It's been a while!

Well, it sure has been a while since I last updated this blog! Which is too bad really, but I would say is not all that unexpected or uncommon. Most blogs die this way. They start off strong and committed, then slow down to a trickle. Before long they just stop all together. THis blog is not much different. My excuse/reason is not that I stopped working on my projects, but that I keep finding more to work on. If I didn't have to sleep, I would be so much more productive.

So, to start this up again - here goes.

Once I got my first iPad I decided to start an iPad blog site, "www.whatisonyouripad.com". It's been a while and I still haven't had much luck getting it into focus. But I am still planning to get it running, so stay tuned.

My movie-room project is almost done now. Well, the actual room part is almost done. I am still in the planning stages of how to convert a newly finished basement into a stylized movie theatre looking room. I have some ideas! Watch this space for details.

I am also in the early planning stages of building a new arcade machine! This will be a more modern take on the classic cabinet design. I am redesigning it for two reasons, first - an original sized arcade cabinet is really just too large for my home, and second - taking advantage of new technologies will allow for a more graceful/future oriented look and feel. I will try to keep the core essence of an arcade cabinet in this new design. I'll probably start this summer!

So as you can see there will be new updates soon!

Building a Home Theatre Room

This week I want to talk to you about one of my newest projects. Building a home theatre in my basement! When my wife and I bought our home a couple of years ago, we managed to convince the previous owner to leave the video projector that he had suspended from the basement family room ceiling. He even left the screen for us too. Now, as you can see, this is not the most ideal setup, but it was still pretty cool to watch movies down there.

We recently had a home owners nightmare happen to us - sewage backup in the basement. I know, ewww. But we were lucky, and it was all cleaned up and fixed within two weeks, however, the basement carpet was going to have to be replaced. While going through this experience, I was trying to see the silver lining to such a crappy (pun intended) situation.

I decided that I would turn the old movie/family room into a REAL theatre room. One with a proper screen and built in speakers.

So, this is my first post as I start this new project. I will post new pictures as I make progress. Just be warned, this project will take me several months to complete, and will require quite a bit of work. At this point I am just getting ready to start the demo work. I need to empty the room completely and then remove all the carpet and underlay, for obvious reasons. I am then planning to remove all the wood panelling from all the walls, and including the stairs leading from the main floor. I never liked the wood paneling from the get-go, so this is my chance to get rid of it.

There is no dry-wall behind the panelling, so I'll have to finish all the walls too. This would be a little more upsetting, however it does allow for me to build in all the wiring ahead of time. I'm trying to see the bright side of a ton of work ahead of me.

Check back regularly to follow my progress here, as well as my other projects… I'm still on the hunt for those old computers, and will have a road-trip in the next week to pick up another system!

My New Hobby!

Today I want to share with you all my latest project which is actually a new hobby as well. As those of you who have read a few of my last postings may know, I enjoy spending time in "nostalgia-ville". I like to be reminded of the "good old days" and for me the good old days are when I was young and just getting into computers. In those days I spent a lot of time using the computer I had and drooling over the computers I wanted to have. I would spend hours looking through computer magazines, looking at the latest and greatest in desktops and lug-able computers that I could never afford.

Well, it occurred to me recently that it may be a neat idea to try and collect some of these old machines. Specifically, I am going to collect the computers I used to have, and the computers I used to really want. The best part of this new hobby is that these computer systems are so old that I can probably get some of them for free! As for the others, I don't believe that they will cost too much. So this can become a new hobby that won't break the bank, and keep the wife from getting too upset.

The first thing I needed to do was try and find some old computers. I placed an ad on a local buy/sell board and waited to see what would happen. The ad just said that I was looking for older computers, and gave a short list of systems. Specifically I was looking for a Commodore 64, an Atari 800XL, and a Macintosh system. The Atari 800XL was my favourite computer for years. But the Commodore 64 comes in at a close second. I learned to program on each of those systems. The Macintosh was only a dream for me. There was no way I could afford to buy one, but I use to want one so badly. I loved the design and look of it. It was a beautiful computer and I would stare at it for hours in magazines. It was just so cool!

