June 8th, 2006 by Atomictumor
Figure its time to run a general update on the geekery in the house:
The TV Situation: Last time we talked (geek), I was puzzling out how to get the computer input running to the TV in the bedroom. Well, looks like a modified version of solution 1 has solved the problem, and has worked nicely, as GAC and I have enjoyed relaxing in the newly painted bedroom watching the new episodes of Robot Chicken.
I lucked into finding a Monster Cable autoswitching RF modulator at the Oak Ridge Sears (truly, the most forsaken store in existance) which was marked down from 30 bucks to 8, and has worked nicely. I avoided the problem with autoswitch constantly seeing the SVideo feed from the computer by setting the card to switch into cloned mode (where the computer signal goes to both the computer monitor and the TV) by use of a hotkey. The only problem is, the card is tempermental, and you usually have to minimize or close everything open, lean to one side, stand upside down, pray to several minor deities, and click Ctrl-M about 10 times in order for the signal to make it out. Oh well.
It was pretty cool last night, because we ran the music from Winamp into the TV in the bedroom while we played cards. Only problem with that plan is when a crappy song comes on, you have to walk into the living room to take care of it.The only fix I can think of for this, other than networking a dedicated media computer in the bedroom, is to get an IR blaster that can send remote control signals from the bedroom into the living room. Of course, I’d also have to get an IR receiver to hook into the computer in order for the computer to accept the signals, and thats where I’m bumping in to a problem. See, I don’t want the remote. I just want the receiver, technology that has been available in electronics since before I was born, but evidently costs 30 bucks to put into a computer. I’ve found plans for building the things, but my electronics skills aren’t up to all that. I’d rather spend the 10 bucks it would cost to build, ship, and advertise to buy the damn thing, and then download some program to assign the signals to functions. Seems perfectly simple, right?
The Computer: Now, we’re running into problems with this thing now. I reformatted the computer a good month ago or so after a runaway font situation hijacked it to do the works of evil, and it still isn’t quite up to snuff. Seems that after the reformat, the ol trusty DVD/r drives aren’t working too well. I keep getting errors when reading disks, and I keep getting errors when writing to the things. I’ve suspected Nero, because if I uninstall the damn thing and re-install it, it works for the first few burns. After that, it starts burning, gets to 2% and craps out with the good old CRC error. What could it be? Here are the options:
- Software (nero, dvdsrhink, etc)
- Media (we bought a 100 pack of Sony DVD-Rs right when this happened, when normally we’re a Memorex house)
- Hardware (The DVD burner, by BenQ, is a couple of years old).
Hell man, I have no clue, and I’m working on a big “screw it” attitude anyway. Moving on.
GAC downloaded a cool little program called Aqua Dock which emulates the dock in Mac OS X. Thats got me put back on the ol desktop customization trip that I started down with Litestep a few months ago (that post is lost to posterity, more on that later), and has got me wanting more. I’ve been sick of the XP interface, after the 5 or so years I’ve been using it, and I’m not seeing anything exciting about Vista.
On the other hand, I still like the way that XP interfaces with programs and uses resources, so I’m not into jumping ship to Linux (like GAC would go for THAT), so I think that modding the desktop is the best way to go.
My only beef is that I can’t find anymore customizations for Aqua Dock. Hell, I’d like to the company that makes it, but I can’t find a web page for em on Google. Its a mystery. Anyway, its cute.
Atomictumor.com: I haven’t had much urge to update this thing, other than posting on it. I still like the theme, so I haven’t been bitten with a bug to fix it lately. The forums went over so well that I don’t think I need to do much else to improve this dump. Thats sarcasm. I’m just happy I didn’t pay for BBS software…
Of the aftermath of the mighty magnethands server crash, I have located maybe 75% of the old posts, and have em stored somewhere. I started manually loading the info into the SQL table for the site to restore em, and after about 15 out of the 200 or so I found, I was ready to quit.
I’m not sure if I want just link the copies of google cache pages I found, or what. My screw it attitude has filtered into the situation, once again, I fear.