The Menubar in Mac OS X can have some pretty handy apps added to it to make your day better. Here’s what I’ve got going on in my menubar:

Menuet - Control iTunes, display album art, fetch album art, scrobble to Last.fm.

Quicksilver - Must have, quicker searching, automate tasts, hotkeys for all.

FMenu - displays selected Facebook notifications.

Gmail Notifier - Show new Gmail mail.

Twitterific - for tweetin.

Caffeine - Stop backlight fading, sleeping and screensaver.

Menumeters - RAM pie chart, CPU meter, HD LEDs

Spaces - Displays current spaces desktop (just enable in the control panel)

You should know the rest.

Anyone got any other nice ones?

Since I bought the Xbox I’ve been sitting on a couch a whole lot, playing GTAIV, Uno and others, as well as watching movies streaming from a my PC to my TV, works great, all wirelessly (sucked it up and bought the AU$169 adapter). Before the Xbox I use to watch most of my TV shows and movies on my PC, along with gaming on the PC, was perfectly comfortable, in fact I seem to feel more confortable there than on the couch, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I’ve still usually got my laptop sitting next to me on the couch, so I’m not missing anything in terms of the casual browsing of the Internets, so what is it? I can only assume it’s due to the fact that I’ve spent so  much time in front of the PC that I feel more at home with it. I’m also beginning to think that I get much more immersed in PC games than console games. headphones on, nice and close to the screen, it all seems more intense. Don’t get me wrong I’m loving GTAIV in front of the TV, but I’m wondering if I’d be enjoying it more if I was playing it at my computer desk. Maybe I should invest in a HDMI to DVI adapter and plug my Xbox into my PC monitor.

On another note, I’ve got a nice new widget in my sidebar that displays my Gamertag details, it’s simply called the Xbox 360 Gamercard Wordpress plugin. It doesn’t come as a widget, so I’m using another plugin to use it as a widget, that’s called the Custom Function Widget, nice!

I’ve had the Xbox for a week now and it’s been taking up way too much of my time. Most of that time is spent playing GTAIV, slowly going through story mode while playing a bit of online along the way. The game still impresses the hell out of me. I did my first chopper mission the other day and the city just looks incredible from up high. It’s so much more atmospheric than previous versions, and much less repetative, if you repeat a mission, you don’t get the same dialog on the drive over if you are with a character and I’m yet to hear repetative speak from random pedestrians.

The Xbox community stuff is pretty cool, it connects to MSN messenger, you have a gamercard that you can view online showing your games played and acheivements gained from the game. The voice chat in online games is fun but of course you get lots of assholes and brat kids. The one thing I’m really looking forward to is the streaming media from my PC. At this point I can’t get it to work since my Xbox connects using a seperate subnet created by my Macbook. Next week I will be just sucking it up and getting a wireless adapter for it, since I’ve sussed out that with my Netgear DG834G ADSL Modem Router does not support the WDS settings that my Airport Express uses, which is very disappointing.

So the next step is to call up EB Games and see if I can trade in my double pack Wii Guitar Hero 3 setup for the Xbox equivalent, I assume I’ll have to pay a bit extra, if it’s too much I’ll sell it on ebay and then buy it, apparently the double pack is limited edition and it’s selling for a decent price on ebay. We’ll see.

I did that impulse thing today and bought myself an Xbox 360 along with a copy of GTAIV, I couldn’t resist any longer, I had to play it. Sure I’ll be poor for a fortnight but meh, I can handle it. I’ve never laid my hands on a 360 till I bought this thing tonight, never even held a controller, and was surprised at how good the controller felt, much better than the Playstation ones, moulds to your hands better.

Stupid me assumed the Xbox had built in WiFi, nope, it doesn’t, I wasn’t fussed, I’ve got an airport express just sitting beside it with an ethernet port just waiting to be used. Not quite as easy as it sounds, or should be. Apple are missing out on a very wanted feature out there and I can’t understand why it can’t function that way easily. I’m sure I’ll get it eventually, but for now, I’m using my laptop as a ethernet to wireless bridge, it will do for now.

The online features of the Xbox are impressive, lots of game demos etc, it had some demos and stuff preinstalled which I may get rid of, I eventually want to get some good arcade games and whatnot, along with GH3 downloadables when I eventually get it.

GTAIV is awesome, of course, I love the controls for driving, using the triggers for forwards and backwards, works like a charm. There’s so many little things in this game that make it awesome, I’m not going to bother to get into it, it’s just awesome, and I’m stoked with it. Online play is just amazing, I played just deathmatch and it’s complete nuts, being a noob I naturally got my ass kicked but I didn’t care, it’s just too much fun. One thing I noticed, even before I got the Xbox was that people seem to talk a hell of a lot more when playing online with it, with the PC people rarely talk, CSS they do a bit but no where near as much. I feel kinda weird talking on it, I haven’t talked that much on it since I was mainly playing some European guys and I couldn’t understand a single word they were saying, I’m sure I’ll get use to it in the future.

Anyhoo, my gamertag is Sebconn, so add me if you’re keen, I could probably keep playing another 6 hours but I do have to go to work unfortunately.

So me and my friend Ben replaced the LCD panel of my Macbook last night, and it went pretty damn smoothly. There were some scary bits where we had to pull out plugs that didn’t look like plugs and strange plastic tidbits, but all in all, we simply followed the guide on ifixit.com and it worked quite well. AU$419 for a 120GB hard drive and a 13.3″ LCD panel, not too shabby, bought from Macfixit.com.au. Here’s some piccies.

Before

After