I got a few responses from my ad posting. I found one gentleman who had a Mac Classic with keyboard and mouse for $20. After the first email from this computers owner, I could see that he was a "serious" Mac user. Before he would agree to sell me this working Mac, I had to promise that I would NOT turn it into a fish aquarium! I promised and quickly picked it up. Originally, I was hoping to get a Mac 128, but this was close enough. It looks the part, and to be completely honest, I didn't know the difference when I was young, so this system will do just nicely.

I then got an email from another person who said I could have his old Commodore 64 for free! Free is hard to turn down, so I made arraignments to meet him at a common location. The reason for the covert meet-up, was that he was a good hours drive away and offered to meet me at a location he knew how to find. Frankly, I was amazed that someone would be willing to go through the trouble. When I met him, he had a surprise for me. Instead of a Commodore 64 computer, he had two, and a floppy drive, and software, and joysticks, and a monitor! All for free! I thanked him and offered to give him $20 for his trouble, but he declined and said he was happy to get it out of his basement and to not have to throw it out.

I then received another email from a gentleman who had quite a few systems to get rid of. I made arrangements to visit and paid $20 for a Commodore 64, floppy drive and an Atari 400 computer. I already had a Commodore 64, but I want to have a couple of each system, for parts and a "just in case" situation. I used to own an Atari 400 and this would be a chance to collect the line of Atari 8-bit computers. He also had a few other systems that I would like to add to my collection at some point. I plan to remain in contact so that I can pick up a few more later on, when I have a little more disposable income.

I already had two Atari systems in storage in my basement, and now I would be able to dig them out and display them as well. One is an Atari XE game system, and the second is an Atari 1040STE 16-bit system. This was my everyday computer for a few years, and I'm glad I kept it around.

The next problem I had to solve was where the heck was I going to put these computers. I wanted some place that I could leave them out and setup so that I can reminisce at will. My current office is in a spare room which has a closet that really serves no purpose. So I decided to build in some display shelves for my new 'old" computers.

So, with a little time, money and effort I built in several shelves and now have a few systems on display. I still have to clean up these old computers and accessories, but I have something I can work with.

I am still looking for a few old systems to add to my collection. I would like to complete the Atari 8-bit line with an 800, 800XL, 600XL, 1200XL, 65XE, and a 130XE. I would also like to get a few Atari floppy drives, like the XF551, a 1050 and an 810. I would love to get the 410 tape drive for this system too. Pretty much any Atari accessory with the classic brown and white plastic casing will do. Another system I would like to get my hands on is a Commodore PET. This was the first computer that I used in school and would love to have one for my very own.

If you live in southwestern Ontario and have one of these systems that you would like to pass on to me, please let me know.

Thanks

Motherboard Wall Art project - Continued.

Today I want to update one of my past projects. I seem to never be completely contented in any project I take on, and usually end up tweaking it in some way or another further down the road. It's been well over a year since I first "completed" my motherboard wall art project, and as I sit and stair at it everyday, it occurred to me recently that it may not actually be a finished project. I enjoy looking at it, but it seems that it might look better it it were not so multi-coloured. Different motherboards always seem to sport a range of colours, and with 12 different motherboards, there was a lot of colour.

The first thing I needed to do was see if it would even be possible to paint this project. I've never tried to paint electronics before, and the variety of materials - different kinds of metals and plastics would make it a challenge for any paint to cover everything. After a sample I discovered that with a coat of automotive primer spray paint, I could easily paint the entire project.

I setup a paint station in my garage, and began removing all the RAM, BIOS and CPU chips. I had this idea that I would leave them unpainted and after painting the entire project, I would place them back into their corresponding slots. This would allow me to use the chip-less motherboards - painted in one solid colour - as a canvas for the removed chips.

After removal of all the microchips, and a good cleaning of the motherboards, I then had to decide on a colour. I've been working on designing my home office to have a simplistic, clean look, and so I thought that I would paint this project white. I went back and forth between flat white and glossy white for way too long. It wan't until I was standing in the paint isle at Canadian Tire with a can of each in my hands that I finally decided on flat white.

