That’s talent.

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We initially tried to run Windows Vista as my desktop, but that was a big mistake (actually, we tried to first run Vista 64, then went back to 32 bit).  Driver issues, software compatibility (Visual studio 2003/2005), issues with group policy, admin privileges, etc.  A huge hassle and 2 days lost.

Now I’m running more or less smoothly on XP Pro.  Well, sort of, waiting for the Visual Studio Service Packs to finish installing…

Lesson learned:  Vista is okay for home, not necessarily the office.

Speaking of home, I am tinkering further with setting up my HTPC as a Linux Box running MythTV.  I like Vista Media Center, but it can be a pain in the ass.  You have issues with running 3rd party codecs (Divx, XVid, MKV, etc), where it doesn’t seem to like me to allow it to fast forward/rewind in the media center consol.  It works fine under Linux.  As well there are HDCP issues in vista I’d rather not deal with.  We’ll see how it goes.  I’m thinking of trying to run Gentoo with KDE/MythTV on top.  I tried Ubuntu, but it does not like my TV (Neither my new Sharp Aquos, or the old Viewsonic).

Anyway, Visual Studio Patches are done.. back to work

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For one, I updated the original post and added pictures to the bottom of it showing the case, inside the case and some pictures of the Vista MCE interface (taken with a camera, too lazy to screencap & copy to my main PC which is where I’m posting from (nicer keyboard)). 

You may want to read my initial post on my HTPC building experience if you haven’t, just so you are up to speed.

The Good

• I love Vista MCE.  The interface for the most part is superior to MCE 2005, and IMO, far superior to Myth (some might argue, but they’d be wrong).  Yes, Myth can do more, but it’s interface is just not up to par, Microsoft spent a good amount of time on those ”little touches”, like the navigation in the MCE start menu, or the nice graphical look & feel.  It just looks better.
• “OMFG, ZOOMG!!!1!”  The picture quality is amazing.  This is in no small part, I believe, due to a combination of the Hauppage TV Tuner and the nVidia 8600GT video card.  But it really does look better than the picture on my DIGITAL cable did.  the digital cable was pixilated at times, especially if there was a lot of text on the screen like the weather channel or CTV NewsNet. Even DVDs look better.  By far better than played through my 360 (which everyone knows blows as a DVD player) and my PS2 (which is better than the 360, but not by much).
• I love gaming on a PC from my couch.  Granted, it may suck with an FPS, trying to use that bloody trackball.. sec going to take a picture for you…
  
  The picture shows the Keyboard & my remote.  Anyway, yeah gaming is awesome, and the 8600GT has no problem handling pretty much anything I throw at it.  I’ve been playing a lot of Neverwinter Nights 2 with everything turned up to max.  Looks beautiful, and runs like butter.
• I love browsing the web from my couch ;)  Google Reader is awesome on my HDTV.

The Bad

• Vista Issue: Microsoft decided that the ability to extend one drive with another (turning two 500 gigabyte drives into one big terabyte drive) should cost you an extra $150-$200 so they show you that you have the option to do it, but don’t enable it unless you have an Ultimate/Business license. WTF?  It was enabled in MCE 2005 & in XP Pro…  Petty MS, very petty.  You can however “mount” a partition as a folder (you can’t extend the folder, it has to be a new empty folder).  Unfortunately, you can’t directly copy anything into that folder unless you also create a drive letter for that folder and copy to the drive.  Every time i try to copy directly to the “mounted” folder I get an error message saying that i don’t have the rights to do that.  I’m a frakin admin! Stupid.
• Vista MCE Issue: When browsing video files (not movies in the “TV & Movies” section, vista seems to like to tile the movies out showing a captured from from each video & no text to tell you what each “tile” is. If you have a tile currently selected, the title appears at the bottom… see the image blow, again sorry, its taken with a Rhonda’s fancy new digital SLR, and I haven’t messed with the settings in it to take good pictures of TV images.  Screen captures seem not to work in MCE… go figure).
  
