Also, what features do you like most about your current phone (even if it’s not a smart phone)?

What phone features do you use most? Share your comments.

My kids play a lot of video games. I don’t mind that fact. I played a lot of games when I was a kid. Anyone for a good game of Pong or maybe a round of Zelda ( either Nintendo style or command line will work ). But, I had to drop off the game scene when I was 23 because I was losing whole days to staring at the screen. Over the years I have managed to avoid World of Warcraft and many of the other big MMO game phenomena.

Then last year, I started playing Halo Reach and the door cracked open. I found myself sneaking into the game room at night to play a quick round of Headhunter. To be honest Halo Reach was the first game that caught my attention in a long time.

And then Minecraft came along. I don’t know why, but I am absolutely hooked on this game. It has discovery, and survival. It’s simple, yet intricate. It’s creative and allows for greater creativity, and every time I think I know something about the game, I turn a corner and there’s a whole new world stretched out before me.

So, I’ve set up a private Minecraft server, installed a bunch of Mods on my local install and plan to start making Minecraft videos to post here. I mainly want to do this because it’s fun and I tend to work a lot. Also, there seems to be a lot of people who are looking for help with installing mods and it would be great to connect with some other crafters.

So if you have ideas for videos, leave them in the comments below and I’ll add them to my list. To start I’m going to cover getting the ModLoader to work for Minecraft 1.2.3. since that took me a long time to work out after the update since the ModLoader seemed to crash Minecraft each time. Then I’ll move on to sharing some of the recent mods I’ve come across and what I plan to do with them in future Minecraft videos.

Okay. That’s it. Subscribe to Bubble Thoughts for updates.

See you next time,

Chaz
BubbleThoughts.com

I don’t know about the numbers and I’m sure those figures were collected pre-iTunes store. Personally, buying music has become so stupid simple that I don’t even think to go find a free song anymore. Throw in spy-ware, mal-ware, porn popups, and time spent and I figure .99 cents is a no-brainer price to pay for a song.

If that’s not enough listening material, there’s Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher to keep me entertained. I use Spotify to scratch that musical itch when I can’t shake the magic eight ball of Pandora to get the song I want and I use Pandora to give me that mindless DJ effect when I’m working and don’t want to think about my music. Stitcher isn’t necessarily for music, but I can stream a ton of podcasts through the app, so if music doesn’t hit the spot, something on Stitcher usually does.

So what does $8 billion worth of stolen goods look like? I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s offset somewhere by all the jobs created to develop paid music services, cloud storage, and mobile apps.

None of which were very big before the iPod.

Stick that in your slid deck Rob!

BubbleThoughts.com

Today we rearranged the furniture in the house. Mainly to acknowledge the fact that we have become a fully qualified tech family. Just to make the point, my Internet provider is hassling me about bandwidth usage, every member of my family has a Mac, we all have tablets, and our Xbox is connected to a 42 inch plasma tv. iPhones are not in shortage and Netflix, YouTube, and text message are all a regular part of dinner table conversations.

So, like I said, we rearranged the house today to make sure that everyone had a comfortable workspace to enjoy their technology, but still be together in the same room. We’re a pretty close knit family and we like being near each other, even if we aren’t directly talking or interacting with each other. But here comes the rub.

Sharing technology space with each other is different than sharing regular space. There are overlapping sounds that make it hard to focus and enjoy what you’re doing. Wether your playing Minecraft on the Mac, Skyrim on the Xbox 360, editing an iBook on the iMac, or writing a blog post on your Macbook while listening to Pandora, the mix of sounds can create a good bit of noise pollution.

So to solve the problem I took a trip to GameStop to purchase a pair of Turtle Beach Ear Force X12 Xbox 360 gaming headsets. Since the bulk of the sound in the room will be coming from my 12 year olds Skyrim obsession, that was the first sound to address. I chose GameStop because they are local and I wanted an immediate solution.

