October 2004 - Posts
I was driving the kids home tonight and we saw the Lunar Ecilpse. When we first saw it the Earth had cast a shadow across about 75% of the moon. We raced home so we could get out the binoculars and take a closer look before it was completely "red".
We got home in plenty of time and while we watched the Red Sox win the World Series saw it get really dark and then saw it light up again. The view through our powerful binoculars was spectactular. The best I can remember seeing.
I started taking pictures about once every 5 minutes from the time we got home and was able to get a few really great shots. I have an extended lens for my Nikon Coolpix 5700 and it did a pretty good job of focusing and getting detail. The shot to the right was taken as the sun started hitting the moon again. Just darn cool!
ExtremeTech has a great article full of advice on bulding a PC today that can be upgraded in the future. Their general advice is "don't build yesterday's PC but instead bet on the new standards like PCI Express". Matches my opinion exactly.
Of course, when I built the PC I'm typing this on about a month ago I ignored my own advice...with good reason: I really needed a new PC and the "next generation stuff" really wasn't there yet and most importantly I was given a nice mobo and CPU for free.
When I wrote the post describing the system I built, I promised I'd follow up with details of how it went. Until right now I bagged on that promise.
A quick summary of what I built:
Assembly went well with a few minor exceptions:
- The Ultra X-Connect PS didn't come with SATA power cables. Apparently they do now. No biggie because the Raptor drives support the old-school power plugs too.
- The first slot of the Antec P160 case (where the video card goes) is constructed such that getting a fat DVI connector attached is almost impossible. The card had to be "angled" a few degrees in order for it to fit. If I want to go dual DVI I will likely need a new case. Bummer.
The machine had some stability problems initially. The machine would hard-hang every few days with garbage on the screen. I downgraded the nVIDIA video drivers to the 61.76 version from the 61.77 version and the and the problems have gone away. When nVIDIA releases new drivers I'll try again. Since then the machine has been rock solid and I have no issues to report.
AnandTech has a very deep article on Windows Media Center Edition 2005. They didn't think much of the earlier versions of MCE. Some quotes:
"Media Center Edition continues to be the coolest looking highest performance PVR/DVR (with a fast enough system) out there on the market today. The interface continues to be clearly ahead of the competition..."
"In the end, MCE continues to be a niche product, but if you have the means, then its definitely one worth going for."
Via Ethan Zoller, the Media Center 2005 SDK is now on MSDN. http://msdn.microsoft.com/mce.
Via this I also discoved Michael Creasy's blog which focuses on MCE. Cool.
Via Furrygoat, I found a great USGS website with tons of really good pictures of Mount St. Helens. Definitely worth checking out.
When I see these photos I'm reminded of two things: How gawd-awful the pictures of the 1980 eruption were and this amazing Earth that God created.
I don't get to write much code anymore. When I do I get an amazing amount of joy out of it. Tonight I realized that my MCE Controller, which I hacked up to enable me to control my Windows Media Center machine via Ethernet from my Crestron system has simply "just worked" since I released version 1.0.1 in February.
I'm struck with how easy it was to write using C# and the .NET Frameworks in Visual Studio. I'd never really done much direct network programming (I certainly did quite a bit of distributed object programming while working on COM) so it took me a bit to understand the classes for TCP/IP, but in a very short period of time (even counting my insistence on doing things the hard way) I was able to build a very stable network app with a nice UI and extensibility.
The thing that blows me away the most is that this thing is multi-threaded. Seriously, I'm not a professional programmer. The last time I implemented something with threads was in 1995 when I wrote OLEView. And even then I didn't really know what I was doing.
To those of you who program for a living, or simply have more time do hack than I do: I envy you.
ExtremeTech discusses "Doing the Multimon". Great article. Too bad they don't talk about the very cool Ultramon, which gives you great fine grained control over your multi-monitor setup including different desktop images, screen savers, and more.
Even more agregious is the fact they don't talk about MaxiVista which allows you to turn any other PC (particularly that ancient laptop you have lying around) into a second or third monitor.
I wrote about both these great tools in March.
Walt Mossberg has
an article on backing up your precious data.
Engadget moans thatthe price of the ultra-cool Sony Vaio type X is too expensive. Sure it is expensive today but soon this level of sophistication in PC hardware will be broadly available at much move competitive prices.
Iain (who as moved to
http://blogs.msdn.com/iainmcdonald) has a
great post based on an old doc written in '95. The topic of the post is how to avoid the pitfalls of a Version 1.0 product. Good stuff.
GamePC - Symphony Arrives : Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
GamePC.com reviews MCE 2005 and loves it.
"...MCE is still (in our opinion) the best home theater product currently on the market by a very large margin."
Another "version 3 success" by Microsoft? I certainly think so, but then I'm highly biased.
Buy.com is now taking pre-orders for the Linksys WMCE54AG "Wireless A/G Media Center Extender"...aka Bobsled. I am so incredibly proud of this device. Way back in 2000 I sat down with Don Gray and Bob Atkinson to brainstorm the concept of using RDP to remote UI and AV from a media server. This concept has finally been released as a full product. Of course you can't actually use one of these until Windows Media Center 2005 ships but you'll be able to get that soon too.
Hats off o the entire Bobsled team: David, Jay, Harry, Guillaume, Jeff, Nick, Gurpratap, Keith and anyone I've forgotten. You did it!
According to the press release, "...Dilbert's Ultimate House"(DUH). DUH is a virtual web-based home that the famous icon of the workplace Dilbert, his fans, tech geeks, the environmentally conscious, and those who just plain love the comfort of a good sofa, will covet."
He's got a pretty clean looking wiring closet, but what kind of home server is that? And why does he still have all those magnetic tapes (or are they CD's...not that it matters)? If he had reliable storage in his home server he could have just stored them there.
On a slightly more (but not really) serious note, The Inquirer (yes I sometimes view it, but I just look at the pictures) has a critical review of DUH. I tend to agree with most of what the author says.
[Update: Fixed The Inquirer URL.]
In Time to RAID PVRs, says Silicon Image The Register reports that Silicon Image has a new RAID chip that they think they can sell to PVR vendors. Not sure how this differs from their existing SATA/IDE RAID chips.
But they seem to agree with me that those hard drives are fragile and redundancy schemes are a Good thing.
news.com reports on a new PC form factor: Helmet PC aims to score with football fans.
This thing would make a fantastic home server (see my mini-ITX post)...as long as you used a Seattle Seahawks helmet and not a nasty Raiders helmet.
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