heartily recommend it if you have 10,000 TiVo Rewards Points burning a firewall in your hard drive.

I still prefer the 360 to the other current-generation consoles, but this high failure rate is very ridiculous.

The basic goal is to play videos encoded with a number of different codecs (i.e. h.264, Xvid, and DivX). So, I thought, before I went into all of the other features that this application will do, I’ll keep things simple and just play a video with the filename hard-coded.

It’s the year 2008. I have the latest Microsoft tools available. Playing a video can’t be that difficult, can it?

1) WPF has a native MediaElement… that only supports wmv files.

2) Microsoft provides a Windows Media Player ActiveX Control (AxWMPLib), that does not seem to be able to use any codecs. The status displays “Locating codec”… “Error downloading codec”, and only plays the audio for the video file. Using the example from the Windows SDK has the same result.

3) DirectX 9.0 includes a Video class in Microsoft.DirectX.AudioVideoPlayback… that throws an exception “Error in the application” whenever you try to play a video. I even downloaded an example and built it in Visual Studio 2003, and that doesn’t work either.

4) VideoLAN has a .NET Interface… stored in a wiki. I guess the concept of a .zip file to download is too much for some developers. After copying-and-pasting the interface file-by-file, I built it, and got it to play video in the WPF application (by way of the WindowsFormsHost control).

    VLanControl.VlcUserControl lVideo = new VLanControl.VlcUserControl();

    windowsFormsHost1.Child = lVideo;

    lVideo.AddToPlayList( "W:/tv/Curb Your Enthusiasm/curb.3x01 - Chet's Shirt.avi", "Curb", null );

    lVideo.Play();

Hooray! The video played! I closed the application, ready to finish this off for good, when I experienced a blue screen of death.

As it turns out, you need to stop the video (and maybe clear the playlist) before you exit.

    protected override void OnClosing( CancelEventArgs e )
    {
        if ( lVideo != null )
        {
            lVideo.Stop();
            System.Threading.Thread.Sleep( 1000 );
            lVideo.ClearPlayList();
            System.Threading.Thread.Sleep( 1000 );
        }
        base.OnClosing( e );
    }

Be careful… in WPF, Microsoft decided to remove support for ‘OnClosing’-type events. You can add an event handler for Closed, but not Closing. At first, I had tried to add an event for Closed that would stop the video, but because this happened after the window had closed, I still experienced a blue screen.

Also note that the Sleep statements are absolutely necessary. I tried to get rid of them once, and tried to wait until the VlcUserControl state was no longer ‘Playing’, but the BSOD decided to appear anyway.