Originally I checked on Amazon first though and as it turns out, the only real price difference was about $9 plus the sales tax. Amazon doesn’t charge sales tax, which in my case would have been around $6 and shipping would have been free. But that would have taken a week to get to me and like I said, the solution needed to be immediate to preserve an otherwise peaceful Saturday. I actually wanted the Ear Force X-11 headset, but the local GameStop didn’t have them in stock, so I went with the X12.

Sidenote: Out of curiosity, I even stopped in at Wal-Mart to check prices and they were only $5 cheaper than GameStop. But, since I really don’t dig Wal-Mart, I decided to pass and support GameStop since they will trade in games and provide better insight into what’s going on in the gaming world than Wally World does.

So with the X12 headset in hand I headed home where I was able to impress my son with my purchase. It only took us a few minutes to connect the headset to the Xbox. I did have to dig out the a/v adapter that came with the 360, but fortunately I keep all the boxes for anything that costs more than $50. We had already snapped the cover off of the Xbox a/v cable so we were able to hook up both the HDMI cable to the plasma tv and the Xbox RCA audio/video cable to the tv at the same time. That allows us to keep the HD game video quality while tapping into the audio output on the Xbox for the Ear Force headphones.

Now, I have to admit, these headphones are an early birthday present to myself. I’m putting together a system to record game play on the Xbox using the Hauppauge PVR and I came across the Turtle Beach headphones while researching the setup. Since the Ear Force headphones start at $49.95 and go up to a $100, I was a little hesitant to buy them until one of the neighborhood kids brought over his pair of X11 headphones a few weeks ago. The sound was excellent and they were extremely comfortable, which is important because I don’t like wearing headphones that hurt my ears. So I was sold.

With my son taken care of I popped a pair of Bose headphones on my 8 year old daughter whose Minecraft games can get a little wild. We’re big fans of Toby Turner around here so Minecraft has become a very animated activity. If you haven’t watched Toby on his TobyGames YouTube channel, you’re missing out. Toby is hilarious! He’s the whole reason I want a PVR for game play recording. He just makes it look fun. So there you go. It’s been a pretty busy day around here.

How is technology shaping things in your house?

Charles
BubbleThoughts.com

Watch the video and tell me what you think. It’s not long, but its very though provoking.

Do you have sharing issues?

Sometimes you just don’t feel like sharing. Sometime you feel like ripping a flipper off and beating someone with it.

Yes boys and girls, sharing can be fun

Well if she won’t tell you, I think it’s only right that you find out for yourself. I’m sorry it had to come to this. I never wanted to hurt you.

Is your girlfriend hiding something from you? Has she told you the truth about what hot girls do in the bathroom? You may be surprised by what you learn in this video.

I hope we can still be friends

Ascension is one such video. It’s a little over 13 minutes long, but I guarantee it’s worth every second.

Take for example this video about drinking your own breast milk. Karen Alloy recorded herself enjoying a cookie along with a bottle of her breast milk. Now, I know what your thinking. Maybe I’m just a sicko and the whole breast thing is what attracted me to this video. Well, you’d be wrong.

While I like walking abreast of people, and ordering chicken breast at a nice restaurant, I’m not 12 any more and the word breast just doesn’t command my attention as much as it (hey look at those) used too.

I actually saw the follow up video first, which features Karen Alloy eating deodorant and drinking glass cleaner (No, I’m sure they weren’t real). That was so funny, I had to see what the joke was and so ensued the breast milk video.

Here’s the follow up video

Now, I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t drink breast milk. I’m sure it has lots of nutritional merits, but I gotta tell ya, the whole 98.6 thing just doesn’t do it for me (not even with a cookie). So, I’ll put the question to you. Would you drink your own breast milk?

Yes, I do understand that the question really lends itself for women to answer. If you’re a harry legged dude with a breast pump and an Internet connection, let me be clear…I don’t want to know (I just think the video is funny).

While you’re considering your answer, be sure to check out the rest of spricket24′s channel while you’re at it. I think she’s pretty funny. Even if she does drink her own breast milk (did she really).

Peace,

Chaz
BubbleThoughts.com