At this point I can say that I am completely happy with my choice. I have this project back up, hanging over my computer desk, and really enjoy it. I hope that this project inspires you as it does me.

Hackintosh – Again!

Well, it’s been a while and I thought it was time to start a new project. I still have some work to do to finish up my iPod dock / antique radio project, but I have been inspired by my latest purchase, so it will have to wait.

While looking around at an asset disposal sale at work I saw something that instantly looked like another project waiting to happen. I found a Blue and White Power Mac G3 tower. It was only $10 so I couldn’t resist.

This model came out in ’99 and was amazing at the time. All though I did read that there were some hardware problems in the initial release. But my plan is not to resurrect a 10-year-old, 300MHz computer. My plan is to rip out the existing hardware and build a Hacintosh into the beautiful looking case.

As you can see, Apple put a great deal of thought into the design, as they always seem to do. The side opens with little effort, and requires no tools to get right inside. It’s a very sharp looking design, and it would be a shame to let it go to waste.

I am just getting started with this project, but I will post an update as soon as I gather some hardware together.

Mac Mini Media Centre

This week I want to tell you about my latest project - setting up a home media centre using a Mac Mini. Last week I got my new MacBook Pro, so my mini really wasn't needed any longer as my everyday computer. I thought this was the perfect opportunity to finally build a media centre computer.

I have tried several times in the past, but did not ever find a system that worked really well for me, and didn't require a great deal of computer know-how to use, after all my wife would need to be able to use it when I wasn't around. I tried Geexbox a while back. This is a Linux based live distro that works with a lot of different hardware - except the actual hardware I had available to me at the time. I was a student then and really could not afford to just go out and buy the supported parts to get this system up and working properly. I was working from spare parts and computers that I used to regularly scavenge from the side of the road on garbage night.

My last experience with a media centre was a birthday present from my wife. A D-Link DSM-320. This was a neat device that just plugs into your TV and can wirelessly stream music, video and photo's from your PC. The only problem was, this thing was VERY picky. I spent a great deal of time trans-coding video to even get it to work, and most times it would end up out of sync with the audio or the video would stutter. I did have a little more luck once I stopped using the bundled D-Link software and switched to Tversity, but it still wasn't what I was looking for. It was truly a lesson in frustration. I still have it, but I never use it.

Enter my Mac Mini. This little computer is really a perfect solution for a media centre. It's diminutive size and simple design allow it to easily fit into a home theater system. The setup was very easy, but did require a little research. First of all, my nice big TV does not have any digital inputs. I purchased it just before every TV came with digital inputs as standard. I have component, s-video, and composite inputs, and thats all. I also purchased my Mac Mini before Apple switched to the Nvidia video card. So I'm working with somewhat older hardware, but that doesn't mean I still can't enjoy a home media centre.

Getting Started

The first thing I did was erase the Mini and re-install OS X. This would give me a clean slate to start with. The first thing you will notice when you turn on a Mini with no keyboard and mouse is that it immediately starts looking for bluetooth devices. So I turned off bluetooth from the Systems Preferences. This stopped the annoying system hang when it first boots up.

I then needed to find a way to connect my Mini to my TV. I found a cable on the apple website that would plug into my DVI output of my Mini and switch the signal to s-video and composite. Not HD by any means, but definitely still watchable using s-video.

Once I had the adaptor I needed to get an s-video cable and a stereo cable to plug into the headphone jack on my Mini and into the RCA audio inputs on my TV.

My Mini came with Front Row and an apple remote so the software was all ready on the computer. I did have to download a few applications to make life a little easier. Just a quick note about the apple remote - if you hold down the play/pause button for 5 or 6 seconds, it will put your mac to sleep. It immediately wakes up if you press it again. It pauses your video exactly where you are, and resumes from there as well.

Perian. This will allow quick time to play many more video codec formats. So I won't have any issues playing most downloaded video.

Flip4mac. This is a WMV quicktime component that allows it to play WMV file format. So I can play windows formated video.

Now that I can use Front Row on my TV, and my apple remote to control things from the couch, I need to figure out how to get enough content on this computer. My Mini came with an 80 gig internal drive - which is really to small for a media centre. I needed more room. I decided to attach an external USB drive to the mini to allow for holding all kinds of video. I had to create an alias of the external drive in my Movies folder. It's as easy as right-clicking and dragging and dropping to make that happen.

