January 2005 - Posts

• More Mac Mini home theater stuff

  There's been a lot of talk on various sites along the lines of my previous Mac Mini post.  Most of them come to the same conclusion, both the hardware and software are lacking, but with a little extra money and a little extra work, you can probably create a pretty nice little HTPC system.  Here's some good sites that have some more information: Mac HTPC - Site that just started and discusses all things HTPC on the Mac. Mac Media Center - Forum created so people can work on a Media Center application for the Mac MythTV on OSX - Apparently MythTV has already been ported to OS X.  I looked at MythTV a while back, it looked pretty slick. Since my MCE is up and running stable, I don't see myself switching to a Mac Mini for my home theater any time soon, but it would be a fun project to play with... Crossposted from dmihalik.com Posted Jan 19 2005, 10:47 PM by mihalik with 1 comment(s)

• Best Press Release Ever.

  I’ve never been a fan of G4 (cable gaming station).  I guess that’s probably because I’m not a 14 year old male, which seems to be their target audience.  I especially don’t like them since they bought TechTV and canceled most of the TechTV shows I enjoyed and apparently got rid of all the competent people that TechTV had. So reading through their press release for two new really lame shows, Jessie found the following line:  "Our audience interacts with digital girls as much as real girls and we're tapping into that fantasy."  I really like the “our audience are losers” stance the station is taking. Crossposted from dmihalik.com Posted Jan 13 2005, 01:20 AM by mihalik with no comments

• Upgrading to Media Center

  I upgraded (or downgraded as some might consider) my Media Portal HTPC to XP Media Center Edition about two weeks ago. I've really enjoyed using Media Portal, but I'm gonna try Media Center out for a while. I was using the MCE skin for Media Portal, and was using my Logitech 680 remote using Media Portal's support for MCE remotes, so I figured that I could try out the software I was trying so hard to imitate. I think MCE's UI is a lot more polished. You give up a few things when you create a skinnable UI like Media Portal has. The other thing that I really like is the ability to configure the app with the remote. Sometimes I want to watch a movie on a new fileshare. Before, I'd have to remote desktop in and map a drive and add it to a configuration. Now I just get a list of all the file shares on my network and select it. I've been very happy with it so far. I was a bit frustrated after two days of attempting to get some directshow filters working for some odd movie formats, but now everything seems to be working great and I've not had to remote desktop in to the machine to fix anything. Usually, I like tweaking on my computers, but with this HTPC project, I've gotten to the point where I just want it to reliably work without any weekly tweaking.  I'm not quite sure what's wrong with me, I guess I'm getting lazy in my old age. Crossposted from dmihalik.com Posted Jan 12 2005, 02:49 AM by mihalik with no comments

• Mac Mini - Almost the perfect Home Theater component

  Apple announced the Mac Mini today at Macworld. This is the exact form factor I've been looking for to use as a home theater PC. It's small, it's quiet, and it looks cool. Oh, and at $500 it's not that expensive (considering most of the nice HTPC cases I've been looking at are around $200 for an empty case). I know that Apple is not (yet) looking to compete in this market, but I hope they do soon because there are just a couple things that keep me from buying one to stick in my entertainment center. 1 – There's no built-in RCA or S-video. I wish I had an HDTV that took DVI, but I don't. And I'm sure most people don't. Apple does sell a little adapter, but it would be nice if it was built-in. 2 – The only sound output is a mini plug. No coaxial or optical audio here. Once again, there's an adapter to solve this. 3 – No good 10foot experience software. I've not done extensive research, so I'm not positive on this. There are plenty of options for Windows (Media Center Edition, Media Portal, Meedio, etc), so I would not be surprised if there was something for OS X that I could not find. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure one of these will probably be arriving our house in the next 6 months (like to wait until Tiger is released), but it won't be showing up to go into the entertainment center (so sad). Crossposted from dmihalik.com Posted Jan 12 2005, 02:12 AM by mihalik with 3 comment(s)

• Guess I should go back to elementary school

  I've been reading David Alan's “Getting Things Done” (more on that some other post) lately and I've made a frightening discovery: I've forgotten how to read. It's probably been a year since I sat down to really read an actual book (though I've been listening to some pretty good ones thanks to Audible). Usually, I'm just skimming web pages, magazine articles, or reference books. Years of skimming pages for the one small bit of information has made my brain lazy; it does not want to concentrate on page after page of text. It just wants to find the one sentence that will solve my problem and ignore all the rest. So, reading “Getting Things Done” is helping me twofold. First, I'm learning how to get things done (though I've got a long way to go). Second, as my eyes wander to the bottom of a page to figure out what the point is, I can whip them back into shape and actually learn how to read, again. Posted Jan 05 2005, 05:35 AM by mihalik with no comments