  As you can see, the tiles are there for each movie.. you tell me what each is.. (minus “Beerfest”, it’s selected… btw: I’ve yet to watch it, I just downloaded it because it was there). This is a very irritating interface.  They NEED to offer a “list” view or something with the text title!
• The wireless keyboard (pictured a ways above) is great for simple searching and small messaging email, but is uncomfortable as a main input device, especially for my endlessly rambling blog posts…  The trackball is sufficient for games like Neverwinter Nights 2, Eve-Online, etc, but would be unacceptable in an FPS.  However, it is small, lightweight and gets the job done very well.  I definitely recommend it as an HTPC keyboard. (see my main HTPC building post for details on parts)

The Ugly

• Hardware Issue: My Biostar TF7050 motherboard doesn’t detect my Western Digital WD5000AAKS SATAII hard drives unless I disable the Quick Power-On Self-Test.  Still fighting with Biostar & Western Digital over who’s problem it is.  Biostar at least gives me the time of day.  western Digital seems happy with sending me form-letter reply after form-letter reply, ignoring my actual issue.  They have by far the worst customer service I’ve ever dealt with.
• Hardware/Driver Issue: Unable to use HDMI.  For video or Audio.  I can’t use it with video, as the nVidia drivers seem to think my TV should always be on unless the computer has put the video card to sleep.  This is not an issue with the TV (or at least, ATI cards work right with the TV).  Audio, on the other hand is choppy and horrible.  This is also from what I understand a driver issue, and apparently Vista’s fault.  Should be fixed in the next few months (both issues).

Conclusion (for now…)

Overall, I’m VERY happy with my setup.  I just added a second 500gb drive I had unused in my Main PC so it (the HTPC) has a whopping 1 terabyte of space for me to fill with movies & music!  and games…   I’ll add updates over time to update on how things are going and what other irritating things i run into & hate’s been resolved.

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I was up  late last night making a yummy Lindt Dark Chocolate Cheese Cake.  It looks really good & seems to have set properly.  I think I screwed up slightly when I added the chocolate, but we’ll see.

This morning I go tup bright & early & made her breakfast before I went to work.  And I gave her the gift I got her, a shiny new Nikon D40x.  She loves photography, and I bought her a Canon Rebel Film SLR a couple years back, but I think the cost of buying film & developing fees was holding her back.

We also plan of having our first child within the next year, and if the number of pictures we have of our cat is any indication, developing fees for a child might bankrupt us

Tonight we are having her parents over for BBQ & Cake, later next week, we’ll be going out to dinner with some friends.

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Why?  Well, he re-created his school as a mod for Counter-strike.   Not to practice killing his fellow students, not out of some hate-filled anger.  But likely because thought it would be fun to play the game in a familiar environment.  However, in the wake of the VT Massacre, two parents saw this little Asian boy created a map of the school in a FPS, and decided he must be planning to kill everyone.  They went to the school board & the boy was immediately removed from the school, the police showed up at his house & confiscated a hammer in his room as a potential weapon.  A fucking hammer, are you serious?  Man, screw gun control, we have to get stronger hammer control, no?

The boy has been forbidden from attending his graduation and at some point may be charged with conspiracy to commit murder, terrorism, etc.

Meanwhile the board members are having a political cluster-fuck jockeying for sides int eh battle over what to do with the boy.

According to all accounts I can find he is well adjusted, has friends, writes not “scary” literature, is an honors student, and has never been in any trouble before.

IS this a harsh over-reaction to a simply innocent situation?  Has the board and these two parent gone off the deep-end?  Is the US living in so much fear that they cannot act in a calm and efficient manner?

How I may have handled the situation is thus:

• Contact the boy’s parents & talk with them.
• Check his history & speak with his teachers.  Does he have a history of anti-social behavior?
• Check out the map & ask the boy why he made it?
• If necessary, check his house for weapons (they found a hammer & 5 swords (for show, not sharp, collectors items).
• Ask him to destroy the map if there is a fear that it could be used for malicious reasons.
• If he complies, leave it at that.  Explain to him that in today’s day and age, people get the wrong ideas about such things.