I fired up Front Row and noticed something was not quite right. All my video, including TV shows all display in the Movies section of Front Row, and not the TV Show section. After some investigation I discovered that iTunes must be used to set the video kind to TV show. This was a problem because most of the TV shows I have are AVI, and DivX files. I didn't want to have to transcode and add all these shows to iTunes. At this point I discovered an application called Movie2iTune which will create links in iTunes to all your tv shows that can be sorted and set to TV shows, thus solving the problem. The software is automated, so all I had to do was select all my TV shows, and drag them over the icon for Movie2iTune. It adds them to iTunes automatically! All I had to do then was select them from the Movies section of iTunes, and change the video kind to TV Show.

The next thing I setup was screen sharing on the Mini so that I can remote into it to create files and move things around. I just had to turn it on from the Sharing preferences menu on the Mini. On my other mac I downloaded Chicken of the VNC. However there are times when I'm sitting in front of the TV and don't have my macBook Pro with me. As long as I have my iPod Touch with me, I can still use the Mini as a computer, even though I don't have a mouse and keyboard attached. I found an app for my iPod called Mobile Air Mouse. This app allows my iPod to act as a track pad and a keyboard.

I've been using my Mac Mini as a media centre for a few days now. I've setup file sharing of the Mini's movies folder and can move over any new video files from any computer on my home network. It is working perfectly, and I have made my way through about twenty episodes of Seinfeld so far. I'm still going to look for some way to more automate ripping DVD's. Currently I've been using Handbreak, but I'd love to just have to pop in a DVD and have it rip all by itself.

Related Links

Movie2iTune

Apple DVI to Video Adapter

Geexbox

D-Link DSM-320

Tversity

Perian

Flip4mac

Mobile Air Mouse

My New Toy! - 13" MacBook Pro

This week I want to share with you my experience with my newest toy, although I really do hesitate calling it a toy. It's an AMAZING piece of technology. It's my new MacBook Pro 13 inch, and this little computer is blowing my mind!

I opted for the 2.26GHz base model, but I did splurge on the Ram and Hard drive. I didn't think that it was worth the $300 for the extra 300MHz or so of processor power. I upped the 2 gigs of standard Ram to 4 gigs. I looked at the 8 gig option for about half a second. It was an extra $1100 to get 8 gigs! I'm sorry, but that it just CRAZY! Is anyone really getting the 8 gig option? I heard that they actually grind up pixies to make the 8 gig ram chips. I also opted for the 500 gig hard drive so that I would have no shortage of storage space.

The unibody construction truly is a nice feature. This laptop feels very solid, and the all aluminum body really does seem to help keep it running cooler.

Multi-touch track pads ARE the future. I've been using it for a few days and I already don't know how to live without it. I'm sure we're going to see many other laptops showing up with this neat trick soon.

The display screen is very clear and bright. I was looking for something bigger than a netbook and smaller than my giant 17 inch dell, which was too heavy to lug around on a regular bases. 13 inches seems to be the sweet spot for me, and what I was looking for.

The biggest surprise for me with this particular laptop is the keyboard. It uses the standard apple chick-let keys, but the feel of them is wonderful. They have the perfect tactile feel and require a perfect amount of force when typing. It was something that hadn't even come to mind when looking at any computer before. As soon as I started typing, I could feel that these keys are perfect!

As anyone who knows me knows, I'm huge into the computer eye-candy, and this Mac does not disappoint. It looks stunning, both the computer and the OS. I'm one very pleased apple owner.

With this purchase, I can see that my transformation is now complete. I am a full fledged Mac user and moving up quickly to a Mac fanboy. I'm already looking forward to the next apple keynote like a child waits for christmas morning. My poor wife is caught in the middle and I'm sure is tired of hearing me lusting after the newest apple offering. Sometimes I wonder if she only stays with me for the free tech support. :)

Next week I'm planning to discuss how I set my Mac Mini up as a media centre computer for my TV... stay tuned (Pun totally intended there :)