McWilliams’ World

I was contacted a few days ago from  a guy named Chris asking if he could include GamerBar360 in a phpBB3 forum mod he was working on.

Thrilled at the idea I gave him the go-ahead.

He contacted me today to let me know that he has it implemented and be seen on the post here. Also the mod developer topic can be found here.

One thing he did ask for in a future version of GamerBar360 is to be able to customize the border color. It just so happens that’s on my list of things do - if I ever get some free time!

Thanks Chris! I hope it works out and people like it!

Wow…what a great bunch pair of guys over at 360Voice.com. If you don’t know what they do, they provide a cool service that allows your Xbox 360 to blog about what it did, what you play, etc… You can see an example on my site (mcwilliamsworld.com) or check my XBox 360’s blog.

I’ve been working on a little Flash-based side project; Gamer Bar that displays your gamer card, info about the last 6 games played, your 360’s last blog entries, and additional data the 360Voice consumes from Microsoft and then provides to other programmers. This is made possible by the 360Voice guys providing an API (Application Programming Interface). Basically it’s an XML data feed you can query and read in the data and use for your application.

I had a suggestion to add whether a gamertag is a Gold or Silver Xbox Live subscriber. In their latest blog update they added that data field and gave me credit for suggesting it. Pretty dang cool! Thanks guys!

I’d say I’m about 60-70% done with the app. I have the functionality down for most items, and I’m now working out the little tweaks, and bells and whistles. It’s been quite fun programming everything. I can’t wait to get it done.

Although the “I’m a Mac” and “I’m a PC” commercials by Apple are humorous, they are misleading and not very honest. In most respects, it’s the other way around. But whatever, let the 3% that use Macs believe whatever Apple tells them.

Anyways, not to start a flame war…

Paul Thurrott posted some counter-commercials that are pretty funny.

After I read this post by Nick, my heart nearly dropped out of my chest. Nick and his young son (7) were in a hit-and-run car accident while brining his son home from karate practice. Although Nick and his son are okay, the story is fairly scary.

Although I don’t know Nick personally, I consider him an acquaintance. I know of Nick through his TopStyle CSS editor - an indispensable tool I’ve used for the last 4 years or so. In that time I’ve been a reader of his blog and all his happenings.

His post jolted me a bit. So I hope you can take a brief moment and send up a prayer for Nick, his son, and his family.