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I’ve whipped up a Workflow for encoding videos for the Blackberry Curve. You will need to head over to my post on encoding video for the Blackberry Pearl for instructions but here is an updated Workflow that should format videos to the correct screen size. I do not have a Curve to test this so if anyone has one and would like to give me feedback, I’d appreciate it.

[Download Workflow for Blackberry Curve]

Thanks from a last minute tip from a friend, I picked up tickets for Video Games Live here at Yale University for Saturday night. This was the first time VGL has been to a University and they packed in about 3000 people into Woolsey Hall. The concert lasted just over 3 hours and it was simply awesome. The song and arrangement selections were fun and inspiring. The pacing of the show was brilliant. They broke up the arrangements with interactive on stage contests, monologue, introduction from various video game composers and a 20 min intermission.

One part of the show was to bring up someone from the audience and have them win money from playing Space Invaders. The catch was the Orchestra would be playing the music in realtime and the person would have to play the game interactively. So you had to run around the stage to move your position on the screen. All they gave the kid was a firing button and a T-shirt to wear with the space invader ship on the back so it would like like the ship was moving on stage just like the screen. The kicker to this whole thing is the kid they brought up was about 350 lbs and the T-shirt they gave him was a medium at best, I don’t know who the hell he fit into this thing but it just added to the fun of the whole evening.

The highlight of the evening tho comes from the 104 year old pipe organ that the Video Game Pianist, Martin Leung, played different tracks from Castlevania on. Hearing Moonlight Nocturne was absolutely amazing.

I wish I got the Castlevania performance on video but i was so into it, I didn’t even stop to think until it was too late.

[Video of the Opening]
[Picture of the Stage]

Connect360 was just updated today to support Video streaming. Connect360 allows Music, Picture and now Video access from your Mac to your Xbox 360. It will scan your iTunes and iPhoto libraries and share them to your Xbox 360 over the network. I love this program and is a must have for any Mac and Xbox 360 owner. Version 2.8 just added streaming Video support that was added to the Xbox 360 in the Fall Dashboard update. After you install the new version and start the service, it will index your “Movies” folder . Right now its only WMV support as thats all the Xbox 360 supports but I’m hoping they will find a way to support transcoding mpeg4 files somehow.

[Trial Download]

…#4 here I come

Now this is pretty cool (read geeky). James Kakalios is a Physics professor at the University of Minnesota and teaches a class called “Everything I Know About Science I Learned from Reading Comic Books”. Where was this guy when I was taking Physics? He has published a book called The Physics of Superheroes and gives speeches to Sci-Fi and Comic conventions.

Here is a clip from a recent convention talking about one of my favorite comic book characters Gwen Stacy and the physics behind her death.

The last few days have been interesting in the world of Macbook RSDs. Paul Stamatiou got hit with RSDs, possible theory and a hardware fix.