and finally upgraded my Wordpress install.  I have been working on an too many projects to count over the last 2 years and as a result I have neglected my Blog and that means I have neglected you, my readers.  Lots of new tunes and collabs to write about so I better get started!

This past Memorial Day Weekend, my wife and I decided to try something new.  The weather was perfect so we decided to take our infamous Rock Band equipment and set it up outside in our backyard.  Now this was a pretty spur of the moment type of decision and we did not have the “perfect” setup, but we were quite pleased with the overall look.

We had used a 8′ bedsheet as our projector screen.  Our projector was hooked up using XBOX’s VGA breakout cord and the XBOX audio was hooked into my OLD but still kick-ass, Sony receiver.  I set up 4 speakers and the sound was almost louder the the squadron of F-18 Blue Angels that kept flying over my house.

Once the sun started to set, we fired up the systems and before you knew it, 4 people were playing Rock Band and it sounded awesome!  I have a few pics I need to post up here to show you our set up and a few of our coolest friends playing Rock Band!

In another cool piece of developer news, Windows IIS 7.0 is supposed to support PHP or at least make PHP easier to work with on IIS 7.0. I have toyed with PHP on IIS 6.0, it will run but most webhosts will not support any issues that should arise when developing web applications.

Here is a great set of articles from IIS.net that covers IIS 7.0 new features in detail and offers an IIS 6.0 to IIS 7.0 Migration guide

Microsoft has released an update to the Windows Live suite. My favorite IM tool has always been Messenger because it is easy to set up and use immediately. I recommend it to family in particular for remote troubleshooting purposes.

The new installation was simple and offered the ability to load specific integration opportunities such as mail, photos etc…I loaded the mail and photo sharing tool to see how it holds up to other solutions from Google and Yahoo.  More to follow.

The clever folks at NordicTrack offer a mid-level Elliptical that you can actually play games on while you burn some calories. If I was going to spend any time on an elliptical, the machine better have some other form of entertainment versus watching my heart ping out of control.

This elliptical has a bunch of Bells and Whistles including, the ability to play your Ipod through the built-in speaker, it has iFit technology which are little SD sticks that can help you with your workouts. Built in gaming with Tetris and Space Invaders, old school classics that you can play while losing weight.

I really do like the way this machine feels after two solid months of usage. The little mini-games help the time pass while I am struggling to burn off some calories. I have hooked up my stereo and I used my Slingbox to set up a laptop so I can watch TV and listen to the audio over the ellipticals speakers.

Not a bad way to shed some weight!