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Normally I would cringe at the sounds of another Alien movie, but Ridley Scott’s involvement in it gives me some hope. I am a little disappointed they are going to do it in 3d. Let’s hope this 3d things is just a passing fad… again. Like many others out there, I’ve been running a home theatre PC for a while now. Any one of you who know me, know that I work in a large corporate IT shop installing and maintaining servers for internal and customer facing systems, so my technical knowledge is quite good. Mostly Windows based but some Linux as well. Personally I don’t mind having a system that is finicky and requires fiddling to get to work, but my wife, like most people out there would rather just sit down and watch TV and not have to know to know what shows to change the output frequency of the video for. Let’s start out with what hardware I’m using. I have a late 2009 Mac Mini. It has a 2 GHz Core 2 Duo processor with 4 GB or RAM and the NVidia 9400 video hardware. My decision to use a Mac Mini was based upon several factors. One, I’m a bit of a Mac Bigot. I mentioned that I work in a Windows shop. We all have to pay the mortgage some how. For software I’m currently running OS X 10.5 on the Mini along with XBMC for OS X. I tried a couple of other XBMC based programs, like Plex and Boxee. Each one of them has had a lot of hours of hard work put into it and does some cool things that XBMC it self doesn’t do very well. Ultimately, I chose XBMC as both of these were based upon XBMC’s code. What that means is the bug fixes and features will hit it first. Also those extra features didn’t mean all that much to me compared to the core functionality of playing ripped video. As for storage, I currently have a a few USB drives attached to the Mini. The Mini is great for that in that it has 6 USB ports right on the back of it. I’m currently building a storage server so that I can move the disks out of the living room and stream the video over the network. More on that in another article. That’s enough for now. Stay tuned. I’ve come across an e-mail management system that has been working really well for me. It’s simple and easy to implement. It requires four folders, including your inbox, used as follows. Inbox: Where all your new mail shows up. Should be empty most of the time. Archive: Things you want to keep for what ever reason. Reference, CYA, etc. FollowUp: Things that you can’t deal with in less then two minutes. It is kind of a To Do list. Hold: Things that you need to follow up on, but are out of your control. i.e shipping notifications about your books from Amazon. How does this work you ask? Well it’s simple. A new piece of mail shows up in your inbox. If you can deal with it in less then two minutes or so, deal with it then “file it”. By “file it” I mean either delete it or move it the Hold or Archive folders. If you can’t deal with it in less then two minutes then move it to the FollowUp folder. If there is nothing in your inbox, you should be working your way through the things in your FollowUp folder. Every once in a while, look through your Hold folder. If your package has arrived from Amazon either delete the notice or Archive it. It’s a great place to find reminders about that information, etc that you have been waiting for from someone. A note about the Archive folder. Before you move something into it, stop and think. Ask yourself, “Do I really need to keep this?” Something like 95% of all archived e-mails are never referenced again. This is a big storage problem for a lot of companies. They always say “Disk is Cheap”, but not at the enterprise level. If you only need it short term then think about putting it in your hold folder instead. Enjoy. Hope this helps. Since today is Canada Day, I thought I’d share with you a couple of things that make Canada great! Hockey (just not The Leafs) and Gordie Johnson. All combined in one place! The first Theme I’m going to try is ATAHUALPA. So far it looks like it’s almost infinitely customizable. My better half found it and is using it for her blog. Of course hers will look hugely better then my, being the designer that she is. I’m not sharing a link with you yet as she would kill me for revealing it before it’s done. I’m done some quick customizing to take the prepackaged look off if it. I’ll probably just fiddle with it till it looks like I want it to. I’m getting a little tired of WordPress Default and WordPress Classic, so I decided it’s time to try out some new themes. I wish I had the time, patients and/or design skills to put my own theme together from scratch, but I don’t so I will be trying out various themes I come accross. I will try and post a link and name to them as I try them out. If you see a look or a feature that jumps of the screen and gives you a big kiss or slaps you up the head please make sure to let me know. Know a good customizable theme let me know that too. This is a step in the right direction. I’m still waiting for two other things. HD movies to be available to those of us in Canada without an AppleTV and the ability to use FrontRow to watch movie rentals trather then having to go into iTunes. I don’t know why it always takes so long for digital content to make it way up here. Ok, I do know why, but seriously, how many years has the content been available on iTunes? We get the shows on regular cable at the same time so why can’t they get their act together. In the past I’ve heard people complain about the quality of the 720p content from iTunes. Has any one had any experience with the new content?
The chatter has been pretty quiet on the web in regards to TSCC future. I’m assuming this is because of the immanent release of Terminator Salvation. The last I have read about TSCC, is that it is dangling from a thread and is all but officially canceled. I’m not sure if this is an obvious observation or not but that’s never stopped me before. I wonder if they are waiting to see how the movie numbers are. If the movie has good numbers, favorable reviews (from fans and critics) and the new season can be timed with a DVD/Blu-ray release there might sill be some hope for our favorite band of future fighters. Cross you fingers. Seriously. This has got to be the most out in left field rumors I’ve heard in a while. What on earth could apple possible want with Twitter? Of course, maybe they have some brilliant out in left field change an industry idea, but I doubt it this time. Something to do with the iPhone maybe? Again I doubt it, but who knows. Just a rumor. Move along please. Nothing to see here. |
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