Gong Xi Fa Tsai!

Happy Lunar New Year! It's the year of the dog.

I just love it when Google modifies their logo . . .

Why Tivo when you can Freevo?

Well I’ve been busy playing, configuring, and tweaking my new tech toys over the last two weeks. I put together (well I didn’t really build it from the mother board up) my very own personal video recorder (PVR) or as other people like to call it, a home theater personal computer (HTPC) or media center PC.

Over christmas vacation, I had time to do some internet research. Googling “pvr” brought me to the web site called Build Your Own PVR. “Why Tivo when you can Freevo” came from this site. BYOPVR pointed me in the right direction on which hardware to buy and it also lead me to the software and community of GB-PVR.

GB-PVR is a fully featured Personal Video Recorder (PVR), allowing you to schedule TV recordings and view and pause live TV. In additional to this PVR functionality, it also acts as a media center allowing you to watch movies, listen to music, view pictures and listen to FM radio.

I bought:

. 2 – 512MB of RAM ($24.99 each at Circuit City after rebates)
. Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150MCE ($49.99 at www.pcalchemy.com)
. Hauppauge MediaMVP ($39.99 on clearance at Radio Shack)

This is pretty cheap considering with Tivo you buy the box and pay for additional monthly subscription fees. GB-PVR records in mpeg2 files which are easily copied to DVD or transcoded to xvid.

I upgraded my RAM from 256MB to 1G. The 150MCE is a TV tuner PCI card for the computer. You screw the cable line into the card. The MVP is a small device that you hook up to your PC via cat5e and TV via RCA or S-Video, so you can control the GB-PVR software and listen/watch everything on your TV. You can also have your PC next to your TV, but the MVP is extremely small and noiseless.

After downloading GB-PVR and resolving some issues via the GB-PVR forums, I was up and running. It works great! I even added some plug-ins for pictures, weather, and the local theater listings.

Our house is wired with cat5e in every room and my ultimate set up will be a MVP for each TV wired through a router to the PC in the office. With the right set up it should allow us to watch and record TV in every room and we can get rid of all cable set top boxes except the one feeding the PC with digital and premium channels.

Check out some screen shots.

HamsterCam

My hamster's name is Willow, she's a beautiful light gray colored russian dwarf hamster with a dark stripe down the center of her back. Hamsters are nocturnal, so she may be sleeping during the day. I have the camera on the top floor of Willow's habitat. She sleeps on the bottom floor.

The HamsterCam might take a few moments to load. If it's dark, either it's night or the light is low in the hamster room.

Later, the HamsterCam may become the ZooCam. The ZooCam may rotate days between seeing what the hamster and dogs/cat are up to during the day.

Title IX

On a lighter note to what follows...Title Nine is a great name for a women's sport/fitness clothes store. I love it when my new catalog arrives, because they have some really cute clothes.

What is Title IX?

Most people incorrectly think that Title IX only requires schools to provide girls/women with equal opportunity to participate in sports. Title IX actually does a whole heck of a lot more than that by protecting both males and females from sex discrimination:

The law states that "no person in the United States shall on the basis of sex be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. The amendment in 1987 expanded the definition of program or activity to include all the operations of an educational institution, governmental entity or private employer that receives federal funds.

Title IX was the first comprehensive federal law to prohibit sex discrimination against students and employees of educational institutions. Title IX benefits both males and females, and is at the heart of efforts to create gender equitable schools. The law requires educational institutions to maintain policies, practices and programs that do not discriminate against anyone based on sex. Under this law, males and females are expected to receive fair and equal treatment in all arenas of public schooling: recruitment, admissions, educational programs and activities, course offerings and access, counseling, financial aid, employment assistance, facilities and housing, health and insurance benefits, marital and parental status, scholarships, sexual harassment, and athletics.

Read about some Title IX Facts and Myths

Did you know that Title IX is under attack:
Save Title IX
NOW's Title IX webpage

Please do what you can to help save Title IX. Remember it's not just about females, males are protected by Title IX too.

OutOutBlogSpot

Another blog to my Blogroll:

OutOutBlogSpot - This blog belongs to a friend in Los Angeles. It has kept me up to date on her life and her new baby. She also pulls some interesting finds off the internet.

Only in Texas ...

Will you see a weather beaten white van on the side of the road with a large piece of white painted plywood propped against its side and the words

COONS
RABBITS
ARMADILLOS
WILD HOGS

scrawled in red lettering. Needless to say, they weren't selling pets.

This was the third time we've seen this van. The first time a couple of years ago, they were only selling "FRESH COONS." The second time was last weekend with the same sign as today. Seems like business has picked up as well as customer tastes.

Numa Numa

Haha, yeah it's old internet news, but you just gotta love the Numa numa video. This guy is great and he's having so much fun. Dragostea Din Tei is now one of our favorite fun songs. We just love his eyebrow raising.

You can read more about it at Wikipedia.

Blogroll Added

I'll be listing my friend's blogs, blogs I frequently visit, and helpful blogs. Right now I only have two:

Michael Cham - Mike was co-worker when I was working at the City of Los Angeles Planning Department. He's been with the Port of Los Angeles for a few years. His blog keeps me up to date on things happening in LA in general and in regard to planning.

Engadget - As a wannabe tech geek this blog repeatedly comes up in google searches for tech gadgets I'm interested in.

Do you BitTorrent?

What is BitTorrent? It's "a free, open source file-sharing application effective for distributing very large software and media files." It's P2P software that is different than the likes of Napster or Limewire, very different from Usenet groups, but it accomplishes the same thing. You can google "bittorrent" and you'll find a lot of websites to get you started. I recommend that you first read more about it at the creator's website for BitTorrent.

I tried a few different BitTorrent clients and like the java based client Azureus the best. Just make sure you download it from the link I provided which is at sourceforge.net. If you go to www.azureus.com you will download a version that includes spyware and adware.

You will also have to to forward your router ports and configure them in Windows. I had no idea how to do this, but the FAQs at the Azureus website will walk you through the process.

So, now we have all 9 aired episodes of Lost Season 2. Guess what we'll be doing this weekend...

Lost Power Viewing Marathon

So, we're hooked on the TV show Lost. My brother-in-law introduced it to us by giving us all the episodes for Season 1. All 25 episodes! So what do you think we've been doing for the past two days once we got back from San Diego...power marathon viewing of course. We had to watch all of Season 1, so that we can then watch the episodes we missed of Season 2 and get all caught up by next Wednesday when the next new episode airs.

It's a very interesting show and while we think some of the characters are annoying (Michael and his son) there are some that are pretty interesting and you want to know more about their past. There always seems to be a surprise and you don't really know what to expect next. Go to the official Lost website to get hooked yourself.