The Blog of G

On of the things that happened while this blog was sleeping was that our old HTPC gave up the ghost. Now to be fair this was not a young machine and it wasn’t built to be a HTPC originally but it got “re-tasked” when it was about 3 years old. The day that it passed on it was over 6 years old! Not bad considering it ran 24/7 for 3 years or so.

Anyway, having lived with a HTPC for a few years it was immediately critical that we (myself and Ellybabes) got it replaced and after considering a shuttle option and having difficulties with Shuttle resellers not offering the model we wanted and the only one that did flat out refusing to support the config we wanted, we made the decision to build our own.

So after a bit of shopping around I ordered all the components from a few different online stores…

1. Elara, Provided the Motherboard. When others Let me down, Kin sorted me out in a matter of days. Thanks
2. Quiet PC supplied the case, CPU heatsink & fan, Graphics card, Power supply and some excellent advice.
3. Dabs provided the Ram, hard disks and the DVD Writer

I decided to reuse the Hauppage PVR-350 tuner card from the old Media Centre to save a little on cost and prayed that it wouldn’t be one of those “christ I wish I hadda” moments

After about a week and a half all the parts arrived within 2-3 days of each other. The hard disks were the last to arrive and there’s only so much you can do with the rest of the components, so I took a few photo’s.

Some of the boxes arriving.

The fantastic Zalman Packaging.

And the visually Stunning MSI Silent Graphics Card

So after the unboxing I snapped the case before starting to assemble.

which was severely hampered by my stupidity

So what did I do that was stupid? Well, your just going to have to come back tomorrow to find out what I did wrong and how I solved the problem, completed the assembly and installed the operating system.

The 2007 F1 Grand Prix season begins tonight with the first practice session of the new season. I’m not going to stay up for it, but I have set it to record on the Media Centre, so, I’ll be watching that while I have breakfast in the morning.

Then tomorrow night I’ll be staying up for qualifying. Saturday being Paddy’s day and the race being that night, I’m really glad that Monday is a holy day. I pray I can recover, before Tuesday.

Hopefully, I’ll find a minute or two over the weekend to post a little more as well.

So, I had a few technical difficulties of my own making and it took me a while to get thing’s back up and running, but as we all know life doesn’t stop just ’cause your blog is offline and I have been busy. here’s a quick round up in no particular order…

Our old media centre PC decided it had enough and shuffled off this mortal coil

We built a new Media Centre PC

We switched phone, broadband and TV providers
I spent a day in St. James hospital (Turned out to be nothing serious:))

Christmas

New Year

Wedding planning

I started my new Job

Another Barcamp

Honeymoon planning

More wedding plans

But at least I’ll have a few posts worth to write about next week. While My sweetie is away for a few days for work reasons.

Right so, my “about” page says I like my gadgets. Yet I haven’t said to much about them.

In truth time is a precious commodity and there are lots of things I would like to cover on this blog that I haven’t, as yet, had the time to. but thats a whole other post

Anyway, back on topic, I’m gonna include a list of my favourite gadgets and over the coming days/weeks I’ll post about each.

Hewlett Packard iPaq 6515
Media Centre PC
X-box 360
MP3 player
FujiFilm S5200 Digital Camera
This Blog
The mobile bloging gadget
Heart Monitor

There are lots more that I haven’t mentioned so bookmark this page, as I’ll be adding to the list and linking each gadget to the relevant post as I post them

A while back I discovered a web radio service called Pandora. I’ve been using it ever since, why? cause it plays toonz that I like. “Big Deal” I here you shout well have a read of this, it gives you a little insite into what makes this web radio station so different and imho better than any I have ever used before.

If your a music fan or musician with an “OpenEar ™” (That’s like an open mind for ears ) then there site is a treasure trove, that will suck up hours of your time. As an example of the kind of treats that it has helped me find, we’ve all heard this but who else has heard this version or a better example, from this song I found this one ’cause there similar??? (click the little play buttons for a sample

All I have to do now is wait for this to be made with “decent” speakers built-in so I can put them in every room of the house, ‘cept the living room of course cause the media centre PC is already plugged into the sound system there.