Wii U Experience - Atlanta Ga

I was invited to the Nintendo Experience for hands on game play to the successor of the Nintendo Wii. I brought my 10 year old cousin as a guest because he will have a great what did you do over the summer story to tell.

I was pretty impressed by the playback and in improved control.  Games are finally in HD. 

I played New Super Mario Bros U, Luigi's Mansion, Rayman Legends and Just Dance 4.

I smoked a family of 3 playing Just Dance 4 dancing to Rock Lobster. With the Wii Motion plus controller tracking your hands and body's position and movement in space and in relation to 3 other players is a modern programming miracle.  Ubisoft has a hit on their hand. Its no Xbox Kinect but has

There was a little bit of stutter in New Super Mario Bros U with 4 players connected.  I'm hoping this was just a bug in the demo unit. Hopefully Nintendo can work out the I/O or processing hiccup. Overall I'm really excited because up until now I thought the Wii U would be underwhelming after I saw the E3 Keynote. I sent Nintendo a social message blast to go back to the drawing board.

Nintendo if you're listening, please include the following for a hit:

Ethernet! Cmon
DLNA playback
Bluray Support
Skype and/or Google Talk chat with the GamePad or release a Bluetooth or USB HD Webcam
Use USB 3.0 for future proofing

Protect Yourself on the Net

Here are some free suggestions to protect yourself from Virus, Trojans and Email Hacks in this order.

1) Download and Install Spybot Search and Destroy.  This will scan and eliminate spyware, adware, key loggers, browser hijackers and trojans. http://www.safer-networking.org/en/mirrors/index.html

2) Download and install Microsoft Security Essentials or  AVG Anti-Virus Free 2012 (The free edition only.  The Internet Security Edition is not needed) http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/products/security-essentials/download or http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepage

3) Change your email password to a strong password using numbers, mixed case or special characters once your computer is clean.  (This will make it harder for brute force password guessing programs to guess your password) Randpass.com can help you with choosing a stronger password. http://www.randpass.com/


Optional

1) Switch to Gmail and use Google Authenticator that requires your email password and an additional password sent to your mobile phone or designated voice telephone to access your email.
http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1066447

2) Use LastPass to help keep track of all your web passwords and generate secure password https://lastpass.com

Dear Nintendo, I've loved you since I was old enough to hold a controller. Please shelve the Wii-U and go back to the drawing board. -Noah

6.5 Million #LinkedIn Passwords leaked. I recommend using @lastpass to manage and change your passwords! http://ping.fm/uWaZX #in

Adding Music on Hold Via The Logitech Media Server

Adding Music on Hold Via The Logitech Media Server (aka Squeezebox Server)

I had an AHA moment this morning when I thought about my abismal music on hold situation on my asterisk server.   I checked my logs for the first time in awhile and found out that people waiting on hold hadn't been receiving music while on hold for quite some time because I migrated to a different mount point for a new raid array.


I did a little research and found out this article (Using Slimserver for Music on Hold )that I could already use the  Logitech Media Server's mp3 stream to loop thru a playlist of selected songs.



Here's how it works.


mkdir /var/lib/asterisk/mohmp3-dummy
touch /var/lib/asterisk/mohmp3-dummy/dummy.mp3

Install mpg123 if you don't have it already
Edit your musiconhold.conf. and note the location of mpg123.

[default]
mode=custom
dir=/var/lib/asterisk/mohmp3-dummy {COMMENT}daab{/COMMENT}
application=/usr/bin/mpg123 -q -r 8000 -f 8192 -s --mono http://localhost:9000/stream.mp3



Reload asterisk
asterisk -rx 'reload'


Go to your Logitech Media Server/Squeezebox server's website.   Usually http://ip:9000.  Click on the player pulldown and you should see an entry for mpg123 from ipaddress.


From there  start creating a playlist and don't forget to save it and set it on repeat.