The Blog of G

It’s a question people ask, often with an air of disbelief, like why would you want to have a pc in your living room?

There are a lot of plus sides to it, not least of which is a 32″ widescreen monitor to surf the web with. But that’s only a small plus, first off what does a HTPC do for you?

Well a home theatre personal computer is exactly that it’s a computer for your home theatre, or in my case, living room. How does this add to your home theatre? for a start it’s 1 box for your DVD player, all your music, digital photo’s, TV recording’s and Home Movies. That’s what Windows Media Centre 2005 will do out of the box. Is it difficult to setup? not really, you can do it all from the remote once the operating system is installed.

For me there are 3 killer features…

1. My Photos – allows basic photo editing and slideshowing your photo albums
2. My Music – The Music collection
3. My TV – schedule and watch TV recording’s

The last of these gets the most use in our house, although having a photo slide show as wallpaper means both myself and Elly get to see those precious moments plenty.

I love the Music portion of Media centre, it was a bit time consuming to get all the info and album art sorted out but once thats done, it makes it so easy to find your favourite artists’ or albums. I’ll post another time about my personal experiences tagging over 20 Gb or about 10,000 individual audio files, it’s actually not as time consuming as you might think.

Where Media centre comes into it’s own is working hand in hand with our set top box for TV. it means outside of Grand Prix, neither myself or Ellybabes watch TV “live” anymore. Instead we record all our favourite TV shows and we can watch whatever takes our fancy at that particular time. So much better than spending 20 minutes flicking through channels till you find something worth watching.

This is really easy to do, just search by keyword till you find the program you like and select “record series” you can even tell it to record all showings on all channels or just new episodes, but once you take those 2 minutes to decide that, media centre just does it. The NTL set top box is far less reliable, needing to be rebooted at least once a week.

What if 2 shows are on at the same time? first media centre tries to find an alternative showing of either show, if it can’t then, it decides what to record based on the recording priorities the user sets. So for instance, we’re huge “Bones” and “Boston legal” fans, to make sure we don’t miss an episode these are top of our priority list.

Whereas “The Simpsons” which is on so many channels and almost daily, it’s near the bottom of the priority list as there always being re-shown.

What all this means is that when we sit down to relax and watch some telly what we want to watch is always on.

So is that it? well not entirely, there is a lot more to it than that and in a future post, I’ll touch on the why I chose Microsoft Media Centre and the benefits that it will bring when we move into our new home.

It’s true, just ask Elly. So when I realised that I needed to update my wardrobe a bit for the impending honeymoon, I got into my usual sulk at the thoughts of what was in store.

Still at least this time I don’t have to go looking for T-shirts as well, thanks to T-Shirt Hell. I have ordered off them before to check the size and quality etc. so I just logged in and bought a load of great T’s in no time. Job done. Well, except for the trousers, shoes, Shirts and Jackets that I apparently “need” :p

There are some designs on there site that I would never wear for obvious taste reasons, (in fact some would say they are not suitable for public consumption) but they are all funny and they’re great quality T’s as well.

Still it got me to thinking about which of T-shirt hell’s shirts would most suit my favourite ‘local’ blogger.

Ellybabes

or how about

and finally, the one that I think is probably gonna get me in trouble

So have I got it right or have I just seriously insulted my new wife? time and the comments will tell

On tuesday last, Ireland witnessed one of the worst traffic accidents in our history. It’s been covered plenty on breakingnews.ie so I’m not going to go into details here, my sympathy goes out to all those involved and their families and friends. This was a truly terrible accident, myself and Elly passed the scene about 10 minutes before it happened. I hope you’ll forgive me for feeling relieved that we weren’t involved.

Something positive has to come from a tragedy like this and I hope it’s helped others to think about the way they drive, the way it has made me think about how I drive. The question that comes to my mind is “so, how fast should you drive in fog?”

Tonight, I did some calculations and worked/puzzled this out. At 120Kph you move a little bit more than 33 meters every second. That’s obviously far to fast to be travelling if you can only see 20m or 25m and thats still only a light fog. If you come up to a stationary object it’s already too late to brake.

So what speed is safe?

Lets say you can see 20m. That’s about 65 feet. What distance can you stop your car in, from what speed? is 70Kph slow enough? Well, you travel about 19.5m in 1 sec. Could you react and stop your car in 1 sec? I know I don’t want to find out.

Even at half that speed you only have 2 secs to react and avoid something thats happened 65 feet ahead. Think about that next time you start your car, I know I will.

Lets make that the positive thing that comes from this, think about how you drive. Not just the speed, your road manners as well. Indicate when you’re going to make a turn or change lane not as you do it. Don’t stay in the overtaking lane if you’re not overtaking and leave earlier so you’re not in a hurry. and maybe we’ll all help make our roads safer for us all.

I think so! That’s why we’re planning a three week european tour!:D

So far on the schedule we have, Stonehenge, Dunkirk, Nurburg, Amsterdam, Wiesbaden, Innsbruck, Monza, Maranello, Monte Carlo, Cannes, Aix-en-provence, Troyes, Maastricht, Spa Francorchamps, Gouda, back to Amsterdam and then home. We intend to drive this! I think it’s about 6650km before we drive around any of the places we’re visiting. Are we mad? Ask me in October

Some of the more astute readers will have recognised that a few of these places would have significance to Formula 1 fans like myself and Elly. Yes, we are taking in not 1 but 2 Grand Prix. What’s more there the last 2 european races of the 2007 season, add to that the fact that Monza and Spa are 2 amazing circuits which have always had amazing races and your starting to get a picture of why were calling this a holiday of a lifetime!

We were at the european GP in Nurburg last year, so why are we returning? Well, were actually heading for the old Nordschleife circuit. We have managed to get a ticket for the Ring Taxi. Which if your not familiar is basically 1 Lap of the old circuit in a BMW M5 with 1 of 3 possible ex- BMW test-drivers at the wheel, a guaranteed sub 10 minute lap. Who knows I may be inspired to take my own car round and see if I can manange a sub 10 minute lap on the fiercest race circuit ever.

We’re also planning to spend a few days in Maranello, the home of Ferrari but also the birthplace of the performance car, where the legend that is Italian Sports cars was born. Were hoping to do a tour of the various manufacturer’s one of the days this covers Ferrari, Lambourghini,
Pagani and more.

For now, I think that’s enough details but don’t worry, I will be talking more about this as we get more details tied down.

So saturday, Myself and Elly, along with some of her American work mates, went into Dublin to see the parade. I’ve lived in Ireland all my life and this is the first time that I’ve ever seen the Dublin Parade Live, as it were, so, after we all met up and found a suitable vantage point along the route, we settled in to wait for the parade, snapping a photo or two and chatting while we waited.

I took a few snaps of the masses as we all waited for our first sight of the parade.

Elly took a few shots in black & white. This one was just some random child in the crowd, but he seems to be enjoying himself:)

As the parade arrived Elly was closer to the rails and started to snap shots in both mono and colour.

Mono wouldn’t have been my choice for a parade but I don’t think either of the next two shots would have worked as well in colour

I’m not sure which one was scarier!

One thing, I noticed that surprised me, was the lack of any Irish Dancers. What’s up with that?

Well there were some interesting St. Patricks

These last 2 are my favourites I just love the colour and the energy. I am at times jealous of Elly’s ability to just pick up a camera and snap great shots, especially when she hogs the camera for an entire afternoon :p