Monday, October 18, 2010

Computing!

I've been down to just my laptop and a single ancient box since moving to Hawaii, due to the careful packing skills of my movers.  I finally bought a replacement, and have been having that old-school feeling of trying to get disparate parts working together.  Unfortunately, I fly out to Baltimore for a week on Wednesday, so I'm making this list partially as a to-do list for when I return.

Current status:

  • HDMI display works to my television.  Unfortunately, the TV refuses to believe there is a computer attached, and so refuses to allow access to the overscan disabling functions.  What this means is that there's a fairly large border that the computer thinks is visible, but isn't.
  • Surprisingly enough, HDMI sound worked with mplayer with only minimal tweaking.  This is a good sign.
  • Wireless now works fine, allowing this computer to function as my wireless router.  I've enabled WPA, since I don't feel like doing MAC address filtering and running kittenwar net.  I am having some throughput issues, where the network stalls every ten seconds or so.  I suspect interference from neighbors, but that's a bit tricky to diagnose.
  • mythtv sees the database, and looks like it should be functional with an evening of tweaking, once I get that overscan issue fixed.
  • The IR remote I got apparently works randomly with mplayer.  I suspect it's a config issue.  I'm hoping that I can simply use the receiver, and train my universal remote to send the key codes.  
  • My external USB drives live too high on the shelf to plug into the new computer.  I can probably solve this by just buying a few 2m cables.
  • I don't have a video capture card yet, so it won't be a DVR quite yet, but that's the next project, once I get the rest of the system up and running.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Columbus day!



Between all the news stories, and this comic, I felt lie I should try myself.  Not bad, but they came out way too hot to eat immediately, and then got soggy.  They're also nearly impossible to eat without shooting sauce all over.


It just goes to show that not all kids shows are exclusively for kids.


I used mostly leftover stuff, and added some provolone to add some extra flavor.  It kind of seems to me that spaghetti taquitos would work a bit better, but that's not traditional.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010