Done.

No need to cause a press frenzy over it, no need to move him to an “alternative school” which by the sounds of it, is where they send all the delinquents, great place for a honors student.  I’m sure he won’t be picked on or harassed by them.

They way they have handled it has likely cause the boy, the school, his friends, the community much pain and suffering.

FYI: His friends, family & members of the Asian community have rallied to his support, but seem to have been ignored for the most part in the school board members’ jockeying for  votes in an upcoming election.

Back in the day, my friends and I created a similar map of our school in Quake, we had a great time.  No one had an issue with it at all.  Oh how times have changed

Linkie: Joystiq.com: Student arrested for making a map of his school

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TV is dieing.  It’s true, look at what’s happening on the web, networks are progressively adding their shows to the web for people to view via their sites.  The only issue with these shows is that they are very poor digital quality, and that they have advertisements in many of them.

“Isn’t that how they make thier money?”

Yes… but it could be done in a better way.   Take a look at  “Vuze” (Use to be Zudeo, before that it was Azureus).  The application is a beefed up torrent client, however, what they’ve added is the ability to buy contnet from providers such as the BBC, Showtime, A&E, etc.  Granted thier offerings are a little sparse at the moment, but they do offer downloads in HD, and since they are torrents the downloads happen quite fast.  The issue here is that for most people getting these movies & shows to display on their TV from computer can be too much for them to handle.  Unless you are running a Media Center/HTPC connected to your TV, it often means burning the content to DVD (which depending on the license for the downloaded content may not be allowed) or setting up some sort of streaming appliance (Xbox 360, Linksys Media Streamer, etc).

What I think will happen soon is that providers will get together and make more interactive media boxes that allow users to buy their content “per-episode” for $1-$2, and will download that content to the “box” for view at thier liesure.

You see, soon the producers and providers will clue into that fact that people are willing to pay that fee in order to watch a show with no commercials, when they want & where they want.  Advertisers will have to find otehr ways to get their content in front of viewers, maybe by offering downloadable ads that when watched & feedback is given provides the user with credits that can then be used to purchase content.

eg:  Lucy watches CSI, Lost, Survivor & Dancing with the stars.  So each week she would pay about $4-$8 to watch those shows ($16-$32/month).  As an option she can download a personalized “ad pack” that the system builds based on her profile & what she has said she liked in the past.  She watches the ads (maybe 5 ads, taking up about 1minute-3minutes each) and then using the menu on her screen responds to a couple quick questions.  She also has the ability to purchase or find out more about the products advertised.  In return for her time, she receives a $2-$5+ credit (depending on ad length and # of questions) that she can use to offset her costs for downloading the shows.  If she watches even 2-3 ad packs per month, she could save almost half of her viewing costs.  The producer is happy becuase he is making money, and the advertiser is happy becuase they are getting thier product infront of the people they actually want to target, and allowing them to easiely purchase the product or find out more info.

Potentially, a show that is watched by just a million people per episode would make $1-$2million for each episode they released.  No more looking for sponsors, or advertisers.  They just produce a quality show, no more thoughts of which networks will pick it up.  You leave it up to the user to decide what to watch, and the service providers who take a cut of each transaction (no more than 5-10%) for providing the bandwidth & boxes.

There are other benefits as well.  ratings and parental controls could provide a more secure and safe environment for kids watching TV.  Parents could setup which shows/ads the kids can download/watch.   This is a bit better than the current v-chip system.  As well, if the boxes ranperr to peer (P2P) based software such as vuze, than the stress on servers would be little to non-existent, as the more users that had the content, the more sources for each other to grab it from.  Downloads would happen in many cases lightning fast, maybe as little as 5-10 minutes for a 60 minute episode.  With Ad packs the user only watches as many ads as they wish, and probably a lot less than they watch now.  Advertisers are probably  happier though because they are getting their ads in front of the people that are more likely to respond well to them (No more tampon ads for guys.. no more male deodorant girls, etc..).

