A Machine Full Of Surprises

Claire was on a serious cleaning buzz this morning and we spent a good deal of the day tidying the spare room, throwing out a bag or two of waste paper, as well as sorting out a bunch of stuff that just needs to be gotten rid of, preferably for a small monetary exchange. I have boxes of comics that I don't need, mostly random single issues or stories I didn't like. We both have more books than we need. Most of the DVDs in my substantial collection are just gathering dust thanks to living in the 21st Century, and the joy of a broadband connection. Incredible!

But after hoovering the house, we were done and dusted by half three. I sat back, flicked on the Xbox and started shifting about in the menus. My 360 has been networked to my PC for years now. It's how I watch a lot of my media, on our projector screen through the Xbox rather than on the relatively tiny PC monitor. Enormous!

But today I clicked into the Music tab on the dashboard. I expected it to be empty. I have a lot of media shared to the Video tab, but I don't remember sharing any music. Instead, I found my entire collection there, as well as any Playlists I had set from the PC. This probably comes as no surprise to the majority of you, but it was a shock to me. I could suddenly play what little amount of music I do have on my PC through my 5.1 surround sound speakers. Amazing!

After spending a stupid length of time playing with the visualizer (like, more than one song!) I decided to test firing up a game to see what happens. As soon as the game started to load, the music cut out. Ah well. Fair eno- But wait! The music came back! And when I tried to load from the menu into the game, the music stopped again, but came back once the level had loaded! Fantastic!

Suddenly, much to my delight and Claires amusement, I was playing Splinter Cell: Conviction with Hanson providing the soundtrack. I was killing terrorist scum to the tune of "Penny and Me". I think the most appropriate song to pop up on the playlist while I ran a level has to be a toss-up between Chesney Hawks "I Am The One And Only" and Foo Fighters "DOA". Surreal!

Even after owning an Xbox 360 for over three years, it still manages to surprise me. Penis!