Category: It Happened to Me

Today, November 1st, is All Saints’ Day, a.k.a. Hallowmas (which is why October 31st is All Hallows’ Eve, a.k.a. Hallowe’en). It’s the day before All Souls’ Day: November 2nd, unless it’s a Sunday, in which case it’s moved to November 3rd). However, in Mexico, festivities for what they call El Dia de los Muertos — the Day of the Dead — typically begin today.

In the Philippines, we don’t throw fiestas like the Mexicans do. Instead, November 1st is typically the day when you go visit your relatives’ graves. I decided to go traditional this morning and pay Dad a visit.

I miss the big guy.

Mmmm…Zombie-killin’ time!

Last night, before heading home, I went to Blockbuster to rent a couple of games on which to give my new XBox 360 a test run.

“Get something fun for me,” said the Ginger Ninja. This was going to be difficult, as the 360 seems to be the console that pays the least attention to the casual gamer and especially women. If there ain’t killin’, adventurin’ or scorin’ goals on the opposin’ team, the pickings are slim. As a person who thinks of himself as a “fair play” sort of guy but who also likes killin’ and adventurin’ games, I often find myself going back and forth between the attitudes of:

• It’s a shame that game manufacturers have no idea of how to write games that appeal to women
• I’m not responsible for your gender’s lame-o Gilmore Girls lifestyle choices, sister!

The nearby blockbuster was out of the disc featuring Bejeweled 2, so I picked the Open Season game for Wendy.

For me, based on what I’d heard and the comments in this entry, I got the stuck-in-a-shopping-mall thriller Dead Rising. I had myself a grand old time killing zombies with two-by-fours, garbage cans, the unexpectedly powerful flat-screen TV, baseball bats and my current favourite: the lawnmower. Nothing kills masses of suburban undead like a bad attitude and a gassed-up John Deere.

Alas, since mine is a Core System rather than the Full System, it doesn’t come with the hard drive (I can’t complain, I got it for free and I can upgrade). Without a hard drive or a memory card, any time I get killed in Dead Rising, I have to start over from the beginning, which makes the box nearly useless. I’d like to know two things:

• If I get the hard drive, is there any point to getting a memory card?
• Can I any old USB storage device — say a USB key or iPod — to save games and XBox gamer profiles?

The gentleman pictured below is James Duncan Davidson. He’s often seen at conferences where the subject matter can be classified as “Web 2.0”, where’s he’s easy to find: just look for the friendly, smiling redheaded dude with the mega-phallic camera lens. Here he is taking pictures of a panel session at the Ajax Experience:

In addition to fast becoming the Annie Leibovitz of the Web 2.0 set, James is also a programmer of note. The trivia question that led to my winning the XBox was “The man with the camera in the front row is well-known in the Java community. In the Java world, what’s he known for?”

I raised my hand first, so I got picked. For a moment, I was tempted to say “He’s known in Java world for defecting to Ruby!“

Sensing that the answer, accurate as it was, would not be accepted, I gave them the answer “He’s known for making ‘Ant‘. The build tool.”

Ben Galbraith, one of the conference organizers and a judge at the trivia contest, looked a little uneasy. “I was thinking of something else, but I think that’s right…

“Oh yeah,” I said, thinking quickly, “…and Tomcat.” Although I’m not really a Java guy, I’ve used Ant many a time, but never Tomcat, so it’s a little off my radar.

Okay, then. You win the XBox 360!

So I tip my hat to Duncan, for playing a role in my shiny new XBox 360.

I also have to thank him for taking this lovely picture of me playing accordion at the Ajax Experience party on Tuesday night. I love this photo: it says “this guy enjoys life.” Mondo thanks, Duncan!

Click the photo to see it on its Flickr page.

As you may have read, I won an XBox 360 core system in a trivia game at the Ajax Experience yesterday (I knew that learning Java development trivia would come in handy someday!).

If you’ve got XBox 360 games that you love, recommend them to me in the comments! I prefer the shootin’, killin’ and adventurin’ games to the sports stuff, and I also like music-based games.