….

At least that’s my vision…

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Oh well.. we’ll see how it goes…

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Well, I’ve been in an on-going (friendly) war with RecordSage & his crew over various topics, such as “Liberalism” (which seems to be some sort of dreaded plague to them), the war, other politics, science, health, society, etc..

It’s a lot of fun, but after writing half a book in replies & stuff It doesn’t leave a lot of room for blogging.. they need a blog integration feature
If you are interested to see what crap has been coming out of my keyboard, come on over to clipmarks at take a look:

My Clips: TheCatWhisperer’s Clips
My Comments: TheCatWhisperer’s Comments
Clipmark’s main page: Clipmarks.com

I’ve add a list on the side bar of my latest comments, however.. it wouldn’t work in RSS mode & looks a little quirky.. meh.

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The festivities started with the rehearsal, where I tried to stay out of the way (Rhonda was one of Heather’s Bridesmaids), followed by a BBQ & Bonfire. I got drunk on wine (I was actually trying not to, but my damned glass/cup kept getting filled… first by me, later by others..), and got a great sleep that night. The next day, the wedding followed by dinner & dancing & more drinking.

The wedding was beautiful. If I was ever going to do a “real” wedding, that’s how I’d want it. Personally we are planning on running away and getting married then coming back and having a party
I bought a new digital camera before we left, a sweet little canon a340, $180 + a $54 memory card at Superstore of all places It was a sweet deal though, the card was 512mb, I could have gotten 2 1gb cards from Tiger Direct if I wanted to wait 2 weeks, but I’m impatient. The camera is 4 mega pixels, 4x optical, etc.

I managed to take almost 500 pictures with the camera and about 50%+ turned out to be quite good (I’m a fan of shooting lots and hoping to get a few really nice pics as opposed to trying to setup a few nice pictures. I also love spur of the moment and candid shots).

We got back, and our PC was dead. So after spending quite a bit on wedding, travel, rental car, etc, I had to drop another $2000 on a computer Is pretty damned sweet though! Intel Dual Core 2.8ghz, 2gb DDR2 ram, 320gb SATA, ATI X1600/512 video, TV Tuner, media Center, Lightscribe DVD-/+ RW/DL, etc, etc. I felt guilty for getting it a Future Shop at first, especially since the first one I picked up ended up being defective. It turned out there was an error in the HP line and they had placed the wrong processor in the machine (a 4600+ instead of 4400+, which strangle enough was a big deal according to HP). Future Shop was great about it though, giving me a super sweet deal on the ATI card (almost 50% off a $240 card), as the video on the Intel (which was the only similarly price/performance PC they had there) kind of sucked, plus the fully tested the damned thing before they gave it to me.

So now I have a super sweet new PC, which I really have been needing for about a year.

I spent the rest of the week (last week) relaxing and doing nothing. We went out with Heather & Joe again before they let on their honeymoon, and that’s about it.

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I already have a favorite for this year, Delana, I usually call her Africa, cause I can’t remember her damn name or how to spell it, and she’s from there originally. She’s a bit hardcore, but I like that, and her voice is very rough and smokey. She did a rendition of Nirvana’s “Lithium” last week & Cash’s “Ring of Fire” this week.

Last week, the songs they were given to choose from where pretty good.. this week, however… the kinda sucked for the most part. They complain to some of the contestants that the song choice was bad and not really what the band was looking for but they are the ones who originally chose the songs the contestants pick from! (There are the same number of songs to choose from as there are contestants, so someone gets stuck with a shitty song…)

Anyway, songs I’d like to see on the show are:

* Orestes stes - A Perfect Circle
* Tiny Dancer - Elton John (but in a Dave Grohl flavor)
* Knife Party - Deftones
* 4th of July - Soundgarden
* Glory Box - Portishead

* Stupid - Sarah McLachlan (would be fun to see someone try and make it rock)

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